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Wednesday,
August 22, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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In the
garb of ORP A new WTO
policy |
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Saffronising
education
A
Chinese shadow on far-eastern Russia
“Small
things — big men”
Pak
lecturer sentenced to death
Joyful
learning without textbooks
Odissi dancer in
Pakistan
Hope of
cure for sleep that kills
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In the garb of ORP DURING
the terrorism days, the police force in Punjab had become a law unto itself and the state is still facing the consequences. After all these years, the judiciary and other agencies have started removing the aberrations that had crept in. In a judgement of far-reaching consequences on Monday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the state to withdraw the ORP ranks (Own Rank Pay) from policemen of the level of SP to Inspector and to make regular promotions to these ranks within six months. It was a strange phenomenon indeed. While others were climbing the promotion ladder slowly and steadily, there were certain blue-eyed boys who took the escalator instead. Among the 14 SPs, 29 DSPs and over 100 Inspectors belonging to ORP ranks holding regular positions, there is reported to be a certain officer who was an Inspector in ORP rank in 1995, became a DSP and then an SP in 1996. Most such appointments were made in utter violation of the principles enshrined in the Punjab Police rules. The rule of seniority tempered with merit was ignored. It has been explained that local rank can be given for a period of six months according to rule 13.2 of Punjab Police rules, and if any extension is to be granted, the reasons should be spelt out. However, no such procedure was followed in these cases. The Judge has pointed out that the rank of DSP could not have been granted by the DGP, the authority for it being vested in the government, and that too when the person is found to be eligible to be brought in list G in consultation with the Punjab Public Service Commission. And the rank of SP could be given only in accordance with the rules and not at the whims and fancies of the then DGP. The court has rejected the respondents' contention that no regular promotions were conferred upon such officers by way of giving ORP and the said ranks had been given only on account of exemplary conduct in service and there was no financial burden. Its observation is pithy and forthright: "Giving a high rank in a disciplinary force has more than financial effects. Earning a rank is a feather in one's cap no doubt if it is earned the right way, but if the ranks are distributed as booty, discipline is lost and the protection of society becomes a secondary aspect." Indeed, such "absolution and absolute power" bred corruption and a number of such situations led to injustice as well. The Punjab Police was not exactly known for its fairplay earlier also. During and after the terrorism days it simply lost its moorings. More than undoing the mischief, it is necessary to put in place checks and balances so that there is no such circumventing of justice in future. |
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A new WTO policy INDIA has softened its stand on a new round of talks on global trade. Until now it was stoutly opposed to fresh negotiations until the commitments made in the earlier Uruguay round were implemented. Now this country says it will “engage constructively and with an open mind” in a new round of negotiations at the Doha ministerial meeting in Qatar in November. The change of policy is easily explained. India does not have much support among developing nations and the USA is mounting pressure that a new round should be started at Doha to take global trading to a higher level. US Trade Representative (the Indian equivalent of Commerce Minister) Robert Zoellick warned India to enter into new negotiations if it did not want to be left behind. The implication was obvious. The Big Brother wants all countries to fall in line or be prepared to live in isolation. India has made its choice and that is that. Prime Minister Vajpayee puts it more honourably. He said on Monday that his government would “engage constructively and with an open mind” any proposal for a new round at Qatar. This is counter-balanced by a reference to “unmet promises and unfulfilled obligations”. He was referring to the non-implementation of the agreement on reduction of subsidy on agricultural products, both domestically and in exports. Also on the non-tariff barriers on exports from developing countries. India has an advantage in producing and selling steel goods, readymade garments, textiles and leather goods. But the developed world has set up tariff and non-tariff barriers to hinder imports. This is against the spirit of the Uruguay Round of negotiations which led to the establishment of the WTO. It is a major climbdown by India which opposed a fresh round of negotiations at the Seattle ministerial meeting late last year. It then argued that negotiations and implementation should have a linear progression and unless the past agreements are fully in place, new ones are either premature or out of place. India is referring to the huge subsidies the USA and the European Union offer to their agricultural produce both to sell at low prices in the local market and to export. This is particularly true of dairy products which pose a threat to Indian dairy farmers, particularly in Punjab and Haryana. The Prime Minister’s promise to protect the interests of small and marginal farmers and also small-scale industrialists is a repetition of old pledges and does not warrant a comment. But his government’s readiness to raise the tariff level is reassuring. The WTO regime is posing a challenge and the Central Government is not, from available indications, fully focused to take it head on. |
