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Bollywood goes bowling (and batting)

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Is it cricket to pitch a big-bucks league with movie-star glitter and gyrating cheerleaders?

THE TORONTO STAR, April 27, 2008

SONYA FATAH

DELHI, India–India has a new addition to its menu of spicy offerings: masala cricket, a.k.a. the multi-million dollar Indian Premier League, which launched this month with a spectacular opening ceremony in Bangalore.

With a heady mix of Bollywood stars, deep-pocketed owners and squads of NFL-style cheerleaders strutting their stuff, the league has sparked a frenzy in India.

The big-bucks draw of the IPL could change the face of the international sport forever, drawing some of the world’s best bowlers and batsmen. League boss Lalit Modi said it’s a sign of India’s confidence and its growing international leadership as the league kicked off.

“India has been subservient for 100 years,” he told reporters. “If it’s our turn to have some glory, so much the better.”

The world’s largest cricket following resides in this nation of 1 billion people, most of whom are also hooked on Bollywood.

The game, which is passionately watched in the countries where it is played, draws little excitement elsewhere.

Now, hoping to compete with newer, snazzier forms of sports entertainment, Indian cricket is taking a page out of the American sports book hoping to extend its army of supporters in India and overseas. For Indo-Canadians, too, the league may be giving cricket a new surge of life.

The IPL offers the shortened form of traditional cricket known as Twenty20, with matches lasting about three hours. Nothing of this sort has been seen before in the international cricketing world, where traditionally matches are traditionally played over a five-day period.

Up for grabs is $3 million in total prize money, about $1.2 million of it for the winning team in a hectic but charged tournament of 59 three-hour games played over a month and a half in eight major urban centres.

The season was launched in Bangalore, India’s high-technology hub, with a huge bang.

Branding itself as “cricket’s richest tournament,” organizers put on an enthralling show for the crowd of 55,000 at M. Chinnaswamy stadium.

Acrobats walked tightropes across the field, with colour laser beams and fireworks lighting up the sky. Bollywood tunes blared as NFL cheerleaders from with Washington Redskins, specially flown in for the event, danced up a storm.

Not so long ago, India cricket officials shunned the shortened format, which was launched in the United Kingdom five years ago. But when the Indian cricket team brought home the championship trophy after defeating long-time rivals Pakistan in the first-ever Twenty20 world cup, officials who had previously tried to discourage the starting of a similar league, dove headlong into negotiations for a new league.

The result? Eight new teams with such evocative names as Delhi Daredevils, Bangalore Royal Challengers and Deccan Chargers, some bought by India’s commercial dons, including Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher Airlines and United Breweries Ltd., and Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd.

Team franchises were sold for a total of just under $725 million, and in February, a unique players’ auction netted India’s national team captain, M.S. Dhoni, for nearly $1.5 million and Australia’s Andrew Symonds for $1.35 million.

In a television interview on a major network, Symonds was asked what he would do with the money.

“I like to fish, so I guess I’ll go and get some fishing rods,” he offered.

Analysts weren’t quite sure how well the tournament would do.

The hype was palpable as huge amounts of money were poured into star-studded television advertising and new teammates were paraded about in flashy uniforms.

So far, the result has been magical, with stands full to capacity and soaring television ratings.

The country’s most popular film hero, Shahrukh Khan, who owns Kolkata franchise, has not only attended every match his team has played, he’s also brought along a long list of film and political celebrities to cheer on his Knight Riders.

With the India’s political dynasty’s future leaders – Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi – and other political stalwarts up on their feet in the stands, the IPL has attracted a wide range of viewers.

But critics still wonder whether the league’s overt commercialization will take away from the game itself, making players only part of a spectacle that seeks to line cricket’s coffers while wooing young viewers with limited attention spans.

“It’s wonderful that players are getting paid as much as they are,” said legendary former batsmen, Javed Miandad, who played for the Pakistan team.

“But the motivation here is commercial. Time will tell, but Twenty20 is not a format through which I think the game can grow or talent can be picked.”

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Suicide rate growing as debt cripples India’s farms

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Agricultural, social crisis widens as small farmers fall prey to high interest and natural calamities

March 24, 2008
SONYA FATAH
THE TORONTO STAR

SANGRUR, India–In a rare moment of solitude in the crowded one-room house where he lived with his family of six, a financially troubled Jasbir Singh doused his body with kerosene and lit a match.

Badly burned, the struggling 50-year-old farmer died on his way to the hospital.

Singh’s debt had tripled over time because of a whopping 30 per cent interest rate, the usual charge to small farmers by moneylenders who hover like vultures over their clients’ villages.

