indian workers on hunger strike under trees in washington dc

jun 7th, 2008

i feel bad about these guys having been ill-treated, and having been induced to part with their life savings under false pretexts.

but i must remark on the irony of malayali guys bringing to washington, DC, their age-old pastime, sitting in satyagraha and shouting red slogans outside the secretariat's walls in trivandrum (here are now permanent shacks for the hunger strikers to sit in, shaded from sun and rain). it used to be that malayalis were good, diligent little workers when outside kerala, but i guess those days are past. (although in this specific case, i do believe these skilled workers were swindled by the recruiters and the american company.)

there was other news that it was communist part of india (maoist) from kerala who had led the labor strife in the gulf recently where there were some violent protests.

and i must point out the preponderance of kerala christists in the report. i am not surprised: one, they tend to think of america as "our country" because, they say, "it is a christist country"; and two, they are generally in the thick of any clever schemes to bypass inconvenient laws. the % of fraudulent chit funds/investment schemes and fake 'prayer' entities created by them in kerala must be approaching 80%, and of course they disappear when things get a little too hot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/washington/07immig.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1212835086-E4PS77LbnJucjp01eKaUlw&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

and where is e. ahamed? i suspect because none of the workers is named "abubacker" or "kunjali", e. ahamed is simply not bothered.