Tribe Desi Vol 226: Social networking for social activism?

Tribe Desi - The premium e-zine for Desis (Indian, Pakistani, etc.)

vol 226| Oct. 12, 2010 | Pure.Desi.Unfiltered Signup | View in a Browser | | REFLECTIONS Good news for the Chilean miners - their rescue on Phoenix I starts tonight, hopefully! Have you heard enough about the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi? Bet you haven't heard about the Guard Monkeys, though...wonder if Leno already used this? All kidding aside, NY Times reports that countries which were not sending their athletes to India are falling over themselves to send trade delegations there... ...and as Juliet Lapidos asks, why is India in the Commonwealth anyway? Well, even if it is a big club, membership has its privileges - other than infrastructure improvements in the host country and hope for its recovery, there are voting benefits for people from member countries living in the UK... Some exciting news - we have partnered with Databazaar Media Ventures, and you will see some exclusive, in-depth coverage and reviews from them - the first one is a review of the upcoming Mithun Chakraborty-starrer Bengali film, Shukno Lanka (dry red Chillies) by Shoma Chatterji. On the topic of movies, there are quite a few independent movies being made by South Asian Americans, ranging from Raspberry Magic to Dadaji...an interesting and telling comment about the struggle by the writer/director of Raspberry magic on her blog: "This weekend, we opened up Raspberry Magic at the Galaxy Cinemas in Cary (right outside of Raleigh), NC. Doing a theatrical screening is definitely challenging, because it means that you have to have sustained PR and buzz around the movie for people to go and see it. We got some good PR through local publications and there was decent buzz, but it was definitely challenging. We were able to get people at all of the screenings, they were very small crowds, but there were people, and many people who came from reading reviews in the local papers. Megha and I answered questions after all of the screenings, and it was great to see that people had really interesting questions. We also spent time at local Indian businesses and the international festival handing out postcards and getting the word out on the movie as much as we could. We’ll see overall in terms of how it works out financially, but it was nice to show the film in a different place, and really get it out to some new audiences. The hustle of indie film never stops!" There is an interesting article in The Huffington Post on Aroon Shivdasani - the founder of NY-based Indo-American Arts Council. Some excerpts: "When I first came to America people thought that we Indians were either rajas with flowing robes riding about atop elephants - or impoverished beggars. There was no thought of the in-between. There were many Indians already here - but most of them were hidden in the universities. The British sent Indians from India to their colonies - today's Guyana, for example - as indentured labour. The Indians that came to North America are highly educated professionals," Aroon told me. In fact, after U.S. immigration laws were changed in 1965, Indians began to immigrate to the U.S. in larger numbers. As a group, they are the most highly educated immigrant community here, with approximately 68% of Indian Americans over the age of 25 possessing a college degree and 36% possessing a graduate degree. "The initial Indian immigrants were in a lower economic stratum. Today, 90% of Indians in North America have attended the best universities and are a visible, viable minority," Aroon told me. "This country now sees Indians in a whole different milieu." Two other interesting facts: Indian-Americans are the most religiously diverse immigrant community in the country, comprising of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Parsis, and Baha'is, speaking languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali (16 Indian languages), and have the highest median household income of any group in the U.S., at $83,820." In addition, there were several queries on why Tribe Desi articles are posted on the blog - the benefits are: a. you get a concise email, with links to what you want to see b. you can post comments on the articles - see below the article, as well as share it with your circle of friends, thereby making you a hot commodity at cocktail parties... c. the best, in my opinion (even though point b above is very attractive) - the related articles. Each article has links to multiple related articles after the article - so you can read what else was said in the press related to that topic. And finally, a Rajni-ism, to celebrate Ethiran - "Rajnikanth doesn't breathe. Air hides in him lungs for protection..." Till next time! The DFW Desi Want to have dinner with dashing Aftab Shivdasani... ...and ring in 2011? MOVIE Dry Red Chillies: Shukno Lanka Noted Indian filmmaker Joy Sundar Sen (Sabyasachi Chakraborty) picks up yet another award for his Bengali film, Swapna Sundari. During the festival, Sen meets Isabella (Emma Brown), a young European actress of the Italian film La Tournee. Sen and Isabella share a bond of mutual respect and understanding that cuts neatly across man-made schisms of age and culture. Sen chances upon a book of short stories by filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak in a Berlin bookstore and his creative juices begin to flow again. He decides to make a film called The Philosopher’s Stone, authored by late Ghatak. It is a story of a man who has hit upon a magic formula to bring dead people alive. But he has no clue about who he will cast in the role of this strange man. He chooses to cast an ageing junior artiste named Chinu Nandy (Mithun Chakraborty) to enact this role. Nandy is a man who stepped into films to become a hero because he “looked like Uttam Kumar from behind” but has reconciled himself over time to remain content as a junior artiste in Bengali cinema, warts and all. He is more surprised than thrilled though his wife and the low-middle-class neighbourhood he lives in are happy about the media attention he is subjected to suddenly. Sen’s producer backs out mid-way because Sen’s film, he feels, lacks commercial viability. So, Sen summons Isabella for help and she steps in happily. Read the full, exclusive review by Shoma Chatterji... ENTREPRENEURSHIP Making money on microfinance? A good article by ex-DMNer Vikas Bajaj. To put CK Prahlad's principle of "bottom of the pyramid" into action, as well as using principles from organizations like the Grameen Foundation - and make money at that! An analogy could be what the French companyDannon is doing - targeting developed marketswith a new spin on probiotics, and developing markets with specialized, cheap, but healthy products like Misti Dhoi in Bangladesh... Click here to read on... CULTURE Twitter, facebook & Social Activism? A very interesting article, in which Malcolm Gladwell asks the question about the contribution of social networking to social change - and tries to compare the Twitter revolutions in Moldovia and Iran to the genesis of the civil rights movement in Greensboro, NC in 1960. An example - does having 1,000 "friends" on facebook mean that these 1,000 would help you drive social change? Gladwell states that The Save Darfur Coalition has 1.2 million members on facebook, but the average donation only comes out to 9 cents per person... There have been quite a few responses to Gladwell's article - for example, "If the Internet didn’t exist, Barack Obama would not be president of the United States,” says Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org. “The fact that the most powerful person in the world wouldn’t be in that position without the Internet and organizing online says something.” The power of the Internet in Obama’s case, Rattray says, was its unique ability to organize thousands of passionate people to work together for change. While 100,000 people ranting on Twitter might not be worth anything, organizing those 100,000 people in a simultaneous action can have a significant impact. Although e-petitions, Change.org’s most common advocacy tool, might top the list of low-commitment activism in some minds, Rattray says that the organization wins a campaign — changes an unjust law, policy, or practice — at least once a week. But he also admits this is probably not the most dramatic method of activism out there..." All in all, a great question, and very thought provoking... read on... 18,000+ active members. To advertise here, please email desi@TribeDesi.com

[Change Subscription] [Cancel Subscription]