For victims of hate crimes, the struggle for justice is often a long one.

Many victims never find that justice, experts say, because they don’t know where — or how — to seek it out. A substantial number may not even be sure they’ve been the victim of a legitimate hate crime or they’re too ashamed or nervous to contact law enforcement, so they choose to remain quiet, experts say.

“The data reveals that about 80 percent of Americans who want access to legal information or services can’t get it,” said Nicole Bradick, chief strategy officer for CuroLegal, an organization that aims to improve legal access via technology. “On the one hand, that’s because people believe the cost is too high. One the other, that’s because taking steps to advocate for yourself in the justice world are seen as big scary steps.”

In some ways, they’re right, said Bradick, a former civil rights attorney in Maine. Depending on the nature of the incident and where it occurred, reporting a hate crime can involve multiple organizations — some public, some private and some overlapping — and the process can vary depending on state laws. The information is out there but it exists in isolated pockets around the Web, Bradick said.

To simplify what can be an incredibly confusing process, Bradick and a team of legal experts from Cisco Systems and the American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation unveiled a digital tool last week to help streamline portions of the reporting process by turning it into an easy-to-use Web application: hatecrimehelp.com.

The free service uses a Mad Libs-like format in which users fill out a paragraph with predetermined words, such as “verbal hate,” “property damage,” “violence” or “harassment,” describing the incident.

Users can add the location of the alleged crime, their ZIP code and the motivation for the incident, such as “ethnicity,” “religion,” “gender identity,” “sexual orientation” or “immigration status.”

Once completed, the page offers contact information for local nonprofits and government resources accepting hate-crime reporting, as well as a feature that explains “what to expect” from each organization. The site also explains the difference between a hate crime and a “bias incident” and offers a side-by-side look at a state’s law vs. federal law.

“We wanted to create technology that would present the law in digestible ways,” Bradick said, noting that the design came from putting themselves in the shoes of a victim and spending months doing Google searches to better understand the challenges victims face online. “Almost everybody has a smartphone and can pull up this information on a browser from anywhere. We’re huge believers in the idea that technology can scale access to knowledge.”

Bradick said the page was prompted by the spike in hate crimes since last year’s presidential election, an increase that has been documented by academics, politicians and experts at organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The FBI claims there were more than 5,800 hate crimes incidents in 2015 involving about 7,100 victims in 2015, the most recent year that statistics were available.

As The Washington Post reported Sept. 22, another division of the Department of Justice that relies on a survey to ask Americans directly about whether they’ve been victims of a hate crime paints a vastly different picture of hate:

“Each year, the results are quite different than the landscape of crime delineated in the FBI’s report,” reporter Janell Ross wrote. “Between 2004 and 2015, people living in the United States reported experiencing an average of 250,000 hate crimes each year, according to a report released by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Justice Statistics in June. In the last five years of that period, nearly half of the hate crimes — 48 percent — self-reported by victims were “motivated by racial bias” and 90 percent involved violence, according to the DOJ report.”

To address underreporting, Bradick said, her team plans to do user testing to make sure their site is as easy to use as possible.

“When it comes to the law, we don’t make it very easy for people to avoid feeling overwhelmed and to protect themselves or take advantage of the protections the law provides them,” she said. “Hopefully, we can begin to change that.”

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This is the year of the rape-revenge drama. After Raveena Tandon’s “Maatr” and Sridevi’s “Mom”, it is now the turn of the father to exact vengeance. In his first film after spending four years in jail for firearms offences, Sanjay Dutt takes the law into his own hands in “Bhoomi” to punish the men who raped his daughter.

Just like the earlier Bollywood films in the same genre this year, “Bhoomi” functions on the premise that rape victims are “tainted” forever and killing the perpetrators of the crime is the only way to find closure. And once again, the film focuses on the parent of the rape victim.

It is telling that when “Bhoomi” breaks for interval, the image on the screen is of Sanjay Dutt curled up on the floor in foetal position, as he berates himself for not protecting his daughter. The film is all about him.

The film establishes early on the close relationship between widowed Arun Sachdeva (Sanjay Dutt) and his daughter Bhoomi (Aditi Rao Hydari). They tease each other, back each other up and are the perfect two-unit family. But their world comes crashing down when Bhoomi is raped a day before her marriage by three men, including a rejected suitor.

Bhoomi’s groom calls off the wedding and Arun’s shoe business suffers because no one wants to do business with the father of a rape victim, it would seem. This turns the father-daughter duo into revenge-seekers, and they proceed to eliminate everyone connected to the crime one by one.

As revenge-dramas go, this one is middling, with neither emotions nor actions quite hitting the mark. Director Omung Kumar makes sure there is some style though – even murder scenes have flying dupattas and top shots. Dutt fits the bill as the affectionate father-turned-vigilante, and Hydari brings the adequate degree of vulnerability to her character. The trouble is, we’ve seen this all before, and more than enough this year.

REUTERS

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In a scene in Amit Masurkar’s “Newton”, the eponymous protagonist is at his desk with a neck brace, thanks to an injury. It might be a brace, but in the way it prevents Newton from turning his head and hampers his movements, it might as well be a pair of blinkers.

It’s a sharp metaphor, one that conveys Newton’s defining characteristic – he’s single-minded in his pursuit of duty, refusing to be distracted or deterred by anything that might stand in the way.

Newton is a young, idealistic government officer who is determined to conduct his very first election duty with honesty and integrity. Never mind that the booth he is in charge of has a total of 76 eligible voters and is in the middle of a jungle infested with Maoist rebels. Never mind that Aatma Singh (Pankaj Tripathi), the local police officer, is openly combative – or that his fellow election officials think he’s loony. Newton will do all it takes to ensure each voter gets a chance to cast his or her vote in the most free and fair manner possible.

