Miscellaneous posts
1) Linky
It has emerged that professionals from India took a third of the available US work visas under the H-1B category last year. Among foreigners living in the US on a temporary basis, India made up the largest group, second only to Mexicans. Last year there were 364,757 non-immigrant Indians residing in the US and 403,793 Mexicans. Among H-1B holders, the largest group by far were from India, with 123,002 people from the sub-continent taking H-1B US work visas last year. Overall, the leading source countries for non-immigrant residents of the US in 2009 were India, taking 36 per cent of the US visas; Canada with 6.5 per cent; the UK with 4.3 per cent and Mexico, taking 4.2 per cent.
In terms of the US student visas issued, students from five countries accounted for more than half the total number. These countries were China, taking 14 per cent; South Korea, with 13 per cent; India, taking 9 per cent and Mexico and Japan, who took 8.2 per cent and 5.6 per cent respectively. California and New York headed up the list of preferred destinations for holders of temporary US visas.
2) D. Udhayakumar on choosing Devanagari for the Rupee symbol (xlated from Ananda Vikatan with due liberties on Anglais-Tam xlation) Linky -- Paid website
It was one of the conditions of the competition that the proposed symbol should reflect India's culture and ethos. I believed that only a Devanagari character could reflect the entire cultural mileau of India. Our Puranas and Vedas are all written in a script that is close to Devanagari. If you say the word "India" outside India, the first thing that hits you would be Hindi and Bollywood. Since I thought from this global perspective of India, I could not avoid the Devanagari script. Why do you see it as a contest between Hindi and other languages? See it from the viewpoint that only a Tamil showed the world the importance of Hindi.
There is a message in this for Tamils. Hindi is a language that we should not avoid. I could come up with the symbol and understand the intricacies behind its construction only because I know Hindi. All this said, I am contributing to Tamil welfare too. My Ph.D. research is centered around the Tamil language. The scripts that we have been using for writing Tamil have been changing ever since man has been around. My research is focussed on understanding the reasons behind such changes and identifying those characters that can be easily represented in a computer. We call this field typography.
posted by Pax-Indica @ 1:15 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
"Congress President Sonia Gandhi had reportedly assured a delegation of Muslim leaders in May this year that modalities for providing reservation to Muslims would be worked out in six months."
Here is a question: Who is this asshole Sonia Gandhi to bring new categories of reservation when her party has fallen on the job to help these people for 60 years. Does this woman think the Indian constitution can be used to wipe her ass with all her sycophants cheering her?
Seriously, what is the difference between a dirt-poor "non OBC" kid and "OBC" kid, neither of whom are responsible for the caste discrimnation in the past? Why are the mofos in the INC pushing the religious reservation stuff when it is divisive and not in the national interest?
Really pisses me off that these assholes in the INC think they can just dick with the constitution any way they please as they have been doing since independence. Yes, muslims are backward, and so are a whole bunch of people of other religions, who gave the INC mofos the right to divvy up the nation so they can win the next elections?
The next step is going to be an increase in the percentage for muslims and with other religious groups joining in for their share -- as if the current divisive caste quota politics was not enough.
http://news.outlookindia.com/item.aspx?688742
This is the long-term effect of caste quota with groups feeling entitled to jobs, qualification for the job be damned. do we really think that if there are religious reservations, there won't be a similar clamour? If that is the case, the motivations for those pushing for religious quotas is more than obvious. There is a serious ethical problem in pretending that poverty affects a "non-OBC" (no quotas) child less than it affects an "OBC" child (and hence one deserves govt. support but the other does not), which is exactly all these quotas and reservations are doing, but Indians seem to be fine with this injustice along with a million others. No point making grand geopolitical plans for India if the foundations of the house are built with sandstone.
U seems to be no ordinary individual. Kudos to him. So far he seems to be a balanced person. I hope he remains so in the future.
All the Govt. needs to do is create a "poverty bar" and provide economic assistance/reservation in jobs to everyone below the bar, and then as there is more money to fund the program, the bar can be raised. This brings the poorest Indians across the board a leg up the earliest. In fact, if muslim happen to be the poorest community, as they are said to be in the Ranganath commission report and the Sachar Committee report, then naturally, more of the muslims will derive the benefits of this system. But then it is not like any government really wants to fix this problem in a reasonable way.
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