Welcome to Blog Mela XXX. I'm your host and I hope you'll enjoy this week's sample of the best and brightest of the Desi blogosphere -
South Asian Diaspora...
Madhu waxes philosophically and finds the true barometer of Desi social evolution in the US - India Abroad:
I remember when India Abroad used to be this inky little broadsheet printed out on the thinnest, cheapest paper. Perfect for wrapping mangoes in (or anything else you picked up in the local Indian market).
...The matrimonials alone took up most of the paper. And strange adds for Ayuvedic meds and plane tickets on the cheap and look: all the insurance you could possibly need by some guy called Bobby.
Niraj defends the much maligned NRI:
...every time some Indian politico makes a barnstorming tour through the U.K. and the U.S., his hand is always extended out. One side of the hand is to slap NRIs for abandoning their homeland, and the other side is to guilt these same NRIs into investing money in whatever scheme they have up their sleeve.
Livin' Simple corrects my frequent references to the non-PC term "Indian" (thus leaving out our Pak, SL, and Nepa, and Bangla bro's) and proposes the term "South Asian Something" - SAS to unify the FOBs, FOAs, ABCDs, Desi's, and so on.
Definitions - A SAS ... well take anyone whose parents are from the Indian Subcontinent (Sri-Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh & India) ... but who were either born or raised (elementary/high school +) in a "western" country. Examples are Sri-Lankan Canadian, Indo-American, Pakistani-Brit etc. There are terms like Desi and ABCD -- but in all do respect they are never encompassing of the rest.So for the context of this entry ... an ABCD = SAS.
She (?) also reviews Bombay Dreams - a show which I've seen 2x and recommend to anyone visiting London. I guess I'll abuse my editorial power to point folks at my review of the ABCD flick - "Where's the Party, Yaar" posted a couple of weeks ago 
From the Homeland...
Mahesh Shantaram of the gorgeously designed Filter Coffee blog shows us how to tell when an Indian insurgency group has come of age - when it's subject to heavy handed internet censorship attempts:
In the strife-torn North-East India are the Hynniewtreps, who are fighting for liberation of Meghalaya from India. Although the HNLC is designated as an insurgent group, it revives that contentious debate about where to draw the line between freedom fighter and terrorist. The Hynniewtreps recently organised themselves on an online discussion forum to promote their cause.
General News
Dheeraj chimes in with a GREAT, well-written, play-by-play of the WTO/Cancun meeting. I'm always a fan of snarky, pro-econ freedom / growth material:
The sweeping scope of the summit inevitably attracts a whole set of people who want to prevent any change from taking place. Some are with vested interest who want to make sure their representatives do not give up too much during the summit but mostly the protesters consist of a ragtag bunch of rich, young kids drawn wide-eyed to some cause, any cause that would soothe their existential angst.
...Trade is as Darwinian as it gets - price of a tulip bulb is whatever you can get away with. So, it is not surprising that the party with most power gets to make the rules of the game. For instance, according to Oxfam, the tariffs applied by rich countries on types of goods imported from poor countries are 4 to 5 times higher than the ones imported from other rich countries. Countries, thus, impose tariffs based on what they can get away with
Potpourri
A couple short entries from & pointers to Desi blogs you might not know about:
Dina Mehta will be hosting next week's blog mela.
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