Saturday, June 26, 2021

Top One Percent: Are Hindus the New Jews in America?

Hindu Americans have surpassed Jewish Americans in education and rival them in household incomes. How did immigrants from India, one of the world's poorest countries, join the ranks of the richest people in the United States? How did such a small minority of just 1% become so disproportionately represented in the highest income occupations ranging from top corporate executives and technology entrepreneurs to doctors, lawyers and investment bankers? Indian-American Professor Devesh Kapur, co-author of The Other One Percent: Indians in America, explains it in terms of educational achievement. He says that an Indian-American is at least 9 times more educated than an individual in India.  He attributes it to what he calls a process of "triple selection".  

Hindu American Household Income:

A 2016 Pew study reported that more than a third of Hindus (36%) and four-in-ten Jews (44%) live in households with incomes of at least $100,000. More recently, the US Census data shows that the median household income of Indian-Americans, vast majority of whom are Hindus, has reached $127,000, the highest among all ethnic groups in America. 

Median income of Pakistani-American households is $87.51K, below $97.3K for Asian-Americans but significantly higher than $65.71K for overall population. Median income for Indian-American households $126.7K, the highest in the nation. 

Median Income of Asian-Americans. Source: USA Facts

Hindu Americans Education:

Indian-Americans, vast majority of whom are Hindu, have the highest educational achievement among the religions in America. More than three-quarters (76%) of them have at least a bachelors's degree.  This high achieving population of Indian-American includes very few of India’s most marginalized groups such as Adivasis, Dalits, and Muslims. 

By comparison, sixty percent of Pakistani-Americans have at least a bachelor's degree, the second highest percentage among Asian-Americans. The average for Asian-Americans with at least a bachelor's degree is 56%. 

American Hindus are the most highly educated with 96% of them having college degrees, according to Pew Research.  75% of Jews and 54% of American Muslims have college degrees versus the US national average of 39% for all Americans.  American Christians trail all other groups with just 36% of them having college degrees.  96% of Hindus and 80% of Muslims in the U.S. are either immigrants or the children of immigrants.



US Educational Attainment By Religion Source: Pew Research


Jews are the second-best educated in America with 59% of them having college degrees.  Then come Buddhists (47%), Muslims (39%) and Christians (25%).

Triple Selection:

Devesh Kapur, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of The Other One Percent: Indians in America (Oxford University Press, 2017), explains the phenomenon of high-achieving Indian-Americans as follows: “What we learned in researching this book is that Indians in America did not resemble any other population anywhere; not the Indian population in India, nor the native population in the United States, nor any other immigrant group from any other nation.” 


Kapur talks about what he calls “a triple selection” process that gave Indian-Americans a boost over typically poor and uneducated immigrants who come to the United States from other countries. The first two selections took place in India. As explained in the book: “The social system created a small pool of persons to receive higher education, who were urban, educated, and from high/dominant castes.” India’s examination system then selected individuals for specialized training in technical fields that also happened to be in demand in the United States. Kapur estimated that the India-American population is nine times more educated than individuals in the home country.

Summary:

Hindu Americans rival Jewish Americans in educational achievement and household incomes. Hindus in America have joined the ranks of the richest people in the United States. They account for just 1% of the US population but they are disproportionately represented in the highest income occupations ranging from top corporate executives and technology entrepreneurs to doctors, lawyers and investment bankers. Indian-American Professor Devesh Kapur, co-author of The Other One Percent: Indians in America, explains it in terms of their educational achievement. He says that an Indian-American is at least 9 times more educated than an individual in India.  He attributes it to what he calls a process of "triple selection".  

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Pakistani-Americans: Young, Well-educated and Prosperous

Hindus and Muslim Well-educated in America But Least Educated Worldwide

What's Driving Islamophobia in America?

Pakistani-Americans Largest Foreign-Born Muslim Group in Silicon Valley

Caste Discrimination Among Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley

Islamophobia in America

Silicon Valley Pakistani-Americans

Pakistani-American Leads Silicon Valley's Top Incubator

Silicon Valley Pakistanis Enabling 2nd Machine Revolution

Karachi-born Triple Oscar Winning Graphics Artist

Pakistani-American Ashar Aziz's Fire-eye Goes Public

Two Pakistani-American Silicon Valley Techs Among Top 5 VC Deals

Pakistani-American's Game-Changing Vision 

Minorities Are Majority in Silicon Valley 


60 comments:

Moh said...

Rich, successful intelligent Jews have made Israel a powerful, developed nation that invents many advanced sciences and technologies. Israel is a virtual superpower. When did indians do the same thing for india?

Khan said...

It’s happening. Slowly but surly. Unlike Isreal, India is very large and populated. So it will be a slow process.

Chin said...

there is a marked difference between Chinese and indians in the US. I suspect when counting Chinese they include all (good, bad, mediocre) even those that can't locate China on a map, been in America for generations. whereas most of 1.5 million pajeets are highly trained and selected. how difficult is is it to understand that out of 1.5 billion street-shitters, a million or so can be selected and trained to be pajeets?

Wong said...

I love studies like this. Back in the 1990s they said that Chinese were a model minority too. Indians already have experience with this sort of fake praise like the whole concept of "martial races" but apparently they keep falling for it.

I hope Indians fully believe their own hype.

Moh said...

How is it happening? Any evidence? What advanced sciences and technologies have indians invented? Here is a list of the average IQ scores for each nation. Compare those of india and Israel:

https://new-iq-test.com/iq-by-country/

Riaz Haq said...

Moh: "How is it happening? Any evidence? What advanced sciences and technologies have indians invented?"


The Hindus in America are the cream of the crop. They are not typical Hindus in India.

Devesh Kapur, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of The Other One Percent: Indians in America (Oxford University Press, 2017), explains the phenomenon of high-achieving Indian-Americans as follows: “What we learned in researching this book is that Indians in America did not resemble any other population anywhere; not the Indian population in India, nor the native population in the United States, nor any other immigrant group from any other nation.”


Devesh talks about what he calls “a triple selection” process that gave Indian-Americans a boost over typically poor and uneducated immigrants who come to the United States from other countries. The first two selections took place in India. As explained in the book: “The social system created a small pool of persons to receive higher education, who were urban, educated, and from high/dominant castes.” India’s examination system then selected individuals for specialized training in technical fields that also happened to be in demand in the United States. Kapur estimated that the India-American population is nine times more educated than individuals in the home country.

Riaz Haq said...

China's best and the brightest stay at home. There's a lot of opportunity for them in China.



https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/18/why-are-so-many-of-the-worlds-best-companies-run-by-indians-google-sundar-pichai/



...part of the reason why you’ll see far fewer Chinese than Indians, not only as chief executives but also in the upper management tiers of large Western multinationals, is far from a positive for India. Rather, it speaks to the relative strength of the Chinese economy and areas where India continues to lag behind.



For example, large Chinese firms pay salaries to upper management that are roughly the same as or only somewhat less generous than those for similar positions in the United States, whereas Indian salaries, converted at the actual exchange rate rather than at the purchasing power of the Indian rupee, still lag behind. According to a 2014 survey by consulting firm Towers Watson, pay for top executives in China was on average more than double that in India when converted into dollars.



Also, perhaps surprisingly, despite concerns about pollution in China (though India’s is comparable, if not worse), China wins hands down as a favored destination for expats. In a 2013 survey by HSBC, China ranked No. 1 overall out of a total of 37 countries as a preferred expat destination.



In fact, firms in India seem to have little desire to tap the global labor market for top managers. Large Indian firms remain heavily dominated by local chief executives, often family members of the firm’s original management. Indian business even at the highest level — and among companies that are heavily globalized — remains largely autarkic and inward-looking. And there is good reason for this, though it does not necessarily speak well of the Indian economy.



A few years back, when Ratan Tata, head of the Tata conglomerate, stepped down after a protracted search for a replacement, his successor ended up being not a foreigner, as some had speculated, but Cyrus Mistry, a consummate insider and member of the extended Tata clan. If even the most cosmopolitan of Indian multinationals thought it wise to stick with a member of the family, rather than pick a star chief executive from abroad, then specific local knowledge and networks — including connections to powerful bureaucrats and government ministers — must remain hugely important at the top levels of Indian management. In this respect, India is much more similar to Japan or China than to the United States or United Kingdom.



So before Indians pat themselves on the back for exporting star chief executives, they might want to consider how this reflects the country’s failures. How can India produce a business environment that nurtures and provides incentives and opportunities to high-performing individuals like Nadella or Pichai, leveling the playing field with Western multinationals? And second, how can India foster a more competitive and innovative environment, one that produces new companies like Microsoft and Google?



While Indians bask in the reflected glory, the real winners are Indian-Americans. They’ll see role models they can emulate without worrying about a glass ceiling — a very American success story after all. And Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would do well to reflect on this as he prepares for a visit to Silicon Valley next month.

Anonymous said...

Anecdotally as India develops the percentage of iit grads going abroad has dropped from around 75% in 2000 to around 25% today..

So India is following the Chinese path at least for top tier grads.Middle/low tier college students are as desperate to emigrate today as they were in 2000 because the Indian economy generates high paying research and development jobs only sufficient to absorb the cream of its vast army of engineering graduates. Iit,Bits pillani,Iiit and top NITs plus a sprinkling of others..the rest do basic coding/erp package implementation type dead end work in it services behemoths like Infosys...

Anonymous said...

Yes they are.plus new jews are very close to original Jews both in the US and between Israel India.

It is two way Israel is by far number one as far as percentage of citizens who have visited India.

It is almost a rite of passage for young Israelis to spend 2-3 months in India after their 2 year compulsory military service.

https://m.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/mother-india-573686

Riaz Haq said...

Excerpt from "The Other One Percent"

An interesting aspect of the construction of identity is the term “South Asian.” In multiple surveys, Indian Americans identify themselves in different ways, but few do so as South Asian. A small section of academics and activist groups, however, are as committed to the term as the population in question appears not to be. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an affirmative action case: Fisher v. University of Texas.111 Three Indian-American groups joined an amicus brief opposing race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Texas at Austin. They argued that “Asian Americans are the new Jews,” because policies to promote diversity through race-conscious admissions in college admissions in effect discriminated against them, drawing a parallel with past discriminatory policies that excluded Jews from many universities. Conversely, several South Asian organizations signed on to an amicus brief in Fisher supporting race-conscious policies, arguing that “Asian-Americans continue to face racial discrimination and benefit from race-conscious policies, which help to break down racial stereotypes by facilitating interactions between students of diverse groups.” The three organizations that signed on to the anti-affirmative action brief all emphasized “Indian” identity, while those that supported race-conscious policies preferred the “South Asian” designation.

Chakravorty, Sanjoy. The Other One Percent (Modern South Asia) (pp. 180-181). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Riaz Haq said...

Excerpt from "The Other One Percent"

One of the reviewers of this manuscript had an intriguing question: did the coincidence of upper-caste status and high education and income among the India-born and their strong adherence to endogamy lead to an inadvertent creation by the U.S. immigration system of a new English-speaking super caste that was both upper caste and wealthy? We were intrigued by the boldness of this suggestion, but were hesitant to go so far as to endorse a “super caste” category. Not only did we not have the data to make such a big claim, but took note of some broadening of the selection base in India that may, over a longer run, create more class heterogeneity. This heterogeneity will almost surely not include India’s most marginalized groups—Adivasis, Dalits, and Muslims—in large numbers or anywhere close to their proportions in India, but is likely to reflect the pattern of political representation in the homeland in which the middle castes—similar to but not congruent with Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—are better represented.

Chakravorty, Sanjoy. The Other One Percent (Modern South Asia) (p. 313). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Riaz Haq said...

It's time to impose an exit tax on the rich and educated who're fleeing India, says Bharat Jhunjhunwala, Business Professor IIM Bangalore

https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/its-time-to-impose-an-exit-tax-on-the-rich-and-educated-whore-fleeing-india-says-bharat-jhunjhunwala

The report of the Afro Asian Bank says that one main reason for emigration from a country is safety. The rich like to migrate if they find that their families are not safe. Religious disturbances are said to be the second reason. The presence of religious disputes leads to agitations and endangers the security. The third reason is freedom of media and entertainment. This is important because the rich may want to live in a ‘free’ environment. They do not like that they may be prevented from obtaining information freely or may not be able to express themselves freely.

The fourth reason is the low rate of economic growth. We may understand this to indicate the less availability of opportunities, which again translates into social disturbances. The government must deal with these issues. The Indian economy has become like an inverted funnel that is sucking out the wealth and sending it to foreign countries. No wonder our GDP growth rate has been declining in the last six years. The government must consider the following steps to manage these reasons for emigration.

