Devoted to Facial Yoga (Don\'t Try This in Public)

By SHIVANI VORA

After hot yoga, extreme yoga and yoga clubbing, what could be next? How about facial yoga, designed to keep the face youthful-looking?

Ranjana Khan, a jewelry designer, has introduced a yoga video online that includes 14 yoga exercises for the face. The Mumbai-born New Yorker, who is married to the fashion designer Naeem Khan, got into yoga in her twenties after running marathons took a toll on her joints and left her physically exhausted, she said in a recent interview. “I had just moved to New York but was back and forth to India and really connected with yoga,” she said. She had teachers in both countries, and one in India began incorporating yoga for the face into their sessions.

These moves, he told her, would increase blood flow to her facial muscles, keep her skin firm and increase her energy. She soon became an enthusiast, and for the last few decades has practiced facial yoga th ree or four times a week, 10 minutes at a time. “The exercises are very easy to do and only take a few minutes a day,” she said.

Ms. Khan's program joins a host of other facial yoga routines dedicated to keeping you looking young such as facialyogaonline.com developed in 2006 by yoga instructor Michael Glen and The Yoga Face, a book and online program created by yoga instructor Annelise Hagen.

While it may seem unlikely that extreme facial contortions might prevent aging, rather than cause wrinkles, doctors say there is some evidence they do make the skin look better.

Neil Sadick, a cosmetic surgeon and clinical professor of dermatology at Weill-Cornell Medical Center in New York, has conducted studies on facial stimulation and said facial yoga does have benefits. “It's not proven that face exercises can increase blood flow, but they can improve muscle tone and make the skin look more supple,” he said.

The effect is not the same as laser resur facing or a chemical peel because the moves won't stimulate collagen, Dr. Sadick said, but with a regular routine, the skin could look fresher overall.

Though there are at least 50 facial yoga moves, Ms. Khan's $12.99 video focuses on those for the forehead, eyes, cheeks, mouth and neck. One example for the neck: purse your lips together as if you're going to kiss someone, look up at the sky until you feel the stretch in your neck, hold the position for 10 to 15 seconds and then release the kiss. Repeat four or five times, Ms. Khan says, and your neck muscles will be tauter.

For her part, Ms. Khan, 57, looks considerably younger than her years, which she attributed entirely due to this little-known ancient practice. “This is about taking care of yourself from the inside out,” she said. “I've had four facials my entire life and have never had a facelift or any other cosmetic procedure.”

Age-Old Fixes for India\'s Water

'S monsoon rains are retreating this week, a delayed end to a yearly wet season that has become ever more unpredictable as a result of . Of all the challenges that face India, few are more pressing than how it manages water. In vast cities like New Delhi, where showers and flush toilets have become necessities for a rapidly expanding middle class, groundwater has been depleted. New Delhi once had many ponds and an open floodplain to absorb the monsoon and replenish aquifers; now the sprawling city has more concrete and asphalt than it has ponds and fields to absorb water.

India's capital has come to rely for half its water on dams in the Himalaya range that capture monsoon runoff. But the dams disrupt the ecology of the Himalaya, South Asia's precious watershed. Much of the waste from New Delhi's overwhelmed sewage treatment system ends up in the Yamuna River, one of the main tributaries of the Ganges, which winds down from the Himalaya and flows 1,500 miles across India to the Bay of Bengal. Combined with under-regulated industrial effluents, urban waste has turned India's mythic and misused rivers into cesspools.

In the countryside, where a vast majority of Indians still live, a combination of free electricity and inadequate regulation has led farmers to deplete untold groundwater supplies. In some places the water table is so low it no longer helps sustain roots, so even more water must be pumped up. In addition, soils have been degraded by chemical fertilizers, so they require even more water.

But in some parts of India, communities are turning to “rainwater harvesting,” capturing rainwater in ponds and allowing it to percolate into the ground to feed wells and springs. Such techniques were once commonplace throughout the South Asian subcontinent, where rain falls for only a few months in the summer monsoon, and often not at all for the rest of the year. Now villagers are returning to these ancient methods to secure the future.

