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From Our Own Correspondent
Dreams Deferred, Hope on Hold
00:27:43
Reporters' stories. Obstacles to President Obama's immigration reforms pile up -- it a...
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Narrator/Presenter
This is a download from the BBC. It's from our own correspondent.
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Reporter/Correspondent
We make one version of the program
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Steve England
for the BBC World Service, but this
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Narrator/Presenter
is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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Kate Adie
It's introduced by Kate AD hello, it was the Indian government promised a budget for everyone, but can it do anything about those trains which mysteriously go missing? We find out why the British once hired half a million porters in East Africa, why the fashionistas of Kinshasa have taken to fur coats and designer Wellington boots. And there are screams of anguish as a rogue broadbean sends our man to A and E in China. But first, President Obama's plans to reform immigration procedures in the United States received a further setback this week when a judge in Texas refused to lift an injunction blocking them. U.S. district Judge Andrew Hannan, who is based in Brownsville, a city on the border with Mexico, is already on record as saying the immigration laws are too lax. 26American states now oppose Mr. Obama's proposals, which, if implemented, could allow almost 5 million illegal immigrants to stay on in the US without fear of deportation. The Brownsville decision means that many of the individual court hearings, which rule on an immigrant's legal status, have been put on hold. And as Regini Vaijana Carlton's been finding out, that's leading to a huge backlog of cases.
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Rajini Vaijanathan
Court number one is a soulless, windowless room where dreams are deferred and hopes are put on hold. Fluorescent tube lights beam down on the suite on the second floor of a vast and modern office building. A judge sits in front of a circular wooden crest which has an American eagle carved into it, a symbol of the country's freedom. To his right is a translator. In the rows of seats in front of him, a group of immigrants waits. Most are Hispanic. Almost all have entered the US Illegally. Desperate to stay, they're here to convince the authorities to let them. These teenagers and young children are just a handful of the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who cross the border into America every year. Number 819, the judge calls out. A teenager named Louis stirs from his seat. Stocky in build and wearing a sports jacket, he's clutching a bundle of papers, one with his photograph attached. How are you? Asks the judge as Louis walks to the table at the front of the courtroom. Fine, replies Louis as he fidgets nervously. Will you find a lawyer? The judge continues. Luis nods as the hearing swiftly concludes. He's told to return in August. Delays like this mean months, maybe years in limbo for those waiting to Find out if this country can ever become their home. Luis's story is all too common. He came from Guatemala, walking for 10 days to join his father, Cesar, in America. Like so many children who make the perilous journey alone, he was caught at the Texan border and sent to an immigration centre. From there, he was taken to Virginia to be reunited with Cesar. Cesar, who's dressed in a striped shirt and battered denim jeans, is in his 50s. As we talk, he clutches a faded baseball cap. Cesar belonged to a generation who left their country and children behind to send money home and support them. He's been in America for nearly a decade and until today, had never set foot in a courtroom. I'm not nervous about being here, he tells me as he explains he's living illegally in the shadows. Cesar lives modestly, cutting grass and working in Virginia's expansive fields, harvesting crops in the summer. He's never tried to get legal status. It's too difficult to get permission, he says as he fiddles nervously with the baseball cap. Thank God I've never had any issues, he says as a small smile flickers from underneath his moustache. When Cesar crossed the border, things were easier, he says. For Louis's generation, the stakes are higher. Louis came to help his father out. More families are travelling to America, and it's created a backlog of cases in the already congested court system, so it could take a long time for Luis to learn whether he can avoid deportation. President Obama's pledging to reform the country's immigration system to bring people like Cesar out of the shadows, allowing them to work legally and pay taxes. But with many states bitterly opposed to his plans, lengthy legal battles lie ahead. Bear with us. We have 5,000 cases, says Judge Bryant as he calls the next person up to be heard. A young woman named Diana heads to the front. Wearing a scarlet lace dress, her hair pleated on one side, she too carries a file of documents. It's hard to believe that at the age of 14, she's already sitting before a judge, her legs barely touching the floor as they dangle from the chair. Her hearing is also short. The judge tells her to find a lawyer and come back later in the year. Diana, who's from Honduras, traveled by bus to Mexico with her 16 year old sister. There, they cross the river to America in an inflatable boat. As she awaits her fate, she's in Virginia, living with her aunt. I'd like to be a teacher one day, she tells me, grinning. Maths, she adds. As I leave, I peer into the adult courtroom as a man dressed in a smart suit finishes up his immigration hearing. The man who asked me not to name him came to the US in 1995 from El Salvador and has raised four children here, but despite multiple hearings, has no legal status. Come back in 2018, he's told by the judge. This court alone has nearly 20,000 cases pending, some of which won't be heard until November 2019. It's estimated there are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. But for so many, the American dream they came in search of has now turned into a waiting game, one which could still be going on well after President Obama leaves office.