First, the government must institute external evaluation of all senior police officers. The Fifth Pay Commission had recommended the external evaluation of all Class A officers of the government. However, this was put in cold storage at the behest of the bureaucrats. The implementation of such evaluation would provide the government with better information regarding the police officers that are more efficient in controlling crime.

An Indian institute of religions

Second, the Prime Minister had expressed his resolve to make Varanasi the global spiritual capital. Followers of different religions live together peacefully in countries like Malaysia and states like Kerala in our country. One reason is that the followers are more aware about the beliefs of the other religions and do not consider them antagonistic to their beliefs. The government must establish an ‘Indian Institute of Religions’ on the lines of IITs and IIMs in each state. Departments of different religions may be stablished in these institutes so that a constructive dialogue takes place and better understanding is created between the religions.

Three, Kabir had said “Keep critics near you. They clean up your temperament without soap and water.” The government must give special advertisements to those print media and TV channels that engage in constructive criticism of the government. This will create an atmosphere of freedom in the minds of the rich. The rich will then not be afraid and not want to emigrate for this reason.

Four, our GDP growth rate has been declining in the last six years. At the same time the share markets have been rising and rising. The reason for these contradictory movements is that our economic policies are supporting large businesses and making it difficult for the small businesses to survive. This policy of killing small businesses and handing over their market to large business on a platter was supposedly to make it attractive for the rich to stay in India. It is having exactly the opposite effect, however.

Small businesses dying

The killing of small businesses is leading to less demand in the economy, lower growth rate and less opportunities for the rich even though they may be making more profits immediately. This is like the plentiful availability of chocolates but no bread. In the end, the rich are leaving despite making profits because they do not see the economy growing.

Shams N. said...

If you mine the data purely by numbers and not by logic, the results are unusable for any purpose other than a flog.

The Indians in the US have much wider wealth disparity than they do in native India. WIthin the Indians, there are 7 Indians on Forbes' 100 richest Americans' list. With their cumulative $30 billion in wealth and over $3 Billion annual income, the nearly 3.8 million Indians here get their average income pulled up, Then there are over 200,000 Indian millionaires here, some in the high 100s of millions. Of the remaining 3.2 million Indians nealy 400,000 earn decent yearly wages in excess of $125,000. But the remaining 2.6 million Indians are providing service for "DoorDash" home food delivery, Costco, ice cream trucks, taxi and buses drivers, dalit workers, janitors, and the like. They barely make $50,000 per year. In comparison, Pakistanis have a much more even distribution of wealth.

Riaz Haq said...

Shams:“Of the remaining 3.2 million Indians nealy 400,000 earn decent yearly wages in excess of $125,000. But the remaining 2.6 million Indians are providing service for "DoorDash" home food delivery, Costco, ice cream trucks, taxi and buses drivers, dalit workers, janitors, and the like. They barely make $50,000 per year. In comparison, Pakistanis have a much more even distribution of wealth”

Do you understand the meaning of “median income”? It means 50% of households earn more than this amount and the other half earn less. The median income of Indian households in US is $126.7K. And the median Income of Pakistani households in America is $87.5K. Need I say more????

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bhYd4KGR8f8/YMi_pUfwIyI/AAAAAAAAn-c/24gM04j1-xkeo-xos6XF6w6NZVPEI_uRACNcBGAsYHQ/s2174/Median%2BHousehold%2BIncome.png

Riaz Haq said...

Why Indian Americans are not the new Jews by Razib Khan

https://www.brownpundits.com/2020/08/23/why-indian-americans-are-not-the-new-jews/

Indians are not nearly as culturally coherent and cohesive as Jews. Genetically, Ashkenazi Jewish genealogies tend to coalesce 500-1,000 years ago. Indian genealogies for different communities coalesce 2 to 4 thousand years ago. Jewish Americans arrived in the United States with a common language, Yiddish. Only the more assimilated Jews were only fluent in the national vernacular. Indian Americans share one language, English, which is the same as that of the nation to which they migrated. The overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans in the 20th century remained Jewish if they were religious. A minority of Indian Americans are Muslim or Christian, and even among Hindus religion and caste distinctions are important enough there are North Indian and South Indian temples. Sikhs are overrepresented amongst the migrants. Jewish Americans tended to create their common American culture in a few large urban areas, in particular New York City. Though Edison and Cupertino have large Indian communities, the size and concentration of these communities are not analogous to Jews in terms of magnitude.

In short, Indian Americans don’t have what it takes to create a coherent catchall ethnic group similar to Amerian Jews except for the fact that outsiders perceive themselves as a singular group. I don’t think that “push” is ultimately that strong.

Riaz Haq said...

‘Indian-Americans are taking over the country’: Joe Biden at NASA meet

https://youtu.be/pXpvajPupS8


US President Joe Biden lauded the contributions of Indian Americans during a conversation with NASA scientists who were involved in the historic landing of Perseverance landing at Mars. ‘Indian- Americans are taking over the country. You (Swati Mohan), my Vice President (Kamala Harris), my speech writer,’ Joe Biden said. Indian-American scientist Swati Mohan leads the guidance, navigation, and control operations of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. The President further added that the achievement of the team was exemplary and thanked them for instilling a dose of confidence in the American people. Watch the full video for all the details.

Riaz Haq said...

India Has Undercounted Covid-19 Deaths by Hundreds of Thousands, particularly among #India’s vast population of #rural poor, who have little access to #healthcare or #COVID19 testing. #Modi #YogiAdityanath #BJP #Hindutva https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-has-undercounted-covid-19-deaths-by-hundreds-of-thousands-families-and-experts-say-11624795202?st=dhywbb7svooew7y&reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter via @WSJ

According to statisticians, the official death count of 390,000 falls far short of the pandemic’s actual toll

As coronavirus cases rose rapidly across India in April, a 70-year-old woman died at her home in the eastern state of Bihar. A rapid antigen test for Covid-19 had been positive, and a lung scan had indicated viral pneumonia and the “possibility of Covid infection.”

But Shila Singh’s death hasn’t been counted among India’s Covid-19 toll.

The institute (for Health Metrics & Evaluation) modeling suggests the true Covid-19 death toll in India exceeds 1.1 million, close to three times the reported number. Dr. Murray estimates the scale of the undercount is similar to those in some countries in Latin America or Africa. He said the institute estimates India has detected only about 3% to 5% of all infections due to insufficient testing.

Murad Banaji, a mathematician at the Middlesex University in London who has been tracking the pandemic in India, estimates the country’s real death toll could be around five times the reported figure, based partly on mortality and serosurvey data, which shows the presence of antibodies in the population.

------------

India has officially recorded more than 390,000 coronavirus deaths, but families who have lost loved ones, health experts and statisticians say that vastly undercounts the true toll. Families like Mrs. Singh’s have been left struggling to get compensation that some states have set up for Covid-19 victims.

India’s undercount has also left a huge gap in the world’s understanding of the impact of the Delta variant, which health experts believe helped drive one of the world’s worst Covid-19 surges in April and May. India was the first to detect the highly infectious variant, which has hopscotched around the world. It is fueling a surge in the U.K., and is expected to become the dominant variant in the U.S.

An accurate count of Covid-19 infections and deaths is “a very important part of understanding how big a threat new variants are,” said Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.


Riaz Haq said...

Indian Americans and American Jews: Advancing a trilateral alliance
ndian-Jewish partnership in the United States isn’t a new story. It has been growing for years.
By JASON ISAACSON JULY 6, 2017 21:18

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/indian-americans-and-american-jews-advancing-a-trilateral-alliance-498989


As an organization that has been deeply involved in promoting Indian-Israeli and Indian-US relations for a quarter- century, it was no surprise that American Jewish Committee played a role this week in the historic visit to Israel by the Indian prime minister – helping to organize programs at two Israeli think tanks, welcoming senior leadership of the Indian business community, and taking part in high-level meetings.
What may have been a surprise to some was the presence here of prominent figures in the Indian American community – notably M.R. Rangaswami, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is founder of the organization Indiaspora, and Dr. Bharat Barai, a Chicago physician and founder of the Global Indian- Jewish Relations Institute, who has been close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi since before the Indian leader’s tenure as chief minister of Gujarat.

But Mr. Rangaswami, Dr. Barai and other Indian American leaders, true friends of Israel, were in exactly the right place. Both men, longtime partners of AJC in deepening Indian- Jewish intercommunal partnership in the United States, are committed advocates of the trilateral alliance – of India, Israel and the United States – that this week’s visit, combined with last week’s visit of Prime Minister Modi to Washington, promises to dramatically strengthen.
Indian-Jewish partnership in the United States isn’t a new story. It has been growing for years – the natural result of obvious cultural affinities and compatibilities, high-achieving minority group status, attachment to a distant ancestral homeland, and common fears of extremism. It has been championed over the years by US Indian and Jewish community activists, strategic thinkers, business leaders and political visionaries – including the late Rep. Stephen Solarz, the Brooklyn Democrat who once addressed the Indian parliament to a standing ovation, and former Rep. Gary Ackerman, driving force in the Congressional Caucus on India, who retired in 2013.
Together, a coalition of Indian Americans and American Jews that AJC was privileged to help assemble made the case to wary US lawmakers and nonproliferation activists for passage of the landmark US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, the turning point in strategic ties between New Delhi and Washington, which was sketched out by president George W.
Bush and prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005, announced in fuller detail in early 2006, but not adopted by Congress until late 2008. The long slog toward enactment, surviving international negotiations by nuclear regulators and breathtaking political brinkmanship in India, cemented working relations between the two communities.
Together, Indian Americans and American Jews have fiercely promoted the principles of pluralism and mutual respect – principles increasingly tested in the public arena.

Ahmed said...


Dear Sir Riaz

Mein yah comments urdu mein ish liyah likh raha hoon takey ap ishey samajh sakey.

Pls mere comments ka reply zaroor keejiyah ga .

Sir jahan tak meri knowledge hai, Joe Biden has very good relations with Pakistani community in America. I came to know that jub Joe Biden President baney, sub say pehlay ounho ney America mein moqeem Pakistani community ko call ke and he invited these Pakistanis to join his administration.

Now Sir ,sawal yah hai key agar Joe Biden ko personally Pakistanis se problem nahi hai,toh abhi tak Joe Biden ney PM Imran Khan ko call keyon nahi kee? Joe Biden ney PM Imran Khan say abhi tak bat keyon nahi kee?

Ap ko pata hai key Pakistani media is giving lot of coverage to this news key President Biden ney abhi tak PM Imran Khan say bat nahi kee aur ap ko bhe pata hoga key American troops Afghanistan say nikalney wali hein.

Pls apney comments zaroor deejiyah ga and I would appreciate if you try to find out what exactly is the problem? Why isn't President Biden talking to PM Imran Khan?

Regards,

Ahmed said...


Dear Sir

One more question, Sir as you know key Isreali Lobbies and Indian lobbies jo America mein hein, in key beech mein relations mazeed strong horahey hein. Ap ko nahi lagta key future mein ja kar Pakistan aur baki Muslim countries key liyah mazeed problem barh jaee gee?

Ap ko nahi lagta key President Joe Biden shayad majboor hein aur woh chahtey hein key America aur Pakistan ke relations achey ho?

Pls apney comments zaroor deejiyah ga.

Regards,

Mayraj F. said...

Nearly 200,000 Asian Americans scramble for citizenship under aging-out visa policy

https://www.yahoo.com/news/young-indian-americans-appeal-path-155340326.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink

One reason for the increased pressure on this issue right now is the coming of age of the children who arrived with their parents from India in the 1980s and ’90s. This swell of immigration came as non-European migrants began to take jobs in the U.S. and move with their families under the 1965 Immigration Act, said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute. From 1980 to 2019, the population of Indians in the United States grew 13-fold.

In school at the University of Iowa on the pre-med track, Mhatre applied for a student visa in June 2020. She submitted the application well in advance, and expected it to arrive by her 21st birthday in April. It didn’t. In limbo, a now-21-year-old Mhatre was forced to get a B2 visitor’s visa to avoid deportation. Her F1 student visa finally arrived only a couple of weeks ago.

The realities of her status also forced her to abandon her dream of being a pediatrician (only a few U.S. medical schools accept a small number of international students). It was a hopeless time in her life, she said.

“I felt like I had no purpose,” she said. “I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was diagnosed with clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder.”