In northwest India, near Almora, a town of 40,000 in the Himalayan foothills, farmers are restoring ponds that have fallen into disuse in order to once again replenish groundwater and feed springs. They are also digging new ponds to use for irrigation and fish culture. In one village near there, I visited a one-room preschool - a balwadi, or child's garden - where mothers in brightly colored saris told me that they needed a toilet so that the kids wouldn't have to run to the woods to relieve themselves. I took that to indicate that this area, while still poor, was progressing; the rural villagers expected to have some form of indoor toilet. However, there isn't enough water for full plumbing - and there is barely enough in the town itself, where many people have plumbing, but the river cannot satisfy all the needs of both the town and irrigation systems in farms nearby.

India's challenges - how to keep the economic engine moving while making government more effective and efficient; how to raise hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while protecting the environment - are staggering. Efforts like Almora's hold great promise, and more are needed.

Even though much of the water resource planning in India looks anachronistic given what we now know, a large contingent in government and engineering circles still advocates big, highly engineered, concrete-based solutions: large dams and deep reservoirs to generate electricity, urban water and sewer systems like those in the West. Many of these projects address the needs of industry and city dwellers, but some of the big dams and concrete canals proposed are meant to sustain rural areas, and many Indian water specialists say they'll do more harm than good.

In a region known as Bundelkhand, for example, a drought has driven farmers to desperation: part of the year they go sleep on the streets of New Delhi by night and build new high-rises there by day. The solution proposed for Bundelkhand is to dam a river to the east and transport its water through a long concrete canal. So far it has not been approved, thanks in part to the opposition of people who say the proposal is foolish, expensive and disruptive. They contend that the region can gain as much or more by going back to its traditional rainwater harvesting: ponds, small dams and an older, more sustainable style of farming.

In the Indian state just west of there, Rajasthan, some villagers have already gone back to the style of rainwater harvesting their ancestors practiced. In the hilly topography of eastern Rajasthan - part of an ancient mountain range that long predates the upthrust of the Himalaya - villagers built small damlike obstructions so that water could be trapped in depressions. Within a short time the groundwater table rose, a dead river became perennial again, and the land was green.

These successes hold lessons even for the megacities. In recent years, environmental groups in New Delhi have advocated the harvesting of rainwater from the roofs of houses and high-rises; the effort has begun, though not yet on a scale large enough to halt the destructive dam building.

For a long time now, centralized solutions for India have appeared to New Delhi's bureaucracy as easier to manage than local initiatives. It would of course be naïve to think a return to indigenous ways is the only answer in a country that is on track to become the world's most populous within a decade or so. But for millenniums, the distinct regions of the subcontinent developed ingenious ways to manage their water, and they prospered. Retrieving those methods, perhaps reinventing them, could give rural Indians some control over their destinies, even in the face of the wrenching changes wrought by globalization and the continued warming of the planet.

Image of the Day: Oct. 8

October 8, 2012, 11:06 am

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Violence and Pepper Spray During Nasheed\'s Arrest in Maldives, Party Claims

By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI

The former president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, was detained on Monday for failing to turn up for a court hearing in a case involving the unlawful arrest of a High Court judge when Mr. Nasheed was president.

Mr. Nasheed was arrested by the police while on a campaign stop in Fares-Maathodaa island, one of the 1,200 islands that make up the tiny Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives, ahead of the presidential elections in July next year.

While there's little argument that the police took Mr. Nasheed into custody, there's plenty of disagreement concerning the manner in which it took place.

Mr. Nasheed's supporters said he had just eaten breakfast at a party member's home when masked police broke into the house armed in full riot gear, spewing obscenities, and swept the former president out in what his supporters contend was a politically motivated move solely aimed at stopping him from campaigning.

Maldivian Democratic Party workers said that former ministers and aides in Mr. Nasheed's government who were in the house were pepper-sprayed and violently dragged out.

“You could only see their eyes,” said Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, the spokesman for Mr. Nasheed's party, describing the police who he said had burst in to brutally arrest their party leader. “They wanted to make it look like they were catching a fugitive.”