But it’s no easy task. Aatma Singh is a morally ambivalent and ambitious officer who doesn’t get Newton’s idealistic way of thinking. The locals, caught in the middle of a crossfire between Maoist rebels and the police, are unsure why the election is important, and no one else seems to share Newton’s belief that the process is necessary.

It is surprising that it took so long for a film like this to be made in the world’s largest democracy. For those of us who are election junkies, “Newton” is a welcome peek into the fascinating world of an Indian general election and the processes and ideologies that govern it. But even if you don’t care about elections, “Newton” works on so many other levels – as a dark comedy, as the portrait of a naive man, and as the story of a land ravaged by war, where the biggest losers are the common people.

Masurkar and writer Mayank Tewari never let the heaviness of the subject get to them. The 109-minute film is replete with deadpan humour and clever dialogue. The cast of characters, especially Raghubir Yadav as a jaded election official and Anjali Patil as a teacher, is a wonderful fit. But it is the sparring between Newton and Aatma Singh and the ideologies they represent that are the real highlight of the film. Both Rajkummar Rao and Tripathi are pitch perfect.

Nothing in “Newton” is said obviously. Metaphors abound, and it is up to the audience to draw their own conclusions. But one thing is clear – Masurkar and Tewari make no bones about whose side they are on, even though the film pretends to be neutral.

That might not be such a bad thing though – films should be political, especially if they lead to conversations around politics and polity. “Newton” is one such film and definitely gets our vote.

REUTERS

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As the Navratri festival is currently underway, tens of thousands of Indian-Americans across New Jersey are coming together at garbas to celebrate. I recently had the privilege of attending a garba in Sayreville and had an incredible experience I will never forget. There were thousands of people, men in their jabho lengos and women in their elegant chaniya cholis with young children by their side, all dancing to the rhythmic drums and live music around the mother goddess Durga.

Navratri marks a special time that symbolizes the triumph of good over evil, just as Durga defeated the demon Mahishasura in a battle lasting nine days and nights. It is also a time to observe discipline, find purity and seek new beginnings. I find many similarities between the themes of Navratri and my campaign for governor of New Jersey, themes that further resonated with me during my time at garba and for which I am running.

When I look back to the last eight years in New Jersey under the leadership of Governor Chris Christie, as well as his Lieutenant Governor and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno, I see nothing but failure and darkness. A period that squeezed the middle class, dug our fiscal hole in the state deeper, ignored the next generation, and made the state less fair and less just. Schools were not adequately funded and education for our children suffered, and our economy, infrastructure and transportation development were ignored.

This is why I am running for governor, to stop the litany of poor decisions made by Christie and Guadagno to the detriment to our residents.

I believe that on this November 7, Election Day, we will be able to create a state with a brighter future that ensures a quality education for our children, a stronger and fairer economy with good paying jobs to take care of our families, as well as adequate health care and affordable housing for the elderly.

As I danced garba for the first time, along with my wife, Tammy, and friends like Congressman Frank Pallone this past weekend, I was again reminded of the beauty of our state. The beauty of diversity and inclusion, that those dancing around us readily accepted us into their culture and taught us garba steps. The colorful ambiance and radiant atmosphere that filled me with optimism for the future. The pride that I felt when I saw so many members of the community coming together and enjoying the moment with one another.

I look forward to celebrating many more garbas to come with the Indian-American community. For everyone in New Jersey and across the world celebrating, I wish you a happy and festive Navratri!

(Phil Murphy is Democratic Candidate for Governor of New Jersey)

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Anger over falling farm incomes has spilled onto streets across a swathe of India’s largest states as farmers struggle with food price deflation and a breakdown of the informal agriculture economy.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi — already grappling with a sharp slowdown in economic growth and looming job cuts in manufacturing — the protests involving hundreds of thousands of farmers highlight his struggle to deliver on the promises that swept him to power.

On Sept. 15, state officials in Rajasthan joined those of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra — all ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — in promising to waive farmers’ loans after 13 days of protests. But farmers aren’t satisfied.

“We’re planning a national rally on Oct. 30 when we would carry torches to show light to state administrations bumbling in the dark,” said Amra Ram, 60, the leader of the All India Kisan Sabha — the farmers’ assembly that represents 15 million members — on the phone from Sikar, Rajasthan. “Our farm incomes are falling and there are no jobs for us anywhere else.”

Farm and labor unions with an estimated combined membership of 30 million are also set to join the wave of demonstrations. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh — which is affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of Modi’s ruling BJP — plans to march to the Parliament to protest the government’s policies on November 17, its president C K Sajjinarayanan said over phone from Thrissur in Kerala.

The agriculture sector — employing more than half of India’s working population — was among the worst hit by Modi’s November cash ban which led plummeting produce prices. Despite the ensuing hardship, farmers largely supported Modi’s move, which they viewed as an attempt to target illegally hoarded wealth. Their backing helped propel the ruling BJP to election wins in key states such as Uttar Pradesh.

Still, farmers’ restlessness worsened after the implementation of the nationwide goods and services tax in July, which further hurt supply chains across India at the peak of monsoons, when prices of vegetables and grains were expected to gain.

“There’s an uncertainty on the farm product prices — what will we do if we aren’t getting the right prices for our produce?” asked Arun Muluk, from Vadgaon Kashimbe near Pune, who joined at least 100,000 others in protests last month that shut down India’s financial capital, Mumbai. “Farmers have the potential to bring the downfall of this government — the government won’t even know how quickly the tide will turn against it.”

The protesters belong to the Maratha community — a key vote bank in the western Indian Maharashtra state, many of whom are land owners or farmers. Their main demands included reservations for the community in jobs and higher education.