Across India, the men and women who work its fields are falling into debt and thousands – haunted by the burden of life-long financial stress – are taking their own lives.

Farmer suicides, particularly in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, where large, parched holdings are unviable to farmers with only limited access to irrigation and loans, are not a recent phenomenon.

But the impact of the crisis in Punjab, the centre of India’s erstwhile green revolution, highlights the extent of the crisis.

The state government of Punjab documents just over 2,000 farm suicides since 1986 but watchdogs say the number could be as high as 60,000 since 1991.

It’s estimated that more than 150,000 farmers have killed themselves across the country since 1997. This month, as part of the annual budget, the government announced a $15 billion debt-relief package for farmers.

It came with conditions – only bank loans will be cancelled; small farmers who own up to two hectares of land will have their institutional debt written off, while larger landowners had only a quarter of their debt cancelled.

That meant nearly a quarter of the 40 million targeted farmers won’t benefit because most borrowed from moneylenders, or they own larger tracts of land.

Few analysts see the government’s debt waiver as a fair response to a deep, societal problem, and refer to it as a “political masterstroke.”

In 2004 the rural electorate voted out the Hindu nationalist BJP government because its “India Shining” campaign hadn’t helped them.

Now, one year before the next general elections, analysts say the Congress party-led government is mollifying India’s estimated 90 million farmer households in the hope of a re-election victory.

Driving through Punjab’s fields, it’s difficult to imagine that farmers here are suffering. Brilliant shades of green flash on either side of paved roads. Rice paddies awash in water gleam under the assault of the sun’s rays and thickets of sugar cane plantations boasting acres of tall, handsome plants extend across vast, open spaces.

Yet, it’s precisely this mirage of wealth that has slung an albatross across the neck of the average farmer, analysts say.

Government subsidies on water have resulted in the digging of thousands of wells to feed water-intensive crops like rice and sugar cane.

“The water table has gone down, so has per capita consumption and Punjabi farmers have not graduated to high-value agriculture,” said Ashok Gulati of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The crisis is also a result of seismic shifts in the Indian economy. Thirty years ago agriculture had a 40 per cent share of the gross domestic product. Today, it’s likely less than 20 per cent even though it employs 60 per cent of the labour force.

Government duties have also been phased out since 1991 and farmers are facing competition from heavily subsidized European or American growers.

Crop failures due to bad weather, and falling prices have also contributed to rising debts.

As urban India has fast-tracked into the 21st century, its rural counterpart has quietly suffered.

“Most government lending to the rural sector is for industry,” said Inderjit Singh Jaijee, of the Movement Against State Repression, who has lobbied for farmers’ rights for years.

“Many farmers find that banks don’t want to lend them money … so they’re forced to turn to moneylenders, who happily loan them money but on interest rates that are north of 25 per cent and get ridiculously high.”

When debtors fail to pay, loan sharks seize their land.

Quick fixes, like loan waivers, are unlikely to revive the dying spirit of the small farmer.

“The long term solution to agriculture is investment – investment not only in agricultural research but also in human capital and infrastructure,” said IFPRI’s Gulati.

In its absence, some see disaster.

“If government doesn’t acknowledge the depth of the problem and come to the aid of the rural farmer, the suicides will not stop,” said local activist Choudhury Ramdia Singh, of Banga village in Sangrur district.

“In fact, the farmer will rise up against the government.”

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Refugees in India embrace their roots

Friday, March 21st, 2008

Many fleeing Chinese rule to follow the Dalai Lama seek linguistic, religious and cultural freedom
March 20, 2008

SONYA FATAH

THE TORONTO STAR

DHARAMSALA, India–Tsering Norbu arrived here from Tibet five days ago.

Hiding between stacks of mail in a delivery van for a courier company, the 14-year-old left his hometown not far from Lhasa and set off to cross the least policed section of the border between China and Nepal.

His parents, who sell Tibetan medicine, paid 7,000 yuan (nearly $1,000) to smuggle him across the border into Nepal, bidding farewell to their eldest child.

Officially registered as a Tibetan refugee by the UN agency in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, Norbu has been safely transported to India, where he is one of several dozen recent arrivals at the refugee reception centre in the village of McLeod Ganj in Dharamsala, a short walk from where the Dalai Lama lives.

Chinese authorities say the recently built railway to Lhasa and the city’s glitzy new malls and high-rises signal new economic opportunities for Tibetans in its Tibetan Autonomous Region, or TAR.

But at the reception centre here in Dharamsala, that sort of progress isn’t stopping the influx of refugees from risking their lives and their freedom to send their young children over into India.