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HUMAN Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi's reply to the debate in the Lok Sabha on the alleged attempt to "saffronise education" did sound convincing. However, arguments that sound convincing need not always be correct. He referred to a number of "policy decisions" taken before the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance came to power to counter the charge that an attempt was being made to destroy the secular character of the country by making contentious and communally-tinged changes in school textbooks. He said that the documents mentioning the proposed changes in school textbooks were circulated with the objective of encouraging a debate on an important issue before taking a final decision. May be he was right. May be he was not. However, a point which may have prompted him to make a calculated retreat was the closing of ranks among the non-BJP parties in the National Democratic Alliance. It is not that the Opposition, led by the redoubtable Mr Somnath Chatterjee, had not done its homework before accusing the HRD Ministry of deliberately trying to introduce distortions and elements of disinformation particularly in history textbooks. Mr Joshi would do well to remember the adage that there is no smoke without fire. He could have ridden rough shod over the concerns of the Opposition. It was the strident opposition from within of the policy of "saffronisation of education" that prompted Dr Joshi to strike a conciliatory note in his reply to the debate. Mr Yerran Naidu, leader of the Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party, which is giving outside support to the NDA government, did not mince words in stating that any change in the school textbooks without a national debate would be opposed by his party. His stand somehow did not square up with the HRD Minister's contention that the document on the proposed changes were made public for starting a debate. Unhappily for Dr Joshi the non-BJP allies stood by Mr Naidu rather than accept his explanation as correct. The political parties from the South are particularly upset by the RSS-BJP interpretation of history which encourages the view that the Aryans were the original settlers in the Indo-Gangetic plains. The saffron view of history does not accept that the Aryans had come from Central Asia who pushed the Dravidian inhabitants beyond the Vindhyas. The decision to introduce astrology and Vedic science as subjects of study at the university level too was attacked. It has attracted criticism even from respected scientists. If the voice of concern of members of even the scientific community is not heard, then it would not be incorrect to conclude that Dr Joshi is interested in a "national debate" which supports only his views on "educational reforms" at the school and university levels. |
A Chinese shadow on far-eastern Russia FOR some years now, many Russians have been worried about what a Russian newspaper described, in early July this year, as “A China Town the Size of Siberia”. Just a week later, President Putin and President Jiang Zemin met in Moscow. So also did Russia’s Foreign and Defence Policy Council. Since then Russians have wondered whether the “China Town” problem came up for discussion at these meetings, and if it did whether it is closer to being resolved or only closer to being brushed under the carpet, with each side fearing to touch what both feel they cannot handle. Of more immediate interest in this context has been a more recent event, the visit to Moscow by the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong II. The “problem” of course is that an uncounted, unknown number of illegal Chinese immigrants, thought by some to be “in millions” and by others in “hundreds of thousands”, have for all practical purposes taken over a slice of Siberia the size of which again is difficult to estimate but is said by some to be as big as “some of our provinces” and by others to be “large pockets on the border”. The very fact that the real size of the problem is unknown is itself a big part of the worry, like the suspected presence of a snake in a dark room. If you know the facts you can start thinking of how to deal with them. But how to deal with what remains unfathomed? And why does it remain unfathomed if not because you are afraid to go in there and plumb it? Andro Piontkovsky, Director of the Centre for Strategic Research based in Moscow and one of the best known commentators on strategic affairs, particularly those relating to the Russian Far East, believes the problem is big. Big enough for him to say in the headline of one of his recent articles that “Russia’s Far East Unites Moscow and Washington” because, he believes, the “province” or “pocket” size problem is a threat to