Jagdish Thakkar, a spokesman in the prime minister’s office, didn’t answer calls seeking comment.

For the main opposition Congress Party, there are plans to make this a key election issue. “This government is destroying farmers,” said Ajoy Kumar, New Delhi-based spokesman for the Indian National Congress. “And going by the huge protests across the country we can see that people are coming around to this realization. We have stood by farmers in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Haryana and our leader Rahul Gandhi is right now in Gujarat raising his voice for them.”

According to Amra Ram, wheat farmers suffered after Modi cut import duties on wheat, first to 10 percent from 25 percent and then to zero in December.

Compounding the stress, 52 percent of Indian farms aren’t irrigated and climate change-led variations in monsoons have only worsened their losses. Small landholdings cut access to institutional funding, while the failure to repay local loan sharks contributes to the suicide of 12,000 farmers every year, according to government figures.

In the lead up to the 2014 elections Modi promised higher prices and reforms including minimum support price for grains, protecting small farmers and addressing rising risks to farming.

“I think those are tough questions that the government will face in 2019,” said Neelkanth Misra, Credit Suisse’s India Equity Strategist. “If half your workforce has not seen an income growth, should you act on it or no?”

Yet Modi, who vowed to add 10 million jobs a year in a workforce that sees the entry of at least a million new seekers each month, hasn’t been able to keep pace with employment creation.

The government is trying its best to accelerate the pace of agriculture reforms, said Ramesh Chand, member of the government’s official think tank NITI Aayog.

Allowing farmers direct access to buyers instead of forcing them to go through a chain of middlemen is high on the agenda, Chand said in New Delhi. States, responsible for implementing agriculture policy, have also been encouraged to introduce market reforms and compensate farmers for the differential between prices offered by merchants as against the government’s minimum support guarantee.

“When I look at the country as a whole I am not satisfied,” said Chand of agriculture reforms. “The Prime Minister wants it, but it is a state subject.”

The answer may not be enough for protesting farmers.

“This struggle is not for us, it’s for the next generation — if our kids didn’t find jobs, they would at least have comfort that they can return and rely on the traditional profession to feed themselves,” said Muluk at the Mumbai protests. “But now, where do we go?”

–With assistance from Nupur Acharya

The Washington Post News Service & Syndicate

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YE BAW KYA, Myanmar (Reuters) – Myanmar authorities displayed on Wednesday the bodies of Hindu villagers they say were killed by Muslim insurgents, victims of a surge of violence in someone else’s fight now playing their part in a propaganda war.

Authorities found 45 Hindu villagers in mass graves in the north of Rakhine state this week, and the news has dominated Myanmar’s media coverage of a new round of violence in old strife between the state’s Buddhists and Muslims.

The military on Wednesday flew a group of reporters from the city of Yangon to see the bodies laid out on the grass, and to hear from those who found them after information about the massacre filtered back from Hindus who have sought refuge from the violence in Bangladesh.

“We followed the paths based on the information we got from the other side,” police officer Okkar Ko told reporters at the scene.

“We found where the soil wasn’t normal and then when we dug up the ground, the smell came out.”

The latest violence in Rakhine state erupted on Aug. 25, when Rohingya Muslim insurgents attacked 30 police posts and an army camp, killing about 12 people.

Hours later, insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) came to the Hindu village of Ye Baw Kya, gathered up about 100 people, marched them away through their fields and killed them with knives, the government says.

The military response to the insurgent attacks has driven 480,000 Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh and drawn U.N. accusations of ethnic cleansing by the army with the help of Buddhist vigilantes.

Myanmar denies that, saying its forces are fighting ruthless terrorists. For the government, the proof of the insurgents’ brutality is plain to see, lying in rows by the mass graves just outside the village of Ye Baw Kya.

“This is terrorism,” Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Win Myat Aye, who visited the site on Tuesday, told Reuters.

The ARSA has denied killing the Hindus saying they never kill civilians.

MASKED MEN

Exactly why Myanmar’s tiny Hindu minority in Rakhine state got caught up in the bloodshed is not clear, and different people have given different accounts at different times.

Some villagers have said the insurgents suspected Hindus of being on the side of the government and acting as government spies.

In late August, Reuters reporters in Bangladesh interviewed a group of Hindu women from the village who said their male loved ones were killed by Rakhine Buddhists.

However, three of the same women told Reuters this week that Muslims who brought them to Bangladesh had ordered them to say it was Buddhist vigilantes who had done the killing.

The three – who individually recounted closely matching stories – said that on Aug. 25, they and about 100 other Hindus were marched by masked men to the area of the mass graves.

They were later able to identify some of the masked men as Rohingya Muslims, although the women said the men spoke several languages they could not identify, besides the dialect spoken by both Muslims and Hindus in the area.

“We watched as they tied each person, hands behind their back and also legs … They cut all their throats and pushed them into a hole,” said one of the women, Bina Bala, 22, adding that the women were spared after promising to convert to Islam.

They said the attackers had objected to official identity cards given to Hindus but not Muslims, saying Hindus should not have them.

The victims were blindfolded, with their hands tied and had their throats slit, said Kyaw Maung Maung Thien, hospital superintendent in the Myanmar town of Maungdaw, who examined the bodies.

“The evidence points to a massacre by the ARSA terrorists,” he told the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

While the accusations fly, the bodies await cremation. Police have been guarding the site of the mass graves, lighting fires at night to keep wild dogs away.

Additional reporting by Shoon Naing and Simon Lewis in YANGON, Tommy Wilkes in COX’S BAZAR

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Scores of Muslims gathered for a parade along Madison Avenue in Manhattan Sept. 24, to celebrate the 32nd Muslim Day Parade. For the first time in its history, a rabbi was its grand marshal: Marc Schneier, the president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, a group that works to bridge divides both religious and secular. Organizers wanted to send a message of inclusion, the New York Times reported.