Between 2,500 and 3,000 Tibetans have entered India every year since the early 1990s, according to the Office of the Reception Centres in Dharamsala. They cross the border into Nepal mostly on foot before being transported to India, where many settle in refugee resettlement centres.

Since the failed Tibetan uprising against the Chinese government in 1959, almost 130,000 Tibetans have followed the Tibetan spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama, settling mostly in India but also in the United States, Canada and Switzerland.

Last year 2,337 Tibetans arrived in Dharamsala, and more than 300 have made it here this year.

“The people who make it out here become representatives overseas for the 6 million who are inside Tibet,” said Dorjee, the director of the refugee centre, who came to India in 1965 and has been an official in the Central Tibetan Administration for over two decades. More than 6 million Tibetans are said to live inside TAR and the Tibetan provinces of Kham and Amdo.

Those who enter India say that China’s claim about increasing economic opportunities hasn’t really affected them. Still, coming to India isn’t just about access to financial betterment. It’s mostly about ties to language and religion that many say are easier to cultivate in India than in Tibet.

“It was very expensive for my parents to send me here,” said Norbu, recalling his frightening trip into Nepal.

“My parents sent me here because I wasn’t learning much about my own culture in school. After six years I could barely write the Tibetan alphabet.”

Once in India, Tibetan refugees are sent to schools where they learn Tibetan, English and Hindi, and become familiar with Buddhism.

Indeed, religious and linguistic freedom have guided many people to this hill-station.

Jampa Tashi, 39, understands why. Once a monk in Pashi Dzong, Tashi was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment in 1994 for pasting Tibetan independence flyers outside Chinese government offices.

“They used all sorts of torture devices on us – electrical shock, hanging, kicking us with boots,” recalled Tashi, who escaped to Lhasa and stayed there under cover for five months after he was released in 2006. He paid the equivalent of $950 to escape to India and arrived in Dharamsala in December last year.

“I was in Lhasa and I saw all the development, but everything that is nice and new and developed is owned by the Chinese.”

For men like Tashi, being in India is a real treat.

“This is a true democracy. Here you can do anything you want, there is no fear, no pressure, even if you want to protest,” he said, referring to the demonstrations in the streets of Dharamsala.

“In China, when we decided to protest, we had decided that we were willing to pay with our lives for it.”

At Dharamsala’s refugee reception centre, there aren’t many political prisoners. Some, like Rinchen Tundup, 30, have been here before.

“I came to India in 2001 and studied Tibetan at the Transit School until 2003. Then I decided to go back and spread the message back home.” Tundup, who comes from Amdo province, said he travelled to many parts of Tibet distributing CDs to raise awareness about the Tibet issue.

“I returned to India because I thought I’d get caught soon, and I figured I could do more good from here as the Olympics draws near.”

Most of those who were at the refugee reception centre were youths like Norbu, whose parents sent them away with a heavy heart.

“I feed very sad and I miss my family but I know it’s good for me to be here,” the 14-year-old said. “I saw that the Tibetans back home were always the employees in the malls, not the owners,” said Norbu. “My mother told me to study hard and to make sure that I get the blessings of His Holiness.”

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Tibet’s youth connection

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

Canadian activists help Students for a Free Tibet run media centre from northern India

March 19, 2008

Sonya Fatah
THE TORONTO STAR
DHARaMSALA, India–There’s a constant buzz in the two-room office of Students for a Free Tibet as throngs of young Tibetans in exile march on the streets.There’s a sudden burst of excitement as Lhadon Tethong of Victoria, B.C., gets off her phone and announces: “There’s been an emergency press conference and His Holiness has said he’s open to change. He will reassess his stance if that is what the Tibetans want.”

Squeals all round and high-fives. Laptops are set aside and everyone gets on their phone to spread the news.

It’s eight days since protests inside the Tibet Autonomous Region and its neighbouring prefectures in China helped launch a veritable resistance movement.

Inside the group’s tiny office, the excitement is palpable as the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan community, hosts the Tuesday news conference.

In reality, the Dalai Lama did not say he was willing to reassess his traditional position on accepting autonomy within China. Instead, he reaffirmed his commitment to non-violence and promised to stick to his middle-path policy of being autonomous in China.

He’d gone one step further and offered his resignation if violence continued. But at the group’s Indian office here the misunderstanding stirred temporary hope for those who have made fighting for a free Tibet a life mission.

When the uprising began in Tibet, 31-year-old Tethong – who was visiting family in India and has travelled across Canada and elsewhere to raise awareness about the Tibet issue – volunteered to assist the Indian chapter of the organization she heads in New York.

