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Passionate on Two Topics: Wine and India

I BECAME a frequent flier long before my days of traveling for the wine industry.

My friends and their families usually loaded up a station wagon to visit relatives in other parts of Ohio, where I lived as a child. Not us. We always went to India to visit our relatives.

I love talking to seatmates about wine and India, two of my favorite subjects. A lot of people are intimidated by wine, and I always say it doesn't matter if you drink a $5 bottle or a $500 bottle. It's just important that you like it. I think wine should help you enjoy life more, not terrify you.

Seatmates often ask me questions about India, and I'm happy to talk about a country I love.

I speak Tamil, which is mostly spoken in southern India. Some people have a tough time wrapping their heads around the fact that I don't speak Hindi. I've spent a lot of time explaining how many different languages and dialects are spoken in India, and how it's a cultural point of pride.

 My early travels to India prepared me for today. I don't let anything bother me.  In India, we often had to travel by train or in the Hindustan Ambassador - a classic car in India that you used to see everywhere.

It didn't have air-conditioning, or much of a suspension, and we felt every rut in the dirt roads. We'd go on long car trips that would make us car sick. The only way to recover or stave off bouts of nausea was to take a cold shower, which by the way, involved ladling water from a bucket onto yourself.

 We used to have to travel through four different cities through dirty airports, wait in 45-minute lines for standing-only toilets while combating Delhi belly. Indian airports had no lounges back then, and the chairs were barely usable. So I became accustomed to sitting on airport floors and keeping myself occupied.

Recently, I was traveling back from a two-week jaunt through , Burgundy and the Loire for my company, Lot18, an online wine site.

I had absolutely no hesitation plopping down on the floor of Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris to wrap my wine finds in socks and duct tape. I attracted plenty of stares, but every bottle survived the journey perfectly.

 At least one piece of my luggage was misplaced by the airline every single time I traveled to India. And, of course, it wasn't the one suitcase filled with gifts, but rather the travel essentials.

So carry-on is a must today, but I've also learned it's important to get familiar with local products. Now I know where to get the best cough drops in Italy, the most comfortable shoes in Morocco and where to buy great clothes in Vietnam.

 I was only about 9 months old on my first trip to India. I wonder how my mom dealt with the 14-hour layovers in Bombay with me screaming the entire time. By comparison, I only scream now when I'm on a flight and if I'm waiting for food. Just kidding.

But I do play on a cultural quirk to make sure I always get what I want. Indians have a unique respect for a hot meal, no matter how dire the situation. The answer to pretty much any form of hardship or discomfort is, “ or nonvegetarian meal?”

So when I'm on a flight to India, I try to convince the attendant that this weary American girl needs two dinners. Sometimes, I wind up with a feast. I'm on the thin side, so I think the attendants may take one look at me and figure I need to be fattened up.



Lawless in Srinagar

September 10, 2012, 11:43 pm
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Even if Kashmir has begun to attract tourists, it remains first and foremost a police state,” Basharat Peer wrote in the article in the Latitude Blog. He reached this conclusion after hearing the story of 12-year-old Faizan Sofi, who was detained under the Public Safety Act, “which allows the Indian government to arrest and detain, for up to two years, anyone suspected of threatening the public order.”

Faizan was charged with involvement in the torching of a police jeep in Srinagar on Aug. 21, which left three policemen injured. The incident took place after a separatist leader, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who was under house arrest, managed to address an Eid congregation by phone, inciting pro tests.

Read more.



Palestinians Borrow Chant From Syria to Vent Rage at Their Leaders

September 10, 2012, 7:29 pm
By ROBERT MACKEY

Video of a West Bank protest on Monday showed Palestinians using a borrowed tune from Syria to call on their prime minister to step down.

During protests in the West Bank on Monday, Palestinians adapted a protest anthem made popular by their neighbors in Syria last year to call for their president and prime minister to step down.

The original song, “Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar,” or “Come on Bashar, Leave,” calling for the departure President Bashar al-Assad, was written last year in Syria. At a protest in the West Bank on Monday, protesters changed the words of the tune, to target President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

As Yousef Munayyer, the director of The Palestine Center in Washington, observed on Twitter, the borrowing completed a circle in a way.

Another striking image of the day's protests in Hebron was the demonstrators hurling their shoes at a large banner of the Palestinian Authority's prime minister.

Palestinain protesters hurled their shoes at an image of their prime minister on Mondya in Hebron.