The parade was founded as a means for Muslim New Yorkers to assert their place in this city, Imam Ali, the president of the Muslim Foundation of America and one of the organizers of the parade, told the Times. “This is a city of parades. We felt we must express ourselves as an integral part of the city. Parade is part of the New York identity,” Ali is quoted saying.

Over the years, the parade’s political significance has undergone several changes.

In 2001, it was canceled after the Sept. 11 attacks but the year after that, it marched with thin crowds as anxious past participants stayed home at the height of Islamophobia.

But today, when every group in the nation seems to be under attack, the parade transformed into a solidarity march and the decision to have Rabbi Schneier as grand marshal came after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Ali indicated. “Anti-Semitism is not his fight alone; it is mine, too. Islamophobia is not my fight alone; it is his, too. We must fight for one another,” Imam Ali said, referring to the rabbi.

Floats featured dancers and sparkly replicas of the Dome of the Rock, the central mosque in Jerusalem. A contingent of Muslim officers from the New York Police Department, also marched in formation in the parade, according to the report. Apart from a few protesters, the parade appears to have gone peacefully.

“This can serve as a wonderful paradigm,” Rabbi Schneier is quoted saying. This February Schneier led a rally in Times Square following President Trump’s Muslim travel ban, saying “Today I am a Muslim Too.”

Some women in colorful hijabs gathered on 38th Street holding American flags.

“To see the Muslims like this in the middle of the street here, that means Muslims have some consideration, that we are being given a chance. That’s New York showing us a little bit that Muslims have a right, just like other people,” one of the attendees in town for the parade, Diakita Amadou told the Times. The parade began after afternoon prayers were offered by the crowd.

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Nimesh Patel, one of several Indian-American comedians and writers who has gained renown in the United States, is among the latest recruits to ‘the writer’s guild’ of Saturday Night Live for its upcoming 43rd season. Over the last couple of years, SNL has tried to diversify its cast and now is also adding that diversity behind the scenes.

Vanity Fair called Patel’s hire the most intriguing. The Washington Post noted the criticism SNL faced for not hiring South Asian talent.

Patel gained notoriety with his writing credits for the scathing stand-up roast on President Donald Trump, that comedian Hasan Minhaj delivered during the White House Correspondents Dinner this year.

“In hiring Patel (who jokes about keeping his Hindu papers on him at all times lest he be mistaken for a radical terrorist), S.N.L. is better placed than ever to dig into” the South Asian perspective, particularly in politics. Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson wrote in her article, “Why Saturday Night Live’s Most Intriguing Hire Is Behind The Camera.”

Last year, comedian, writer and actor Aziz Ansari was the show’s first ever South Asian host and his performance was widely acclaimed especially his delicate handling of issues of racism and division in a Donald Trump presidency.

On Oct. 14, Kumail Nanjiani, a Pakistani-American comedian, writer, and most recently, the actor in the critically acclaimed movie, The Big Sick, will become the show’s second South Asian host.

Patel also has a short and clever stand-up routine on Tinder alleging racism among white women; and a slew of 2016 election jokes among his many accomplishments, for example the one on Comedy Cellar where he is quoted in Vanity Fair saying, “I wanted Bobby Jindal to win. . . he’s the Indian guy, not because I believe in his politics but because I want a career on S.N.L. and that’s the only way that was going to happen.”

Obviously, S.N.L did not want to wait for that possibility to materialize.

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Indian American doctor, Jumana Nagarwala, 44, was granted bail after spending five months in jail for performing female circumcision, also known as female genital mutilation (FGM).

According to clickondetroit.com, the bail which was set at $4.5 million was raised by 17 friends and family members who placed their personal property as collateral and was initially denied by the federal judge who considered her a flight risk.

Nagarwala was arrested after attempting to board a flight to Kenya.

Nagarwala is currently under house arrest and will be tagged with a GPS tracker, her bank accounts have been frozen and her passport will be confiscated

According to an Alpha News report, Nagarwala was the first of several individuals to be arrested by federal authorities for cutting the genitalia of more than 100 young girls in a clinic outside of Detroit, Michigan, for 12 years.

Two, 7-year-old Minnesota girls Haseena Halfal and Zainab Hariyanawala, became the main focus of the case after their mothers brought them to the clinic for the illegal procedure.

Both of the mothers of the Minnesota girls were indicted last week by federal prosecutors for conspiracy to defraud and female genital mutilation.

According to the World Health Organization, female genital mutilation is identified as “procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons,” though it has no health or medical purpose, the practice is a popular tradition in eastern cultures.

Nagarwala says she is innocent however, is expected to stand trial on October 10.

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NAPERVILLE, IL

The Hindi Lovers Club of Illinois in collaboration with Consulate General of India-Chicago celebrated the 7th Annual Hindi Day and Midwest Hindi talent quest at Naperville IL., Sept. 9th.

More than 300 people enjoyed the program until midnight. Formed in 2010, the Hindi Lovers Club of Illinois says its mission is to promote Hindi language overseas and try to keep the Indian culture and its language alive in Indian communities overseas.

The talent contest had 125 participants and 11 categories to encourage kids and adults to take part in ethnic dances, songs, and essay competition using Hindi language.

There were performances like “Kavya Pathan” by kids who recited poems in Hindi written by other poets. Dances ranged from folk to classical forms, including Kathak, and a Shiv Tandav dance that hearkened to mythological stories. There were speeches by dignitaries about the importance of Hindi language and they all praised the Hindi Lovers Club for its work. “Everyone (has) to learn Hindi as it is very essential now to get jobs in communication, broadcasting and journalism worldwide,”said Khemchand Sharma, one of the guests.