That means helping the media centre sift for truth in piles of misinformation. As the uprising in Tibet has gathered steam, so has government censorship in China.

For the 100,000 Tibetans who live in India, and who have struggled to keep in touch with relatives since March 10, passing on information detailing the government’s crackdown on family and friends isn’t easy as communication lines have been intercepted or broken.

On March 10, Indian police arrested the group’s leader in India, Tenzin Choeying, 30, along with more than 100 other marchers.

In his absence, the local team is buttressed by young activists from around the world.

Jessica Spanton, 25, from Montreal, is one of them. She started raising awareness for Tibet while still in high school in Edmonton.

“People in Alberta are basically pretty conservative and don’t really care about social justice issues so it was like banging your head against the wall,” said Spanton, recalling her time trying to raise awareness about issues back home.

Still, after attending non-violence training and after years of working with the student group, she’s remained committed.

Tethong, too, has memories of campaigning difficulties.

“As a family, we would go every year on March 10 (the anniversary of the national uprising) and demonstrate outside the Chinese embassy in Vancouver,” she recalled.

“We used to chant for Free Tibet and people would come up and ask us what a Tibet was, and what we were giving away for free.”

Last August, Tethong spent six days in China blogging about how the Chinese government was painting an untrue, rosy picture of the situation in Tibet in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Tethong says she was followed for most of her time there. At the end of six days, the Chinese government deported her.

Her blog – Beijing WideOpen.com – had caused a bit of a stir, and she continues to work on it from India recounting her observations.

As visitors to India, Tethong and Spanton aren’t participating in the daily marches around town or the candlelight vigils where young Tibetans cautiously remind India to be wary of China.

“Remember 1962!” they shout, referring to the Indo-Chinese war. “Remember how China duped you!”

Many of those who protest are angry because they are cut off from family in Tibet, and they have reservoirs filled with personal stories or hand-me down tales of Chinese brutality or the gradual erosion of Tibetan culture.

As well as giving support to the Tibetan community, Tethong has been receiving some strange emails, like this one from “Liu”:

“I am a Chinese living in Lhasa who is astonished by the authority’s atrocious crackdown on the Tibetans.

“The current situation is worsening. And though it is still dangerous to send out this letter I believe it is necessary to reveal the truth to the outside world and to you who are fighting for your deserved rights.

“Attached please find some first-hand materials I have collected.”

The attachment was a virulent virus intended to destroy files on Tethong’s computer.

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Anti-China Protests Rachet up in India

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

DHARAMSALA, India: More than 600 people carried lit candles and chanted for a free Tibet as a global protest movement inspired by internal Tibetan dissent entered its seventh day.

Children, monks, young men, women and the elderly – most of them Tibetans – marched through the streets of McLeod Ganj, a hill station town in India’s northern Himachal Pradesh state that is kilometers away from Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

A day that began with an organized march, candlelight vigils and flag demonstrations, ended peacefully as thousands of candles lit up the window frames of homes dotted across the hills of this northern Indian region, signaling the exiled community’s solidarity with those in Tibet.

One week after Tibetans inside and outside Tibet launched a serious efforts to revive the spirit of a 1959 uprising, an increasing number of Tibetans in India joined ranks with the protestors.

Local area Tibetan activists helped bolster the mood by distributing free Tibetan flags and encouraging people to fly them proudly.

“I have this brainwave last night,” said Tenzing Janyang, 31, who runs Rogpa, a support network. “I thought this would be a good way to demonstrate our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Tibet.”

The bright yellow, red and blue flag is banned in the People’s Republic of China and is a symbol of resistance for Tibetan activists.

Collecting funds from friends and family Janyang bought over a 1,000 Tibetan flags and handed them out. Hundreds of Tibetans and other supporters pinned them onto their shirts or waved them in the air as they chanted for Tibet’s freedom.

“It’s the eve of the Chinese government threat to Tibetans to stop their protests,” said Janyang referring to the Chinese government’s Monday 17th warning that Tibetans cease their protests. “We thought flying our flag high was a great way to pay tribute to the people who have been killed fighting for our freedom.”

New from Tibet filtered in through international organizations, news media and Tibet connections as flyers and news bulletins were distributed at the peace vigil.

Information about the aggressive response of the Chinese police to a protest by 2,800 monks at Amdo Ngaba Kirti Monastery in Tibet was detailed in circular distributed by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a Tibetan non-governmental organization.

Constant news reports from Tibet have helped enlist more people into the ranks of the disaffected.