both Russia and America and can be resolved only by their joint efforts. This of course is a thought which runs counter to the more prevalent view that Russia and China have to work together to contain what is seen as American hegemony. Piontkovsky was invited by strategic thinkers around the new Bush Administration in Washington to give his thoughts on what the administration should work towards in its relations with Russia. The focus of his thoughts, he says, is that “the key to Russia’s survival in the first half of the 21st century lies in whether Russia can hold on to its territory in Siberia and the Far East.” To that, a well-known American strategist, Thomas Graham, responded by saying, according to Piontkovsky, “Constructing a durable (global) balance will be more complicated if Russia’s presence in Asia wanes further. In this sense, the USA, as well as most Asian powers, has a long-term strategic interest in the development and maintenance of a healthy Russian presence in East Asia.” Therefore, Graham urged “our two countries along with interested parties, to examine how we can rebuild the economy in the Russian Far East so as to bolster Russian sovereignty there.” Individuals apart, well-known American institutions have also been coming to similar conclusions. At a seminar by the Carnegie Moscow Centre on “Russia’s China Problem”, a forecast was presented that by the middle of this century `` there will be seven to 10 million Chinese living in Russia, who will thus be the largest ethnic group in Russia after the Russians themselves.” Most of them would come into the Russian Far East, the region of Russia which is richest in natural resources but severely under-populated, and would mostly come from the heavily overpopulated adjacent provinces of China. That would prolong and further aggravate the serious demographic imbalance between the two regions, which even now is causing what people of Piontkovsky’s point of view see as a creeping colonisation of the Russian Far East by China. The only answer for Russia, said the Carnegie seminar, was “broadest possible internationalisation of the development of the Russian Far East and Siberia” by “Japan, Korea, other Asian Pacific countries, and the United States”. Going off on a different track, Democracy International, based in America, has suggested a related remedy, a “US-Russia-India Triangle” instead of a “Russia-China-India” Axis. Implicit in some of this thinking are two assumptions. One, the wealth of Siberian resources is so great that if China got hold of it China’s power would grow vastly further while Russia’s economic recovery would be jeopardised. Second, this could happen if the present Chinese encroachments into Siberia continued to grow unchecked. Neither assumption is disputed much by any of the many people with whom I have discussed them in Moscow. Where opinions differ, however, and sharply, is how ominous, if at all, these encroachments have grown already, whether there are any future Chinese intentions behind them, and what are the best ways of countering or at least containing them. According to on-the-spot surveys in the Far East by a Russian scholar working in America, Mikhail Alexseev, the problem is more of perception than reality. In Primorsky Krai, the province most affected, Chinese immigrants do not number more than “1-1.5% of the local Russian population on any day”, but the local people believe they number as much as “10-20%” and, according to a fifth of the respondents, could go up to as much as “40-60%” in five to 10 years. Not only local people in Primorsky but also serious people in Moscow believe the problem is less what it is today than what it can become if it remains unchecked. But the apprehension at both levels is that the means of checking it are, in the first place, difficult to get and, in the second place, can be effective only if and to the extent to which the Chinese authorities, whether in Beijing or on the border, decide they should be allowed to be effective. Russia has no way of implementing countermeasures on its own. Most difficult to get is the means most needed, enough Russians to go and populate the area themselves. Difficult to get because Russia is running out of Russians, and particularly of Russians of the kind who are fit for the demands which life will make upon those who are sent to populate Siberia. The birth rate has been declining for a long time, and therefore Russia is unable to make up the severe losses of manpower (28 million deaths) it suffered during World War II, which are also a cause of the decline of population because of a severe gender imbalance. People avoid marriage, those who marry avoid having children because that means long-term responsibility, those who say they do not mind the responsibility are quick to add that it is unfair to bring a child into the hardship which life means in Russia today. Therefore, the abortion rate is high, marriages are unstable, and the proportion of the aged and infirm in the total population is rising. That is hardly a demography which can help Russia to populate the huge areas which border on China. There are about 25 million Russians in the Central Asian republics which separated from Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. Some scholars in Moscow believe that if agricultural productivity improved a large number of Russians could be moved