Indian American activist Mallika Dutt wins Courage Award

Indian American civil rights activist

Mallika Dutt will be honoured by the Asian American Justice Centre (AAJC), a leading US civil rights organisation, with the American Courage Award in early October.

Dutt is the executive director of Breakthrough, an innovative, international human rights organisation using the power of popular culture, media and community mobilisation to transform public attitudes and advance equality, justice, and dignity. Through initiatives in India and the US, Breakthrough addresses critical global issues, including violence against women, sexuality and HIV/AIDS, racial justice and immigrant rights.

Anita Botti, deputy director of the President’s International Women’s Initiatives InterAgency Task Force, will present the award on behalf of Ambassador-at-Large, Melanne Verveer at a ceremony here.

Mallika Dutt has a long history of activism and commitment to social change and has addressed global issues ranging from women’s rights to racial justice and immigrant rights, AAJC said. For the last decade, she has been spearheading efforts to stop the erosion of fundamental human rights in the US, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. Most recently, Breakthrough has partnered with the AAJC, along with 25 other leading organisations, to produce “Restore Fairness”, a powerful documentary that calls on the government to bring back due process to immigration in the US.

“Restore Fairness” features interviews with members of Congress, immigration judges and individuals directly affected by unfair immigration policies.

“Restore Fairness” follows the successful launch of the groundbreaking video game ICED - I Can End Deportation (www. icedgame.com), and interactive website End Homeland Guantanamos (www. homelandgitmo.com) - two multimedia initiatives that have brought national attention to the harsh impact of unfair detention and deportation policies on immigrant communities.

“I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the American Courage Award,” said Mallika Dutt. “We hope that our collective efforts will result in new immigration policies that respect fundamental American values of fairness and due process.”

Indra Nooyi heads list of top 50 women in world business

PepsiCo Chairman and Chief Executive Indra Nooyi of India has topped the inaugural Financial Times (FT) list of top 50 women in world business.

Nooyi, 53, is among four Indians making it to a list that FT said prompts the question whether the struggling male-dominated world of business would have been better off with more women in charge.

“The collapse of some of the world’s biggest banks has been blamed partly on directors’ failure to ask tough questions. A study by The Conference Board of Canada found that boards with women directors paid greater attention than all-male boards to audit and risk controls,” the FT said.

The other three Indians on the list published Friday are: Britannia Industries head Vinita Bali, Biocon Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and HT

Media Chairperson Shobhana Bhartia. Nooyi attributed much of her success to the US, saying: “I think the United States represents the greatest meritocracy in the world... the US is a country that likes to see others succeed.”

The list commended Bali, ranked 22, for her experience in the food production business.

“In the 1980s and 1990s, she shuttled between Cadbury and Coca-Cola, occupying key marketing roles in India, the UK, South Africa and across South America. Her opportunity to take the leadership role at Britannia came after the controversial resignation of Sunil Alagh in 2003,” it said.

The FT said the entrepreneurial skills of Mazumdar-Shaw, placed 47, “have taken Biocon from being a start-up in Bangalore to a successful listed company”.

Bhartia, at number 48, was praised for helping shape HT Media into one of India’s largest media companies.

“HT Media’s editorial portfolio includes Hindustan, Hindustan Times and Mint, India’s second largest business newspaper. Under the guidance of Bhartia, this group has expanded online and recently launched desimartini.com, a social networking site.

HT Media launched Fever 104fm, the product of partnering with Virgin Media,” the paper said.

Another four Indians figure in a ‘women to watch’ section: Cisco Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior, and HewlettPackard India Managing Director Neelam Dhawan in the technology and media sector; and UBS India Chief Executive Manisha Girotra and HSBC India CEO Naina Lal Kidwai in finance.

The paper said it could not include ICICI Bank CEO Chandra Kochhar despite her being in a powerful position because she had not served at least 12 months in the role.

Indian-origin minister quits British government, takes G20 job

British Business Minister Shriti Vadera, one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s most trusted colleagues, is to quit and work fulltime for the G20 group of nations, Brown said recently.

“I came to her and said, ‘This is the job for you’,” Brown said in New York. “Her expertise in this area is such that there is no one better to do this job,” Brown added.

Vadera, an ex-banker, will co-ordinate the hand-over of the G20 presidency from Britain to South Korea. She will work unpaid and will continue to have a desk in the Cabinet Office.

Vadera will start work for South Korea in the middle of October and is taking her post at the request of President Lee Myung-Bak, the department of business said.

“Shriti has real passion for the G-20 and has done excellent work, so this is a logical move for her and us,” her boss, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, said in a statement.