Lobten Tenzing, 22 and Lmsang Teharcho, 25, both monks came to India from Tibet, six years ago joined the protests today. They have no news about their families in Tibet but news of Chinese military action against peaceful protestors has brought both of them out onto the streets.

“”We are fulfilling our dreams because we want to take our country back,” said Tenzing. “We will never give up out country without fighting for it.”

More Tibetans in exile have come out onto the streets since yesterday when a spontaneous march drew about 2,000 people out onto the streets of McLeod Gang and Dharamsala.

“We were watching from up here,” said Dawa Lokyitsang, 23, a Tibetan American, who has been in McLeod Ganj for the last nine months and is helping Students for a Free Tibet. “It started with just ten guys shouting out for a free Tibet, and within five minutes people started emerging from their homes and there were 100 people.”

Within an hour some 2,000 people had joined the protest from McLeod Ganj to Dharamsala where the Tibetan government-in-exile has its headquarters.

On the way they hauled out an effigy of Chinese president Hun Jin Tao and burnt it.

The protest caused a little bit of tension in the Mcleod Ganj-Dharamsala area, which has been home to thousands of Tibetans since the Chinese government took over Tibet in 1959.

Indian authorities arrested a group of over 100 Tibetans four days ago when they began a peace march to highlight their opposition to Chinese rule over Tibet as the Beijing Olympics draws near.  A second group of 44 Tibetans that set off after the first arrest has not yet been arrested.

“India is caught up in a tight spot,” said Lokyitsang. “It’s not sure whether it should listen to the condemnation of the international community or the Chinese government.”

Few expect that the coordinated and spontaneous protests organized outside Chinese embassies in several countries, will have the desired impact on Chinese authorities but the spirit of hope hung in the air in Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj.

  “We have hope,” said Janyang, who was born in Dharamsala and whose parents were among the first to join the Dalai Lama in India in 1960.  “We always have hope. I’m always hoping and dreaming that my next morning sunrise will be in Tibet.”

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Indian police drop case of Brampton MP

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Brampton MP Ruby Dhalla

Only silence in Dhalla incident now as ‘beaten’ child thieves disappear, witnesses clam up

March 10, 2008

TORONTO STAR

SONYA FATAH

POHIR, India–When high-profile Brampton MP Ruby Dhalla came to town two months ago, she set off a tizzy with the Indian media that sparked headlines back in Canada and set tongues wagging here.

Now, the people of this dusty Punjabi village appear to have lost their tongues over the tangled tale that started with a routine purse-snatching and culminated with alleged police brutality against the two waifs who were caught red-handed.

The purse was quickly found, but it may take a little longer for the Liberal MP, twice elected in Brampton-Springdale, to fully recover her reputation in the Indian media after being pilloried for her supposed indifference to police handling of the street children.

The local drama that played out in the capital, New Delhi, highlights the intersection of rural India’s endemic poverty with the casual violence inflicted on crime suspects – and the readiness of the country’s highly competitive media to caricature public figures.

The episode turned a routine courtesy call by Dhalla and a delegation of Canadian politicians into a public relations disaster.

Indian media accused the Canadian politician of being a “shockingly callous” ringside observer to the fate of two child thieves as they were beaten “black and blue.”

Unaware of the allegations of police brutality, Dhalla was ambushed by Mumbai-based Times Now, which quoted her as hoping the children had learned a lesson for stealing her assistant’s purse.

In the aftermath, Dhalla scrambled to undo the damage by calling for an investigation into police conduct. She received a full retraction by the offending media in India, who admitted to quoting her unfairly.

Embarrassed local officials promised a full probe.

Today, there is virtually no trace of the tempest that placed Pohir and the Canadian MP in the eye of a media storm. The police investigation has been forgotten. The accused children have disappeared, along with their parents.

Local residents, too, have clammed up. Even the journalist who first accused the police of beating up the children later refused to co-operate, for fear of jeopardizing his visa application to Britain.

A senior police officer investigating the case was transferred. And the formal inquiry probing police conduct has been disbanded, the file thrown into the dusty, paper-filled chambers of Punjab police’s records room.

In their final official report on the case, police insisted the children hadn’t been beaten “black and blue.” Indeed, they hadn’t been beaten at all, police insisted.

“They were medically examined at the Civil Hospital and it was shown that they were not harmed,” said Gurpreet Singh Bhuller, senior police superintendent for Ludhiana district.

“All the villagers said nothing had been done,” Bhullar said, confirming there was no cause for action against any police officers.

“I was in touch with the Punjab police officers on a daily basis and was told of the results of the medical report via phone,” said Dhalla in a telephone interview from Ottawa.

