For A Change articles from August 1997

For A Change archives from August 1997

Never to late to say sorry.
August 1, 1997... Public apology for historic national wrongs seems to be in vogue: President Clinton for slavery and the more recent medical experiments on African Americans without their consent; Tony Blair for English ignorance of the Irish potato famine; the...

Can India's reforms help her poorest? As India celebrates 50 years of freedom, Michael Smith observes her economic reforms.
August 1, 1997... As India celebrates 50 years of freedom, Michael Smith observes her economic reforms and asks... On the main highway climbing up through the mountains south of Pune, in western India, the traffic is nose to tail: trucks, buses,...

Brain drain in reverse: fifteen years ago, Farhad Forbes packed his bags in California's Silicon Valley and returned to India to help run his family's business.
August 1, 1997... Fifteen years ago, Farhad Forbes packed his bags in California's Silicon Valley and returned to India to help run his family's business. He tells Michael Smith why. India is renowned world-wide for her excellence in computer software and...

Plenty of sauce.
August 1, 1997... How saucy can a bunch of poor Indian village women get? Saucy enough to generate a fund of Rs75,000 ([pounds sterling] 1,300) and establish a cooperative to administer it. Even a chance meeting with Kalindi Bhat hits you with the impact of...

Books for Lesotho.
August 1, 1997... When Welsh headmaster Dafydd Idriswyn Roberts visited Lesotho last October, he was shocked at the lack of equipment in rural primary schools. `There were virtually no books, and even basic texts like an atlas or a dictionary were often...

Prayer power.
August 1, 1997... She doesn't see herself as a heroine, but the German government disagrees. From 1978 to 1989, church social worker Ilse Neumeister organized weekly prayers for peace in Erfurt in the former German Democratic Republic. Reunified Germany has...

Militant for mother's milk: Raj Anand knows the formula to save 1.5 million babies' lives a year - and it doesn't come out of a tin.
August 1, 1997... Raj Anand knows the formula to save 1.5 million babies' lives a year--and it doesn't come out of a tin. He talks to Mike Brown. Though it was fully 20 years ago, I remember clearly the post-natal ward of Nair Medical College Hospital in...

Making room for the other: everyone needs to know where they belong, maintains Rabbi Marc Gopin - but this doesn't mean hating outsiders.
August 1, 1997... Mahatma Gandhi was a devout Hindu and I am a Jewish rabbi, trained in the Orthodox tradition. And yet, across the worlds that divide us, I have found innumerable insights in his writings and styles of human interaction that resonated with the...

What the imperialists left behind: six generations of Alan Faunce's family played a part in Britain's colonial history.
August 1, 1997... Six generations of Alan Faunce's family played a part in Britain's colonial history He reflects on both the darker and the brighter facets of his country's imperial adventure. In July 1623 one John Faunce, of Purleigh, Essex, reached...

Life in the balance.
August 1, 1997... I was sitting on the train, deep into my book, when suddenly the man across the aisle interrupted, `So how do you do it?' Startled, I glanced up. He nodded toward my book. The cover read Getting a Life. Wonderful, I thought. How do I explain...

Seeing through the darkness: Jyoti Kanetkar meets an Indian businesswoman who has triumphed over physical disability.
August 1, 1997... In India we have a saying, `She who rocks the cradle makes the world a better place.' It certainly applies to Neela Dave, a wife and mother who lives in one of Bombay's extended joint families. Hers has 56 members. For all its size, it is a...

Kashmir in the crossfire.
August 1, 1997... Kashmir in the Crossfire Victoria Schofield IB Taurus, London, 1996, [pounds sterling] 24.50 It is with an eye to the future that this book should be read. South Asia is a region vital to the 21st century. Kashmir is a focus of its immense...

Americans move beyond boundaries.
August 1, 1997... In June President Clinton called on Americans to engage in `candid conversations' on racial issues. `We must build one American community,' he said, `based on respect for one another and our shared values.' The same month some 300 people met at...

Vietnam veteran meets his past.
August 1, 1997... When he performed his regimental chaplain's duties at the Washington, DC, Vietnam War Memorial on Memorial Day (26 May) this year, the Rev John Plummer was for the first time since that war much freer `to think about the other names who are...

Low point, high point.
August 1, 1997... I have come face to face with the fact that God loves details. I am called by an Egyptian woman who needs a ride to the hospital for a biopsy. As we drive along in the car I mention some health worries of my own. She encourages me to go for a...

India and Pakistan: the road ahead.
August 1, 1997... Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in an interview with an Indian television channel spoke about the need to drain the poison that has bedevilled the Indo-Pakistani relationship for the last 50 years. The animosity, hatreds and suspicions,...