from other parts of agricultural Russia to the Far East. But attempts to persuade them to go there have not succeeded much. The amenities which might persuade more of them to go are expensive to provide and in its present state Russia cannot afford them. A suitable immigration policy could be one answer, that is inviting workers on a regular quota basis from all neighbouring countries, for fixed periods, with long-term settlement rights for those who have special skills or other endowments for the development of these areas. But this thought also runs into hurdles. Out of all close neighbours only China has enough population to spare, and China can help only if, first, it stops the flood of illegal and uncontrolled migration, and, second, fully cooperates in implementing a scheme of short-term and controlled migration. Is China fully willing in the first place and able in the second to stop the flood, and then to cooperate in replacing it with controlled immigration? There are doubts on both counts in Moscow, and so long as they persist the Chinese shadow on far-eastern Russia will also persist. In the meantime, Russia can only play with such pain killers as is the current experiment with North Korea paying off its huge debts to Moscow, which it can neither pay off with cash nor with goods, by sending such contingents of North Korean labour as it can hire at home on such terms as it can force on them or persuade them to accept. Enlarging the experiment is sure to have been discussed by Mr Putin with Kim during their recent meetings in Moscow. But neither has North Korea sufficient population to spare for Russia nor will that help Russia to persuade China to withdraw the present hordes of illegal Chinese immigrants from Russia’s Far East. |
“Small things — big men” MY friend has sober habits. He is hardworking. Fair and just in his dealings. Goes to bed with a clear conscience every night. I always thought he is bold and fearless. But no! He is afraid of doing wrong. Telling a lie. More than that, I recently discovered that he fears “Her”, The most. That was a revelation. How did it happen? Early morning, the telephone rang. My friend announced: “I am going for darshan”. I was still groggy. The night’s hangover was still hanging around my head. His words took time to sink in. He repeated: “To Mata’s temple.” The “Shakti-peeth.” The station of divine strength. High in the hills. To seek Her blessings. I was happy that he had informed me about it. Taking advantage of the available opportunity, I requested him to make a small offering on my behalf too. That too, without my wife’s permission. Alibi? She was not in station. And he was good enough to do it. Not only that. He even got a special “pooja” done for my family and me. On return, he sent me a big packet containing the “prasad” from the holy shrine. A coconut and all the rest that goes with it. Each bite must be a thousand calories. No wonder, the priests look so well fed. I was greatly touched by the kind gesture. Sent him a small envelope with two small papers bearing the autograph of the Governor, Reserve Bank of India. Rang up to thank him for the kind gesture. Exchanged usual courtesies. And felt happy at heart. Just the next morning, I got a letter. I saw the printed address on the envelope. a letter from a man of letters? To me? Marked “strictly personal”. And sealed. With a big and beautiful rose bud. Having a sizeable stem. Immaculately rapped in a plastic cover. Apparently from an exquisite florist. I was curious. We had spoken to each other just the previous evening. Why the letter? This winged messenger? Has he sent me a birthday wish through a sheer lapse of memory? Or is it my short little piece being returned with the usually unsigned “regrets” slip? Why with a rose? All the thoughts crossed my mind. The minute that I took to locate the letter opener seemed like an eternity. Having found the paper cutter, I removed the cello tape. With all the care. Neatly. So as to ensure that neither the fresh looking rose bud nor the white piece of stationery were damaged. Then I removed the seal and the staple pins. Without injuring my fingers. And finally reached the envelope. Despite being in a hurry, I gave it a clean cut. Probed to locate the contents. Failing to find a letter, I imagined that it would be the usual “slip”. Looked inside. There was another paper. Folded and sealed. With too many pins again. Removed each one. Carefully. As if handling the thorny cacti. What did I find? Make a guess. Mercifully, it was not the usual “regret” slip. Nor greetings. The finely folded paper held only a five-rupee coin. He would not keep a penny more than what he had actually offered at the shrine. My wife had watched me go through all the motions. She quickly picked up the phone. Rang up my friend. I shall keep giving you five rupees extra every time, if you promise to send an equally beautiful rose on each occasion. Then she turned to me and asked: “Why did he have to send this small sum of money? With all the paraphernalia? The petrol must have cost him more than the money.” Yes! But there are some amongst us who take care of small things. They are really big people. And nothing can be big for them. Is it not so? |
Pak lecturer sentenced to death A