“Hindi is the third most spoken language of the world right now and if our coming generation won’t use it, soon it might lose its position. We should encourage Hindi in our day-to-day conversations at home and with our fellow Indians, that way we can bring Hindi to the number one position from the fourth position in most spoken languages in the world,” said Gurbachan Kaur.

VIP guests at the event included Consul O. P. Meena and community leaders and elected officials. An award ceremony took place at the end with trophies and cash prizes given out for first 3 winners in each category. Certificates were awarded to every participant in the contest followed by a vote of thanks by club secretary Anica Dubey.

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HILLSBOROUGH, NJ – More than 500 supporters in the fields of business, arts, philanthropy and medicine attended the annual SKN Hope Gala on Friday, at the Marigold Hotel in Somerset, New Jersey, which focused its efforts to raise funds for South Asian children with special needs this year.

“We could not be more humbled by the love and generosity of the community,” said founder Dr. Naveen Mehrotra. “SKN’s goal is to educate the South Asian community about the various diseases that plague our loved ones, and this year, we wanted to shed light on how parents cope with their children with special needs.”

The major beneficiary of this year’s fundraiser will be the Special Needs Community Outreach Program for Empowerment (SCOPE).

Guest of Honor Juhi Chawla, a renowned Indian actress, humanitarian and former Miss India, spoke at the event and served as the show stopper for international fashion designer to the stars, Joy Mitra, who debuted a special collection he created just for the cause.

The fashion show spotlighted special needs children, who walked the ramp with their mothers, followed by an intimate Q&A between host Mini Mathur and the fathers.

“What an amazing opportunity for my son! I am so proud of him every day, and walking the ramp, dressed up so fabulously, allowed him to know that we love him just as he is,” said Radha Lath, mother of Aditya Lath, a child with special needs.

“Parents of special needs children have an unbelievable level of grit and determination, as they face daily life issues, and we are honored to be shedding light on some of their challenges at the SKN Foundation Gala,” said Sonalika Ahuja of Beyond Media, the woman who executed the event for the second year in a row.

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NEW YORK – Pratham, one of the largest educational nonprofits in India that provides quality education to underprivileged children, hosted its annual New York Tri-State Gala on September 15, at the Cipriani Wall Street.

The event, which was attended by approximately 600 influential leaders from the business and Indian-American communities, raised over $3.8 million for Pratham’s innovative, award-winning educational programs targeted at the underprivileged in India.

Established in the slums of Mumbai in 1995, Pratham is now one of India’s largest non-governmental education organizations, having affected the lives of more than 50 million underprivileged children in the past two decades.

Guests were entertained by writer, comedian and Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj, who delivered a rousing 20-minute set. Born to an immigrant family, Minaj talked about his upbringing and stressed the importance of “giving kids an opportunity.”

Mangala Mehar, a Pratham vocational program graduate, shared the impact the organization has made on her life. Today, the 22-year-old is a senior housekeeper at a Maldives resort, earning enough to pay her father’s medical bills and send her younger brother to college.

“I had always dreamed of becoming a successful and independent woman. The Pratham course gave me something far greater than the skills to get a job at a fancy hotel. Pratham gave me the motivation and self-confidence to keep moving ahead,” said Mehar before receiving a standing ovation.

The evening honored Ajay Piramal, Chairman of The Piramal Group and the Pratham Education Foundation, who is stepping down from the latter position after a decade of service. In that time, the organization experienced tremendous growth, tripling in size to its current $36 million.

“This has been a very satisfying journey for me where I have learned a lot. I am most grateful to Pratham for this,” said Piramal. “We can look ahead with a lot of optimism,” he added as he reflected on how, in 22 years, Pratham has gone from a single program in a Mumbai slum to one of the most influential forces in India’s education sector.

In her speech, Pratham CEO Dr. Rukmini Banerji described the next frontier for Pratham: exploring an edtech approach to accelerating children’s learning of foundational literacy and numeracy. She praised the significant support Pratham has received from Google and a family-based trust to experiment with digital learning and determine the optimum solution for educating India’s 100 million children who are functionally illiterate.

Chapter President and PNC executive Gagan Singh attributed the evening’s success to the gala committee, staff and volunteers who worked tirelessly over many months, and to donors who have remained loyal to the organization year after year. “In the end,” he concluded, “what is also really important to recognize is that we have an amazing organization in Pratham led by truly passionate and inspiring leaders, which makes it easy for all of us to tell the story.”

Established in the slums of Mumbai in 1995, Pratham is now one of India’s largest non-governmental education organizations, having affected the lives of more than 50 million underprivileged children in the past two decades. To achieve its mission of “every child in school and learning well,” Pratham develops practical solutions to address gaps in the education system and works in collaboration with India’s governments, communities, educators and industry to increase learning outcomes and influence education policy.

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On Friday the 22nd of September, K.S Aura LLC celebrated the launch of their first product ‘Khandaan’. It is their first attempt to fill the vacuum and bring a brand that covers products such as pulses, rice, spices, flour and many more that guarantees both taste and health.

The Vice president of the company, Mr. Rajiv Wadhera was asked to describe ‘Khandaan’ in one sentence to which he said, “ Eat Khandaan products and be healthy”. He also said, “‘Khandaan’ in English is translated as ‘ family’ and as a family we wish each one a very healthy and happy life. Hence we do not add food color or preservatives in our food products. People’s health is our first and foremost concern.”