She said she had asked the chief commissioner of Punjab police to launch an inquiry into the incident.

“I didn’t actually have any idea (about the result).”

Pohir is a one-road town flanked by fields on either side, about 20 kilometres south of Ludhiana, Punjab’s largest city.

Everyone here seems to have taken a vow of silence.

Yet, one man had a first-hand account of the episode and swore that the children were beaten, not by local police, but by Amritsar officers accompanying Dhalla’s delegation.

“I was at the event when the whole thing happened,” said Jassi Phallewalia, the journalist who broke the story.

When Phallewalia heard Seema Bhayana, an executive assistant to Dhalla, cry out about her stolen purse, he also heard people pointing out that the two children who had smiled and waved at Dhalla from their front-row seats at the event, had fled. He scurried after them to rescue the purse and return it to its rightful owner.

“An elderly woman spotted the children rushing across the fields. I got onto my motorbike and sped away to catch them.”

The children had thrown the purse into a polyethylene bag as they rode a scooter across the field.

But with Phallewalia in pursuit on a motorcycle, they hardly stood a chance.

“I caught the kids and grabbed the bag. Then the police arrived and snatched the kids. I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures.”

In Phallewalia’s photographs, an 11-year-old boy named Sachin is shown being dragged along the ground, surrounded by police officers.

In another shot, he appears half-conscious, his face wet as he lies in the back seat of a car with his 9-year-old sister, Bindia, her hands clasped together pleadingly.

With his evidence and his eyewitness account, Phallewalia could well have been the key person in an investigation on police brutality. But he said the police never approached him, nor did he go forward with a statement, even though he initially broke the story.

“I didn’t want any negative publicity to adversely affect my visa application,” he said, fearing his testimony might jeopardize his visitor visa application to Britain.

Although Dhalla said she did not want to take action against the children, she didn’t hear about the police report filed by Hardev Singh Liddar, a Brampton resident who hosted an event for the MP at his family’s home in Pohir, until two days after the incident.

In her speech to those gathered in Pohir immediately after the incident, Dhalla said, she appealed to residents to forgive the children.

Meanwhile, Sachin and Bindia, children of migrant workers from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, were arrested for theft, and taken to observation homes in Ludhiana and Jallander.

For many of the children getting out isn’t as easy as it was for Sachin, whose high-profile arrest earned him bail on Jan. 16.

There has been no trace of Sachin, his sister or his parents since he was granted bail on Jan. 19.

What exactly happened on Jan. 9 will likely never come to light.

The controversy, doubtless exaggerated by Dhalla’s visit to this small, rural village, is over, and the inquiry report, to have been released in mid-February, now long forgotten.

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CHILD THIEVES USED BY GANGS

Monday, March 10th, 2008

In Punjab’s increasingly affluent urban and suburban areas, child thieves are not uncommon.

“It’s a constant problem here,” said Jassi Phallewalia, the journalist who broke the Ruby Dhalla purse-snatching story.

“Many times the kids are part of larger organized gangs and they show up at marriage halls and mingle innocently with the guests before running off with someone’s purse.”

Police, too, are familiar with the problem.

“Some operate at an individual level, encouraged by their parents and others are part of gangs operated by adults,” said Gurpreet Singh Bhuller, senior police superintendent for Ludhiana district.

Most are the children of migrant workers from the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, police say. They live well below the poverty line.

Once caught, the children are sent to juvenile detention centres and kept in custody until their court dates or until they are given bail. Many spend months, even years without visits by parents who are too scared to approach the detention system.

Sometimes it’s the frustrated villagers who take the law into their own hands. The Indian media have highlighted several cases where vigilante groups took action against thieves. In one case, a man was tied to a motorcycle and dragged along the road as punishment.

- Sonya Fatah

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Dire poverty fuels India’s lucrative trade in kidneys

Monday, February 25th, 2008

But sellers often lose organ only to find shame, depression after their finances fail to improve
THE TORONTO STAR, February 25, 2008
SONYA FATAH

CHENNAI, India–When Geetha Vijaya heard that a “kidney broker” was scoping out her neighbourhood looking for donors, she put her kidney up for sale. Her husband, an auto-rickshaw driver owed loan sharks about $800 and earned, at best, a little more than $100 monthly.

Burdened by daily visits from creditors, Geetha arranged for her kidney removal. On Jan. 4, 2006, after her kidney was removed at Aswene Soundra Hospital in Chennai, she collected $900 and paid off her husband’s debt.

“The money disappeared as soon as it came,” Geetha chuckled good-naturedly in her cramped one-room home in the city’s largest urban slum, Villivakkam.