As a kid, she wasn’t fully conscious of how her status differed from her peers, but all at once, it was hitting her. She had to follow the path of least resistance and find a field where she was more likely to get a job and a visa. Even though she’s found a new path for her degree, her immigration status means she’s never had an internship or work experience.

She knows she’ll have a college degree in under a year, but the concept of failing to get a job and having to return to India is still a worry. And in order to stay for now, visa kids like Patel and Mhatre have to prove they don’t intend to stay forever. To qualify for several types of temporary visas, applicants have to show proof of ties to their “home” country and say they don’t plan to pursue permanent residency in the U.S.

“We've lived here all of our lives,” Patel said. “It’s really hard to prove nonimmigrant intent, which is something that's required for student visas and a lot of other temporary statuses as well.”

After years of phone calls and visits to lawmakers, they say a new bill provides a bit of hope. It will be introduced by Ross on Thursday and would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act “to authorize lawful permanent resident status for certain college graduates who entered the United States as children, and for other purposes.”

“For me personally, it’s really exciting,” Patel said. “I’ve had something that’s never made sense growing up. It’s an idea that I’ve always had: Why don’t they just create this? It’s great to see.”

Riaz Haq said...

How Indian Americans Came to Love the Spelling Bee

Since 2008, a South Asian American child has been named a champion at every Scripps National Spelling Bee.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/style/spelling-bee-south-asian-americans.html

In 2016 and 2017, Indians accounted for almost 75 percent of all H-1B visa holders in the United States. This “changed the character of the community, in terms of skewing it more professional and more highly educated,” Dr. Mishra said.

Parents were looking for hobbies for their children that prioritized “all kinds of educational attainment,” said Dr. Shankar. Spelling as an extracurricular activity soon began to spread by word of mouth. “They tell their broader ethnic community about it, and they bring each other to these South Asian spelling games, which are really accessible and held in areas where there’s a large concentration of South Asian Americans,” she said.

The hobby is also passed down — within families — to younger siblings and cousins. (“If the older sibling did it, the younger one often follows,” said Dr. Shankar.) That was the case for the 2016 Scripps champion, Nihar Janga, 16, whose passion for spelling was born out of a sibling rivalry going back to age 5. Watching his mother quiz his older sister, Navya, as she was preparing for the bee, Nihar started chiming in, reciting spellings even before Navya could finish.

“I looked up to the fact that my sister was participating in something like this, but I also wanted to be better at it. Eventually, it grew into my own love for spelling and everything it’s taught me,” Nihar said.

An Engine for Success
Navya and Nihar’s family, who live in Austin, Texas, first came across spelling bees through Navya’s bharatanatyam (an Indian classical dance) teacher, who was involved with the nonprofit North South Foundation.

The foundation has over 90 chapters, hosts regional and national educational contests in a variety of subject areas, and raises money through these events for disadvantaged students in India. A spelling bee is among the contests run by the organization, and it’s common for top contenders to continue on to Scripps.

Riaz Haq said...

Pew: Religion and Education Around the World
Large gaps in education levels persist, but all faiths are making gains – particularly among women


Hindus in India, who make up a large majority of the country’s population (and more than 90% of the world’s Hindus), have relatively low levels of educational attainment – a nationwide average of 5.5 years of schooling. While they are more highly educated than Muslims in India (14% of the country’s population), they lag behind Christians (2.5% of India’s population). By contrast, fully 87% of Hindus living in North America hold post-secondary degrees – a higher share than any other major religious group in the region.

https://www.pewforum.org/2016/12/13/religion-and-education-around-the-world/

Riaz Haq said...

India’s Muslims: An Increasingly Marginalized Population
India’s Muslim communities have faced decades of discrimination, which experts say has worsened under the Hindu nationalist BJP’s government.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/india-muslims-marginalized-population-bjp-modi

Summary
Some two hundred million Muslims live in India, making up the predominantly Hindu country’s largest minority group.

For decades, Muslim communities have faced discrimination in employment and education and encountered barriers to achieving wealth and political power. They are disproportionately the victims of communal violence.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling party have moved to limit Muslims’ rights, particularly through the Citizenship Amendment Act, which allows fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from nearby countries.

“The longer Hindu nationalists are in power, the greater the change will be to Muslims’ status and the harder it will be to reverse such changes,” says Ashutosh Varshney, an expert on Indian intercommunal conflict at Brown University.

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistani doctors recognize the heroes of pandemic among them | ksdk.com

https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/health/pakistani-physicians-of-st-louis-acknowledge-their-heroes-appna-who-forge-ahead-against-pandemic/63-4f5df9a5-15cb-4058-900f-3cf58ff1645e

T. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — The Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America recognized healthcare workers for being on the front lines during the ongoing pandemic.

"I think there's strength in numbers," said Dr. Tariq Alam, St. Louis Chapter President of APPNA. "One physician alone can't win this fight. We all have to pour in our ideas. Get the best from everyone and get the best solution for our region."


For the 250-plus members, collaborating across healthcare networks in our region was easy, Dr. Alam said. He also says it brought doctors closer to the community.

"We have many who have language barriers, or economic barriers," Dr. Alam said. "Basically being able to reach out to them, I think that is one of our highlights."

Member and St. Louis County Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan said there's not enough praise to go around.


"The only reason we aren't looking at a 3 million or 4 million death count is because of the selfless work and sacrifice of healthcare providers across the country," Dr. Khan said. "We owe them everything."

Khan said the work isn't done yet.

"I am very happy that nearly 35% in the St. Louis region is vaccinated," Dr. Khan said. "I am equally worried that 65% of us are not. We are not out of this yet."

Khan is happy that county leaders support strong health guidelines until we cross the finish line. He said it's going to take more community action before things return to normal.

"It depends entirely on how the virus behaves, on the number of people getting vaccinated and the spread of disease in smaller communities in high-risk groups," Khan said.

Until then, doctors say mask up and get the vaccine or encourage others to do so.

Riaz Haq said...

Zaila Avant-garde: #African-#American Teenager makes history at #US #spellingbee. it’s the first time since 2008 that at least one champion or co-champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee is not of #SouthAsian descent. #Indian-#American - BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57773502


A teenage basketball prodigy has become the first African American to win the US Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old from New Orleans, Louisiana, cruised to victory with the word "murraya", a type of tropical tree.

To get to that point she had to spell out "querimonious" and "solidungulate".

Despite practising for up to seven hours a day, she describes spelling as a side hobby - Zaila's main focus is on becoming a basketball pro.

She already holds three world records for dribbling multiple balls at once, and has appeared in an advertisement with the NBA megastar Stephen Curry.

Zaila saw off a field of 11 finalists on Thursday to win the title and bagged a first-place prize of $50,000 (£36,000) at the event in Orlando, Florida.

In the final round, she beat 12-year-old Chaitra Thummala of Frisco, Texas.

It was the first time since 2008 that at least one champion or co-champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee was not of South Asian descent, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Why do Indian-Americans win spelling bee contests?
Zaila had earlier in the evening hesitated over the word nepeta, a herbal mint, but managed to spell it correctly.

"For spelling, I usually try to do about 13,000 words [per day], and that usually takes about seven hours or so," the home-schooled teen told New Orleans paper the Times-Picayune.

"We don't let it go way too overboard, of course. I've got school and basketball to do."

Zaila is the second black girl to win the tournament - Jody-Anne Maxwell, of Jamaica, was crowned champion in 1998 at the age of 12.

In 2019, eight children came joint-first for the first time in the spelling bee's history. The tournament was cancelled last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Riaz Haq said...

Virgin Galactic's Sirisha Bandla, an #Indian-#American woman aeronautical engineer, wants more women, people of color in space. Historically, most astronauts have been white, male, and military. #VirginGalactic #SpaceTourism #Branson #Unity22 https://www.newsweek.com/virgin-galactic-sirisha-bandla-women-people-color-space-1608601

The first time non-white and women astronauts were selected by NASA was in 1978 as the agency looked to add candidates with a wide variety of backgrounds for its then-upcoming Space Shuttle program.



------------------------

Sirisha Bandla is one of five people joining billionaire Richard Branson on board a Virgin Galactic flight to space on Sunday.

The 34-year-old scientist is Virgin Galactic's vice president of government affairs and research, and will be handling a University of Florida research project onboard.

When V.S.S. Unity reaches its maximum 55-miles up, Bandla will become only the second India-born woman and third person of Indian descent to leave Earth's atmosphere. Although there is some debate about the point at which the planet ends and space begins.

The scientist has spoken out about a lack of diversity in the space industries—and space itself—in the months leading up to the flight.

"Women and people of color you don't often see...I don't often see students that look like myself in this industry just yet," Bandla said in a September 2020 interview with Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, a program helping college students into the commercial spaceflight industry.


Historically, most astronauts have been white, male, and military.

Analysis of NASA's intake from 1959 to 2017 by National Geographic, however, has shown how things are changing at the space agency. It did not look at the emerging private space industry, of which Virgin Galactic is a part.

Riaz Haq said...

#Dalit Scientists Face Barriers in #India's Top #Science Institutes. About 17% of India’s population, Dalits who are officially referred to as “Scheduled Castes” in government records. #caste #Apartheid #Hindutva #Modi #Brahmin https://undark.org/2021/07/26/dalit-scientists-face-barriers-in-indias-top-science-institutes/ via @undarkmag

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1419710594815434757?s=20

Interviews with young Dalit scientists, along with a growing body of academic work, detail the obstacles Dalits still face on their path through scientific training. Those barriers begin early: Just getting into science and engineering education has been a challenging and uncommon choice for Dalit students in the first place, according to Wankhede, the educational sociologist. “Science education is very expensive. Highly inaccessible,” he said. Students pay higher tuition rates for science courses than in other areas, because they are required to take additional classes to do experiments. And to keep up with their coursework, science students often pay for instruction in pricey private academies called coaching institutes, something many Dalit families cannot afford.

For those Dalits who make it into elite scientific institutes, cultural barriers remind them of the caste divide. During his time at IISc, Thomas found that his lower-caste and Dalit sources identified reflections of upper caste culture throughout the institute. Thomas focused on the Carnatic music concerts that Brahmin students organized. Traditionally, Carnatic music, a type of classical music, has long been the domain of Brahmins in southern India. In one instance at IISc, after the singer finished her song, the Brahmin audience continued singing, showing their familiarity with the art form, writes Thomas. But such events alienated researchers who were not Brahmin. One saw Carnatic music as a “symbol of domination” and said he preferred “folk songs and songs of resistance by Dalit reformers.”

“The mindset remains extraordinarily Brahminical in these elite institutions,” said Abha Sur, a historian of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written about caste and gender in Indian science. That mindset, she added, tacitly aligns itself with caste hierarchy: “There is implicit devaluation of people that continuously erodes their sense of self.”



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EVEN AS DALIT researchers like Sonkawade and Kale recount fighting against casteism, many upper-caste researchers describe themselves as caste-blind, or beyond caste — a phenomenon, critics say, that has made it more difficult to address ongoing disparities in top scientific institutions.

In 2012, social anthropologist Renny Thomas joined a chemistry laboratory at the Indian Institute of Sciences to study caste dynamics at the institute, arguably India’s most elite science university. That year, he interviewed 80 researchers, and later observed a cultural festival celebrated at the institute. Again and again, Thomas found, Brahmin researchers denied that caste existed in their lives or on the campus. “Caste!?? Oh, Please! I have nothing to do with caste,” one molecular biologist from a Brahmin family told Thomas, according to a paper he published last year. “It never registered in my mind.”

Such claims aren’t limited to academic science. In a 2013 paper, University of Delhi sociologist Satish Deshpande argued that for many upper-caste Indians, caste is “a ladder that can now be safely kicked away,” but only after they convert those high-caste privileges into other forms of status, such as “property, higher educational credentials, and strongholds in lucrative professions.” Many Dalits, Kale said, would also like to forget their caste. But upper-caste people, he added, “don’t let us.”

Anonymous said...

@RiazHaq : Problem with Dalits is NOT that they are Dalit. They face a different issue in Indian top universities. The issue they face is how they entered the university in the first place. Its a backlash against affirmative action. Interestingly, by creating an affirmative action based on caste, Indian political system has only made caste system stronger.

Riaz Haq said...

Rich #Indians leaving #India: Some of the most sought-after residential visas are for countries like #US, #UK, #Portugal, and #Greece. These jurisdictions provide various investment options, and attractive returns on real estate. #Modi #BJP #economy #COVID https://www.business-standard.com/article/markets/more-more-rich-leaving-india-in-search-of-better-investment-opportunities-121073100026_1.html#.YQVU7SAfSkE.twitter

Wealthy Indians are increasingly domiciling their families and businesses overseas for better investment opportunities, wealth preservation, lifestyle, and health care.