Her duties as a business minister will be taken over by Mervyn Davies, who already serves in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Indian American to represent US in farm trade talks

President Barack Obama has nominated an eminent Indian American agricultural scientist to the key post of chief agriculture negotiator in the office of the US Trade Representative to represent US in crucial agricultural trade talks.

Obama Tuesday announced his intent to nominate Islam A Siddiqui, who earned his Bachelor of Science degree in plant protection from the Uttar Pradesh

Agriculture University and MS and PhD degrees in plant pathology, both from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

“I am grateful for the willingness of these fine individuals to serve my administration and am confident that they will represent our nation well. I look forward to working with them in the coming months and years,” Obama said of Siddiqui and seven other key appointees.

Siddiqui is currently Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, where he is responsible for regulatory and international trade issues related to crop protection chemicals.

Previously, Siddiqui also served as CropLife America’s vice president for agricultural biotechnology and trade.

From 1997 to 2001, Siddiqui served in various capacities in the Clinton administration at US Department of Agriculture as Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programmes, Senior Trade Advisor to Secretary Dan Glickman and Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programmes.

As a result, he worked closely with the USTR and represented USDA in bilateral, regional and multilateral agricultural trade negotiations.

Since 2004, Siddiqui has also served on the US Department of Commerce’s Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, and Health/Science Products & Services, which advises the US Secretary of Commerce and USTR on international trade issues related to these sectors.

Between 2001 and 2003, Siddiqui was senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he focused on agricultural biotechnology and food security issues.

Before joining USDA, Siddiqui spent 28 years with the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Indian origin minister plays good Samaritan mid-air

Deepak Obhrai, an Indian origin junior minister in the Canadian government, has earned kudos for helping out a woman diabetic while on a flight from Ottawa to Calgary.

Obhrai, a five-time MP from Calgary and parliamentary secretary (minister of state) to Canada’s minister for foreign affairs, was flying from Ottawa to his hometown when a woman passenger suddenly fell ill.

Seeing the crew in a commotion at the back of the plane, Obhrai went and checked the woman. Being a diabetic who carries an insulin kit with himself all the time, Obhrai sensed that the woman’s sugar level had dipped.

“I figured it out and took a reading with my blood-sugar measuring instrument. I was right. I asked the attendants to give her orange juice.

“The woman drank the juice and was soon feeling normal. She completed her journey and walked off a normal person,” Obhrai told IANS.

The good deed mid air earned the IndoCanadian minister kudos from the crew and the national media.

Obhrai, 59, has been a diabetic for more than two decades. “I have taken all precautions and done well,” he said.

Countdown begins for Commonwealth Games

A YEAR-LONG countdown has begun for the 19th Commonwealth Games India is hosting, the country’s biggest sporting extravaganza that the government says will showcase its abilities even as critics say the preparations are not up to the mark and may fall short of international expectations.

The 12-day event will open Oct 3, 2010 at the 75,000-capacity Jawaharal Nehru Stadium in the heart of New Delhi.

Over 5,000 athletes from 53 countries that were once part of the British empire will compete in 17 disciplines. The event is the biggest India will host since the Asian Games in 1982 that saw 4,595 athletes from 33 nations take part in 21 events. Amid hiccups and criticism, the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee of India is confident that the grand show will go like clockwork.

“Let me tell you that 80 percent of the work at all the venues will be completed before December 31, except cycling and rugby venues where work started a bit late. But those two will also be completed in time for the competition,” Committee

Secretary General Lalit Bhanot told IANS.

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, for whom the games are a matter of personal prestige, admits to spending sleepless nights but is equally sure that the event will go off without a hitch. “We will be ready on time,” she has declared.

But the going hasn’t been exactly smooth.

Last month, Commonwealth Games Federation president Michael Fennel shot off an angry letter to Indian Olympic Association (IOA) chief Suresh Kalmadi demanding a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ensure that work on various projects was expedited.

“With only a year to run until the games, I feel I must personally brief the prime minister on the lack of preparations and to seek his input in developing an appropriate recovery plan,” Fennel said.

Fennel’s outburst has spurred the Indian authorities to pledge that all the facilities will be ready on time. Security is a major issue but the home ministry has ruled out any threat to the Games. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no specific threat to the Commonwealth Games,” Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said. India has briefed security professionals and representatives from 26 Commonwealth countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Kenya, Nigeria and Singapore about security and traffic related arrangements to be put in place during the games. The delegations were also shown around the venues of the games. Pillai said the delegates were impressed with the professional nature of presentations. But some did make suggestions.

