Monsoon
[Tamil poet from Pre-Christian Sangham era]
fraternity”
- Translated By Eelam Tamil Scholar Rev Fr. Xavier Thaninayagam
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to Restore Tamil
Rights
- Chicago, Sept 11, 1893
I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have
repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human
beings: "As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take
through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead
to Thee."
After two centuries of Western domination, China and India are poised to
claim their places [Yale Global]
"The balance of influence in this region is shifting rapidly to China - not yet the balance
of power, but the balance of influence."
That statement, made recently to me by a senior leader in Singapore, is an early
indication of how a new, third wave of globalization is ending the era of the West's
global dominance and restoring Asia to its traditionally powerful and influential role.
Growing population of young adults within the community of plantation workers in hill
country towns of Nuwara Eliya, Hatton, Bandarawela and others see education as their
best opportunity to break out of the miserable living conditions their parents endure.
More are seeking lower-middle class employment in and out of their estates. "Out of the
thirty staff running this show room, fifteen are children of plantation workers," said
Malar Rani who attends to the stream of visitors inspecting the merchandize displayed
at the Laboakellie tea estate, located 15 km north of Nuwara Eliya town.
Is there any point or purpose in writing in a strange script about the miseries of the
drought-stricken peasantry? What consolation can we bring to these country folk of
ours by giving vent to our feelings and emotions in the language of our one time
imperial masters?
Many U.S. technology jobs have been outsourced to India, and now there are reports
medical research is being transferred there, too. Clinical trials that cost millions in the
United States cost only thousands to perform in India. It's raising questions about the
ethics of using subjects who have little exposure to Western medicine, and whether
they're fully aware of the risks and benefits of participating in drug trials. One issue:
There may be no benefit to those suffering illness in India if the drugs being tested are
too expensive for poor Indians to afford. Reporter Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities
Public Television reports.
The outsourcing story has so far headed down a one-way street - with Indians and
Indian firms accused of eating into jobs in the United States and the United Kingdom,
and the latest estimates pegging India's offshore services growth rate at over 40%.
But as Indian information-technology (IT) firms reach global scales, a reverse trend is
also evolving - Americans and others from the West are finding employment in the
overseas operations of Indian firms. It is been termed "reverse outsourcing" and
nobody, including presidential aspirant John Kerry, should find cause to complain about
it - even if elections are looming in the US. This adds to the many out-of-work
executives from the US who have moved to India in search of better opportunities.
For 12 years, I covered South Asia for the BBC and I grew to dread the annual cyclone
season and the accompanying trips to sodden coastal areas of eastern India or
Bangladesh.
There we would see tens of thousands of families who had lost everything, people to
whom survival was almost a curse. No-one has insurance along the shores of the Bay of
Bengal.
So I found myself wondering, as I went to Punta Gorda in south-west Florida, where
Hurricane Charley made landfall last week, about the nature of suffering in America.
Does a natural calamity devastate here as it does in South Asia?
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