medical lecturer in Pakistan has been sentenced to death under the country’s blasphemy laws after his students complained to a hardline Islamic organisation about one of his classes. Younus Shaikh (46) was sentenced at a private hearing in Rawalpindi on Saturday and fined 100,000 rupees (US $ 1,400). He will appeal but faces many more months in jail before a final decision is reached. Several hundred people have been sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan but none has yet been executed. The lecturer had trained and practised in Britain and Ireland before working at a private homoeopathic college in Islamabad. He was known for his progressive views on women’s rights and religion. After one class in October he was accused by his students of saying that until the prophet Mohammed received his first message from God at the age of 40 he was not a Muslim and did not shave his armpits or pubic hair and his parents were not Muslim. A group of 11 students complained to a group called the Organisation of the Finality of the Prophet, a self-appointed guardian of hardline Sunni Islam which has brought dozens of blasphemy charges against religious minorities. A charge was lodged against the lecturer and he was immediately arrested, although he insisted his words were misunderstood. Human rights groups have long criticised the blasphemy law because its vague definition has meant it has been frequently used to victimise minorities, especially Christians. Dr Shaikh is only the third Muslim to be convicted. The law, introduced in 1986 under the Islamic hardliner General Zia-ul Haq, defines as blasphemy anything which “by any imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly’’ defiles the name of the prophet. In 1992 the then Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, made capital punishment the only possible sentence for those convicted in an effort to placate the religious right. Often those accused are arrested with no evidence other than the word of their accuser, and property or family disputes are frequently behind the accusation. Last year after a three-year trial, a Lahore court sentenced to death a Muslim Sufi mystic accused of calling himself a prophet. The case was again brought by the Organisation of the Finality of the Prophet.
The Guardian
Wildlife thrives under militancy
Militancy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir has had one positive fall-out: wildlife has shown a remarkable increase — despite the fact that the state has pro-hunting laws — because it is too dangerous for people to go into the forests to shoot animals and birds. Various elusive species that needed special protection a decade ago can now be easily sighted since not only have their numbers increased but they do not fear humans any more. In Doda district, for instance, there are so many leopards that they have become a menace.
WFS |
Joyful learning without textbooks THEIR teacher has taken a day off, but that does not affect the academic schedule of these first standard students. The peppy six-year-olds begin with the customary prayer and then spend the rest of the day learning their lessons. There are no textbooks, nor do they learn by rote. They learn through games. This isn’t a city public school practising innovative teaching methods. These youngsters are studying in a government school in Karnataka’s MB Halli village. In 1997, the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), in collaboration with Unicef, launched a project aiming for universal enrolment, retention of children at the primary level and ensuring minimum levels of learning in classes I to IV. Called Nalli Kalli (Joyful Learning), this programme did away with standard textbooks by developing locally appropriate material, so that the children could identify with what they are reading, and designed an innovative curriculum. Equally important was the development of a good learning environment so that the children would want to come to school. It began first in the tribal-dominated HD Kote in Mysore district and is now being implemented almost all over Karnataka. One of the most striking features of this system, says Manjula, deputy project coordinator, DPEP, Mysore, is that “unlike traditional learning, which completely ignores slow learners, Nalli Kalli acknowledges that children’s learning rate is not the same. The teaching method is geared to take care of these differential needs so that there is effective and independent learning. It provides an opportunity for students to learn at their pace and still complete the syllabus.” The system has a graded curriculum which sets learning tasks along a continuum and children move from one grade to another at their own pace. At the end of a year, attainment gaps of various children are bridged with the teacher’s individual attention and support. Textbooks, says Manjula, are discarded to make learning “individualised, child-centred and interactive.” The teachers’ tools are flash cards, which list a set of activities and games. By playing these games children learn all the subjects. The children are divided into different groups and each has a certain set of activities depending on the level its members have reached. When the activities of a certain level are completed, the group moves on to the next level. A child is not tossed into the world of academics on entry into the classroom. Teachers design a set of “readiness activities” which prepare a child for learning and only then does actual teaching