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Kate Adie
And that's Rajini Vaijanathan. Now, it was a budget which aimed to please everyone in India, the businessmen, the middle class, the rich and the poor. It promised greater investment for the economy, to slash bureaucratic red tape, and to establish a universal Social Security scheme. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government said it would come down hard on those who were profiting from the country's black economy, who tucked away dodgy cash in foreign banks and tax havens. There were plans to streamline water and electricity supplies and for a big cash investment for the railways. But as Mark Tully has been hearing, questions are being asked about how and indeed when these ambitious dreams might become a reality.
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Narrator/Presenter
Narendra Modi triumphed in last May's election because voters, fed up with the corruption and ineffectiveness of previous governments, were convinced by his promise to bring change and development. This budget has been eagerly awaited as the first substantial statement of how he intends to fulfil his promises. Plans for massive investment to modernize the creaking infrastructure, simplify taxes and take action against those who evade tax have been welcomed by business and by most economists. But a former governor of the Reserve Bank, India's central bank, has now warned that the devil is always in the implementation. Modi has plans for massive investment in the railways, but there the devil is likely to be particularly active. Bullet trains have been promised, but it will be very difficult to motivate the staff to run the present trains that travel little faster than their steam predecessors on time. The railway staff are not in the least concerned if a train is running seven or eight hours late. And when a train comes to a halt in the middle of the countryside, passengers pour onto the tracks. The staff stands by, watching this dangerous practice. Rarely is it possible to find out what's happening. On one occasion, I was told that the line had punctured. This, I gathered, meant a rail had cracked. The casual attitude of railway staff is an example of the well known Indian attitude to life known as Juga. Which means, why worry? Everything will come out all right in the end. Once I was told that a train I was waiting for at a big junction was indefinitely delayed. Does that mean it's lost? I asked the official in the inquiry office sarcastically. If you choose to say so, came back the disinterested reply. When I lost my cool, the official looked at me with contempt and said, you foreigners don't understand India. This is the land of Jugaar. There is another train. It was lost and now we found it, so you can take it. Juga pervades all the activities of the government and so there may not be much urgency about implementing Modi's budget proposals. The dead hand of the Raj also may well delay or even derail them. When I asked a senior railway officer why the long standing commitment to build special lines for freight was being implemented so slowly, he replied, because we're still running the railways like you used to. And the same goes for most of the activities of the government of India. There is one difference between the railways of the Raj and the railways today. In the Raj there were no politics. Today politics are all pervasive and with them comes corruption. Railway ministers have commissioned projects to get kickbacks from contractors who implement them. Resources have been wasted by railway ministers commissioning unprofitable lines and introducing new trains in their home states. One of the few efficient railway ministers I've known received so many complaints about the speed of an express that he cut several stops to speed up the train, only to find when he came back from a trip abroad that they had all been reinstated because of political pressure. Most of Modi's infrastructure investment is to come from public sector organizations, all of which are pervaded by politics. So how will any of the projects be productively implemented? The intervention of the devil in the implementation of Modi's plans for investment isn't the only question mark hanging over the budget proposals. The idea is to speed up growth. But some economists warn the proposals will adversely impact India's long term development. Although the Finance Minister had earlier announced a grand plan for universal health assurance, there was no mention of it in the budget. On the contrary, spending on health was cut even though India already spends less on health than most countries. One economist ended his article on the budget with the words welcome back to the third world. And he believes that even if the devil is exorcised from the implementation of the plans for investment in infrastructure Modi will be taking India backwards instead of developing it as he's promised, unless he invests heavily in education and health, too.