Mr. Kawaljit Singh the president of the company flew all the way from India to attend this event. Ms. Tanvi Prenita Chandra, President of Renascent media house, organized the whole event. When she was approached with a question regarding her experience as a media partner with ‘Khandaan’, she said, “I must say that we at Renascent Media are very honored and grateful to be associated with one of the world’s largest company, now launching Khandaan brand – premium quality food products in this part of the world. Whereas advertising and marketing is concerned, we are all set not to leave any stone unturned to make KHANDAAN a number one brand in America.”

The event had dinner and drinks with live music which added a unique melody to the evening. The majestic Deewan banquet looked fuller with friends, family and press who came in support. All in all it was entertaining event hosted by K.S Aura LLC with an aim to bring a strong wave of change in the realm of South Asian food market.

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An Indian American doctor, Vasundhara Kalasapudi’s aging facility India Home; a non-profit serving the elderly Indian American population in New York has been named as one of Next Avenue’s Influencers In Aging for 2017.

Kalasapudi trained as a physician at first and became an expert on geriatric psychiatry, which allowed her to diagnose her own father with dementia in 2003, something she thought she would never do.

She then travelled to India several times to take care of her father and in the process became very much aware of the lack of culturally appropriate services and care facilities for the elderly in the Indian American community.

So Kalasapudi founded India Home, a revolutionary nonprofit that serves the elderly Indian American community in New York City, providing hundreds with food, health care and social support which can be found in strong Indian values.

“I would advocate bettering integrating social and medical services for older adults. Senior centers are integral institutions to help Americans age in place and prevent or delay many health issues, but medical professionals are unaware of such social services,” Kalasapudi said about the one thing she would do to change aging in America.

“More than 100 million Americans are over age 50 now, and as life expectancy increases, it is imperative that policies, housing, science, technology and culture all evolve to better serve our population. These honorees on our list of Influencers in Aging are on the leading edge of this revolution,” said Next Avenue Editorial & Content Director Shayla Stern.

Next Avenue is public media’s first and only digital publication dedicated to covering issues for people 50 and older and this is the third annual list of the top 50 Influencers in Aging, which includes advocates, researchers, thought leaders, innovators, writers and experts at the forefront of changing how we age and think about aging.

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NEW YORK – IBM, the tech company that dominated the United States in the early years of the digital age, before Google and Microsoft, has about 130,000 employees in India which is about one-third of its total work force, and more than in any other country.

According to the New York Times, IBM’S work in India spans an entire gamut of businesses, from managing the computing needs of global giants like AT&T and Shell to performing cutting-edge research in fields like visual search, artificial intelligence and computer vision for self-driving cars and one team is even working with the producers of Sesame Street to teach vocabulary to kindergartners in Atlanta.

“IBM India, in the truest sense, is a microcosm of the IBM company,” Vanitha Narayanan, chairman of the company’s Indian operations, told the New York Times in an interview at IBM’s main campus in Bangalore.

The work in India has been vital to keep down the costs at IBM, which has posted 21 consecutive quarters of revenue declines as it has struggled to modernize its main business of supplying tech services to corporations and governments.

The company’s employment in India has nearly doubled since 2007, while its work force in the United States has shrunk through waves of layoffs and buyouts as outsiders estimate that it employs well under 100,000 people at its American offices, a 30,000 decrease since 2007.

According to data posted by the research firm Glassdoor, it is much cheaper to employ Indian workers as depending on the job; the salaries are one-half to one-fifth than those paid to Americans.

Ronil Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University who studies globalization and immigration, told the New York Times that the range of work done by IBM in India shows that off shoring jeopardize even the best-paying tech jobs in America.

Based in Armonk, NY, IBM’s chief executive, Ginni Rometty, who helped carry out the India expansion strategy, pledged to create 25,000 new American jobs after Trump won the election.

The company also said that it will be investing in the United States by bringing $1 billion to create training programs and opening new offices.

Narayanan, who spent 12 years working at IBM in the United States and China before moving to India in 2009, said the company decided where to put jobs based on where it could find enough qualified workers and the customer’s budget. “It’s not as if someone says, ‘Oh, jeez, let me just take these jobs from here and put them there,’” she said.

William Lazonick, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, who has studied the globalization of business, said that IBM and other tech companies have benefited greatly from the emergence of a low-cost, technically skilled English-speaking work force in India.

“IBM didn’t create this, but IBM would be a totally different company if it wasn’t for India,” he said.

IBM even has a Bangalore “garage” full of app designers who build corporate iPhone and iPad apps to simplify tasks like helping airline agents rebook passengers, bankers make loans and doctors update patient files.

IBM, which opened its first Indian offices in Mumbai and Delhi in 1951, however, it left in 1978 after a federal dispute about foreign ownership rule and made a comeback through a joint venture with Tata in 1993; today the company is spread all across the country, including Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Chennai

In 2004, IBM landed a landmark 10-year, $750 million contract from Bharti Airtel, one of India’s biggest phone companies, which remains a major customer.

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NEW YORK – The job site Hired recently conducted a study that found that freelance technology workers in Denver, Colorado earn less than the other similar contract workers in major cities, though they have better hourly rates than other full-time workers.

According to the Denver Post, the average freelance engineer makes $67 an hour which is $139,360 in a year if they work a 40-hour week while traditional full-time software engineers in Denver make $112,350 a year. however, that pay rate, as well as the $65 an hour for freelance designers, was “some of the lowest” in the analysis says the Indian American CEO of Hired, Mehul Patel.

The lower pay rates in Denver are due to a lower cost of living than “the really expensive cities” like San Francisco, New York and Washington, Patel said adding that to live a lifestyle comparable to Denver, a Bay Area freelance worker must earn at least $227,816.

“Tech workers in Denver care deeply about working for a company where they believe in the mission and can take ownership of products and processes, but work-life balance is also extremely important to them,” Patel told the Denver Post.