The police and a spokesman at President Mohammed Waheed Hassan's office offer a far less diabolical account. Yes, the police were dressed in riot gear to protect themselves in case the situation got out of control, they said. But they didn't use force or expletives, they said, and they certainly didn't use tear gas or pepper spray.

A police spokesman, Hassan Haneef, said the police had received a court order Sunday to produce Mr. Nasheed at the court hearing on Tuesday, which will question his order to the army t o arrest a senior judge, Abdulla Mohamed, who he contended was corrupt. Critics said the move was an unconstitutional overreach of Mr. Nasheed's authority.

Mr. Haneef acknowledged that Mr. Nasheed had been cooperative when he was taken into custody.

Masood Imad, media secretary at the president's office, said Mr. Nasheed had ignored the first two court summons for the hearing. Then, according to the law, the court ordered the police to bring him to the hearing, or else the police would have been held in contempt of the court.

Mr. Imad said that the police had acted professionally when they brought Mr. Nasheed into custody.

“He's not been brought in like a criminal,” said Mr. Imad. “He wasn't even handcuffed.”

He said Mr. Nasheed was taken to the capital, Male, in a very large, comfortable police speedboat, “with seats like an aircraft's.” In addition, he said, the police stopped at an island along the way so Mr. Nasheed could buy the brand of cigarettes he wanted.

The allegations between the two groups echoed the accusations that have been volleyed since Mr. Nasheed resigned from office in what he said was a coup in February. The archipelago nation, which became a democracy as recently as 2008, has been in political turmoil since Mr. Nasheed stepped down. Scores of protesters were arrested in July, the most recent of violent demonstrations that have wracked the country since the change of president.

Mr. Nasheed is now campaigning in the hope of coming to power in the next election and changing Mr. Waheed's government, which he said is illegitimate.

Mr. Ghafoor of the Maldivian Democratic Party said that the former president's arrest came while about 300 party members and supporters had been traveling on five boats and campaigning door to door. He said it was on their stop at the 17th island on Monday at 9:45 a.m. when the police kicked down the door to the house of the former housing a nd environment minister, Mohamed Aslam, where Mr. Nasheed had stopped by.

“They pushed their way in, hurting anyone inside the house,” said Saleema Mohamed, a participant of the campaign trip, who was inside the living room when the police entered the house, according to a statement. “Minister Aslam asked them repeatedly to calm down and to not hurt anyone. He was saying, ‘This is my house.' The police shoved him and pushed him, and he fell on the glass table and broke the table.”

Mr. Nasheed is scheduled to appear in court at 4 p.m. Tuesday. After the hearing, Mr. Nasheed would be allowed to leave unless the court orders that he be further detained, Mr. Imad said.

Is it Time to Retire India\'s Quota System?

By GARDINER HARRIS

The United States and India are both robust and diverse democracies that have sought through preferences to overcome centuries of discrimination against some of its most vulnerable citizens.

But the means used by the two countries are starkly different. In the United States, strict quotas have long been banned by judicial decree; in India, quotas are the rule in government jobs and schools. Preferences in the United States have been limited to minority populations, and those who benefit in university settings are generally a small share of the overall student body.

In India, preferences are sometimes given to the majority, and the share of university seats in states like Tamil Nadu given by preference often far exceeds 50 percent. Thus, it is often those with the most political power, and sometimes the most money, who get preferences.

In the United States, the elec tion of Barack Obama as president has led some to argue that the need for affirmative action policies has ended. If a black man can become president, they ask, what evidence is there that blacks continue to face the kind of discrimination that justifies preferences?

The response to such arguments, of course, is that Mr. Obama is just one man, and his success does not prove that discriminatory practices have disappeared. But imagine the argument if Mr. Obama were the seventh or eighth black president. That is the situation in many Indian states, where leaders have sprung from castes that continue to get preferences.

Critics in both countries have advocated transitioning to need-based programs that give preferences based upon economic or geographic circumstances, but such need-based programs have yet to garner the political support of those based upon identifiers that have more political resonance, like caste and race.

