Lakshmi Gandhi’s Blog

After the debacle at Shea today, Mr. Met is the only Met currently in my good graces. Here’s a video of Mr. Met dancing to Bhangra music at an Indian wedding earlier this year.

In-vitro fertilization in the United States can cost infertile couples tens of thousands of dollars. If couples look overseas for a surrogate mother, they would only have to spend a fraction of that. In India, a surrogate pregnancy costs just $6000. For the average working person in India, it would take 10 years to earn the equivalent of $6000.

There are 600 IVF clinics in India and they bring roughly $400 million dollars a year into the local economy.

The Christian Science Monitor reported last year that 75% of the clients at Kaival Hospital in Anand are foreigners from the UK, the US, Japan and Southeast Asia.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was profiled this morning on This Week with George Stephanopolous. After seeing pawnshops, check-cashing counters and payday lenders in the American cities he has visited, Yunus decided to bring Grameen Bank to New York City. The bank makes microcredit loans primarily to low-income women in the community.

The check-cashing industry in particular irks Yunus. “It’s very humiliating that I have a check, even a government check, I cannot get it cashed.,” he said. “So I have to go to cash checking, and I have to spend a lot of money … and this is my hard-earned money. But I cannot take it to the bank and get the cash. … And then payday loans — this is another big business. That means a failure of the system.”

Guess who said this:

“Just like Musharraf, since 9/11, the Bush administration has played both ends and the middle, assuring the American      people that it’s doing everything it can to protect them, while tiptoeing around our supposed ally,” Huckabee said. “It’s been afraid of upsetting the apple cart, even though the cart contains poisoned apples destined for export to the United States.”

Answer: Former Arkansas Governor and current Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. (Via TPM Election Central)

The Himalayan glaciers are melting fast and Bangladesh is suffering because of it.  The melting ice has already caused sea levels to rise and the Washington Post today said that Bangladesh could lose up to 20% of its land by 2030.  The article also says that there could be as many as 20 million “climate refugees” from Bangladesh in 23 years.

Stories like this make me wish American environmental activists and celebrities would talk more about the damage that has already occurred because of global warming instead of discussing it as if it were a dangerous, yet thankfully distant, phenomenon.  It’s something we can’t neglect.

Aliens in America, the new CW sitcom about a Midwestern family that takes in a Pakistani exchange student, debuts October 1st. Judging from the preview, it looks absolutely dreadful. The show’s premise is very similar to the Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie. Little Mosque, however, was produced by a Muslim (Zarqa Nawaz).

Many blogs have pointed out that the name Raja is not typically a Muslim name. You would think that the network would do at least a little research on these types of things. Even Wikipedia says that Raja is usually a Hindu or Sikh name.

Surprisingly, the debut episode received favorable reviews when screened at a Los Angeles mosque.

The LA Times recently had a story on the Friendship Buses that transport goods between India and Pakistan. An unintentional consequence of opening the border to freight trucks is that many of the Friendship Bus drivers will soon be out of work.

Last week was terrible for freedom of the press in South Asia. Four New Delhi-based journalists were sentenced to four months in jail on Friday for writing articles that implied former Chief Justice YK Sabharwal was corrupt. The tabloid newspaper Mid Day published a series of articles that alleged Sabharwal ordered a group of illegal shops and commercial buildings be torn down because his sons’ business interests would benefit from the demolition. The journalists have stood by their story and are planning to appeal.

In Bangladesh, cartoonist Arifur Rahman was arrested in Dhaka because one of his pieces “hurt religious sentiments.” The cartoon was titled “Name” and featured a young boy who called his Mohammed. You can see the cartoon here. (Hat tip: 3rd World View).

According to Reporters Without Borders the text of the cartoon is as follows:

Boy, what’s your name?
My name is Babu.
It is customary to put Mohammed in front of the name.
What is your father’s name?
Mohammed Abu.
What is that on your lap?
Mohammed cat.

The RSF statement sums it up perfectly: ‘”The play on words had no intention of attacking the Prophet,” Reporters Without Borders said “It was a joke about a cultural custom. The government should not yield to pressure from extremist leaders who are trying to politicise the case. Rahman should not be made a scapegoat. He must be freed.”‘

Update: The International Press Institute called for Rahman’s release Wednesday.