As Reuters reports, the protesters were frustrated at the Palestinian Authority's management of the economy in the parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank it administers. In the evening, there were clashes between the Palestinian Authority's security forces and demonstrators in Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus.

The Israeli-American journalist Joseph Dana, who is based in Ramallah, noted that video of the security forces hurling rocks at protesters looked quite a bit like images from Egypt recorded last year.



Vivid Portrait of Syrian Rebel Fighters Outside Homs

September 10, 2012, 6:42 pm
By ROBERT MACKEY

The French photojournalist who reports from behind rebel lines in Syria using the name Mani has produced another striking video report for Britain's Channel 4 News, an intimate portrait of the Free Syrian Army's Farouq Brigade first broadcast on Monday.

The report shows rebels fighters who withdrew from the city of Homs six months ago battling forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad less than 10 miles north of the city, in the town of Talbiseh.

For the past three months, Syrian opposition activists have been posting video online showing rebel fighters and civilians fleeing from heavy shelling on the streets of Talbiseh and huge clouds of smoke rising over the town after airstrikes.

Video broadcast by the Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya in June showed rebel fighters and civilians taking cover as the town of Talbiseh was bombed.

Video posted online by Syrian activists, said to show the aftermath of a July airstrike on Talbiseh.

In one part of the French filmmaker's report, he shows rebel fighters scattering as a helicopter gunship attacks, and then shooting back with a captured antiaircraft weapon.

In a previous report for Channel 4 News, Mani captured in vivid detail the desperate struggle of rebel fighters to hold on to the Homs district of Baba Amr under intense shelling in February. In his new report, he watches as the fighters from Homs plot an attack on a Syrian Army checkpoint that they hope will open the way for them to return to the city.

The filmmaker also found evidence of the increa singly sectarian outlook of some of the Sunni Muslim fighters in the brigade. “We want to open the road to Homs,” one fighter told him. “Our families are there. They're being butchered by the Alawites, the Shia and their militia. It's not about the army anymore or toppling the regime. It's a sectarian conflict.”

As my colleague David Kirkpatrick reported last week, the Farouq Brigade, one of the largest rebel brigades, is led by Lt. Abdul-Razzaq Tlass, “a relative of Mr. Assad's former defense minister, Mustafa Tlass, whose family members were early defectors.”

Christoph Reuter of the German magazine Der Spiegel interviewed Lieutenant Tlass during a visit to Rastan, near Talbiseh, two months ago and found him extremely confident of victory:

When we encountered Tlass in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs last December, he was leading a small band of pitifully armed defectors. An attempt to meet him again this summer turns into a searc h for a phantom. Everyone knows his name and his Farouq Brigade is now the largest in Syria, with 7,000 men fighting under its banner in devastated Homs alone. But where is Tlass? First we are told he is in Homs, then in Rastan and then in Talbiseh, always in a different place. After a week, a messenger arrives and tells us to be ready that evening.

At the appointed time, a car arrives and takes us across the city to a house located hardly a hundred meters below a military tank position. No one would expect him to be here, says Tlass, probably the most wanted man in Syria. He sits down in the middle of the room. It will only take a few weeks more to bring down the government, he says.

And then? Will he return to the new army as a lieutenant? He smiles briefly. “I will go where the people want to have me,” he says. He has immense power, and he knows it. He also insists that the revolution is not an end in itself, “but it's a fight for our rights. We want dem ocracy, not the next dictatorship!”



Syrian Filmmaker Leaves Haunting Record of the War That Killed Him

September 10, 2012, 5:18 pm
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Tamer al-Awam, a Syrian filmmaker and activist, was killed over the weekend in the city of Aleppo, where he was filming the bombardment of civilian neighborhoods in the ongoing war between opposition forces and the Syrian Army.

The Syrian Journalists Association said in a Facebook statement that Mr. Awam was one of 69 media activists or journalists to have been killed covering the fighting in Syria. (While the journalists association said Mr. Awam died on Sunday, a Web site that tracks the fighting in Syria, Syrian Center for Documentation, said Mr. Awam died on Saturday while working on a film about the Free Syrian Army.)

One of Mr. Awam's most recent projects on the war was a 24-minute, Arabi c-language documentary called “Memories at a Checkpoint.”

Tamer al-Awam's “Memories of a Checkpoint.”