Some of the most sought-after residential visas are for countries, such as the US, the UK, Portugal, and Greece. These jurisdictions provide various investment options, as well as attractive returns on real estate. “After the lull in immigration programmes during the initial phases of the pandemic, we are now seeing more and more families evaluating alternative residencies and citizenship programmes,” said ...

Riaz Haq said...

Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey
SUMITRA BADRINATHAN, DEVESH KAPUR, JONATHAN KAY, MILAN VAISHNAV

https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/09/social-realities-of-indian-americans-results-from-2020-indian-american-attitudes-survey-pub-84667

U.S. Census data affirm that Indian Americans enjoy a standard of living that is roughly double that of the median American household, underpinned by substantially greater educational attainment—the share of Indian Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree is twice the national average.4 However, these aggregate figures mask severe inequalities within the community. Although overall levels of poverty are lower than the American average,5 there are concentrated pockets of deprivation, especially among the large number of unauthorized immigrants born in India and residing in the United States.6

Additionally, a narrow focus on demographics such as income, wealth, education, and professional success can obscure important (and sometimes uncomfortable) social truths. What are the social realities and lived experiences of Indian Americans? How does this group perceive itself, and how does it believe others perceive it? To what extent does the community exhibit signs of shared solidarity, and are there signs of division as the group grows in number and diversity? These are some questions this paper attempts to address.

While the social realities of Indian Americans are often glossed over, recent events have brought them to the fore. In 2020, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against U.S.-based technology company Cisco Systems after an employee from one of India’s historically marginalized caste communities (“Dalits”) alleged that some of his upper caste Indian American colleagues discriminated against him on the basis of his caste identity.7 The suit, and subsequent media melee, triggered a wave of wrenching testimonials about the entrenched nature of caste—a marker of hierarchy and status associated with Hinduism (as well as other South Asian religions)—within the diaspora community in the United States.8

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Thirty percent of non-citizen IAAS respondents possess a green card (or a permanent residency card), which places them on a pathway to gaining U.S. citizenship. Twenty-seven percent are H-1B visa holders, a visa status for high-skilled or specialty workers in the United States that has historically been dominated by the technology sector. On average, an H-1B visa holder reports living in the United States for eight years, although 36 percent of H-1B beneficiaries report spending more than a decade in the country (that is, they arrived before 2010). Eighteen percent of non-citizens reside in the United States on an H-4 visa, a category for immediate family members of H-1B visa holders. Fourteen percent of non-citizens are on F-1, J-1, or M-1 visas—categories of student or scholar visas—while another 5 percent hold an L-1 visa, a designation available to employees of an international company with offices in the United States. A small minority of non-citizen respondents—6 percent—claim some other visa status.

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Ten percent of IAAS respondents identify as “South Asian American,” a term which refers to diaspora populations from countries across the region such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Six percent choose no hyphenation at all and identify only as “American” and another 6 percent classify themselves as “Asian American,” an identity category that includes a wide range of diaspora groups from the Asian continent. Two percent of respondents identify as “Other,” indicating that none of the declared options satisfy them, while just 1 percent identify as “Non-resident Indian,” the official appellation used by the Government of India to refer to Indian passport holders living outside of India.

Riaz Haq said...

The Casteism I See in America - The Atlantic


https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/india-america-caste/620583/


A 2016 study by Equality Labs, an American civil-rights organization focused on caste, found that 41 percent of South-Asian Americans who identify as lower-caste reported facing caste discrimination in U.S. schools and universities, compared with 3 percent of upper-caste respondents. The survey indicated that 67 percent of lower-caste respondents said they had suffered caste discrimination in the workplace, versus 1 percent of upper-caste individuals. (The survey of more than 1,500 people focused on Hindus. Though upper castes hold more power, caste discrimination is more complex than simply being meted out by upper castes against lower castes, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Equality Labs’s executive director, told me. “In fact,” she said, “it is all castes against all castes.”)

More recently, a September 2020 study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that first-generation Indian immigrants to the U.S. were significantly more likely than U.S.-born respondents to espouse a caste identity. The overwhelming majority of Hindus with a caste identity—more than eight in 10—self-identified as upper-caste, and first-generation immigrants in particular tended to self-segregate, making their communities more and more homogenous in terms of religion and caste. Respondents to the Carnegie survey had varying responses to experiencing different forms of discrimination, depending on whether the discrimination occurred in the U.S. or in India, and who suffered from it. Overall, 73 percent viewed white supremacy as a threat to American democracy, but only 53 percent saw Hindu majoritarianism as a threat to Indian democracy. On the question of affirmative action in university admissions, the data suggest higher levels of support for the policy in the U.S. (54 percent) than India (47 percent).



The anguish caused by casteism is much like that caused by racism, resulting not simply from hateful slurs but from an expansive and intimate system woven into behavior, cultural practice, and economics. On a granular level, upper-caste Hindus do not share utensils or drinking water with those of lower castes, and lighter skin tones are preferred to darker ones. On a systemic level, society self-segregates, with upper castes often congregating in the same neighborhoods; the achievements of upper-caste Hindus come at least partially at the expense of lower-caste communities.

The system dictates that every child inherits their family’s caste, which is indicated by a person’s middle and last name—the name of one’s village and the profession of the family. Caste determines social status and spiritual purity and defines what jobs a person can do and whom they can marry. As outlined in Hindu mythology, men were created unequal by Lord Brahma, the Creator, supreme among the triad of Hindu gods that also includes Lord Shiva, the Destroyer, and Lord Vishnu, the Preserver. From Brahma’s head came the Brahmans—priests and intellectuals. From his arms came kings and warriors; from his thighs, white-collar workers; and from his feet, blue-collar workers. A fifth group, once described as untouchables, was kept outside of the caste system entirely, its place in the social order to clean toilets, sweep streets, and dispose of dead bodies. (The word pariahcomes from the Tamil language and refers to one of the most persecuted and lowest of caste groups, the paá¹›aiyar, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Pariah is a global standard for social outcasts, but Tamil-Brahman families, including mine, use it as a term of abuse, and it has come to mean “someone who is despised.”)



The top three groups—Brahmans, warriors, and traders—are the upper castes and can intermarry and dine with one another.

Riaz Haq said...

.⁦
@rupasubramanya
⁩ on India’s continued brain drain: Since 2014, almost a million people have given up Indian citizenship. Many of the most talented and ambitious Indians still make a beeline for the West.

https://twitter.com/dhume/status/1469869099102703623?s=20

Riaz Haq said...

New Twitter CEO (Parag Agarwal) highlights struggle to halt India's brain drain - Nikkei Asia

Rupa Subramanya is a researcher and commentator. She is a distinguished fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the co-author of "Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India."

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/New-Twitter-CEO-highlights-struggle-to-halt-India-s-brain-drain

I identified the fact that most of these success stories typically involve people with graduate degrees, training and work experience all acquired in the U.S. Well trained in mathematics, fluent in English and at ease in the American business culture, Indians are able to transition into leadership roles much more comfortably than many other Asian-born corporate executives in the U.S., including those born in China.


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But the success of Indians on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and in Ivy League colleges is both a glass-half-full and a glass-half-empty story.

On the one hand, Indians excel in the meritocratic American work culture, but on the other, they are escaping a stiflingly bureaucratic, crony-driven, inefficient work culture back home where innovation and creativity are often punished rather than encouraged and rewarded. With the notable exception of several prominent recent startups, mostly in the tech sector, the biggest Indian conglomerates are typically headed by their founders or their descendants.

These push and pull factors driving talented Indians to the U.S. are revealed dramatically in official statistics. Using data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a reply to a question in the Indian Parliament, my analysis shows that from January 2014 to September 2021, a little under 1 million Indians have given up their passports to acquire foreign citizenship. Indian law does not allow multiple nationalities, so those giving up their passports are doing so because they have acquired citizenship elsewhere.

Of those giving up their Indian passports from 2014 to 2019, the years for which we have comparable data, more than 30% on average were giving up their Indian citizenship to become naturalized Americans. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, that was a whopping 45%. In other words, almost half of those giving up their Indian passports were acquiring American ones.

China, which also requires those citizens who obtain citizenship of another country to relinquish their Chinese passport, has seen no such exodus. Data from the DHS from 2003 to 2019, the last year for which data is available, shows a consistently higher number of Indians becoming naturalized every year compared to Chinese-born immigrants.

On average, 40% more Indians became naturalized in a given year than Chinese, bearing in mind that China has a larger population than India. In 2019, a whopping 64% more Indians were naturalized than Chinese. Given the large number of Indians giving up their passports in the last couple of years, that percentage may even tick up a few more points when the latest U.S. numbers become available.

This reality of a mass exodus of talent from India is not new, a phenomenon that goes back to the 1960s. However, it is a far cry from the optimistic free-market rhetoric of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his early days in office, when his main slogan was "minimum government, maximum governance."

Modi convinced many at the time that India would once again be a land of opportunity, as it had been in the mid to late 2000s under the previous Congress-led government when the economy was growing at nearly double digits, prompting many Indians to return home with some even giving up the coveted American green cards. That hope soon faded against the backdrop of corruption scandals that helped usher Modi to power in 2014.

Riaz Haq said...

What’s the secret behind India’s IIT, which produced Twitter chief Parag Agrawal and other tech titans?
The Indian Institute of Technology is an elite network of 23 engineering schools which boasts the ‘the most difficult admission exam on the planet’
‘IITians’ include Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, Micron Technology’s Nikesh Arora and Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla


https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3160906/whats-secret-behind-indias-iit-which-produced-twitter-chief?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=3160906

Above the imposing main entrance of the first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), which opened back in 1951, is the motto “Service to the Nation”. For years, as many graduates of the country’s elite network of engineering schools headed off for greener pastures in the US, the joke among Indians was “which nation?”.
Twitter’s new chief Parag Agrawal recently joined a long list of talented IIT graduates who have become tech titans in Silicon Valley, including Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, Micron Technology’s Nikesh Arora and Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla to name just a few.

By global standards, IIT – which has grown to 23 campuses around India – is way down the academic league tables, according to the widely used QS World University rankings. IIT Bombay fared best of all Indian educational institutions in 2021, coming 177 out of the leading 200 universities in the QS global rankings. By contrast, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was in top position. While IIT scores well on employer reputation, with 70 out of 100 points, it loses heavily on its lack of international students and faculty.

Riaz Haq said...

#Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of 4 counts of fraud, acquitted on 4. Her #Indian-#American partner & ex boyfriend Ramesh Balwani is facing his own charges and a separate trial. #SiliconValley #technology
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/elizabeth-holmes-verdict-theranos-trial-rcna9022 via @nbcnews

The government's case included text messages between Holmes' former business partner and ex-boyfriend, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, discussing Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou. The couple expressed concerns over Carreyrou writing a negative article, with Balwani promising to "nail" the reporter.



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Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of four federal fraud charges Monday and acquitted on four others while a jury deadlocked on the three remaining charges after months of trial.

Holmes, 37, was the force behind a modernized blood test —advertising a cheap finger prick that could offer comprehensive results for a number of medical issues. But The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that Theranos devices were inaccurate, beginning the company's eventual downfall.

She was initially facing 12 fraud counts, but one was dismissed earlier in her trial, the result of an earlier error by prosecutors. Holmes potentially faced 20 years in prison, fines and potential restitution to defrauded investors.

The jury spent seven days going over the evidence and charges. On the third day of deliberations, jurors asked the judge to listen to audio clips of a 2013 call Holmes had with investors.

A week into deliberations, the jury sent a note that said it was deadlocked on three charges. Judge Edward J. Davila, at the prosecutor’s request, read the jury instructions known as an “Allen charge” — telling them to resume deliberations and attempt to reach a verdict on the outstanding charges.

The jury remained unable to reach a unanimous verdict, they said in another note Monday.


Riaz Haq said...

#UkraineWar has exposed #inequity in #India's #medical school admissions. #Indian medical entrance exam favors students from elite backgrounds (upper caste) who can afford specialized coaching or those who can attend expensive private colleges ($100,000) https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2022/0328/How-the-Ukraine-war-exposed-education-inequity-in-India

Every year, roughly 1.5 million students take the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, or NEET, to compete for some 90,000 seats in medical schools across India. About half of those are at private universities where tuition and other fees easily exceed $100,000. As a result, tens of thousands of Indian students opt to study medicine in countries like China, Russia, and Ukraine, where education is cheaper.

