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WORLD
barack Obama began the year on a high note. Fresh off a convincing victory in a re-election battle that pitted him against Republican challenger Mitt Romney, he started his second term as most two-term presidents do, focused on shaping his legacy. But the president was barely five months into his new term, when Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former National Security Agency contractor, hit the headlines. Snowden disclosed that the agency he once worked for spies not just on Americans, but also on many of America’s allies, including India. He fled from Hawaii to Hong Kong before revealing the mind-boggling extent of the NSA’s surveillance programmes to Britain’s Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post. The revelations strained Washington’s ties with its allies, particularly in Europe and Latin America. The NSA had intercepted communications between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her aides, and tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone. Snowden also made disclosures about the US surveillance program PRISM, which collects and analyses information from Internet and phone users around the world. Snowden is now hiding away in Russia, but the embarrassment his disclosures have caused to president Obama is in plain sight. The scandal hurt Obama’s image at home and abroad. The president worried aloud that Americans are increasingly viewing government as an Orwellian “Big Brother.” Even as the NSA scandal raged, a chemical weapons attack on August 21 in the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, that left more than 1,400 people dead threatened to draw a reluctant U.S. into a protracted civil war. Obama said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a red line which, if crossed, would compel him to change his calculus. With mounting evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime was behind the August 21 attack, President Obama was left with little choice but to prepare for war. He vowed punitive air strikes. But US action was averted after Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in an unscripted moment, gave Assad the option of avoiding military strikes if he turned over his chemical weapons. Syria’s main international backer, Russia, jumped at this suggestion, paving the way for a deal that could soon result in the destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons stockpiles. While the breakthrough in Syria was produced by an off-the-cuff remark, it was months of intense and often back-channel diplomacy that resulted in a historic agreement between the US and its Western allies with Iran in which the Islamic republic agreed to roll back key aspects of its nuclear programme. The six-month deal is seen as a precursor to a long-term agreement. A thaw in Iran’s relationship with the West is good news for India, which has had to cut back on its oil imports from Iran because of Western sanctions on Teheran. Even as Obama has succeeded in breaking the ice with long-time foes of the US, at home he has struggled to win over conservative Republican Party lawmakers who are determined to play the role of an obstructionist opposition to the hilt. Things came to a head in October when the government was shut down after Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives insisted on delaying Obama’s signature health care law as a condition for passing the budget. The ratings agency Standard and Poor said the shutdown, which lasted from October 1 to October 16, cost the US economy $24 billion — or $1.5 billion per day. The US government was last shut down in 1996. The rollout of the HealthCare.gov website, key to the implementation of the new health care law, itself was later hit by crippling technical glitches that created a headache for the White House. In December,. Obama blamed “poor execution” by his team in getting the website up and running and conceded that “nobody has acquitted themselves very well these past few months.” To the President’s critics, the problems with the website were proof that the healthcare law they derisively refer to as “Obamacare” was a wreck.
The new year will undoubtedly bring fresh challenges for Obama, but many of the ones the president has grappled with in 2013 will carry over into 2014.
One can only hope that President Obama has learned his lessons from 2013.
Indian power and prejudice two recent events in quick succession this year on either side of the Atlantic Ocean came as news for concern back home in India. It revealed just how much the Indian diaspora continues to be a subject of racial prejudice and physical attacks in some of the world's advanced democracies. On August 18, an 80 year-old Sikh was attacked by a 19 year-old British girl in Coventry, UK, in full public view and broad daylight. The brutality was captured live and posted on YouTube and remains there for everyone to view. The octogenarian eventually died two-and-a-half months later on November 3. On September 21, a month after this incident and five time zones away on the other end of the Atlantic Ocean, a Sikh professor at Columbia University was kicked, punched and had his beard pulled on a street in New York by more than a dozen young men on bikes who, while labelling him a terrorist, kept jeering "Get Osama". These are two of several examples that occurred this year, which go on to raise the critical issue of identity being faced by people of Indian origin, notably turbaned Sikhs who are among the few clearly identifiable communities, who sometimes get perceived to be members of a community (Muslims) that often gets demonised by many around the world, especially among a section of WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) in the West following the 9/11 terror attacks. This grave issue of misplaced identy is an issue that India continues to grapple with. The Indian diaspora presents an interesting contrast overseas. Indian Information Technology engineers rank second to Chinese immigrants in the Silicon Valley in the United States. The Gujarati diaspora, which accounts for less than 0.01 per cent population of the US is estimated to control 5 per cent of that country's wealth. A few people of Indian origin have been appointed to key positions in the Obama Administration. Yet, at the same time, Indians continue to be seen in poor light because of incidents of domestic violence — wife-beating and child abuse, immigration fraud, human trafficking and even honour killings, even though the latter is usually associated with feudal, fundamentalist and conservative sections of Pakistan. A major downside was the involvement of some 400 Indians in riots that left 39 police and civil defence personnel injured and 25 vehicles, including 16 police cars, damaged following an outbreak of a riot in Singapore. The riots broke out after a 33-year-old Indian construction worker was run over by a private bus earlier this month. Currently 25 Indians charged with rioting face up to seven years imprisonment plus caning while another 56 Indians have been deported and another 200 issued formal advisories.
During the second half of this year, India's former colonialist, the United Kingdom, contemplated introducing visa bonds valued at £ 3,000 for first-time visitors from the erstwhile jewel in the crown. The proposal was eventually dropped but not before yet again exposing the constant vulnerability faced by ‘Third World’ Indians seeking to visit the vastly affluent and much coveted West. The US made headway in framing new immigration laws, the impact of which is yet to be fathomed. Unlike many other countries, India did not lobby for insertion of clauses favourable for Indians even as issues relating to both the H1B and L1 visa continued to fester. Some government measures for protecting the interests of Indian-origin people overseas have included signing Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on manpower with the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan and Malaysia; establishing Indian Community Welfare Fund (ICWF) at Indian Missions to provide on-site relief and assistance to Indian workers in distress; signing of bilateral Social Security Agreements (SSA) with the several European countries and with Japan and Canada. At over 25 million, the Indian diaspora is the world’s second largest with a diversified global presence spread across 200 countries with the highest concentration in the Gulf and the Middle East, North America comprising the US and Canada, South Africa and South East Asia. Counties such as Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and Fiji in the Pacific Ocean are dominated by people of Indian origin for historical reasons. Significantly, India for some years has been the largest recipient of inward remittances. In 2011-2012, India recorded $70 billion up from $ 21 billion in 2003. In the eight year period starting from 2003 to 2010 alone, India recorded a dramatic increase of 162 per cent in remittances. Interestingly, India also has the highest number of returning migrants which averages one lakh a year. Then again, the influx of labour under the emigration clearance required or ECR category increased from 6,26,000 in 2011 to 7,47,000 in 2012 with Saudi Arabia as the major destination followed by Kuwait, the UAE, Oman, Qatar along with other countries in the Gulf region. The fact remains that the Indian community overseas continues to grow in strength and has given India a presence in many countries, especially in the oil rich Gulf and the affluent and powerful West. Considering that the Indian diaspora can be a major source of Soft Power, what is needed is more influence of Indian-origin residents in their respective countries of residence. Ups *
Remittances at all-time high of $70 billion Downs *
Attacks continue on Indians, notably Sikhs
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