Millions of impoverished Indians may inundate Russia

India dreams to get rid of tens and maybe even millions of its own citizens and deliver them to Russia. This idea was voiced yet again by Indian officials during the recent Moscow-Delhi video conference. The conference was organized and was dedicated to to the state of affairs in the BRICS organization (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

A question was raised during the conference about a possible immigration of a considerable part of the Indian population to Russia. Alexander Apokin, an expert with the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis particularly stated the following: "If some people in India will find money and labor resources to work in Russia, it will be a promising development of events. Hundreds of millions of people will be able to find work."

Tatiana Shaumyan, the director of the Center of Indian Research of the Institute of Oriental Studies, said that such methods are already being practiced towards the Chinese in the Far East of Russia. "The Chinese use that. They bring capital and people and they work here," she said.

The Indians may face certain problems if they move to Russia. Russian winters can be too cold for them, not to mention the fact that they do not know the Russian language, Shaumyan added.

It is not the first time when Indian officials talk about a possibility of sending millions of Indian nationals to Russia. In 2010, Indian officials offered to simplify the migration regulations with Russia. They also say that some countries suffer from climate change and need to redirect their human resources to other countries of the globe which suffer from the shortage of their own human resources.

Yevgeny Khakimullin, an expert on tourism to India, said in an interview with Pravda.Ru that if some Russian officials support the above-mentioned propositions, then it only means that those officials have never been to India.

"Those who say that hundreds of millions of Indian migrants will bring a lot of good to Russia have most likely never been to India. They don't know anything about the country either. First and foremost, the Indians can handle cold weather very well. One may not doubt about the fact that they will get along with Russian winters well. It is naïve to believe that there is no cold weather in India. It can be very cold there, especially near the Himalayas.

"The Indians are sounding out opportunities for the time being, but they will continue to promote their idea more decisively in the future. One way or another, Russia should say no to these ideas even if the country gets criticized for xenophobia. Water and land - all of that are strategically important national resources. These resources belong to our generations, which we have no right to bargain away. The last thing that Russia needs is to become a semblance to the filthy and stinky Indo-Gangetic plain. The memories of my visits to those Indian territories give me shivers.

"The persistent desire of the Indian side to get rid of hundreds of millions of people is very easy to understand. First and foremost, it goes about the population of the plains of Indus and Ganges rivers, which makes up 700,000 million. Most of those people live in horrific anti-sanitary conditions. You have to see it with your own eyes to realize that. Those who have not been to those areas can watch "The Slumdog Millionaire" to get the picture. In the movie, they build skyscrapers over the slums. In real life, though, the slums do not go anywhere, and Russia runs the risk of bringing all of that over.

"The situation has become even more serious due to the climate change. It became much hotter in India than before. Forty percent of Himalayan glaciers have disappeared. Droughts occur more frequently than before too. The Indians have nowhere to go. They face a serious threat of national famine, so they are trying to put the cart before the horse. They will continue to put pressure on Russia at this point. Why Russia you may wonder? Because Russia is virtually the only country in the world where there is a lot of uninhabited land that is good to live on.

"There are people in Russia who say that the decrease of the population is a national catastrophe. In this case, they believe, it could be good to attract migrants from other countries. But we have a lot of them already.

"The worst thing about it all the the fact that the Indians who may come to live in Russia are not needed in their homeland. Those IndianIndia dreams to get rid of tens and maybe even millions of its own citizens and deliver them to Russia. This idea was voiced yet again by Indian officials during the recent Moscow-Delhi video conference. The conference was organized by RIA Novosti and was dedicated to to the state of affairs in the BRICS organization (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

A question was raised during the conference about a possible immigration of a considerable part of the Indian population to Russia. Alexander Apokin, an expert with the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis particularly stated the following: "If some people in India will find money and labor resources to work in Russia, it will be a promising development of events. Hundreds of millions of people will be able to find work."