Opposition to NEET has been brewing since the government introduced the exam in 2013. Critics say that NEET favors students from elite backgrounds who can afford specialized coaching – echoing arguments against the SAT and ACT in the United States – or who can attend expensive private colleges where the bar for admission is lower. “The system is not fair; there cannot be any doubt on that,” says Dr. Anand Krishnan, a professor of community medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. “Medical profession is not just pure knowledge. You have to be more humane. There are a lot of other characteristics which are important to look for.”

When Mr. Gahlot was in 11th grade, he left his hometown of Siryawali in northwest Uttar Pradesh to go to Kota, Rajasthan, the academic coaching capital of India. There, he says, he followed a grueling regimen of studying six to seven hours a day, but fell about 50 points short of what was required to get into a government-run college.

“It was totally depressing. I would think I’m not smart enough to be a doctor, I can’t do this,” he says. Several of his friends in similar situations chose different career paths. But Mr. Gahlot had made up his mind to become a doctor in eighth grade, and turned to his last resort – going abroad. He says he was too ashamed to tell his peers he was leaving India, because many see foreign medical students as “quitters” who weren’t able to crack NEET.

The fierce competition for Indian medical school seats cost another student his life. Naveen Gyanagoudar had gone outside to buy food when he was killed by Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Speaking to local reporters, his distraught father lamented that despite scoring 97% on high school exams, his son couldn’t get admission to a medical school in his own country.

The double blow of high competition and high cost means India’s new generation of doctors lacks diversity. “They are predominantly urban-centric kids, from well-entrenched, reasonably well-off middle-class families,” says Dr. Sita Naik, a former member of the Medical Council of India, which used to oversee medical education. Dr. Naik says these graduates are unlikely to move to rural areas, where the demand for doctors is the greatest. Rural India is home to two-thirds of the country’s population but only 20% of its doctors, according to a 2016 report.

Riaz Haq said...

#US Professor Calls #India "Sh*****E". "They're taught that they are better than everybody else because they are Brahmin elites and yet, on some level, their country is a sh*thole,” UPennProfessor Amy Wax said. #Caste #Brahmin #Xenophobia #Hindu https://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad/us-professor-calls-india-sh-e-indian-americans-slam-remarks-2892529 via @ndtv

Leading Indian-Americans, including US Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, have slammed a law professor from University of Pennsylvania for her disparaging comments about the Asian American community, with a specific disdain for Indian-Americans.
In a recent interview to Fox News, Prof Amy Wax from the University of Pennsylvania alleged that “Blacks” and “non-Western” groups have “a tremendous amount of resentment and shame against western people for [their] outsized achievements and contributions.” “Here's the problem. They're taught that they are better than everybody else because they are Brahmin elites and yet, on some level, their country is a sh*thole,” Wax, who has a long history of inflammatory remarks, said.

She also said that the westerners have outgunned and outclassed the Asian Americans in every way.

“They've realised that we've outgunned and outclassed them in every way… They feel anger. They feel envy. They feel shame. It creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind,” she said.

Wax then targeted the influential Indian-American doctors' community as well. “They are on the ramparts for the antiracism initiative for ‘dump on America,'” she alleged.

The comment was condemned by the Indian-Americans across the US.

“After President Trump left office, I thought the days of calling others “shithole” countries were over,” Krishnamoorthi said in a tweet.

“As an Indian-American immigrant, I'm disgusted to hear this UPenn Professor define Indian-American immigrants, and all non-white Americans, in such insulting terms,” he said.

Stating that such comments are borne of hatred and fear, he emphasised that such talks make it much harder to accomplish common-sense immigration reform.

“Comments like these are borne of hatred and fear, and they lead to real harm for my constituents and our minority communities. They fuel hate crimes against minorities, and they make it much harder to accomplish common-sense immigration reform,” Krishnamoorthi said.

Indian-American Law professor Neil Makhija also slammed Wax for her comments.

“It's irresponsible to use your position to lend credibility to these overtly racist sentiments that don't recognise Indian-Americans for who we are," he told Axios.

Indian-American Impact is slated to hold a summit next month in DC Makjiha told Axios he's planning to adjust programming to discuss the incident and create solutions against anti-Asian and South Asian hate in educational settings.

“The most unfortunate thing is that we have a lot of brilliant and incredible students at the law school,” he told NBC News.

“It makes you question whether she can fairly grade or educate,” he said.

This is not the first time Wax's controversial comments about race have gone viral, the US media reported.

Her appearance on Carlson's show is not the first time Wax has made anti-Asian remarks. In an interview in December, she said that Indians Americans should be more “grateful” to be in the US and that the country would be “better off with fewer Asians.” Penn has confirmed that the school is in the middle of disciplinary proceedings against Wax, NBC News reported.

“The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School has previously made clear that Professor Wax's views do not reflect our values or practices,” it quoted a representative as saying.

“In January 2022, Dean Ruger announced that he would move forward with a University Faculty Senate process to address Professor Wax's escalating conduct, and that process is underway,” the report quoted the Penn representative as saying.

Riaz Haq said...

A mysterious new report tells you who funds Hindu nationalism in US, and with how much money
While Hindu groups like the HSS flag the report as 'unreliable', anti-Hindutva activists say that it's based on available data but not getting enough attention.
VANDANA MENON

https://theprint.in/features/a-mysterious-new-report-tells-you-who-funds-hindu-nationalism-in-us-and-with-how-much-money/995680/

Drawing upon publicly available resources, the report details the financial ties of groups in the US that are spending millions to influence American education and further the interests of the Indian government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Over almost 20 years — 2001 to 2019 — seven of these charitable groups spent at least $158.9 million, sending some of it to groups in India. Around half of this money, nearly $85.4 million, was spent between 2014 and 2019.

While Hindu groups in the US have flagged the unreliability of the report, anti-Hindutva activists have said that it is based on publicly available data but not getting enough public attention.


Titled ‘Hindu Nationalist Influence in the United States, 2014-2021: The Infrastructure of Hindutva Mobilizing,’ the report is authored by Jasa Macher and facilitated by the South Asian Citizens Web. It’s a researched update on a 2014 report, authored by someone who uses the same initials and email address: JM.

But Google the author and you won’t find a digital footprint — only references to their report.

“We find it strange that a report on the alleged nefariousness of various organisations, including our own, is likely written under an unacknowledged pseudonym, seemingly created solely for the purpose of this report,” wrote the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) to ThePrint in an email response.

Following the money
So, where does the money come from? Philanthropists among the diaspora, fundraising drives, wealthy family foundations and American taxpayers themselves.

Organisations like the Bhutada Family Foundation and the Puran Devi Aggarwal Family Foundation donated around $2 million to groups like the HAF, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), and Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of USA between 2006 and 2018, according to tax records. While the report points out that the donors’ ideological opinions can’t be assumed based on the fact that they’ve donated to Hindu non-profit groups, it lists the Sangh affiliations of those who head these family foundations.

According to a 2021 Al Jazeera report, five Right-wing groups — Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of USA, HAF, Infinity Foundation, Sewa International, and VHPA — received $833,000 of U.S. federal Covid relief funds, paid for by the American taxpayer. The HAF filed a defamation suit against the reporter, Raqib Hameed Naik, as well as others named in the report, including members of another US-based group, Hindus For Human Rights. ThePrint has reached out to the organizations mentioned in this article for their comments on the report.

Riaz Haq said...

#IndiaAt75: #Tech giants confront rampant #caste discrimination among #SiliconValley #Indians. They're taking a modern-day crash course in #India’s ancient caste system. #Casteism #casteisminindia #Modi #Hindutva #Islamophobia #Apple #Cisco #Google #IBM

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/caste-california-tech-giants-confront-ancient-indian-hierarchy-2022-08-15/

Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy By Paresh Dave

Apple, the world’s largest listed company, updated its General Employee Conduct Policy nearly two years ago to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on race, which it defined as existing categories such as race, religion, gender, age and ancestry. joined together.

The inclusion of the new category, which was not previously reported, goes beyond US discrimination laws, which do not explicitly ban racism.

The update came after the tech sector – which counts India as its top source of skilled foreign workers – received a wake-up call in June 2020 when California’s employment regulator asked Cisco on behalf of a lower-caste engineer. Systems, which accused the two upper-castes. Bosses blocking his career.


Cisco, which denies wrongdoing, says an internal investigation found no evidence of discrimination and that some allegations are unfounded because race is not a legally “protected class” in California. An appeals panel this month rejected the networking company’s bid to push the matter to private arbitration, meaning a public court case could come as early as next year.

The controversy – the first US employment lawsuit about alleged racism – has forced Big Tech to confront a millennium-old hierarchy where the social status of Indians has been based on family lineage, from the top Brahmin “priest” class to Dalits. Until, the “untouchables” and were sent to slave labor.

Since the lawsuit was filed, several activist and employee groups have begun calling for updated US discrimination legislation — and also calling on tech companies to change their policies to help fill the void and stop racism. Is.

Their efforts have produced poor results, according to a Reuters review of policy in US industry, which employs hundreds of thousands of workers in India.

“I’m not surprised that the policies would be inconsistent because that’s almost what you would expect if the law isn’t clear,” said Kevin Brown, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies race issues. Include it in US laws.

“I can imagine that … (a) some parts of the organization are saying it makes sense, and other parts are saying that we don’t think it makes sense to take a stance.”

Apple’s core internal policy on workplace conduct, which was spotted by Reuters, added references to equal employment opportunity and race in anti-harassment sections after September 2020.

Apple confirmed that it “updated the language a few years ago to ensure that we prohibit discrimination or harassment based on race.” It states that the training given to the employees also explicitly mentions caste.

“Our teams assess our policies, training, processes and resources on an ongoing basis to ensure they are comprehensive,” it said. “We have a diverse and global team, and we are proud that our policies and actions reflect this.”

Elsewhere in tech, IBM told Reuters that it added race, which already had India-specific policies, to its global discrimination rules after it filed a Cisco lawsuit, though it declined to give a specific date or reasoning. Gave.

The company said that IBM’s only training in which caste is mentioned is for managers in India.

Many companies do not specifically mention race in their core global policy, including Amazon, Dell, Facebook owner Meta, Microsoft and Google. Reuters reviewed each policy, some of which are published internally for employees only.


Riaz Haq said...

'Go Back To India': Indian-Origin US Lawmaker Gets Threat Messages
In all the messages, the male caller is heard threatening the lawmaker with dire consequences and in one instance she is being asked to go back to her country of origin, India. https://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad/indian-origin-us-lawmaker-pramila-jayapal-gets-threat-messages-go-back-to-india-3329168 Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal has been receiving abusive and hate messages over the phone from a male caller who even asked her to go back to India.
On Thursday, Chennai-born Jayapal posted a collection of five such audio messages.

In all the messages, portions of which have been redacted because of obscene and abusive content, the male caller is heard threatening her with dire consequences and in one instance she is being asked to go back to her country of origin, India. https://twitter.com/RepJayapal/status/1567943349763559426?s=20&t=Mt03qB4bGVD3DJhsgHaq0w

Riaz Haq said...

Hindu nationalism in India ratchets up tensions among immigrants in the U.S.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-06/hindu-nationalism-grows-in-the-united-states

In a park in Anaheim last month, hundreds gathered to celebrate Indian Independence Day.

They bought Indian food from booths and settled on the grass to watch traditional song and dance performances. The holiday had special significance this year: Aug. 15 was the 75th anniversary of the end of British rule.

Then, about a dozen people, most of whom were Indian American, marched silently past the crowd, carrying signs that read “Abolish caste” and “Protect India’s Muslim lives.”

A few men from the independence celebration charged at the protesters, grabbing the signs, breaking them and throwing them into trash cans. Some shouted obscenities in Hindi-Urdu. They called the protesters “stupid Muslims” and yelled at them to “get out of here.”

Through a microphone, an announcer led a chant: “Bharat Mata ki jai” — “Victory for Mother India.”

“We are Indian,” Rita Kaur, a protester who is Sikh and was born and raised in Southern California, said later. “We are simply speaking for Indians who are harmed relentlessly.”

Indian Independence Day means vastly different things to different people in a country shaped by religious and ethnic conflicts, as well as caste discrimination.

For many of the majority Hindu religion, the day represents the end of colonialism and the birth of India as an independent nation that became the world’s largest democracy.

For many Muslims and other minorities, it represents the bloody partition of the former British colony into India and Pakistan and the persecution of non-Hindus and lower castes.

