Two Million Minutes

On the heels of Did You Know 2.0 comes Two Million Minutes, a documentary that tracks the lives of six students, two America, two Indian, and two Chinese as they go through four years of high school (hence the 2 million minutes) in their respective countries. It i examine the value Americans add to the global economy, and the impact these students are likely to have on the economic futures of their home countries.

Executive producer Bob Compton, a venture capitalist for 20 years, was inspired to make this documentary after visiting India and China a few times for his business ventures. Impressed by the calibre of the employees, he decided to visit the schools and discovered that high schoolers in Indian and China were ahead of their US counterparts by 2-3 years. According to compton, global education standards are ahead of the US and especially in India and China, two of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Neil Ahrendt, one of the students in the documentary, in conversation with GMA anchor Robin Robers, claims that it is not entirely untrue that he has been portrayed as unmotivated in the film; he says there is not enough challenge in the school system to motivate him to expend more effort than was necessary. Bob Compton claims the film is not an indictment of the school system in the US, rather, it’s a closer look at the way the students in each of these countries allocates the time available to them over four years of high school.

My Identity Trajectory

Visiting friends in Washington State last year, I happened to refer to India as “back home” in the course of a conversation, and was gently queried if there would come a point when I would call this country I choose to live in, the United States, my home. Not too long after, in my women’s spiritual group, Re-formed Congregation of the Goddess, the question of identity arose again, this time in the context of the spiritual path we travelled. And now, here I am, in St. Paul, Minnesota, participating in the Al-Musharaka Summer Seminar, whose theme this year is Identity Trajectories: Teaching the Culture and Society of North Africa and the Middle East at Home and Abroad.

I’ve never given my identity much consideration other than from the perspective of who “I” am. Understanding and establishing my core essence as a person has been more important to me than examining my Indianness, or my womanhood. But coming to the US has changed that. To some degree, my identity in this country is still about who “I” am, but I now find that perceptions of that identity are textured by my ethnicity, or my notions of the religion I was born into but do not practice. A faculty member in the Religion department at my university calls me “an anamalous Hindu”. I suppose he’s right in that I’m a cultural Hindu but not a religious one. And whereas I took my Indianness for granted back home , here, I am eager to share my experiences, my culture, my heritage.

And then there is the question of citizenship. I am eligible to apply for citizenship this year, and I find myself wondering about what it means to me exactly. Is it a practical choice? After all, my husband is an American, I’m building a life and career here, and it does make sense to walk that route. Is it even necesary? My green card gives me practically all the rights a citizen has, except the right to vote. Do I want the right to participate in the governance of this country? Would I become less Indian if I gave up my Indian citizenship? And do I really want to apply for a visa every time I wanted to go back home to visit my parents and extended family? Fortunately, India’s new dual-citizenship policy mitigates that concern to some degree.

Citibank ran an ad in India many years ago whose tag line has stayed with me ever since: You can take an indian out of India, but you can never take India out of an India”. I suspect I will walk the path to American citizenship, but I will do so in my Indian shoes.