“That makes contract work especially appealing because it provides the flexibility to work when you want and prioritize your personal interests, whether that be raising a family or skiing in the middle of the week. Our candidates in Denver often tell us they want the best of both worlds, and freelancing can make that a reality,” he added.

Engineers in Austin, Texas, make $72 per hour, while in Chicago, they’re getting paid $83 an hour and in San Francisco, freelance engineers are paid an average of $108 per hour.
On the other end, freelance engineers in San Diego make less than those in Denver, or $64 an hour. But that rate is so low, that such workers live poorly making it one of the worst places to be a freelancer in the tech industry.

However, contract jobs are growing with freelancers making up to one-third of the U.S. workforce according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So the attraction is flexible hours, more tax deductions and fewer office politics, “freelancing seems even more appealing when you consider that many software engineers and designers work 50 to 60 hours a week,” Patel stated.

But there are downsides to a more flexible schedule as freelancing offers no paid vacation, company culture or consistency of a 40-hour week and benefits are also minimal.

Hired’s research showed that contract workers averaged 22 hours per week on projects and says that full-time employees in 2016 paid about $100 a month for health insurance premiums, while freelancers paid an average of $386 a month.

According to Hired, here are hourly rates for freelance engineers and designers in major cities:

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COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh/UNITED NATIONS – More than 60 Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar are believed to have drowned when their boat capsized, the latest victims in what the United Nations says is the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency.

The refugees drowned in heavy seas off Bangladesh late on Thursday, part of a new surge of people fleeing a Myanmar military campaign that began on Aug. 25 and has triggered an exodus of some 502,000 people.

International anger over the crisis is growing.

In New York, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar over the violence.

It was the first time the United States had called for punishment of Myanmar’s military, but she stopped short of threatening to reimpose U.S. sanctions which were suspended under the Obama administration.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and has denounced rights abuses.

Its military launched a big offensive in response to coordinated attacks on the security forces by Rohingya insurgents in the north of Rakhine state on Aug. 25.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council the violence had spiralled into the “world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency, a humanitarian and human rights nightmare”.

Colonel Anisul Haque, head of the Bangladeshi border guards in the town of Teknaf, told Reuters more refugees had arrived over the past day or two after the number had seemed to be tailing off, with about 1,000 landing at the main entry point on the coast on Thursday.

The refugee boat capsized in driving rain and high seas as darkness fell.

An official with the International Organization for Migration said 23 people were confirmed dead and 40 were missing. Seventeen survived.

“We’re now saying 40 missing, which suggests the total fatality rate will be in the range of 63,” the official, Joe Millman, told a news briefing in Geneva.

One survivor, Abdul Kalam, 55, said his wife, two daughters and a grandson were among the dead, who were buried at tearful funerals on Friday.

Kalam said armed Buddhists came to his village about a week ago and took livestock and food. He said villagers were summoned to a military office and told there were no such people as Rohingya in Myanmar.

After that he decided to leave and headed to the coast with his family, avoiding military camps on the way.

A spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency said a fifth of new arrivals were suffering from acute malnutrition.

The Bangladeshi Red Crescent said its clinics were treating increasing numbers of people with acute diarrhoea. The World Health Organisation has said one of the diseases it is particularly worried about is cholera.

“We’re seeing the absolute perfect breeding ground for a major health crisis,” said Unni Krishnan, director of Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit.

‘BRUTAL CAMPAIGN’

In a ramping up of the pressure on Myanmar, also known as Burma, Haley echoed U.N. accusations that the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Rakhine state was ethnic cleansing.

“We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be – a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority,” Haley told the U.N. Security Council.

The United States said earlier the army response to the insurgent attacks was “disproportionate” and the crisis raised questions about Myanmar’s transition, under the leadership of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, after decades of military rule.

Suu Kyi has no power over the generals under a military-drafted constitution. She has nevertheless drawn scathing criticism from around the world for not stopping the violence.

The public in Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has surged over recent years, largely supports the offensive against the insurgents.

Haley said the military must respect rights and fundamental freedoms, and those who had been accused of abuses should be removed from command and prosecuted.

“And any country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place,” she said.

There was no ethnic cleansing or genocide in Myanmar, its national security adviser, Thaung Tun, said at the United Nations, adding that Myanmar had invited Guterres to visit.

China and Russia, which have veto powers in the Security Council, expressed support for Myanmar.

The U.N. Human Rights Council extended the mandate of a Myanmar fact-finding mission by six months, until September 2018, over the objections of Myanmar, China and the Philippines.

Myanmar’s representative said the mission was “not helpful, was not in line with the situation on the ground and would do no good to finding a solution to Rakhine issues”.

Myanmar says it will not grant visas to mission investigators.

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Two Indian Americans, Aryaman Khandelwal and Nitish Sood, were named among the winners of the 2017 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes on Sept. 25.

The award, founded by author T.A. Barron in 2001 who named it after his mother Gloria Barron, annually honors 25 outstanding young leaders ages 8 to 18 who have made a significant positive difference to people and the environment, celebrates their inspiring and young public spirit with up to 20 top winners receiving $5,000 each to support their service work or higher education.

“These amazing young people see a need and use heroic qualities like compassion, perseverance and courage to find a solution,” Barron said in a statement. “Their message is clear: Find your passion and take action. Start small but dream big and you can truly make a difference, no matter how old you are.”

The 2017 class’ projects address a wide range of today’s important issues, including pollution, protecting wildlife, literacy, STEM, the homeless, cancer research and more.

Khandelwal, 17, of Pennsylvania, founded Get2Greater, an app which uses electronic tablets and local health workers and provides better access to medical care in developing countries like allowing health workers who aren’t fully literate, treat conditions like hypertension and malnutrition.