or learning begin. A child learns the alphabet not by writing them at first, but by moving the fingers over the letters on a cardboard. And when it comes to topics such as “My village”, the child has to actually do a survey of his or her village and report about it. Since there are no examinations, the assessment of how much a child has learnt is done through a set of memory games. In this children play with dice and have to do the activity prescribed in the place where the dice has landed. Enrichment groups (brighter children) help out the slow learners. Asked whether these groups foster a sense of inferiority among slow learners, Pushpavati, a teacher, says, “On the contrary, it motivates everyone. Also, the enrichment groups are not static and keep changing according to individual progress. This also spurs children to do better.” In class IV, however, a few textbooks are introduced so that the child is prepared to deal with them when he or she graduates to the next grade. Since the system depends on teachers’ initiative, emphasis is laid on building their capacities. A 12-day training programme is held and all teachers have to prepare the flash cards during the training itself. “This,” says Basavaraju, a programme coordinator, “enhances teachers’ creativity and competency by ensuring that all teachers have a say in developing, implementing and reviewing material produced.” “It is joyful learning for children and painful training for teachers,” quips Basavaraju, a primary school teacher himself. But the teachers aren’t complaining. “We now find meaning in what we do,” says Kamakshi, the head mistress of a primary school.
IANS
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Odissi dancer in Pakistan SHEEMA
Kirmani remembers when she gave out 50 invites for her debut solo classical dance performance in 1984 and was overwhelmed when more than 300 enthusiasts attended. It was a time when Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation drive had destroyed the link between the dance communities of India and Pakistan, compelling Pakistani artistes to work around a virtual ban on cultural pursuits. “In the ’80s, people were thirsty for culture and I was overwhelmed to see so many come and support this art form,” Kirmani, Pakistan’s exponent of the Odissi and Bharatanatyam style of classical dance, said. For Kirmani and her contemporaries, it has been struggle to reinvent dance as an acceptable art form and cultural practice in Pakistan where government support and recognition has remained negligible. But she explains that the cultural climate has altered since 1993, with a modest comeback of classical musicians and dance troupes actively performing in commercial and experimental houses. Her perseverance as a dancer and teacher of Odissi and Bharatanatyam in Pakistan is testimony to the fact that classical dance once banned and exiled to the private salons of the rich has returned to the public sphere. Recalling with nostalgia her early days when she was inducted into dance as a student at Ghanshyam’s Rhythmic Art Centre in Karachi, Kirmani said the Ghanshyams fled the country in the early ‘80s after persistent targeting by fundamental elements that proclaimed they were anti-Islam. With a 20-year career that has survived virulent societal repression, she recalls the times when no-objection certificates obtained prior to a performance were suddenly cancelled without explanation. “The issue of religion attached to dance emerged when General Zia announced that dance was against Islamic values, without delving deeper into the fact that dance, being a part of culture and the legacy of the subcontinent, should be equated with lifestyle. “Dance has existed pre-religion. The whirling Sufis danced. Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai was a dancer and a musician himself. How, then, is dance associated with immorality and decadence?” Kirmani studied classical dance forms in India with Leela Samson of the Kalakshetra, Mayadhar Raut at the Bhartiya Kala Kendra in Delhi and returned in 1990 on a one-year scholarship to train under Guru Aloka Pannikar at Art Kendra, also in New Delhi. Her interest in artistic expression also allowed for exploration into other art forms as theatre. Involved with the leftist movement of the early 80s, Kirmani was instrumental in the formation of Tehrik-e-Niswan (the Women’s Movement) in 1981, which opposed Zia’s martial law regime. “The development of street theatre allows women from deprived communities to come forth and express emotions like joy and pain which are ordinarily denied to them. These plays don’t require sets and are minimum in terms of production. We have repertories of six to eight plays performed every Saturday,” she says. Performed in the low-income areas of Karachi such as the Lyari and Orangi townships, the plays generate dialogue alongside entertainment. Living in squatter settlements where the average income is less than Rs 1,000 per month, and with no opportunity for entertainment, the under-privileged have played host to productions performed by Tehrik-e-Niswan. She said: “A woman who dances in a public space is anathema to conservative Muslims associating classical dance forms with Hindu mythology. Today, young minds are closed and not rebellious. Unlike the bohemian curious-minded lot of the ‘60s, complacency has set in the younger generation.”