In one of the first sequences of the film, in which he introduces his work in northern Syria with an Austrian journalist, the camera moves hauntingly up a stairwell to show the walls of a home blackened with the residue of smoke. The slogans “Down with Bashar” and “Freedom” are scrawled on the walls. “Here, the camera conveys the image, without the death and the fear,” the filmmaker says simply.

In another scene, a family with children peering out of the gloomy room in darkness, Mr. Awam says he is giving a voice to people who only want one thing: “To tell the world: stop the killing. We are a people who love life.”

Throughout the 24-minute documentary, Mr. Awam goes from the intimacy of households, where he interviews women and children, to the secret workshops of the rebels, where they manufacture homemade rockets and then test-fire them from the back of a red Toyota pick-up truck. “We made it with our own hands,” says a fighter.

Some of the film's most gripping moments come from the filmmaker's proximity to battles - one moment, under fire with rebels on rooftop, then filming a helicopter attack on a nearby building. Some of the most moving are Mr. Awam's interactions with civilians, whose support for the Free Syrian Army put them in the line of fire. “There is shelling everywhere,” he says at one point, hurrying through narrow, rubble strewn streets with the crack of gunfire nearby. “This is Syria,” he says.

He frequently pauses to ask civilians basic questions. “Where is your father?” he asks a little boy, Mahmoud, at a graveside. “Paradise,” the little boy answers, “Who killed him?” Mr. Awam asks. “The army,” the boy replies.

He asks a little boy, standing in a doo rway, how he is sleeping. He struggles to be heard from the street as he questions a man standing at an open window, the sounds of battle nearly drowning out their voices. “No electricity, no water!” the man shouts back.

Mr. Awam's death was mourned by opposition bloggers and celebrated by supporters of President Bashar al-Assad's government.

The end of his film shows the rebel fighters taking control of a Syrian Army checkpoint in Maaret Al-Noman after a 9-hour battle. The fighters celebrate, raising their weapons high, and residents follow them in the street by motorcycle. In th e final scene, Mr. Awam appears to be sitting in a peaceful courtyard garden, smiling, with a pair of white doves on either shoulder.

That image is posted on a Facebook page set up in his memory, where people have uploaded more of his video work and photographs. “We are all the martyr, filmmaker Tamer Al-Awam,” reads one of the titles on the page.

Mr. Awam, 34, lived in Germany, but traveled back and forth to Syria to work as a reporter and filmmaker with German and international media, the journalists association said. He organized many demonstrations and activities in support of the Syrian revolution in Europe.

Last year in Germany, as the uprisings in the Middle East gained momentum, Mr. Awam was a visible, outspoken critic of the entrenched Arab governments and called for change, according to videos showing him at protests.One video posted on the Facebook tribute page shows Mr. Awam sending a direct message to Mr. Assad during one demonstration.

Mr. Awam speaking at a protest in Germany against the Syrian regime in 2011

“This is a message to the Syrian authorities, and personally to President Bashar al-Assad,” he said, speaking in Arabic. “Enough killing of civilians, enough corruption, enough repressing people. We want freedom in Syria. Freedom.”

“Bashar al-Assad, you are more than 40 years old,” he continued, in another part of that video. “Cancel the emergency law. Give political detainees in Syria their freedom, immediately.”

“The time for dictatorship has passed.”



India\'s Congress Party Leads in Donations

September 10, 2012, 11:36 am
By HARI KUMAR

India's governing Congress Party received the largest donations of any political party in the last seven years, and donations to the party's primary opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, were less than half of Congress's.

The figures, culled from documents collected through public interest litigation and Right to Information filings, were compiled by the Association for Democratic Reforms, an independent nonprofit group that is trying to increase transparency in India's democratic political system. Congress, the party that has been leading the coalition governing India for the last eight years, is under increasing pressure to enact reforms and clean up corruption.

The Congress Party received 20 billion rupees ($365 million) in donations during the last seven years, the nonprofit group said Monday, while the Bharatiya Janata Party received 9.9 billion rupees. The major source of donations were trusts affiliated with corporate conglomerates and companies in the mining, construction, infrastructure, power and telecommunications industries, the group said.

These figures may represent just a small fraction of the actual donations made to these political parties, and the amount from unidentified donors far outweigh those identified by political parties.

Under existing law, political parties in India do not need to reveal the source of donations if the amount is less than 20,000 rupees. Political parties made good use of this provision: Congress received only 11.9 percent of its donations from named sources during the 2009-11 time period, while the Bharatiya Janata Party received just 22.8 percent of its donations from named donors. The Bahujan Samaj Party received 4.8 billion rupees in donations during last seven years and did not name any donor in that period.