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Kate Adie
Mark Tully in Delhi. This week, commemorations have been held in northern France to remember the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. It was a battle which the British lost, but it was notable for being the first time that large numbers of Indian troops fought and died on the Western Front. The Indian army, at the time one of the world's largest volunteer forces, saw action in German East Africa as well as in Europe. More than 60,000 of their soldiers were killed. Another 60,000 were wounded. The India Gate in New Delhi, which was built in 1931, commemorates the Indian soldiers who lost their lives fighting in the First World War. Rita Chakrabarti has been finding out more about their war effort in France and in Kenya.
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Reporter/Correspondent
It's a fact sometimes forgotten, but the First World War really was a global war, with soldiers from all corners of the then British Empire dragged into it. India alone provided one and a half million volunteers. One of the nation's most notable contributions was at the Battle of neuve Chapelle in March 1915. It's not part of the World War lexicon like Ypres or Gallipoli, but it was the first time that the Indian Corps fought in a major action in Europe. The troops were part of a group of 24,000 soldiers who landed in Marseille the previous autumn, many of them poor and illiterate and away from home for the first time. They set up base in the city's racecourse, an incongruous group in such a setting. At the Indian Memorial at Neuve Chapelle, I meet the descendant of one of them. Colonel Avatar Singh Dhillon's grandfather survived that particular battle, but was killed in action in 1917. He was only 24 and left behind a wife and two young sons. Colonel Dillon proudly tells me that he is part of a line of five generations of soldiers. His eyes moisten as he sees for the first time the name of his grandfather inscribed on a memorial plaque. It's an honour to be here, he tells me, and his heart is full of pride. But he says at the time it must have been very strange. Far from rural India and straight on to the fields of France and Flanders. That would have been very different for them. They joined the army not knowing what they were in for thousands of miles south in Kenya. The same pride is evident from Joseph Sifueli Shayo, whose great great uncle was pressed into service by the British in what was then British East Africa. This front is little known about but is now gradually being rediscovered. Africans were initially excluded from fighting for the British, but this was bush territory in which there were few railways and hardly any roads suitable for vehicles. And Africans were recruited en masse to act as porters, carrying food, water and other supplies on their heads for miles in the ferocious heat. In all, half a million porters were employed by the British to do this backbreaking work. Joseph doesn't know how his ancestor died, but he does know the family was sent a lock of the dead man's hair in a little box by the authorities to prove that he he'd passed away. They're proud, he tells me, that his great, great uncle was part of the war effort. But he says his contribution was like that of a brother to the mainstream British troops and he and his family wish there were greater recognition of that. It is a fact, wandering around the immaculately kept Commonwealth war cemeteries in southern Kenya, that very few of the names on the gravestones are of black Africans. That will be partly because many of the casualties were not on the battlefield, with more deaths from disease than from inj. Later in the campaign, when British and Indian troops were exhausted from the climate and conditions, African troops, led by European officers, did fight for both sides, but the majority have no known graves. Remembering their contribution has now become the obsession of James Wilson, an amateur historian who's painstakingly uncovered many of the conflict sites on Kenya's border with Tanzania. He takes me to the sleepy town of Mactau, now a row of run down shops set in the scorched red earth of the bush. Imagine, he says, 20,000 British troops were here. Imperial troops, including Indians with different dietary needs, all camped in the middle of nowhere. A small railway was built by the summer of 1915, but before that, all the supplies were carried in on the heads of African porters from the main centre, 30 miles away. Without the work of the local people, he tells me, none of the British war effort would have been possible. The story of World War I is no different from that of other historical upheavals. There's an overarching narrative and then many other threads, some forgotten, some ignored. But as the contribution of the former colonies is being rediscovered, it's increasingly clear that the forces which represented Britain in the Great War were every bit as multicultural as the country that Britain is today.