Just two years after her surgery, the couple is in debt again. Suffering from dull but chronic back pain, the 31-year-old is frustrated that selling her kidney didn’t turn out to be the long-term investment she had imagined.

“At the time, I justified it to myself because of the money and because the person who got my kidney had been suffering for seven years. But now I feel sad, sometimes very low, thinking about it.”

Villivakkam, or “Kidney Vakkam,” as it has been known for decades, as Chennai’s central hub for the lucrative organ trade. Hundreds of its residents have had their kidneys removed over the years, the long scar along one side of the waistline a permanent reminder of that sale.

The kidney trade is illegal in India, but still thriving. Last month, police arrested alleged transplant kingpin Dr. Amit Kumar who had fled to Nepal after a kidney racket was broken up in New Delhi.

Kumar, whose wife and children live in Brampton, Ont., is accused of masterminding an illicit racket that transplanted more than 500 kidneys for his high-paying patients, most of whom come from overseas, including Canada.

Today, illegal kidney rings can be found across India, where 100,000 to 150,000 people suffer from renal failure every year and only 4,000 authorized transplants take place. Targeting inner-city slums and rural areas, middlemen and brokers seek out willing “donors,” offering India’s poor a quick way to escape financial debt or to bankroll a costly wedding for an eligible daughter.

Most kidney sellers approach brokers directly. But a few, like Mary Gurwadan, 35, head directly to a hospital. Gurwadan, who lives in a slum along the city’s railway line, made her way over to Pandalai Nursing Home in the centre of the city to collect the $750 she was promised. Virtually all of India’s kidney sellers live under the poverty line, eking out a living as construction workers, cycle-rickshaw drivers, fishermen and other low-paying jobs. When they fail to pay off their debts, loan sharks move in, often resorting to high pressure to get their money back.

Forced into finding quick financial solutions, thousands of India’s poor have gone under the knife happy to sacrifice a piece of themselves to resolve their financial crises. But as many have discovered, the money goes quickly. Later, there’s nothing left to sell.

“If I was given the chance again, I would never sell my kidney,” said Kalvati, 30, in Tsunami Nagar, an area in north Chennai where tsunami victims were resettled. Kalvati owed neighbours more than $250 four years ago. A broker offered her the princely sum of $2,500 but after she was operated upon at Meenaxi Mission Hospital in Madurai, he only gave her $1,000.

“Sometimes, I sit back and I think, `Why did I sell it?’” she said. “Sometimes I get palpitations thinking about it, about a decision I cannot reverse.”

Almost all of those who had sold one kidney and were interviewed for this article said they feel a deep loss, even shame, at having given up a body part to cover their debt. “Shame. Shame. Shame,” chanted one seller, chastising herself.

For those who study the underground organ trade, it’s clear that the biggest price paid by donors is the long-lasting psychological scars: Their perennial debtor status makes many of them despondent.

“What we’ve noticed is that if the true motive of donation is money, then eventually depression sets in because nothing has changed in the donor’s life and, in fact, their financial situation is worse,” said Dr. Sunil Shroff, who runs the Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network, a Chennai-based organization that works on advocacy and on improving understanding around cadaver-based transplants.

Organ sale is illegal in India. The Transplantation of Human Organs Bill was passed into law in 1994 and strictly prohibits the sale of organs. Yet, a commercial underground industry has mushroomed because of the lack of legal kidneys.

“The problem in the kidney trade is poverty,” said Shroff.

“Kidney scams, prostitution, child labour, these are all persistent problems in India and are a response to a larger community problem. This is the larger problem of a social evil.”

The kidney trade is hardly new to India. The financial desperation that motivates most kidney sales was the theme of a popular 1980s Bollywood movie, Saheb, starring one of India’s most popular stars, Anil Kapoor. Kapoor’s character was forced to abandon his dream of playing professional soccer after he sold his kidney so his parents could afford his sister’s wedding, highlighting the tragic consequences of his sacrifice.

All of the kidney sellers interviewed for this story said they had lost part of their earning capability because of health problems.

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An extensive network makes buying kidneys `very simple’

Monday, February 25th, 2008

Although commercial sale banned, loophole in law enables `donations’ for `special reasons’
The Toronto Star, February 25, 2008
SONYA FATAH

CHENNAI, India–The transplant business is built on the nexus of doctors, government officials, hospital staff, patients, kidney sellers, brokers and lab technicians.

Together, they create the conditions under which kidneys bought from the country’s desperately poor are transplanted into the bodies of wealthier Indians and foreign patients.