Khandelwal was inspired to launch his project following an annual summer trip to India to visit relatives in the city where he was born.

When he and his family traveled to a nearby rural area known for its extreme poverty and illiteracy, for the first time the Indian American teen saw people living in unimaginable conditions.

With startup funding from Penn State Lehigh Valley Launchbox, he decided to create an app called Get2Greater, which is written in Hindi, field tested in India and is now being used by the MAHAN Trust.

The app allows health workers to enter simple inputs like a patient’s height, weight and blood pressure and provides far more timely diagnoses instead of writing out long forms and waiting for nearly a week to diagnose.

“The problems facing our world are too great to be left to those in charge. The responsibility for change falls on us and we must be prepared to accept it. We can all make a difference,” said Khandelwal.

Sood, 17, of Georgia, along with his brother Aditya founded Working Together for Change, a nonprofit that mobilized more than 600 volunteers to help 3,000 homeless people through free medical fairs, supplies distribution and job training.
The nonprofit has organized 16 free medical fairs so far, recruiting doctors and nurses to provide screenings for vision, cholesterol and diabetes.

The teen focuses his efforts on raising awareness of homelessness by providing medical relief and finding innovative ways to empower the homeless including teaching teenagers how to code and sponsoring homeless students’ college tuition.

The group also stages 24-hour sleep-outs to give volunteers a glimpse of what it’s like to sleep out on the street, allowing them to learn how it feels like to be homeless so that they will know how to act and speak with greater compassion as they distribute backpacks of supplies to the homeless.

Sood began his work four years ago after a homeless man gave him a tattered copy of Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax,” in which the Lorax says, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

“One in every 45 kids in America will be homeless today. No one person can end this epidemic. But working together, 44 kids can help the 45th,” said Sood.

The group has also traveled to Mexico to build homes for homeless families there.

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Indian American Jessica Bachan Singh, a retail merchandising and product development major at Florida State University who has been volunteering in Ethiopia over the summer; empowering girls, education and economic development and one day desires to work in the fashion industry, was one of the five recipients of the NRF Foundation 2017 Ray Greenly Scholarship.

“The Ray Greenly Scholarship was established to cultivate the next generation of digital retail talent as they embark on their careers. The students were challenged with a real-world, in-store retail application of their skills and talents — and they didn’t disappoint. Our five winners blew us away with their innovative solutions using technology to connect customers to brands and products. We are excited to watch them continue to do great things in the future,” said Ellen Davis, the Executive Director of NRF Foundation.

In order to receive a scholarship, each applicant was required to write an essay on innovation along with providing a two-minute personal brand video and create an innovative digital prototype that could serve as a complementary resource to the in-store experience for West Elm customers at their furniture and home décor branch of Williams-Sonoma Inc.

“Technology and in-store experience are areas we are constantly looking to improve, so we selfishly built the challenge around both of those opportunities. Switching the application requirement from paper submission to prototype for the first time may have been asking a lot, but ultimately we believed it paid off for everyone. The submissions were ambitious and inspiring, which is exactly why we wanted to participate in the Ray Greenly Scholarship Competition,” said Luke Chatelain, West Elm Vice President of Innovation.

Digital retail executives from 20 companies were involved in selecting the semi-finalists based on the creativity and innovative spirit demonstrated in their applications.

The other four recipients of the scholarship include Tess Burns, a senior at Savannah College of Art and Design, who will receive $25,000; Quinn Vissak, a computer science and engineering major at the University of Connecticut; Eric Wagner, a mechanical engineering and business administration major at the University of Florida and Julian Walker, a master’s degree candidate in integrated marketing at Northwestern University, who will all receive $10,000 along with Singh.

The scholarship was established to honor former Shop.org Vice President Ray Greenly, who died of cancer in 2005.

The program provides financial aid to students studying in fields such as engineering, computer science, marketing, business, e-commerce and economics.

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NEW YORK – Edison Adult Medical Daycare (Edison), its former owner, Dinesh Patel, and current owners, Daxa Patel and Satish Mehtani, have agreed to pay the United States and the State of New Jersey $2.72 million to resolve allegations that Edison improperly billed and received payments from Medicaid despite Dinesh Patel having been excluded from participating in Medicaid following his 2012 conviction for accepting kickbacks.

Acting U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick announced that on September 19, 2012, Dinesh Patel pleaded guilty to accepting cash kickback payments from Orange Community MRI LLC in exchange for patient referrals. He was later sentenced to three months in jail and two years of supervised release.

On March 17, 2012, Dinesh Patel was excluded by the State of New Jersey from participating in any capacity in the Medicaid program. Later, on February 20, 2014, Dinesh Patel was excluded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, and all federal health care programs for a period of five years. Five days after Dinesh Patel’s Medicaid exclusion in 2012, he transferred his 50 percent ownership interest in Edison to his wife, Daxa Patel.

The settlement resolves federal and state government allegations that from March 17, 2012, through August 4, 2015, Dinesh Patel violated his exclusion by not ceasing his involvement in the adult daycare facility, and that Edison violated the False Claims Act by submitting claims to and receiving payments from Medicaid while Dinesh Patel directed, managed and supervised activities at Edison. The settlement also resolves allegations that owners Daxa Patel and Satish Mehtani had full knowledge that Dinesh Patel was managing Edison while he was an excluded Medicaid provider, according to the Justice Department.

Dinesh Patel, Daxa Patel, Satish Mehtani, and Edison have agreed to pay $2.72 million plus interest to be split equally between United States and State of New Jersey. Dinesh Patel has also agreed to another five-year exclusion precluding him from participating in all federal health care programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, until 2022.

The claims settled by this agreement are allegations only; there have been no admissions of liability.

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