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Kate Adie
And that was Rita Chakrabarti. Now, how long do you have to wait for treatment at a hospital, Accident and emergency department? It's the sort of question we may become rather tired of as the election spotlight shines. Ever more brightly on the nhs. The answer, of course, depends on how seriously you are hurt and on whether or not you've arrived at one of the hospital's busiest times. But while waiting, you can muse about whether the wait would be shorter or longer in various overseas countries. Now, he might not have chosen to, but Steve England recently had a chance to see what it was like in
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Steve England
China it all started with a broad bean. Train journeys in China can take forever. The distances are big and so is the country. So whether you're traveling from one of the grubby old stone fortress looking Mao era stations or one of the new futuristic stations complete with marble floors and huge video displays that quite frankly put our airports to shame, there is always a food shop to stock up before you begin your journey. These shops even sell soap and towels, as well as a massive range of Chinese foodstuffs, giant pot noodles, chewy dried meat of dubious origin, nuts, chocolate in strange exotic flavors and dried broad beans. On the train from Beijing to Tunxi, the endless countryside of rural China sped past our window. Interspersed with small towns and forests of cranes building hundreds of new high rise apartments, the dreaded broad bean was bitten into. A shriek, a gasp, and a tooth was split in two. At our destination, Tunshi, we booked to stay in the oddly named Koala Youth Hostel, even though none of us was exactly in the first flush of youth. Throughout Asia, beds can be terribly hard, almost like sleeping on a plank. But at youth hostels, because they're mostly dealing with foreigners, the beds tend to be softer. The friendly youth Hostel staff wrote down the address of a dentist, and a local taxi ploughed its way through the frightening traffic and dumped us outside what looked like a department store. My confidence in the taxi driver had not been reinforced when I noticed he was reading our piece of paper upside down. It was a department store, but luckily a helpful girl at the cosmetics counter directed us to the dentists around the corner. After a very short wait, we were escorted into a big open plan office with rows of dentist chairs, maybe 20 or 30, and we were introduced to one of the dentists while he finished some paperwork. Our eyes ran from the open drawers stuffed with forms and rubber stamps to the cluttered work surfaces and the dirty floor. We looked at the equipment with its stains and scuffs and more dirt. The dentist's young assistant saw our faces and apologised that things weren't up to Western standards. Now in the chair, the dentist began to tap around and hit the offending split tooth. It was all flailing Legs and screams of anguish at which the dentist rather disconcertingly laughed. No, he couldn't do this. We would need to go to the accident and emergency department of the local hospital, which luckily was just over the road. Arriving at A and E at the hospital, we were told we couldn't be seen until we had paid to be admitted. After all, we were foreigners and this was a Chinese hospital. So we paid. It was 6 yuan, about 80 pence. The young assistant who had come with us to act as an interpreter led us to the dental department and one of the hospital dentists whose previous patient was getting out of the chair. The fact that he was in handcuffs was rather disturbing. Did they have no pain relief? Finally it was explained that yes, they did have pain relief, and our friend was in handcuffs because he was a prisoner who had been brought here by his prison guards. In the dentist's chair, again the same tapping around in the mouth resulted in again flailing legs and screams of anguish. Ah, yes, broken tooth. Did we want it extracted? Yes, we did. Well, we would need to pay for the dentist's time and the drugs. After all, A and E was not free for Westerners. We'd heard this script before, so we did pay. It was 50 yuan. That's five pounds. The dentist administered the painkilling injection, and with one swift move, the split tooth was out, which he proudly displayed to the sizeable crowd that had gathered around to see the entertainment. A Westerner in a Chinese hospital was a novelty that no one, staff or patients, wanted to miss. In no time at all, we were in a taxi and dodging the tonxi traffic again. And back at our youth hostel, I began to think what the experience would have been like at an A and E department in Britain. In China, the whole experience had taken less than an hour.
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Kate Adie
Steve England. Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has long had the reputation of being one of the liveliest capitals in Africa. Whether or not that's surprising in a country with a long and painful history of civil war, poverty and corruption is something that can't be resolved here. But this throbbing metropolis on the banks of the River Congo is known around the world for its art and culture, and perhaps above all, a vibrant music scene. Mike Wendling, who's just been there, says some of its citizens also believe that looking good is all important.