IANS |
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Hope of cure for sleep that kills IT begins with a low-grade fever, pain in the joints and itchy skin. Later the patient displays the symptoms that give the disease its name - lethargy, drooping eyes, vague movement and disconnected speech. In the later stages, hallucinations and disruptive behaviour are common. Finally, the victim experiences excruciating pain, eventually lapsing into a coma before death. The disease is sleeping sickness, a fly-borne parasite that gradually destroys the brain and leads to death within six months. It was almost eradicated in Africa by the early sixties, but it is now spreading across the continent three times faster than Aids, and threatening the lives of millions. Treatments are expensive - involving multiple intra venous injections, often via a drip - and can be lethal. But now American scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, funded by the billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates to the tune of US dollars 15 million, believe they have found a `miracle’ cure - a cheap, easily administered pill - that they hope will save the lives of the tens of thousands who would otherwise die in Africa each year from the disease. In two weeks, researchers will begin the first human trials of a new drug for sleeping sickness - DB-289 - first developed as an anti-infective to treat an opportunistic fungal infection in Aids patients. The trial, on 30 patients at a clinic near Luanda in Angola, comes amid a massive resurgence of a disease encouraged by war and the collapse of infrastructures. In central Africa, experts estimate up to 450,000 people are infected and that the disease has spread three times faster than HIV, the virus that causes Aids. Epidemic levels of infection have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Sudan and Uganda. More than 60 million may be at risk of infection in 36 countries. Concern was highlighted this year when five tourists, including a Briton, contracted sleeping sickness after visiting the Serengeti game park in Tanzania. The disease is carried by the tsetse fly, an aggressive chocolate-coloured insect the size of a house fly, which is immune to repellent sprays and gels that discourage mosquitoes. The worm-shaped protozoa - a little larger than a human red blood cell - can `reshuffle’ its protein coating to confuse the body’s natural defence mechanisms. The cheapest drug, Melarspol, is toxic, killing 5 per cent of the patients. Another problem is the emergence of drug-resistant strains. Uganda’s Ministry of Health says drug resistance is building up, with refugees from Sudan bringing in new strains.
The Observer |
Case under Factory Act
Delhi |
The way to realise the Truth or to realise your oneness with the Divinity, the way to realise the unison with the All, or your sameness with the whole world, the way to this Divine realisation of the Self can be made smoother through your family ties if you will. * * * So, O man or woman, if you have set up the task of being drawn towards the sun of suns, take your companion with you, as the earth does the moon; and with your companion, like the moon, go on revolving round the sun of suns, the Light of lights. Thus instead of making this one little body partake of the glory, light and lustre of the Sun, you can make your companion share with you the glory and light and lustre of the same sun. Thus instead of drawing but one soul, you can draw other souls. Instead of working through just one body, you can work through many bodies. They are all yours. * * * Thus before realising your unity and unison with God, first realise your oneness with your wife and children. How can a man who has not realised his oneness with his wife and children, realise his oneness with all? * * * Let your being merge in those who are near and dear to you. Let your interests be one with your interests; let all the bodies be welded into one; let them become one stream... After that you can take other families in; and rising by degrees, let all families be as your own body; and after you feel all bodies as your own you can realise your oneness with God; you can take each and all with you. * * * According to Vedanta, no body can realise God unless his whole being is converted into Universal Love; unless he looks upon the whole universe as his body. This is the first step in the realisation of Self or Truth; it is to become the whole world. Then the next step is to rise beyond that. — Swami Ramatirtha,
* * * Mardana touch the chords, the Word is descending — A popular saying of Guru Nanak Dev |
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