One of the tragic eyesores of modern India, the Dharavi slum in Mumbai epitomizes the failure of the Indian state to provide the most basic necessities for its citizens. Asia’s biggest slum, Dharavi is located in Central Mumbai, between Mahim in the west and Sion in the east and attracts poor people from across India […]
Some 50,000 low-caste Hindus and nomadic tribesmen converted to Buddhism at a horse race-track in Mumbai on Sunday in one of the single largest conversions in recent times. For centuries, the stratified caste system has been one of the greatest scourges of India, particularly in the rural hinterlands where those from the lower castes and […]
Whoa, our favorite paper New York Times has a front page story today (May 21, 2007) on India’s severe power shortages. Writing for the Times, NYT’s South Asia bureau chief Somini Sengupta describes: an electricity crisis that represents one of the major hurdles to India’s ability to hoist itself into the front ranks of the […]
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee members Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Richard Durbin  on May 14, 2007 fired a shot across the bow of nine top Indian IT companies that heavily use H1B Visas charging them with displacing qualified, American workers. In a letter to the CEOs of the top nine IT companies including […]
As India Grows, so does its slums It’s boomtime for the Indian economy for the last few years. And it’s boomtime for India’s slums as well over the last couple of decades. Even as India’s annual growth rate crosses 8%, the number of Indians living in slums in cities - often near open gutters and in […]
Life in the Northeastern U.S. during winter is bad enough. But imagine living in numbing Arctic chill where the temperatures can range from -29C to -68C. One wrong step and you could potentially fall 12,000 feet into the cold, cold ice. After spending three days at a temporary U.S. Navy camp in the Beaufort Sea in […]