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Mike Wendling
Sis Lekoto comes striding across the square in front of Kinshasa's central railway station, holding the hand of his priest. A more unlikely pair you could not imagine. Sis a modern day hipster dandy, dressed in a top hat, smartly tailored black coat, red hoodie, a silver pendant hanging around his neck, and, well, his vicar. I've always known I was a sapper, sis says. You feel it from the day you were born. A sapur, a member of Le SAP in English, the Society of Ambience Makers and Elegant People. Sis is the captain of the Kinshasa sappers. He's just back from the catwalks of Paris, and as we sip cold bottles of Primus beer in the midday heat, he explains the SAP way of life. Learning the style and attitudes of an elegant person, he says, is like studying for a doctorate in philosophy at the Sorbonne. It is a spiritual experience, he says. It is like a religion. I look at his minister, who's beaming. He obviously doesn't consider this blasphemous in the slightest. As I found out, nearly everyone in Kinshasa loves the sappers. The economy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is growing at a rapid clip. People are getting wealthier, and when people have more money, they spend it on more and better food, mobile phone credit, beer, going out to nightclubs, and, of course, on clothes. The next day I visit Sis in his home, a small room in the dusty district of Matongai filled with tin roofed shacks, crumbling shops, and dirt roads. It's 30 minutes and a world away from the gleaming new buildings in Kinshasa city center, so wouldn't it be an idea to spend a bit less on clothes and a bit more on slightly more salubrious digs? Nothing, says Sis, is more important than fashion. In his small room, he yanks a suitcase out from under the bed, unzips it, and pours out a stream of dozens of pairs of shoes, carefully picking the ones he'd like to show off. The same with shirts, jackets, coats. He finally settles on khaki overalls, a leather jacket, jeans studded with pins and jewelry, and some designer Wellington boots. It's a combination that really shouldn't work at all, but at the same time is absolutely perfect. Some other sappers last year got to star in a popular ad campaign for a famous beer brand. Those mostly older men were from Brazzaville, the capital city of the Republic of Congo, just across the river of the Brazzaville sappers. Sis is scathing. They are about cheap clothes, he says. We are expensive. They are like secretaries. We are the bosses. Kinshasa's sapeurs are younger, their style more cutting edge, with influences from high fashion to hip hop. Once Cease is dressed to the nines we travel to a nearby square. His mates show up dressed in, for example, a tuxedo with a fluorescent patterned jacket, a fur coat and a costume that would not look out of place on a guard at the Tower of London. They strut and bounce, dance and flounce. Everyone stops to stare. And when they are ready to have serious fun, they lead an impromptu parade through the streets of Matonga. Rush hour traffic comes to a halt. People come out of their houses and jump up from their chairs. At roadside cafes, football games are abandoned. Kids start to whistle and shout. Within minutes, we are in the middle of a crowd of hundreds. Young men sing we love the Sappers. It is chaos, unbridled pride and joy. But wait, I forgot something. This is the part where I should point out that this is a wretched country where conflict still rages a thousand miles to the east, where the democratic transition is quite arguably neither democratic nor a transition. Just weeks ago, anger at President Kabila turned into riots in which nearly 50 people were killed. The sappers weren't starting then. Nobody was. There are terrible problems here with aids, illegal mining and of course, all that stuff that kills poor people just because they're poor. Malaria, stomach bugs, childbirth. That's reality, of course. But so is this. Night has fallen in Kinshasa at Club why Not Cease and his friends have arrived. The bass from the club and from dozens of clubs all around is thumping away like heavy rain. We go in and immediately the DJ is shouting to the sappers. Somebody buys a bottle of whiskey and the sappers and the Congolese who love them are in the mood. They're set to dance all night long.
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Kate Adie
Mike Wendling on the dance floor in Kinshasa and bringing this edition to a close. And don't forget, you can hear our correspondence stories anytime you like by downloading the from our own Correspondent podcast. And we're back here on Radio 4 at half past eleven on Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.