Political financing is the “basic source” of corruption in India, said Jagdeep Chhokar, a former professor at the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad and a founding member of the Association for Democratic Reforms. “If we can make it transparent, we can make a dent in corruption,” he said.

Still, he added, “Whatever is reported is just tip of the iceberg,” as empirical evidence on the ground “suggests that political parties spend many times more” than these figures show. “A lot of expenditure is just not visible,” he said.

The association spent 14 months retrieving the data by filing public lawsuits and relying on India's Right to Information Act to force parties to divulge their donations.

“All the political parties opposed it tooth and nail,” said Anil Bairwal, national coordinator for th e activist group. India's income tax authorities also refused to cooperate with the group's requests for information, until they were ordered to by India's chief information commissioner. Political parties are required to state their income to the tax department, though these figures are probably significantly underreported.

 



In Northwest Corner of India, the Work of Centuries

September 10, 2012, 11:25 am
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“In scattered hamlets, weavers, embroiderers, textile painters, tie-dyers, bead workers, potters, carvers, cobblers and bell-makers work as they have for centuries, often taking weeks, even months to finish a single flawless piece,” Claire Spiegel wrote in The International Herald Tribune of the craftsmen of Kutch, in the northwestern state of Gujarat.

“It's a dying art, almost extinct,” Sumar Daud Khatri from Nirona village told Ms. Spiegel about the 400-year-old tradition of elaborate freehand fabric painting called rogan art his family has practiced for seven generations.

“The Sumar Khatri family is the last in the Kutch to practice the rogan fa bric painting that locals bought for ceremonial clothing and special bed coverings,” she wrote. But over the years locals have shifted to cheap machine-made textiles and Mr. Khatri finds customers among tourists who come to visit the grasslands of Kutch.

Mr. Spiegel described Kutch as “a haven of exquisite, age-old craftsmanship nourished by its distinctive ethnic mix and historic isolation,” but modern amenities have come to the region “after a devastating earthquake in 2001 brought economic assistance to the area and helped revive dying craftsmanship.”

Several local cooperatives and non-profit groups now market the region's handicrafts to sophisticated urban markets in India and abroad but the path has been long and arduous, she wrote.

Read the full article.



Mumbai Cartoonist Jailed

September 10, 2012, 11:31 am
By HARI KUMAR

A Mumbai court sent Aseem Trivedi, a young cartoonist, to judicial custody for two weeks on charges of sedition and violating the information technology act after he drew a cartoon that mocked the corruption in the Indian government.

In his cartoon, Mr. Trivedi, an anti-corruption activist, substituted the three lions in India's national symbol with three wolves. After the cartoons circulated on social networking sites, a private citizen filed a complaint against him, and he surrendered to Mumbai police on Saturday. His is the latest cartoon to upset the Indian government.

On Monday, Mr. Trivedi was presented to the judicial magistrate in Mumbai's junior court by polic e. Mr. Trivedi said he refused to ask for bail unless the charge of sedition was dropped against him. As he left the court, he shouted anti-corruption slogans, raising his fist.

“I am not a traitor; I am a law-abiding citizen,” he said in a handwritten statement given to his sympathizers. “If raising a voice against injustice is sedition, then I am a traitor. I will not ask for bail.”

Free speech advocates criticized the court's decision. Markandey Katju, chairman of the Press Council of India, said Mr. Trivedi should not have been arrested in the first place. “Politicians must learn how to behave and must accept criticism,” Mr. Katju said.

The cartoonist's father, Ashok Trivedi, told NDTV, an independent news channel, “Why he should apply for bail? He has not committed any crime. He should be released unconditionally.”

The Mumbai police must file the charges against the cartoonist before his trial date can be set. Mr. Trivedi faces a maximum penalty of imprisonment for life if found guilty of sedition.



Image of the Day: September 10

September 10, 2012, 11:14 am
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

India and Pakistan Sign Visa Agreement, Easing Travel

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan and signed a new visa agreement on Saturday, easing restrictions for travelers in what was seen as a step toward warming relations between the rival South Asian countries after years of heightened mistrust and hostility.

The agreement was signed by S. M. Krishna, the Indian minister for external affairs, and Rehman Malik, the Pakistani interior minister, in Islamabad.

