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The new outsourcing from India—motherhood |
The business of renting a womb is also growing in India, much like the growth of industry and service is. More and more couples from several countries overseas are turning to India to find surrogate mothers that will carry their babies to term and hand them over.
All for a fee of between $10,000 and $20,000, an amount way lower than the $50,000 that surrogacy costs in the US.
The egg of the aspiring mother is normally used in the pregnancy, and contracts signed to ensure the baby is given to the parents who have rented the womb. Only married women who already have children are selected to avoid any chances of the surrogate wanting to keep the baby.
Several fertility clinics are operating in India that assist in locating surrogates, most of whom come from poor rural areas and to whom the fee they earn is money they could never earn otherwise. Estimates put the numbers of surrogate births in India at 100-150 each year.
For the Indian women, apart from the handsome fee they are paid, there is a sense of empathy with childless couples.
Surrogacies have been arranged for couples from India, Britain, the US, Singapore, France, Portugal and Canada.
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NRI entrepreneurs are key growth factors in American cities
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Immigrants from India have emerged as key growth engines for American cities from New York to Los Angeles. Indian businesses from food to healthcare to jewellery have transformed once sleepy areas into thriving centres. During the last decade, immigrants have been starting a greater share of new businesses than natives, stimulating growth and creating new jobs. These facts were inked in a recent report from the Centre for an Urban Future in New York.
Immigrant entrepreneurs are also turning certain locales into some of the most dependable areas of cities’ economies. Shockingly, however, despite their contribution to growth the immigrant entrepreneurs remain an overlooked and little understood part of the cities’ economies.
In New York, the impact of foreign born entrepreneurs is most evident in boroughs from Astoria and Elmhurst to Wakefield and Washington Heights.
In examples quoted in the report are Richmond Hill, where large numbers of Sikhs from India contribute to a thriving business environment.
In Sunset Park, Flushing, Indians have opened several businesses from groceries and pharmacies to financial services.
In Jackson Heights roughly 20 Indian jewellery businesses and some half dozen restaurants are buzzing. In Queens, Indian sweet shops proliferate. Manhattan too has its share of Indian diamond and jewellery businesses.
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Indian American students are finalists for Intel Science Award |
In America’s oldest and most prestigious high school science contest known as the Intel Science Talent Search award, also billed as the Junior Nobel, four Indian American students are among the 40 finalists.
The students are Venkat Mikkilineni, Neha Anil Deshpande, Abhinav Rohatgi and Sara Dana Bayefsky Anand.
The students will travel to Washington DC to undergo rigorous judging processes, meet with national leaders, interact with leading scientists and present their research. The finalists will receive scholarships totalling $530,000. The overall winner will receive a $100,000 scholarship.
Mikkilineni has submitted a math project that analysed determinental sequences. Deshpande submitted a zoology project studying subito and pavarotti genes in fruit flies. Rohatgi studied the effects of a gasoline additive on the physiology and mortality of marine molluscs and Anand entered with a zoology project based on research in Israel’s Negev Desert, on the European free tailed bat.
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Lisa Sthalekar named Women’s International Cricketer of the Year |
Lisa Sthalekar left Pune, India as an infant when her family moved to Australia, where, with her father’s coaching she picked up a cricket bat at the age of seven.
Now 27, she has been named the Women’s International Cricketer of the Year at the Allan Border medal awards in Australia. She pipped Aussie captain Karen Rolton by just one vote to become the third member of the Australian women’s team to win the coveted award.
Sthalekar is a top order batter and off spinner and versatile all rounder and has won player of the match in her long list of matches, including steering her team New South Wales to a win in the Women’s National Cricket League in her first season as captain.
Lisa works full time for Cricket New South Wales as coach and also has an arts degree majoring in psychology. |
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Meera Syal’s writings in British curriculum |
In an astonishing revamp of the British school curriculum, Milton, Byron and Joyce are out and Punjab origin British writer, actor and comedian Meera Syal is in.
Syal makes the list with mixed race Indian Anita Desai on the new culturally appropriate curriculum for 11-14 year old schoolgoers. They are alongside classic greats Austen, Bronte, Chaucer, Dickens, Hardy and Shakespeare. Syal, 45, has written two novels with colloquially rich language and provides an insight into the lives of a multicultural British society.
The curriculum is due to be introduced next year. The new emphasis on literary cultural diversity is an attempt to meet the needs of the 21st century. Educational purists lament the so-called ‘politically correct’ effort to include the non-classics over the great poet Byron for instance. |
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