Tatiana Shaumyan, the director of the Center of Indian Research of the Institute of Oriental Studies, said that such methods are already being practiced towards the Chinese in the Far East of Russia. "The Chinese use that. They bring capital and people and they work here," she said.

The Indians may face certain problems if they move to Russia. Russian winters can be too cold for them, not to mention the fact that they do not know the Russian language, Shaumyan added.

It is not the first time when Indian officials talk about a possibility of sending millions of Indian nationals to Russia. In 2010, Indian officials offered to simplify the migration regulations with Russia. They also say that some countries suffer from climate change and need to redirect their human resources to other countries of the globe which suffer from the shortage of their own human resources.

Yevgeny Khakimullin, an expert on tourism to India, said in an interview with Pravda.Ru that if some Russian officials support the above-mentioned propositions, then it only means that those officials have never been to India.

"Those who say that hundreds of millions of Indian migrants will bring a lot of good to Russia have most likely never been to India. They don't know anything about the country either. First and foremost, the Indians can handle cold weather very well. One may not doubt about the fact that they will get along with Russian winters well. It is naïve to believe that there is no cold weather in India. It can be very cold there, especially near the Himalayas.

"The Indians are sounding out opportunities for the time being, but they will continue to promote their idea more decisively in the future. One way or another, Russia should say no to these ideas even if the country gets criticized for xenophobia. Water and land - all of that are strategically important national resources. These resources belong to our generations, which we have no right to bargain away. The last thing that Russia needs is to become a semblance to the filthy and stinky Indo-Gangetic plain. The memories of my visits to those Indian territories give me shivers.

"The persistent desire of the Indian side to get rid of hundreds of millions of people is very easy to understand. First and foremost, it goes about the population of the plains of Indus and Ganges rivers, which makes up 700,000 million. Most of those people live in horrific anti-sanitary conditions. You have to see it with your own eyes to realize that. Those who have not been to those areas can watch "The Slumdog Millionaire" to get the picture. In the movie, they build skyscrapers over the slums. In real life, though, the slums do not go anywhere, and Russia runs the risk of bringing all of that over.

"The situation has become even more serious due to the climate change. It became much hotter in India than before. Forty percent of Himalayan glaciers have disappeared. Droughts occur more frequently than before too. The Indians have nowhere to go. They face a serious threat of national famine, so they are trying to put the cart before the horse. They will continue to put pressure on Russia at this point. Why Russia you may wonder? Because Russia is virtually the only country in the world where there is a lot of uninhabited land that is good to live on.

"There are people in Russia who say that the decrease of the population is a national catastrophe. In this case, they believe, it could be good to attract migrants from other countries. But we have a lot of them already.

"The worst thing about it all the the fact that the Indians who may come to live in Russia are not needed in their homeland. Those Indians who can afford a better life travel to developed Western countries, such as Britain and Canada. Russia will only have to welcome endless crowds of impoverished inhabitants of the slums. If this idea comes true to life, it will kill Russia.

"The Indian government will try to get rid of the dangerous burden. There are many fundamentalists among Indian Muslims. It is simply enough to take a look at them to understand that. For example, practically all women over 12 years of age wear niqabs - the clothes that completely cover their face, body and even their fingers. The level of the inter-religious violence in the country is very high. All of that may come to Russia if Indians begin to migrate here.

"Taking into consideration the speed of the growth of the Indian population, one may say that they will inhabit everything in Russia very quickly. It is incredibly silly to believe that those people will be able to develop the Russian agriculture. Some apparently believe that the Russians can't do it. I'd say to this that they have very good harvests in Orenburg, in Kuban and on Don.

"Let's take, for example, other countries that lie on the altitudes similar to those of Russia. They are Canada, USA's Alaska and Scandinavia, for instance. The combined square of those countries is comparable to Russia's territory, with approximately the same amount of arable lands. However, there are only 60 million people living in those counties. It seems OK for them, they are happy about it, and their GDP is twice is large as that of Russia. Russia needs to learn the lessons that Britain has recently been given instead."