The visa requirements have been strict in the past because of suspicions on each side. Among other changes, the agreement will exempt travelers over 65, children under 12 and businessmen from reporting to the police during their travels.

Relations between the two countries have improved in recent months, and trade has been increasing. The visa changes are meant to build on that by increasing contacts between Indians and Pakistanis in the hopes of instilling more trust. Some previous agreements to improve relations, however, have stumbled in being carried out.

Mr. Krishna, in Pakistan for a three-day tour, has met with top government officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf.

Indian and Pakistani officials have offered optimistic statements about the nations' relations. “We must learn from the past,” Mr. Ashraf said Friday in his meeting with Mr. Krishna. “We cannot change our neighbors.”

Pakistan's foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, called the new visa agreement “the first step in normalization of relations with our neighbor.”

Mr. Krishna and Ms. Khar covered a broad range of issues in their talks, but it was not immediately clear if they made headway in addressing mutual irritants.

The most volatile issue, Kashmir, remains at the center of discord between the countries and shows no signs of resolution. Officials say they are continuing their discussions over the disputed Himalayan territory, which has led to wars in the past.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India - who supports the visa changes - made clear that security remained a big concern. According to the Indian news media, he said there had been increased attempts by militants to infiltrate the de facto border that divides Kashmir.

Frictions also continue over the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, for which India has blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba militants based in Pakistan. India wants swift prosecution of suspects arrested in connection with the attacks. A trial of seven Lashkar-e-Taiba suspects is under way in Pakistan, but critics say its progress has been stalled by frequent adjournments.

For its part, Pakistan wants India to move quickly on disputed territories beyond Kashmir, including the Siachen Glacier. Pakistan also is pressing for India to remove nontariff barriers to trade.

Despite continued tensions, Pakistani politicians and Indian officials said that a step-by-step approach to repair ties was essential.

“We will not be held hostage to history,” Ms. Khar said.

Pakistan has sent a strong message to India by increasing trade ties, she said. Bilateral trade between the two countries was only $300 million in 2004, but increased ninefold to $2.7 billion in 2011, and is expected to grow further.

In his remarks, the Indian foreign minister stressed that terrorism was dangerous to both countries.

“We agreed that terrorism poses a continuing threat to peace and security,” Mr. Krishna said. “The Pakistani side reiterated its commitment to bring all perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice expeditiously.”

He said Mr. Singh would visit Pakistan when “he feels something worthwhile will come out of the visit.” There is speculation that Mr. Singh might go to Pakistan by the end of the year.



Despite Outcry, Crime and Migrants Falling in Mumbai

September 10, 2012, 6:46 am
By NARESH FERNANDES

Days after a court in Bihar ordered the Muzaffarpur police to register a case against Raj Thackeray, the head of the far-right Maharashtra Navnirman Sena party, for threatening to drive workers from the north Indian state out of Mumbai, Mr. Thackeray reiterated a popular perception that migrants from poorer parts of India are pouring into Maharashtra, raising crime levels.

“Every day 48 trains come to Maharashtra from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand,” he told the Times Now news channel over the weekend. “Who are these people? Where do they go? Then you will blame police for not being able to control the crime in the state.”

As it turns out, the statistics from Maharashtra's capital d on't bear out Mr. Thackeray's contention. According to the Mumbai police Web site, crime in the city of 12.4 million people fell 8 percent between January and the end of August compared with the same period last year. The city police registered 19,547 major crimes like murders, burglaries and thefts in that period, down from 21,247 cases in the first eight months of last year.

Not only is crime dropping, so is the rate at which people from other regions are moving to Mumbai, a city that once prided itself on being a magnet for migrant energy. In fact, the provisional figures for the 2011 census show that the total population of the island-city district of South Mumbai actually dropped 5.75 percent over a decade. Though the population of the northern suburbs increased 8 percent in the same period, this is the lowest rate of growth recorded in Mumbai since the 1930s, said D.P. Singh, chairman of the Center for Research Methodology at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, who closely tracks the city's demographic patterns.

Since 1961, natural increase â€" births to people already living in the city â€" has been the largest factor in Mumbai's population growth, census figures show. In the decade until 2001, migrants accounted for only 39 percent of the city's growth. Of the people who chose to migrate to the city in that period, a significant percentage â€" 37.6 â€" came from other parts of Maharashtra, Mr. Singh said.