A 1994 organs act strictly prohibits commercial peddling of organs. But one loophole is repeatedly exploited. Living, unrelated people can “donate” their kidney “by reason of affection or attachment towards the recipient or for any other special reasons.”

Middlemen, many of whom once sold their own kidney, fabricate tales of relationships between seller and patient to get approval from a government-mandated authorization committee. The network is so extensive that it is relatively simple for a patient with renal failure to get connected with a seller.

Rajesh Gupta, 37, a resident of New Delhi, began receiving dialysis treatment in 1997. As the prosperous owner of a company manufacturing electrical wires and cables, Gupta coughs up $600 monthly to get treatment at Delhi’s Apollo Hospital.

Still, buying a kidney is hardly difficult, he said.

“The process is very simple, actually,” Gupta explained. “The (nursing) attendants of patients in dialysis rooms have all the details. They give you a number and connect you with a donor.”

India’s medical elite have been debating the kidney business for years with two decided camps arguing their positions in medical journals, newspapers and talk shows.

In the pro-kidney selling camp are a bevy of senior nephrologists, surgeons and urologists, who argue that India’s poor benefit economically from selling their kidneys. Yet, almost all kidney sellers interviewed for this article were all in debt again.

“Look, in this country we’ve been trying for cadaver transplants for 15 years,” said Dr. K.C. Reddy, the doctor who removed seller Mary Gurwadan’s kidney, and who is one of the biggest proponents of kidneys for sale.

“The simple fact is that people here want to receive their bodies intact for cremation. They don’t accept removal of organs.”

In the absence of alternatives, a ready pool of willing sellers ought to be embraced, he said.

“We’re talking about saving lives here.” Reddy said.

“Preventing a man from selling the only thing he has of value just isn’t right.”

Indeed, the names of senior doctors and their hospitals repeatedly appear on medical documents obtained by the Star detailing the kidney donations.

Thirty-nine-year-old Anjalai Subramanium, a resident of a North Chennai slum, went under the knife for $800 in 1994. At Chennai’s Willingdon Hospital, she was operated upon by one of Chennai’s best-known doctors.

It’s unlikely that foreign nationals, who fly into India to get a kidney transplant, are ignorant of how kidneys are sourced.

With India quickly growing into a major destination for medical tourism, many come here after being stuck on waiting lists for years.

“When someone’s life is at stake, especially when the solution is just a matter of money, people are willing to compromise on a lot of things, including integrity,” said Amanda Gallagher, an American tour operator who is looking to set up her own medical tour operation, though not for illegal kidney transplants.

Government authorities mandated to prevent the commercial trade in kidneys appear complacent about the practice.

“One of the problems is that the crime status is fairly low in comparison to other crimes,” said Dr. Sunil Shroff who runs the Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network in Chennai.

“It isn’t a murder, so when there is a sting or a media bust then the authorities do something quickly just to appease the media and temporarily silence things.”

The penalty for selling kidneys is hardly a deterrent. If convicted, a judge can sentence the accused to two to seven years or a fine of between $250 and $500.

Documentary evidence, found in countless files kept by sellers in their slum dwellings across Chennai, reflects that doctors, hospital administrators and government officials take a very casual view of the kidney trade.

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Indian officers charged in kidney scandal

Saturday, February 16th, 2008

The Toronto Star, February 16, 2008
Sonya Fatah

NEW DELHI, India–A junior New Delhi police inspector was arrested yesterday on charges of extortion as the probe into an alleged illegal kidney-transplant ring revealed that several officers had helped the accused and his associates get away when authorities were on his trail.

Similar charges have also been filed against six other officers, police spokesperson Satyendra Garg told the Indian television channel CNN-IBN. The six were still on the run yesterday.

The officers face extortion-related charges punishable by up to three years in jail.

Amit Kumar, an Indian-born doctor whose family lives in Brampton, has denied he led the ring that allegedly took up to 500 kidneys, often obtained from unwilling donors in Gurgaon, outside New Delhi.

News of police involvement in letting off key members of the alleged ring was revealed when Kumar’s driver was arrested and allegedly told investigators police had been paid about $45,000 in January so that the accused could evade arrest.

Garg confirmed that Ravinder Kumar Singh, an assistant sub-inspector in New Delhi’s police force, was arrested and that the others were still being sought.

Meanwhile police raided the home of Kumar’s in-laws in Pathankot in Jammu. Indian media reported that several family members were detained for five hours and questioned.

Kumar, dubbed “Dr. Horror” by the India media, was turned over to Indian authorities last week after being apprehended in Nepal.

He has insisted he is innocent and never removed donors’ kidneys without their written permission.

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