Since Narendra Modi became prime minister of India in 2014, his naked appeals to patriotism and his party’s frequent scapegoating of minorities, especially Muslims, have resonated with some who believe he has made the country stronger and safer. Meanwhile, religious minorities, especially Muslims, have faced mob attacks from Hindu vigilante groups.

Those conflicts have sometimes spilled over into Indian communities in the United States.

An Indian Independence Day parade last month in Edison, N.J., featured a bulldozer with a photo of Modi — a provocative symbol when local officials in India have used bulldozers to demolish the homes of Muslims. Parade organizers later apologized.

In Silicon Valley, discrimination against people from the Dalit caste surfaced in a lawsuit filed in 2020 by California officials on behalf of an engineer at Cisco Systems who alleged that higher-caste supervisors gave him lower pay and fewer opportunities. At Google this year, a talk about caste equity was canceled after some employees accused the speaker of being anti-Hindu.

“This poison of sectarian hatred has been getting more widespread,” said Rohit Chopra, a communications professor at Santa Clara University who has long been critical of Modi and his supporters for promoting Hindu nationalism. “That same pattern of increasing aggression and impunity seems to have replicated itself in the diaspora.”

Organizers of the Anaheim Independence Day celebration did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement to NBC Asian America, organizer Manoj Agrawal said the event was “not religion-biased” and included many Muslim vendors.

Agrawal said the protesters intended “to create trouble and then record something which can help them to showcase something.”

The Hindu American Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group, defended the Independence Day organizers. The protesters were seeking to “disrupt children performing on stage inside the event,” the group’s managing director, Samir Kalra, said in a statement.

Riaz Haq said...

#Hindu Nationalists have also targeted #Jewish-#American Professor Audrey Truschke with vicious threats and abuse on her various social-media profiles, including threats of #rape and #murder, as well as anti-#Muslim and #Antisemitic slurs. #Islamophobia https://caravanmagazine.in/history/hindu-right-cannot-debate-me-audrey-truschke

Audrey Truschke is an associate professor of South Asian history at the Rutgers University in New Jersey, in the United States. Truschke’s research focuses on the history of early and modern India. She has written three books on the subject—Culture of Encounters, on Sanskrit in the Mughal courts; Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth which argues for a reassessment of the Mughal king; and the recently published Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim rule.

Truschke has regularly come under severe criticism from Hindu right-wing nationalists, who see her academic research into India’s complex multicultural past and religious history as an affront to their beliefs. Beginning with the release of her first book, Truschke has faced a constant barrage of online harassment, hate mail, co-ordinated attacks on social media, and in some cases, even censure—in August 2018, a lecture she was due to give in Hyderabad was cancelled due to security threats, after the police received letters of opposition. The same year, she faced an outpouring of threats and abuse after she tweeted that according to one loosely translated verse in Valmiki’s mythological epic Ramayana, Sita called Ram a “misogynistic pig.” Truschke discussed this interpretation and the misogynistic response from the Hindu right-wing, in an article in this publication.

In early March this year, Truschke began facing a spike in vicious threats and abuse on her various social-media profiles, including threats of rape and murder, as well as anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slurs. The abuse referred primarily to her scholarship on India. On 9 March, Truschke tweeted that in recent days, she had faced an “avalanche of hate speech” and threats endangering her family. She said she had blocked 5,750 accounts “and counting.” A few days earlier, an anonymous Twitter account “@hinduoncampus,” which claimed to be run by Hindu students in US universities, circulated an open letter to the Rutgers administration, describing Truschke’s work as “bigotry against Hindus.” In a statement issued on 9 March, Rutgers University called for an end to the trolling, and backed Truschke’s academic freedom to pursue “controversial” scholarship. It also promised to begin a dialogue with the Hindu students on campus.


Riaz Haq said...

Epilogue: Black Feminist Buddhist Response to the Trauma of Caste

Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Breathing in … I read and hold close Thenmozhi’s beautiful and courageous Dalit feminist meditation. I am left with the question: How do our solidarities allow us to move forward in the face of such relentless evil? Caste apartheid and white supremacy, along with capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, misogynoir, audism, ableism, cis-heterosexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, and other forms of oppression, are death-dealing to millions across the globe. Is this not evil? Is this not the suffering that we must end? Caste apartheid is painful to navigate. Thenmozhi walks us through its challenging terrain, painting a detailed portrait of how the soul wounds of caste apartheid are a global pandemic that contributes to genocidal violence across South Asia. The external caste-based violence committed against Dalit communities often results in loud silences around intracommunal sexual violence, a reality that survivors of color in the US know too well.

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 155). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

Riaz Haq said...

'Brahmins represent the head of India': Manoj Muntashir's video on JNU postershttps://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mangal-pandey-chanakya-were-brahmins-manoj-muntashir-s-video-on-jnu-posters-101670162529384.html

Brahmins represent Only Brahmins pray for the good for everyone even when he has nothing to eat, Manoj Muntashir said in his video slamming the anti-Brahmin slogans at JNU. “I am proud that I am Brahmin," he said in the video.Writer and lyricist Manoj Muntashir has released a video protesting the anti-Brahmin slogans which recently surfaced on the walls of Jawaharlal Nehru University triggering a massive row. In his video, Manoj Muntashir said it is a stereotype that the Brahmins are facing as everywhere they are portrayed as 'greedy and wicked'. Clarifying that he is not part of any political party, the artiste said his aim for the video was to say the truth about Brahmins.

On Thursday, the walls of the JNU campus were defaced with slogans like "Brahmins leave the campus", "There will be blood", "Brahmin Bharat Chhodo", "Brahmino-Baniyas, we are coming for you!" etc. 'Go back to Shakha' was found written inside the chambers of the Brahmin professors. While the university authorities ordered a probe, no group took responsibility for the defacement.

"Though India was plundered several times by outside forces in history, it did not lose everything and who saved these things from the plunderers? The Brahmins. I don't need to remind you that Mangal Pandey and Chanakya were Brahmins," Manoj Muntashir said."We are the kingmakers; Brahmins never hankered after power. Maharishi Vasistha never wanted to capture Ayodhya," Manoj Muntashir said adding that some people think Brahmins divided the society into castes but it is not the fact, he said. Brahmins represent the head of India and it should never be bowed down, Manoj Muntashir added.The JNU episode created a row and the university in past has been accused of fanning 'anti-national' activities. After the incident, Vishwa Hindu Parishad said coward Leftist agenda will not be successful as JNU now has adopted the idea of nationalism and social harmony/

Riaz Haq said...

Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy says IITs have become victims to rote learning due to coaching classes


https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/companies/infosys-founder-nr-narayana-murthy-says-iits-have-become-victims-to-rote-learning-due-to-coaching-classes-article-95545869

As more and more students leave India for higher studies, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy proposed that governments and corporates should “incentivise” researchers with grants and provide facilities to work here. “The 10,000 crore per year grants for universities under the New Education Policy will help institutions become competitive", he said.


https://youtu.be/2vzSwExIoNg

Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy on Tuesday expressed concern over India’s education system saying that even the IITs are becoming a victim of learning by rote due to the “tyranny of coaching classes.” Murthy suggested that our education system needs a reorientation directed towards Socratic questioning.
The Infosys founder, who himself is an IIT alumnus, batted for Socratic questioning in the classroom in order to arrive at solutions to real-world issues. “Many experts feel that (in) our country, (there is an) inability to use research to solve our immediate pressing problems around us… (this) is due to lack of inculcating curiosity at an early age, disconnect between pure or applied research," he said.

As to what could be done to solve this, the 76-year-old suggested that the first component is to reorient teaching in schools and colleges towards Socratic questioning in the classroom to solve real-world problems rather than passing the examinations by rote learning. Socrates was a fifth century (BCE) Greek philosopher credited as the founder of Western philosophy.
Speaking at the 14th edition of the Infosys Prize event in Bengaluru, Murthy said that the nation’s progress on the economic and social front depends on the quality of scientific and technological research. Research thrives in an environment of honour and respect for intellectuals, meritocracy and the support and approbation of such intellectuals from society, he noted.

Riaz Haq said...

Japan Needs Indian Tech Workers. But Do They Need Japan?
Recruiters call the push a crucial test of whether the world’s third-largest economy can compete with the U.S. and Europe for global talent.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/business/japan-indian-tech-workers.html

Mr. Puranik said fellow Indians often called him for help with emergencies or conflicts — the wandering father with dementia who ends up in police custody, the daughter mistakenly stopped by border agents at the airport. He once even fielded a call from a worker who wanted to sue his Japanese boss for kicking him.

His own son, he said, was bullied in a Japanese school — by the teacher. Mr. Puranik said he repeatedly talked to the teacher, to no avail. “She would always try to make him a criminal,” he said, adding that some teachers “feel challenged if the kid is doing anything differently.”

A similar dynamic can sometimes be found in the workplace.

Many Indian tech workers in Japan say they encounter ironclad corporate hierarchies and resistance to change, a paradox in an industry that thrives on innovation and risk-taking.

“They want things in a particular order; they want case studies and past experience,” Mr. Puranik said of some Japanese managers. “IT doesn’t work like that. There is no past experience. We have to reinvent ourselves every day.”

---------

As it rapidly ages, Japan desperately needs more workers to fuel the world’s third-largest economy and plug gaps in everything from farming and factory work to elder care and nursing. Bending to this reality, the country has eased strict limits on immigration in hopes of attracting hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, most notably through a landmark expansion of work visa rules approved in 2018.

The need for international talent is perhaps no greater than in the tech sector, where the government estimates that the shortfall in workers will reach nearly 800,000 in the coming years as the country pursues a long-overdue national digitization effort.

The pandemic, by pushing work, education and many other aspects of daily life onto online platforms, has magnified the technological shortcomings of a country once seen as a leader in high tech.

Japanese companies, particularly smaller ones, have struggled to wean themselves from physical paperwork and adopt digital tools. Government reports and independent analyses show Japanese companies’ use of cloud technologies is nearly a decade behind those in the United States.

“As it happens to anyone who comes to Japan, you fall in love,” said Shailesh Date, 50, who first went to the country in 1996 and is now the head of technology for the American financial services company Franklin Templeton Japan in Tokyo. “It’s the most beautiful country to live in.”

Yet the Indian newcomers mostly admire Japan from across a divide. Many of Japan’s 36,000 Indians are concentrated in the Edogawa section of eastern Tokyo, where they have their own vegetarian restaurants, places of worship and specialty grocery stores. The area has two major Indian schools where children study in English and follow Indian curricular standards.

Nirmal Jain, an Indian educator, said she founded the Indian International School in Japan in 2004 for children who would not thrive in Japan’s one-size-fits-all public education system. The school now has 1,400 students on two campuses and is building a new, larger facility in Tokyo.

Ms. Jain said that separate schools were appropriate in a place like Japan, where people tend to keep their distance from outsiders.

“I mean, they are nice people, everything is perfect, but when it comes to person-to-person relationships, it’s kind of not there,” she said.

Riaz Haq said...

Wells Fargo sacks #India VP Shankar Mishra for #urinating on #AirIndia co-passenger. Shankar Mishra, in an inebriated state, urinated on a senior citizen in her 70s, in business class of an Air India flight from #NewYork to #NewDelhi. #urinator #drunk

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/wells-fargo-terminates-india-vp-shankar-mishra-for-urinating-on-woman-co-passenger-9823021.html

American financial services company Wells Fargo, on January 6, sacked Shankar Mishra, India Vice-President of its entity in India as Mishra, in an inebriated state, urinated on a woman in her 70s, in business class of an Air India flight from New York to New Delhi.

“This individual has been terminated from Wells Fargo. We are cooperating with law enforcement and ask that any additional inquiries be directed to them,” the company said in a statement released on January 6.

The company also said it holds its employees to the highest standards of professional and personal behaviour and that it found these allegations deeply disturbing.

After news of Mishra urinating on a woman co-passenger on board an Air India flight on November 26, 2022, was reported, the Delhi Police on January 5 wrote to the concerned authorities seeking a Look Out Circular (LOC) against Shankar Mishra.

Riaz Haq said...

Indians are top earners in the US, even ahead of Americans; China, Pakistan miles behind

https://www.firstpost.com/world/indians-are-top-earners-in-the-us-even-ahead-of-americans-china-pakistan-miles-behind-11994502.html

According to an American Community Survey, Indian-Americans (USD 100,500) have the highest median household income in the US. They are ahead of people from countries like Sri Lanka, Japan, China and Pakistan


Top American lawmaker Rich McCormick, while addressing the US House of Representatives, recently said that the Indian-Americans constitute about one per cent of the US population and pay about six per cent of the taxes.