Among the reasons for the city's population decrease, Mr. Singh said, was that Mumbai residents were increasingly moving farther away to new property developments in Thane in the north and the Navi Mumbai area in the northeastern district of Raigad. He attributed this shift to Mumbai's prohibitively expensive property prices.  “Old as well new settlers are choosing Thane compared to Mumbai,” Mr. Singh said. But he also pointed out that employment is becoming more difficult to find in the city, another factor that has been inhibiting migrants.

This trend of declining migration from rural India to cities isn't limited to Mumbai. In a recent paper in Economic and Political Weekly, Amitabh Kundu and Lopamudra Ray Saraswati of Jawaharlal Nehru University note that this is a nationwide phenomenon. The reason for the change, Mr. Kundu said in an e-mail interview, is “exclusionary urbanization.” As the researchers explain in their paper, “Urban centers have become less hospitable to and less accommodating for the poor.” This has meant, they said, that “poor and unskilled male labourers are finding it difficult to gain footholds in urban centers.”

Naresh Fernandes is a freelance journalist who lives in Mumbai. He is a Poiesis fellow at New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge. He is the author of “Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age.“



Fighting for Bangladesh Labor, and Ending Up in Pauper\'s Grave

Arantxa Cedillo for The New York Times

Workers at an export processing zone in Ashulia, Bangladesh, on their way to work at the garment factories. A labor organizer in Ashulia was killed. More Photos '

ASHULIA, Bangladesh - His tiny office was lost among the hulking garment factories that churn out cargo pants or polo shirts for brands like Gap or Tommy Hilfiger, yet workers managed to find Aminul Islam. They came with problems. Unpaid wages. Abusive bosses. Mr. Islam, a labor organizer, fought for their rights.

Security forces found Mr. Islam, too. His phone was tapped, the police regularly harassed him, and domestic intelligence agents once abducted and beat him, his co-workers and family say. More than once, he was told his advocacy for workers was hurting a country where garment exports drive the domestic economy.

And then no one could find Mr. Islam.

He disappeared April 4. Days later, his family discovered that he had been tortured and killed. His murder bore a grim familiarity in a country with a brutal legacy of politically motivated killings, and it raised a troubling question: Was he killed for trying to organize workers?

Five months later, Mr. Islam's killing remains under investigation. There have been no arrests in the case, and the police say they have made little progress.

On the day he disappeared, Mr. Islam was trying to resolve a labor impasse at factories that stitch shirts for Tommy Hilfiger, American Eagle and other global brands. Then an acquaintance arrived unexpectedly, accompanied by a woman in a veil. The man, now suspected of having ties to security agencies, had an urgent request, that Mr. Islam officiate at his wedding.

Mr. Islam rode off in a rickshaw to help him and was never seen again.

It is unclear if Mr. Islam was killed because of his work, and it is possible that he was killed for an altogether different motive. But his labor advocacy had collided with powerful interests in Bangladesh, now the second leading exporter of apparel in the world, after China. Cheap, nonunion labor is essential to the export formula in Bangladesh, where the minimum wage for garment workers is $37 a month. Unions are almost nonexistent in apparel factories.

Ordinarily, a murder in Bangladesh attracts little outside attention, but Mr. Islam's death has inspired a fledgling global campaign, with protests lodged by international labor groups and by European and American diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. This outside pressure is partly because so many global brands now use Bangladeshi factories. But Mr. Islam also worked for local labor groups affiliated with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., a connection to the American labor movement that has infused his death with geopolitical overtones.

For years, mutual suspicion has defined the relationship between the labor federation and the Bangladeshi establishment. Citing labor abuses, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. is currently petitioning Washington to overturn trade preferences for Bangladesh, infuriating Bangladeshi leaders and casting suspicions on the domestic labor groups nurtured by the federation, including those where Mr. Islam worked.

“It was viewed as, ‘Why are you trying to destroy our economy?' ” said Alonzo Suson, who runs an A.F.L.-C.I.O. training center in Dhaka known as the Solidarity Center. “The federations that supported the A.F.L.-C.I.O. are viewed as not being loyal, as being traitors.”

Mr. Islam's work often made him a target. In 2010, after angry wage protests shook the country, the authorities charged Mr. Islam and two of his bosses with “antistate” activities. Harassment by police and intelligence agents became so intense that Mr. Islam's bosses sought a truce: a secret meeting was held between Mr. Islam and the director of the main domestic spying agency, the National Security Intelligence Agency, or N.S.I.