What do you think of India's caste-based quotas? They were originally intended to serve only a small share of the population and for only 10 years. Have they grown too large, or are they still serving a valid social purpose?

Debating the Death Sentence for \'Honor\' Killings

By NIHARIKA MANDHANA

Five people from Delhi were sentenced to death on Friday for the “honor killing” of a couple, the latest in a series of death penalty judgments in India for the murder of young people who wish to marry outside their caste or religious group.

The victims, who belonged to different castes and hoped to get married, were reportedly tied with ropes and beaten with sticks and pipes before being electrocuted to death in 2010.

“Such cruel and barbaric acts cannot be allowed to take place in developed metropolitan cities,” the sessions judge, Ramesh Kumar Singhal, said while sentencing.

So-called honor killings take place in many parts of India, particularly in the northern states of Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where caste continues to be a decisive factor in marriage. Young men and women who violate the traditional rules that prohibit marriage outside their own ca stes and religious communities are regularly ostracized, tortured and sometimes even murdered by members of their family, village or community. On some occasions, self-appointed caste councils, called khap panchayats, pass diktats ordering such attacks, claiming they hope to protect the honor of their communities.

In recent years, India's highest court has taken a strong position against this practice. “There is nothing honorable in such killings,” the Supreme Court said in 2006, “and in fact they are nothing but barbaric and shameful acts of murder committed by brutal, feudal minded persons who deserve harsh punishment.”

Last year, the court went one step further and prescribed the death sentence to punish those guilty of honor killings, saying it was time to “stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices which are a slur on our nation.”

“All persons who are planning to perpetrate honor killings should know that the gallows await them,” the c ourt said.

But not all institutions in India agree with the court's stance. In a report released in August this year, India's Law Commission, an advisory body of legal experts, criticized the court's directive, saying that the death sentence in India is to be used “only in very exceptional and rare cases,” when “aggravating and mitigating circumstances” are found.

The commission found that since the decision was given, the lower courts of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi had sentenced almost all accused in cases of honor killings to death. Disapproving of this trend, the commission said that each case needed to be judged on its own facts and circumstances and criticized what it called the Supreme Court's “blanket direction” to give the death penalty in all instances of honor killings.

“No hard and fast rule can be laid down,” the report said, in sharp contrast to the court's decision prescribing the death penalty for honor killings committed “for w hatever reason.”

In the 2011 case decided by the Supreme Court, a man strangled his daughter to death for having a relationship against his will. The court said that if a person is unhappy with the behavior of a relative or a member of his caste, “the maximum he can do is to cut off social relations,” but he “cannot take the law into his own hands by committing violence or giving threats of violence.”

India has retained the death penalty, but since the 1980s this extreme form of punishment has been used only in the “rarest of rare” cases. Statistics show that even where the death penalty is given, execution is uncommon. According to Amnesty International's recent data, 435 people were sentenced to death in India between 2007 and 2011, but none have been hanged.

Honor killings, which have been under intense media scrutiny, now fall within the “rarest of rare” category. In a bid to combat the practice more effectively, the government began c onsidering various legal proposals in 2009, including an amendment to the country's penal code to explicitly mention honor killings. The Law Commission, tasked with evaluating this proposal, advised against it, saying the amendment would cause “interpretational difficulties.”

Instead, the Law Commission proposed a law to ban the now infamous “khap panchayats,” which are different from the country's gram panchayats, or local self-governments. The bodies of community elders have been called “undemocratic” by the government, and the report labels them a “pernicious practice.” “Often young couples who fall in love have to seek shelter in the police lines or protection homes to avoid the wrath of kangaroo courts,” the report said.

The proposed law seeks to prohibit any group from gathering “to deliberate on, or condemn” any legal marriage, “on the basis that the marriage has dishonored the caste or community tradition or brought disrepute to the family, village or locality.”

The intention of the law, the report said, is to “curb the social evil of caste councils or panchayats” that endanger the “life and liberty of young persons.”