What’s more interesting to know is the fact that Indians are the highest earning ethnic group in the US — ahead of people from countries like Pakistan, China and Japan.

According to US Census Bureau, 2013-15 American Community Survey, Indian-Americans (USD 100,500) have the highest median household income in the Joe Biden-led country. They are ahead of people from countries like Sri Lanka, Japan, China and Pakistan.

The data also highlights that 70 per cent of the Indian-American population in America holds a Bachelor’s degree, while the national average is just 28 per cent.

While this data is from an old survey, a more recent numbers also indicate the same thing.

According to an August 2021 report of Press Trust of India, Indians in the US, with an average household earning of USD 123,700 and 79 per cent of college graduates, have surpassed the overall American population in terms of wealth and college education.

As per the latest census data in the US, the number of people who identify as Asian in the United States nearly tripled in the past three decades, and Asians are now the fastest-growing of the nation’s four largest racial and ethnic groups, the PTI report stated.

Why Indians have highest median household income in the US?

Harsh Goenka, chairman of RPG Enterprises, took to Twitter to share a chart that shows Indian Americans having the highest median household income in the US. He asserted that Indians shine in the US because “we value good education and are the most educated ethnic group.”

“We work very hard along with being frugal in our habits… We are smart… We are in IT, engineering and medicine- the highest paying jobs,” he added.

How Median Household Income is calculated?

Household income usually refers to the combined gross income of all members of a household above a specified age, according to Investopedia.

The median is the middle number in a group. For example, if there are three incomes in one household of Rs 10,000, Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000, in this case median income is Rs 15,000.

Domination of Indian-Americans in the US

In his first speech in the US House of Representatives, Rich McCormick urged for a streamlined immigration process. “I rise to this occasion to just appreciate my constituents, especially those who have immigrated from India. We have a very large portion of my community that’s made up of almost 100,000 People who have immigrated directly from India. One out of every five doctors in my community is from India. They represent some of the best citizens we have in America, we should make sure that we streamline the immigration process for those who come here to obey the law and pay their taxes.”

He added, “Although they make up about 1 per cent of American society, they pay about 6 per cent of the taxes. They are amongst the top producers, and they do not cause problems. They follow laws. They don’t have the problems that we see other people have when they come to the emergency room for overdoses and depression anxiety because they’re the most productive, most family oriented and the best of what represents American citizens. God bless my Indian constituents”.


Riaz Haq said...

I won a birth lottery on caste, but learned fortune need not mean cruelty
Shree Paradkar
By Shree ParadkarSocial & Racial Justice Columnist

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/04/15/i-won-a-birth-lottery-on-caste-but-learned-fortune-need-not-mean-cruelty.html


I come from a Brahmin family. This means I won a birth lottery. It means that while other identities may pose barriers, caste is never one. In fact, in certain situations, it is the secret handshake that opens doors, sometimes literally.

Caste privilege looks like — among many things — never hesitating to say your last name, being considered to come from a “good family,” having a higher chance of a sheltered upbringing (innocence is prized but not granted to all women) and being treated with deference in public spaces.

Brahmins around me insist they are not casteist. They say they don’t even think about caste let alone know the names of various castes, yet their social circles are almost entirely made up of fellow Brahmins. They say that caste oppression is now reversed and that Brahmins are now the real victims, sidelined in the caste system.

These are debates without empirical data, backed up by an anecdote or two about an undeserving “lower caste” person getting this job or that. (For a Brahmin, everybody else is “lower caste.”) By various counts, Brahmins, who form about four to five per cent of the Hindu population, comprise half of Indian media decision-makers and at least a third of bureaucrats and judges. Meanwhile, according to Oxfam, Dalits’ life expectancy can be up to 15 years less than other groups.

If forced to discuss caste, Brahmins will often claim the orginal varna system was fluid at its founding thousands of years ago, again with no evidence that Dalits could ever have educated themselves enough to then be considered Brahmin. As Indian social justice advocate Dilip Mandal noted recently on Twitter Spaces, a discussion on caste is neither theological nor historical nor abstract. It’s about lived experiences today.

Being ignorant of caste is a marker of privilege. I, too, only learned of the details of the caste system thanks to the tireless advocacy of Equality Labs in the U.S. Understanding anti-Black racism awoke me to caste-based brutality. Of course, learning that one’s gloried background is the carrier of such cruelty causes harsh cognitive dissonance. Reckoning with this reality is painful, but that discomfort pales in comparison to the generations of trauma inflicted on the marginalized. There is also little point in guilt or self-hatred; both emotions, while wrenching, simply continue to centre on the self.

None of us are born with a ready-made analysis of oppression. None of us choose to be born into the identities we inherit. The least the holders of power can do is to sit quietly, listen, reflect — not “Am I complicit” but “In what ways am I complicit” — learn, make space. And then they should let go of the reins.

Riaz Haq said...

'Hindutva Is Nothing But Brahminism'

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/hindutva-is-nothing-but-brahminism/215089


The author (Kancha Ilaiah) of Why I Am Not A Hindu on his view that 'Dalitisation' alone can effectively challenge the threat of Brahminical fascism parading in the garb of Hindutva.


How would you characterise contemporary Hindutva? What is the relationship between Hindutva and the Dalit-Bahujans?

As Dr.Ambedkar says, Hindutva is nothing but Brahminism. And whether you call it Hindutva or Arya Dharma or Sanatana Dharma or Hindusim, Brahminism has no organic link with Dalit-Bahujan life, world-views, rituals and even politics. To give you just one example, in my childhood many of us had not even heard of the Hindu gods, and it was only when we went to school that we learnt about Ram and Vishnu for the very first time. We had our own goddesses, such as Pochamma and Elamma, and our own caste god, Virappa. They and their festivals played a central role in our lives, not the Hindu gods. At the festivals of our deities, we would sing and dance--men, women and all-- and would sacrifice animals and drink liquor, all of which the Hindus consider 'polluting'.

Our relations with our deities were transactional and they were rooted in the production process. For instance, our goddess Kattamma Maisa. Her responsibility is to fill the tanks with water. If she does it well, a large number of animals are sacrificed to her. If in one year the tanks dry up, she gets no animals. You see, between her and her Dalit-Bahujan devotees there is this production relation which is central.



----
In fact, many Dalit communities preserve traditions of the Hindu gods being their enemies. In Andhra, the Madigas enact a drama which sometimes goes on for five days. This drama revolves around Jambavanta, the Madiga hero, and Brahma, the representative of the Brahmins. The two meet and have a long dialogue. The central argument in this dialogue is about the creation of humankind. Brahma claims superiority for the Brahmins over everybody else, but Jambavanta says, 'No, you are our enemy'. Brahma then says that he created the Brahmins from his mouth, the Kshatriyas from his hands, the Vaishyas from his thighs, the Shudras from his feet to be slaves for the Brahmins, and of course the Dalits, who fall out of the caste system, have no place here. This is the Vedic story.

What you are perhaps suggesting is that Dalit-Bahujan religion can be used to effectively counter the politics of Brahminism or Hindutva. But Brahminism has this knack of co-opting all revolt against it, by absorbing it within the system.

It is true that although Dalit-Bahujan religious formations historically operated autonomously from Hindu forms, they have never been centralised or codified. Their local gods and goddesses have not been projected into universality, nor has their religion been given an all-India name. This is because these local deities and religious forms were organically linked to local communities, and were linked to local productive processes, such as the case of Virappa and Katamma Maisa whom I talked about earlier. But Brahminism has consistently sought to subvert these religious forms by injecting notions of 'purity' and 'pollution', hierarchy and untouchability even among the Dalit-Bahujans themselves, while at the same time discounting our religious traditions by condemning them as 'polluting' or by Brahminising them.

Riaz Haq said...

A third of India's most sought after engineering graduates leave the country

https://qz.com/a-third-of-indias-iit-graduates-leave-the-country-1850522071

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31308/w31308.pdf

Banaras Hindu University saw a 540% spike in immigration among graduates after it was turned as an IIT in 2012

One-third of those graduating from the country’s prestigious engineering schools, particularly the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), migrate abroad.

Such highly-skilled persons account for 65% of the migrants heading to the US alone, a working paper (pdf) of the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has concluded.


Nine out of 10 top scorers in the annual joint entrance examination held nationally for admission to the IITs and other reputed engineering colleges have migrated. Up to 36% of the top 1,000 scorers, too, have taken this path, according to the paper published this month.

In the US, there is a long list of IIT graduates now leading executives and CEOs. However, most immigrants move to the US as students and eventually join the US workforce. The NBER paper found that 83% of such immigrants pursue a Master’s degree or a doctorate.

“...through a combination of signaling and network effects, elite universities in source countries play a key role in shaping migration outcomes, both in terms of the overall propensity and the particular migration destination,” the report said.

India has 23 IITs across the country. The acceptance rates at most these hallowed institutions are lower than those of Ivy League colleges, especially at the most sought-after IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai, and Delhi. In 2023 alone, 189,744 candidates registered for the JEE, competing for only 16,598 seats.

Global economies are keen on highly skilled Indians
The US graduate program is a key pathway for migration, to recruit the “best and brightest,” the NBER report said.

Similarly, the UK’s High Potential Individual visa route lets graduates from the world’s top 50 non-UK universities, including the IITs, stay and work in the country for at least two years. For doctoral qualification, the work visa is for at least three years.

Fresh IIT graduates looking to move abroad are helped by a network of successful alumni and faculty already settled abroad, the report said. Some even provide access to particular programs where they have influence over admissions or hiring decisions.


The interesting case of Banaras Hindu University

In 2012, the century-old Banaras Hindu University (BHU), also India’s first central university, was accorded IIT status. The institute located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, was elevated without any changes to its staff, curriculum, or admission system.

The NBER report studied 1,956 BHU students who graduated between 2005-2015 with a BTech, BPharm, MTech, or integrated dual degrees. It found a 540% increase in the probability of migration among graduates after the grant of the IIT status.

“...the quality of education/human capital acquired by the students in the cohorts before and after the change remained constant, while only the name of the university on the degree received differed,” the report said.



Riaz Haq said...

Brain drain: Two in three Indian emigrants are highly educated

https://scroll.in/article/1021175/brain-drain-two-in-three-indian-emigrants-are-highly-educated


Indians have been leaving the country in droves because of better job and education opportunities.


The world’s largest source of immigrants also ranks high in terms of their education levels. And here is why that is a problem.


Nearly two-thirds of those migrating out of India seem to be highly educated, having received academic or vocational training. This is the highest for any country, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This brain drain is a “consequence of an education system designed for ‘selecting’ the best and brightest in an economy that is still too controlled and cannot create opportunities for its best and brightest”, according to economist Shruti Rajagopalan.

Unemployment crisis
In India, unemployment levels rise with education, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. As of December 2021, one in five college graduates was unemployed. Besides a lack of jobs, there are also the problems of a skills-opportunity mismatch and corruption to deal with in the country.

Additionally, gender and caste discrimination still wreak havoc. These problems exist in the west as well but are not as acute as they are in India.

Opportunities abroad
Indians have been leaving the country in droves because of job opportunities with better pay and work hours. In the United States and United Kingdom, for instance, professionals in the healthcare and science, technology, engineering and math fields are in high demand.

Further, international students are a great source of income for universities abroad. For Indian students, it is not only the quality of courses but the diversity and holistic set-up in those campuses, too, are a huge draw.

An added attraction is the opportunity to stay on after graduation. Post-study visas, like the H-1B in the US, have mostly gone to Indians. Western countries have also etched out categories for startup founders and innovators.

No wonder then that the number of Indians studying abroad is set to grow from 7.7 lakh in 2019 to 18 lakh in 2024.

Riaz Haq said...

India’s diaspora is bigger and more influential than any in history
Adobe, Britain and Chanel are all run by people with Indian roots


https://www.economist.com/international/2023/06/12/indias-diaspora-is-bigger-and-more-influential-than-any-in-history

The Indian government, by contrast, has been—at least until Mr Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) took over—filled with people whose view of the world had been at least partly shaped by an education in the West. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, studied at Cambridge. Mr Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh, studied at both Oxford and Cambridge.

India’s claims to be a democratic country steeped in liberal values help its diaspora integrate more readily in the West. The diaspora then binds India to the West in turn. The most stunning example of this emerged in 2008, when America signed an agreement that, in effect, recognised India as a nuclear power, despite its never having signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (along with Pakistan and Israel). Lobbying and fundraising by Indian-Americans helped push the deal through America’s Congress.

