Until we read the latest issue of New Yorker (March 2, 2009) a short while ago, we’d never heard of Rudresh Mahanthappa.

Nor of Kadri Gopalnath.

Nor of Vijay Iyer. 

Boy, are we happy that we read that New Yorker piece by Gary Giddins titled Passage to India that goes ga-ga over Rudresh Mahanthappa.

Listen, all ye philistines out there – Rudresh is a saxophonist as is Kadri Gopalnath. The difference – Rudresh is an American jazz alto saxophonist while Kadri Gopalnath is an Indian saxophonist with roots in Carnatic music.

As for Vijay Iyer, the guy is an American jazz pianist.

The focus of the New Yorker piece is on Rudresh Mahantappa and his two recent albums Kinsmen and Apti.

The outcome of a collaborative effort between Rudresh and Kadri Gopalnath, Kinsmen is sheer magic, folks. A must-listen.

After listening to Convergence and Ganesha on YouTube and snippets of other pieces from Kinsmen on iTunes, all we can say is that even we, yes, we with our untrained ear for music, were bowled over. Completely.

Schmuck, do we even have to tell you to click on the below image to listen to Convergence and achieve moksha:

(Image: YouTube)

Not for nothing does the New Yorker’s Giddins describe Kinsmen as

a momentous achievement that will be around for a long time to come.

More on Vijay Iyer in a later post.

Feast on Rudresh Mahanthappa and Kadri Gopalnath for the nonce.

In the third bailout of Shitty Bank oops Citibank, the U.S. Treasury Department plans to convert $25 billion of its preferred securities into common stock provided other private holders agree to the same terms.

If the latest round of bailout goes through, the U.S. government’s stake in Shitty Bank will rise to 36% from 8% and and wipe out the stake of existing shareholders by 74%.

Horrible for small investors across America who thought Citi was a safe haven. Citi is also suspending dividends on both preferred shares and common stock.

It’s beyond disgusting to see the greedy swines on Wall Street get yet another bailout when they should have all been marched off to jail for the widespread destruction they’ve caused.

Folks, this edition of Incredible India focuses on the hundreds of millions in India who go to bed hungry every night in India’s countless villages.

We present below an excerpt from the recent Report on the State of Food Insecurity in Rural India jointly prepared by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).

The increase in severity of food insecurity can be gauged from following points:
• The proportion of population consuming less than 1890 kcal/cu/diem has in fact increased in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, Rajasthan and marginally for Punjab.
• Almost 2/3rd of rural households in Jharkhand did not have access to safe drinking water in 2001.
• More than 90 percent of rural households in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh did not have access to toilets within their premises.
• As many as eight states – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – have shown increase in the incidence of anaemia among women in the reproductive age group. The highest increase

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Yes. we all know Jeeves. Bertie’s venerable Man Friday, yes.

But Medical Butlers. What in the heck is that?

Well, Medical Butlers are a new category of workers brought about by the disastrous American healthcare system.

As we were desultorily contemplating the coming collapse of the U.S. healthcare system, we were drawn to this new category of Medical Butlers on the Internet (where else).

Medical butlers are a direct offshoot of medical tourism – Medical tourism is the process of traveling aboard to a specific destination to obtain certain medical procedure with the highest quality of medical care and luxury accommodations during their recovery (as defined by medical tourism concierge Fly Free For Health).

Here’s how the folks at Fly Free For Health describe Medical Butlers:

Medical Butlers are a new breed of service professionals assigned to visiting overseas patients and their families, handholding them from the point of arrival to departure. Their role lies in their abilities to meet both the lifestyle and healthcare needs of the medical traveler. There’s also a digital form of Medical Butler who are just a click away to serve as a Digital Concierge via the internet and mobile phone. The digital form of Medical Butler is called iMedical Butler.

Odd though it may seem, it does look like there’s potential for this category of health-care facilitators like Medical Butlers.

Medical Tourism – Hot Trend
After all, a Deloitte Center for Healthcare Solutions study has found that medical tourism is a hot trend among U.S. healthcare consumers.

According to the study, more than 750,000 Americans went overseas in 2007 for less expensive medical treatments, a number that’s projected to grow to 6 million by 2010 and 15.75 million in 2017.

Obviously, this will cost the U.S. health care system billions of dollars. Yes, all those greedy doctors, avaricious insurance companies, callous hospitals and mercenary pharmaceutical companies are gonna take a beating.

Folks, time to celebrate.

Maneesh Dhir, the head of AOL International and the bloke responsible for aggressively pushing AOL’s expansion into India, has quit.

We say Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish. 

God knows, how many jobs Maneesh killed in the U.S. in his missionary zeal to outsource AOL operations to India.

A recent memo from AOL CEO Randy Falco as well as Maneesh’s bio (still up on the AOL web site) make it clear that Maneesh played a key role in what we consider the let’s outsource-to-India mania that’s taken hold of AOL and the rest of corporate America (much to the detriment of U.S. workers).

As Falco writes in his memo announcing Maneesh’s departure:

Maneesh helped us learn the benefits of tapping into a worldwide pool of talent. It was his idea to open an AOL call center in Bangalore in 2002, which quickly became our largest. Two years later, he pushed for the creation of the Bangalore Development Center and the Bangalore Knowledge Center–important centers for technology, finance, analytics and shared services that are now part of the AOL India operations. (Source: allthingsd)

It’s folks like Maneesh aided by the clowns on Wall Street that have pushed America to the brink and decimated the American middle class. A few years back, when we called to cancel our AOL subscription service, the call landed in Bangalore.

 
Maneesh Dhir
(Pix: AOL)

Maneesh’s bio on the AOL web site also makes his outsourcing role clear:

Before he was named to his current position in 2007, Dhir was Senior Vice President and Country Manager, based in Bangalore, India. There he led a large workforce across technology development, back-office operations, and call center operations. In addition, he has been instrumental in the development of the soon-to-be launched India portal. Earlier, Dhir played a key role in establishing and launching AOL’s operations in Bangalore.

Guys, do not be deluded by all this gobbledygook rhetoric on free trade.

Folks, we have now restored the commenting process on the SI blog.

We’d disabled it for a few hours last night as we made some changes to the backend of this blog to improve load-time.

However, for the next 24-48 hours some users may continue to experience technical issues. Hopefully, things should settle down after that.

As we made the changes, some comments may have been lost but we’ll try to restore them and input them manually.

Thank you.