A senior government official, interviewed about the case, denied any involvement by the spying agency in Mr. Islam's death. But Mr. Islam's colleagues worry that the lack of progress on the case reflects a lack of commitment by the authorities on labor rights.

“Who is so powerful?” asked Kalpona Akter, who had been Mr. Islam's boss and friend, “that they killed Aminul - yet is still untouchable?”

A Voice for Workers



Does Delhi Need a Cap on Car Ownership?

September 10, 2012, 3:21 am
By MALAVIKA VYAWAHARE

Is it time for India to take lessons from China about pollution and congestion?

The municipal government of Guangzhou, one of China's biggest auto manufacturing centers, plans to halve the number of new cars on the streets, The New York Times reported, by introducing “license plate auctions and lotteries.”

The move comes as the city struggles to address traffic congestion issues and curb pollution â€" issues that also bedevil India's biggest cities, particularly its capital. Despite the current slowdown, India is still one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and, according to a World Economic Forum study released this year, also has the world's worst air p ollution.

The problem is particularly acute in Delhi, where an average of 1,335 vehicles were added to Delhi's roads every day during 2010 and 2011. Infrastructure improvements have not kept pace with the influx of vehicles, mostly cars and motorcycles, and the city faces a capacity crisis in less than a decade, an expert says.

“The capacity of roads in Delhi will be exceeded by 2021 on most major roads and junctions,” Geetam Tiwari, a professor of transport planning at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi who is also associated with the city's contentious Bus Rapid Transport pilot project, told India Ink.

So far, the Delhi government has been mulling measures to discourage private vehicle use and promote other methods of transportation, like B.R.T., rather than direct limits on ownership.

“Increasing vehicular population is a major challenge facing the city, and we will have to take toug h decisions to deal with it,” a senior Delhi official said in an interview with The Jagran Post last week.

The “tough decisions” so far include making parking more expensive, levying congestion charges on certain routes during peak hours and upgrading the public transportation system, all of which are being gradually implemented in Delhi. The government is also considering a proposal to levy parking charges in residential areas, unlikely to be a popular idea among car owners, who are the city's wealthiest and most influential people. The B.R.T. project, for example, has spawned vociferous opposition, especially among the car-owning population. A recent court order, in response to their complaints, allows other vehicles to use the bus-only corridor, negating its benefit for those not using private cars.

Some cities in India, however, are already experimenting with rules to check car ownership.

Aizawl, the capital of the northeastern state of Mizoram , has linked the granting of licenses to parking availability. Vehicle owners have to show that they own garages before their vehicles can be registered. But as a consequence, “a number of vehicles have been left unregistered due to the inspectors' inability to verify that the garages exist,” the local news media reported.

In Jaipur in the western state of Rajasthan, the state government was directed by the high court to register only those vehicles whose owners submit an affidavit that they have a parking space for the vehicle. The order came into force on May 1 and local transport officials have not encountered the same difficulties as their peers in Aizawl, for a simple reason. “We were asked to get the affidavits from the vehicle owners. The high court did not direct us to crosscheck the affidavit,” officials told the The Daily Bhaskar.

Vehicle ownership levels remain fairly low in Delhi at 85 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants, compared wit h a developed country like Britain, which has 760 vehicles per 1,000 people. But owning one remains a goal for many. “Rising appetites for personal mobility are buttressed by the association of car ownership with high social status,” a report on changes in bus transportation pointed out.

Growth in car sales remains a strong point in India's economy. In a mid-term review of the Automotive Mission Plan 2006-2016, the government outlines plans to make India a “destination of choice in the design and manufacture of automobiles.” According to the review, vehicle production in the country increased from 9.7 million units in 2006 to 20 million in 2011.

India's courts have occasionally addressed questions about the addition of more cars to India's roads. Dismissing the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's plea this year to limit the cycle rickshaws on Delhi roads, a Supreme Court judge said the government was not prepared to put limits o n cars. “In your so-called vision, you must have thought that by scrapping rickshaws there will be enough space for cars and other vehicles on the roads,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.

Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of the Center for Science and Environment and head of the transport planning program, said the government should focus on influencing commuting choices and encouraging people to use cars less and public transportation more.

“A quota system should be a last resort,” Ms. Roychowdhury said. “But that is something Delhi would have to consider if the current government policies do not solve the transport problems soon.”



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