“There were 10 major issues. The most important was the management of public perception of threat to the games. Others included appointment of nodal officers for co-ordination. It was decided that all countries would share their threat perceptions with each other,” he said. Delhi’s chaotic traffic, with some 900-1,000 vehicles being added every day, could prove to be a bugbear. But the police say a solution is at hand with an Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) being installed to cover 302 intersections and 87 corridors covering 204 km. What is also causing concern is the multiplicity of agencies involved in putting the games infrastructure into place. Then, it took an outburst from IOA secretary general Randhir Singh, vice chair of the Commonwealth Games Organising committee, to get it to activate its subcommittees.

“Time is running out and there is all round scrambling, leading to grave doubts about the successful conduct of the games. Do you think the promise of organising the games will be fulfilled?” Randhir Singh, who took part in the shooting event at the 1982 Asiad, wondered while speaking to IANS.

“Criticism should be ... welcomed because sometimes you may think things are moving in the right direction, whereas it might not be so,” he added.

Thanks to him, the 23-odd sub-committees are up and running. This, however, cannot be said of the venues across the city where the games will be staged.

Be it the showcase Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the venue of the opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics competition, the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, the Yamuna Velodrome, the S.P. Mukherjee Aquatic Complex or the K.D. Singh Babu National Stadium, work is at best 40 percent complete.

In all this, the only bright spark seems to be the Commonwealth Games Village - largely because the athletes’ housing complex is being executed by a private builder.

Games Village will be a residential showpiece

AN ARMY of more than 500 people, including architects, engineers, supervisors and labourers, troops to a dusty 27-acre complex in east Delhi that is witnessing some of the most frenzied construction activities among the many such sites being readied for next year’s Commonwealth Games.

The area is littered with sand hills, granite, marble heaps, construction cranes and complex building-machinery. Another group of daily wage earners waits outside for day jobs in any of the 34 apartment blocks under construction by Emaar-MGF. A new road linking the complex to the south is also under construction, along with a practice arena for athletes next to the complex.

“The apartments will be ready by 2010 because the pace of work is frenzied,”

Aijaz Utsahi, a designer and supplier of tiles, marbles and plaster of paris (PoP), contracted by the builders told IANS. Twenty-eight years ago, a sprawling village had been built at Siri Fort in the heart of the capital for the athletes who had participated in the 1982 Asian Games. Now, finishing touches are being put to yet another residential showpiece, the Commonwealth Games Village, overlooking the Yamuna river and next to the landmark Akshardham Temple, for the athletes who will make it their home for the October 3-14, 2010 sporting extravaganza.

The township, unlike the Asiad Village which was rather spaced out and idyllic amid tree-lined avenues, reflects the changing city-scape of the capital.

The homes are sleek seven, eight and nine storied luxury apartment blocks laid out amid green landscaped parks, a mini golf course, a swimming pool and a club house which will be equipped with a food court and shopping mall. Each block has 12 apartments on an average. The township, taken over by the New Delhi Municipal Council for the Commonwealth Games, will be handed back to Emaar and the Delhi Development Authority in 2011, which will then sell the homes to private buyers after renovation and clean-up, a senior official of the Dubai-based Emaar told IANS.

Emaar MGF Land Limited, one of India’s leading real estate developers is a joint venture between MGF Developments Limited and Emaar Properties PJSC (“Emaar”) of Dubai. Emaar is one of the world’s foremost real estate companies with operations in 16 countries. MGF has over the last 10 years established itself as one of the key players in retail real estate development in India.

The DDA will hawk 11 towers, while the remaining 23 will be sold by Emaar. “The floor areas vary between 1,900 and 2,200 square feet. The apartments are either twobedrooms, three-bedrooms, four-bedrooms or five-bedrooms,” the Emaar official said. Work is on in full swing at the village. “I have supplied Italian tiles in cream and white for the rooms and matching darker shades for the baths. The finish of the walls, facade and ceilings will be textured with Italian marble grains and PoP,” Utsahi said. A walk through a sample apartment at the Games Village was like a peek into a studio set - going by the sheer luxury of the homes. A four-bedroom apartment opened into a spacious drawing-cum-dining-cumliving room with four bedrooms (with baths attached) fanning out radially. Each bedroom gave out to a small terrace. The kitchen was a trendy built-in unit in marble, granite, tile and steel.

The bedroom floors are made with wood to give them a western look - and to ensure easy maintenance.

“The homes come furnished with airconditioners and Italian bath and kitchen fittings keeping in mind the ethos of the international visitors in 2010,” the Emaar official said.

“Bookings started last year,” the Emaar official said. The prices of the apartments vary depending on the view. The homes facing the river are more expensive.

“The homes are priced from Rs.2 crore ($420,000) onwards, with the smallest ones being the two-bedroom apartments,” the Emaar official said, adding the booking down payments for the apartments to be sold by the company range from Rs.25 lakh to Rs.40 lakh.

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