The Indian diaspora gets involved in politics back in India, too. Ahead of the 2014 general election, when Mr Modi first swept to power, one estimate suggests more than 8,000 overseas Indians from Britain and America flew to India to join his campaign. Many more used text messages and social media to turn out bjp votes from afar. They contributed unknown sums of money to the campaign.

Under Mr Modi, India’s ties to the West have been tested. In a bid to reassert its status as a non-aligned power, India has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and stocked up on cheap Russian gas and fertiliser. Government officials spew nationalist rhetoric that pleases right-wing Hindu hotheads. And liberal freedoms are under attack. In March Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress party, was disqualified from parliament on a spurious defamation charge after an Indian court convicted him of criminal defamation. Meanwhile journalists are harassed and their offices raided by the authorities.

Overseas Indians help ensure that neither India nor the West gives up on the other. Mr Modi knows he cannot afford to lose their support and that forcing hyphenated Indians to pick sides is out of the question. At a time when China and its friends want to face down a world order set by its rivals, it is vital for the West to keep India on side. Despite its backsliding, India remains invaluable—much like its migrants.

Riaz Haq said...

TOP TALENT, ELITE COLLEGES, AND MIGRATION:
EVIDENCE FROM THE INDIAN INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY
Prithwiraj Choudhury
Ina Ganguli
Patrick Gaulé


https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31308/w31308.pdf


We study migration in the right tail of the talent distribution using a novel dataset of Indian high
school students taking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), a college entrance exam used for
admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). We find a high incidence of
migration after students complete college: among the top 1,000 scorers on the exam, 36% have
migrated abroad, rising to 62%for the top 100 scorers. We next document that students who
attended the original “Top 5” Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were 5 percentage points
more likely to migrate for graduate school compared to equally talented students who studied in
other institutions. We explore two mechanisms for these patterns: signaling, for which we study
migration after one university suddenly gained the IIT designation; and alumni networks, using
information on the location of IIT alumni in U.S. computer science departments.

------


Highly skilled immigrants make important contributions to innovation and technology in
the United States. Often, they study in elite universities in their home countries before getting
advanced degrees abroad. For example, many successful Indian immigrants in the technology
industry—including Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc./Google, and Arvind Krishna, the
CEO of IBM—are undergraduate alumni of the selective Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
Similarly, Chinese students in U.S. Ph.D. programs overwhelmingly come from a set of highly
selective Chinese universities (Gaulé and Piacentini, 2013).
In this paper, we study migration in the very right tail of the talent distribution for high
school students in India, focusing on the extent to which elite universities in their home country
facilitate migration. We focus on the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The IITs are
prestigious and highly selective technical universities with lower acceptance rates than Ivy League
colleges, particularly for the original five IIT Campuses.
1 Admission to the IITs is solely through
the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), where nearly one million exam takers compete for less than ten
thousand spots. Desai, Kapur, McHale, and Rogers (2009) document anecdotal evidence related
to the role of elite institutions in India, such as the IITs and the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences, in facilitating skilled migration to the United States. IIT students have even been
described as “America’s most valuable import from India” (Leung, 2003).
Emigration is often difficult to observe from administrative datasets, and few surveys have
been conducted with a focus on top talent that are not selected on future success or mobility.
2 We
were able to overcome these challenges by leveraging the unanticipated public release of the names
and scores of JEE exam takers in 2010, combined with an intensive manual collection effort on
exam takers’ outcomes. The result is a novel dataset of high school students who took the JEE
exam, linked to college attended and later career, education, and migration outcomes. The data
provides individuals’ scores received on the exam and their national ranking. An important feature

Riaz Haq said...

Why #Indians don't want to be Indian #citizens anymore? More than 1.6 million Indians have renounced their Indian citizenship since 2011, including a whopping 225,620 in 2022 alone, averaging around 618 per day. #Modi #BJP #Hindutva
#chaos #anarchy
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/migrate/why-indians-dont-want-to-be-indian-citizens-anymore/articleshow/101418122.cms

"The principal reason why people migrate is economic well being. Everyone wants a better life and their hope is that they would find it in another country," Amit Dasgupta, former Consul-General of India in Sydney, told IANS.

"In sociology, this is referred to as 'the push factor'. You are pushed out to a place which offers better prospects," Dasgupta said.Many Indian students who go for higher studies abroad also end up settling there as these countries provide them better jobs with attractive pay scales.According to the latest Education Ministry data, more than 770,000 Indian students went abroad to study in 2022 -- a six-year high.

Also, many Indian students find it tough to find jobs after returning home, which is why they apply for permanent residency in their country of study.

More than 90 per cent of the students do not wish to come back to India, say estimates.When it comes to India's rich, they want to swim in foreign waters to diversify their fortune, set up alternative residencies, conduct business and pursue a better quality of life even though India continues to be an attractive environment for business activity and corporate growth.

A 2020 Global Wealth Migration Review report said that among many reasons why people make the decision to migrate to other countries is safety of women and children, lifestyle factors like climate and pollution, financial concerns including taxes, better healthcare for families and educational opportunities for children, and to escape oppressive governments.A low passport score of a country can also make individuals emigrate.

A higher passport index ranking ensures one gets better access to travel visa-free to many countries.The Indian passport registered the largest global fall in the Passport Index 2023 -- ranking at 144th position this year with a mobility score of 70.

This means Indians can travel to 21 countries visa-free, and need a visa for 128 countries.In contrast, a Greece or Portugal residency card provides Indians visa-free travel across all Schengen countries.

Riaz Haq said...

op Source Countries of Immigrant STEM Workers in US in 2019

1. India (720,000) 2. China (273,000) 3. Mexico (119,000), 4. Vietnam (100,000), 5. Philippines (87,000), 6. South Korea (84,000), 7. Canada (56,000), 8. Taiwan (53,000), 9. Russia (45,000), 10. Pakistan (35,000).

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states

Since 2000, the share of foreign-born workers in the STEM workforce has increased by more than 40 percent.

The share of foreign-born workers in STEM occupations has grown significantly in recent years. As shown in Table 2, the number of foreign-born STEM workers increased from 1.2 million (16.4 percent of the STEM workforce) in 2000 to 2.5 million (23.1 percent of the STEM workforce) in 2019.

Because immigrant STEM workers tend to possess skills that complement those of their U.S.-born co-workers, the presence of immigrants in the workplace increases the productivity (and therefore the wages) of all workers. Moreover, innovation by immigrant workers increases the revenue of the firms in which they work, which enables employers to hire more workers. The overall share of workers who are foreign-born and hold advanced degrees from either a U.S. or a foreign university is also associated with higher levels of employment among U.S.-born workers. A 10 percent increase in the share of foreign-born workers with advanced degrees working in STEM occupations boosted the U.S.-born employment rate by 0.03 percent. This means that every additional 100 foreign-born workers with an advanced degree working in a STEM occupation creates roughly 86 jobs for U.S. workers.

Riaz Haq said...

An excerpt of "The Other One Percent" by Chakravorty, Sanjoy; Kapur, Devesh; Singh, Nirvikar. (pp. xiii-xiv). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.


A major focus of this book is on demonstrating and understanding the multiple selections that shaped the Indian-American population. These selections applied not only to education (that, in terms of attaining college degrees, made the India-born population three times more educated than that in the host country and nine times more educated than the home country’s population) but also to class and caste (favoring, by large margins, the “upper” and dominant classes and castes of India), profession (engineering, IT, and health care), and both the region of origin (Gujarati and Punjabi were overrepresented in the first two phases, and Telugu and Tamil in the third phase) and region of settlement (in specific metropolitan clusters in and around New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston and Dallas). In addition to direct selection is what we call the “selection+” advantage: we suggest that group characteristics or norms, such as the fact that Indians had the highest propensity to live in married-couple households of any major immigrant group, added to the advantages of being an already selected group. We show, in particular, how family norms were useful in keeping the Indian-American poverty level low (under 5 percent) and family income high (the highest in the United States). It is also likely that the selection process enabled, without explicitly intending to, the generation of high levels of social capital (through linguistic/ professional networks such as Gujarati entrepreneurs in the hotel industry, Telugu and Tamil workers in the IT industry, IIT engineers, Malayali nurses, Bengali academics, etc.). Several linguistic subgroups, many with caste or clan affinities, with moderate to high levels of human capital, were also successful in creating “bonding” social networks and capital that enhanced their status.5 Even low-income groups, such as Punjabi
taxi drivers in New York, were able to create some social (bonding) capital. Several professional subgroups without kinship or linguistic affiliation—doctors and engineers, for example—were able to organize and prosper by creating bridging social networks and capital. Selection—broadly understood—is present as a primary or secondary theme in much of this book.

Riaz Haq said...

Social Realities of Indian Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/09/social-realities-of-indian-americans-results-from-2020-indian-american-attitudes-survey-pub-84667


Thirty percent of non-citizen IAAS respondents possess a green card (or a permanent residency card), which places them on a pathway to gaining U.S. citizenship. Twenty-seven percent are H-1B visa holders, a visa status for high-skilled or specialty workers in the United States that has historically been dominated by the technology sector. On average, an H-1B visa holder reports living in the United States for eight years, although 36 percent of H-1B beneficiaries report spending more than a decade in the country (that is, they arrived before 2010). Eighteen percent of non-citizens reside in the United States on an H-4 visa, a category for immediate family members of H-1B visa holders. Fourteen percent of non-citizens are on F-1, J-1, or M-1 visas—categories of student or scholar visas—while another 5 percent hold an L-1 visa, a designation available to employees of an international company with offices in the United States. A small minority of non-citizen respondents—6 percent—claim some other visa status.

------------------------

The overwhelming majority of Hindus with a caste identity—more than eight in ten—self-identify as belonging to the category of General or upper caste.

Riaz Haq said...

The Hindutva Lobby, by Andrew Cockburn

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/10/the-hindutva-lobby-hindu-nationalism-america-andrew-cockburn/

In the summer of 2023, California legislators approved a bill banning discrimination on the grounds of caste. Defined in the bill as “an individual’s perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status,” caste is a central feature of life for hundreds of millions of people in India and beyond. The measure had been championed by California’s Dalit community. Once known as “untouchables,” Dalits occupy the bottommost rung of the Hindu hierarchy, and they have traditionally been confined to menial occupations on the fringes of Indian society, purely by virtue of their birth.

Dalits in California report that this ancient system has been imported to the United States where it remains prevalent in the Indian diaspora, including among those in the tech industry. “They say that in California this doesn’t exist,” declared the measure’s sponsor, State Senator Aisha Wahab. “If it doesn’t exist, then why do we have so many people advocating for the need of this bill?” (As if to corroborate Wahab’s allegations, Google had canceled a planned talk in 2022 by the Dalit activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan, in reaction to the vehement objections posted on internal Google message boards that denounced her as “Hinduphobic”—a common defense against claims of casteism.) Despite furious opposition from leading figures in California’s Hindu tech community—such as Asha Jadeja Motwani, widow of the engineer who helped craft the original Google search algorithm—by September the measure had passed both House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan majorities and was sent to Governor Gavin Newsom for his signature. While Newsom deliberated, Dalit activists, led by Soundararajan, waged a monthlong hunger strike outside the state legislature. Then, in October, Newsom announced that he was vetoing the bill. It was unnecessary, he claimed, because any discrimination was already covered by existing civil-rights laws.

Newsom’s decision took many by surprise, but others knew better. A month earlier, the ambitious governor, widely considered a future Democratic presidential candidate, flew to Chicago, where Joe Biden’s campaign had convened major donors for a meeting of the Biden Victory Fund PAC. Among them was Ramesh Kapur, a wealthy Massachusetts entrepreneur, whose voice and checkbook carry weight in the firmament of Democratic Party fundraising. In Chicago, Kapur made it clear to Newsom that he faced an important choice: if he ever hoped to secure Kapur’s support, he had better make the right decision on the caste bill. Kapur was hoping to encourage competition between Newsom and Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian. “I raised money for her when she ran for the Senate and the presidency,” Kapur told me. (His goal, he said, is to elect the first Indian-American president—“hopefully before I get reincarnated!”) “If you want to be our next president,” Kapur bluntly informed the governor, “veto the bill.”

Newsom received an equally unequivocal message from Ajay Jain Bhutoria, another major Biden fundraiser who had served as deputy finance chair of the Democratic Party. “We used very strong words,” Bhutoria, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, later recounted on Twitter,