A Grandson Returns To Retrieve His Legacy

It was the sign above the store that made me stop short, one perfect spring day, during a stroll down East Seventh Street: Surma Books & Music. The goods for sale were ceramic eggs, embroidered blouses, religious icons. A few shelves of books and cassette tapes, mostly in Ukrainian.
The sight of it all woke the memory of another sign, another road, another May, 26 years ago.“Apiarist,” said the sign on that street, in Saddle River, N.J.The beekeeper was 91 years old, lord and servant to 700,000 bees. They darted into a tangle of raspberry vines. Their wooden hives were set in the yard. The old man worked barehanded; he said the stings prevented rheumatism. He was spry as a fawn.And his voice, on that spring afternoon in 1983, was fragrant with Ukraine that he left in 1910. After digging coal near Scranton, Pa., he moved to a pocket of the Lower East Side of Manhattan known as Little Ukraine. He opened a shop and stocked it with books and newspapers and things from the old country. Then he kept bees in northern New Jersey.Schoolchildren — not a wandering reporter — were his steady visitors. A class of fifth graders sat on tree stumps, in the shade of a pine grove, and absorbed lore of the bee: the needless terror of the stings, and the flowers the bees pollinate, their combs thick with honey.But, the kids wanted to know, wasn’t he scared? “A beekeeper likes to be with the bees,” he said. “When he hears them buzzing around, he thinks it’s a symphony.”Nearly three decades later, in the shop on Seventh Street, I mention the old beekeeper, Myron Surmach. The man behind the counter nods.“My grandfather,” he says. “He started this store in 1918.”The grandson is Markian Surmach, 47, and he is almost as surprised to be standing in the shop, a few doors east of Third Avenue, as I am to encounter another Surmach in 2009.“I was away for a long time,” he said. “Most of my generation of Ukrainians moved away and assimilated.”When Myron Surmach moved from shopkeeping to beekeeping in the 1950s, he turned the store over to his son, Myron Jr., who had a fine run as impresario of Ukrainian dances and parties and outfitting the flower children of the 1960s. Peasant blouses were in demand. Janis Joplin and Joan Baez and members of the Mamas and the Papas shopped in Surma Books & Music.The grandson, Markian Surmach, whose first language was Ukrainian, lived above the store until he was 6. He left Little Ukraine and New York behind in 1991. “You want to define yourself, apart from the mold,” he said. “I chose to run away.” He started a Web-development business in Denver.Surmach the beekeeper and store founder died in 1991, not quite 99 years old. His son died in 2003, at age 71. Markian has a sister, who was busy raising her children.“If I didn’t come back, the store was going to close,” he said.No place stays the same for 15 years, certainly not in Manhattan. With a few exceptions, Ukrainians have long since drained from the Lower East Side. So have the artists living cheaply. “The homogenization of city life is not unique to New York, or this country,” Mr. Surmach said. “It’s all over the world.”People return to the store around Christmas and Easter, and also after attending services at St. George Ukrainian Church, he says. The older people will glance through the Ukrainian newspapers; younger ones will pick over the crafts, the painted eggs and greetings illustrated with folk scenes by a Surmach aunt.He wrestles with the future. “I started a business of my own with a clean white slate,” he said. “Here, the book is fully written. I’m just trying to write in the margins. I haven’t given up yet. I’m trying to find meaning.”Perhaps, he says, he will bring fresh life to the shop with music. He is offered another memory of his grandfather from 1983: for the visiting schoolchildren, the beekeeper played the bandura, a 55-string lute.“For an old man, this is like family,” Myron Surmach had told the kids. “Everyone, when they get old and lonely, should have a bandura. It is like family because it has all the voices.” He plucked a high note. “These are the children.” Then a richer one: “These are the ladies.”Hearing of this nearly three decades later, the grandson smiled and pointed to a bandura, hanging on the wall. He stood below an old sign, “Honey Sold Here.” The old bee farm is gone, but Surma Books & Music still stocks honey, fields of clover, tangles of raspberry, remembered in a jar.