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Monday,
July 15, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Yet another massacre Master of
Lord’s
Psychic inheritance |
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Lions in winter
Exercise lowers estrogen, breast cancer risk
Bush saving corporate America or himself ?
Spare a thought for battered men
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Yet another massacre A MATTER of national sorrow that it is, the massacre of 27 persons in Jammu on Saturday has put the Indian Government on the horns of a dilemma. It has to decide whether it will respond to the ultimate provocation by issuing yet another “tough statement” as it has done all along in the past, or it will find a more effective method of letting the perpetrators know that enough is enough. Even its ominous avowal that its patience has run out has become old hat. And as far as crossing the “Lakshman rekha” of civilised behaviour is concerned, that was crossed right at the time of the December 13 attack on Parliament, as the Prime Minister had himself announced. The newly anointed Deputy Prime Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, has only recently said that General Musharraf has not proved to be trustworthy. That narrows down India’s choices greatly. In an interview, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee had said that India should have taken retaliatory action immediately after the assault on Parliament but was persuaded by world leaders not to do so. That is why Kaluchak happened. As if that was not enough, Jammu has added another inhuman page to this never-ending bloody story. The question is how long India will respond to such provocations with only empty words. An Arab saying is that “if you backstab me once, it is shame on you; if you backstab me twice, it is shame on me”. This earthy wisdom should be taken note of by the world is general and India is particular. They have believed in the wily General’s promises repeatedly and the latter has merrily demonstrated time and again that his assurances are not worth the magnetic tapes on which they are recorded. It is high time the world learnt a few lessons. One, Pakistan is just not going to shut down its terrorism export houses, whatever pledges its leaders may make in public or privately. Its protestations that the jehadis are not under its control are meaningless because its army has been actively involved in pushing them in. Two, this deadly brigade is not going to confine its activities to India alone. Afghanistan had already proved that the pestilence can spread in all directions. The world will be ignoring India’s concerns only at its own peril. And three, power-drunk mischief-makers are never going to listen to the voice of reason. To them it appears to be a sign of weakness. Unless you are rough with roughnecks, you can never make them behave. Only when realisation dawns on them that they will have to pay a high price for their perfidy can they be made to mend their ways. That is not a call for war but only a suggestion to eschew the policy of appearing overeager to offer your cheeks whenever you are slapped. The argument that the frustrated terrorists are deliberately trying to provoke India into waging war against Pakistan has been used far too often to be relevant. |
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Master of Lord’s ON Saturday India became a serious contender for lifting next year's cricket World Cup in South Africa. The victory that the team scripted in the tri-nation final against England at Lord's is the stuff that make fairy tales look dull. When Mohammad Kaif and Zaheer Khan completed the 326th run in what turned out to be a nail-biting contest of the highest quality the game of cricket saw India ride into the hall of fame on the strong and reliable shoulders of the youth brigade. It can be said with just a minor risk of being proved wrong that the future of Indian cricket is as bright as the sun with the new boys giving the team a look of invincibility. Any team that can chase a seemingly impossible target of 326 without the help of Sachin Tendulkar has a right to believe that it can now beat the best teams in the world. From the opening game until the final on Saturday India dominated the tournament with just a small hiccup in an inconsequential league game against England. The key to India's success was the important element of self-belief. Plus the ability to carry on in spite of early setbacks. A team that can afford the luxury of keeping V. V. S. Laxman in the reserves must surely be brimming with talent. Yuvraj Singh. Kaif and Virendra Sehwag left little scope for doubt that they were worthy of playing for India. Only Dinesh Mongia did not do justice to his skills. A combination of experience in the form of captain Saurav Ganguly, Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid plus enthusiasm of the youth brigade has helped India become a highly promising one-day team. The restructuring of the team by coach John Wright and Ganguly too played an important role in making India click as a team. There was some criticism of the move to break up the world's best opening pair of Tendulkar and Ganguly. But the106-run partnership for the opening wicket between Ganguly and Sehwag in double quick time should prove effective in silencing the critics. The decision to send Tendulkar at number four was simply brilliant. He took charge when there were early setbacks and went on to score a century apiece against Sri Lanka and England. Dravid and Yuvraj have made the middle look rock solid. But it would be unfair to overlook the singular performance of the lower order batsman, the shy and modest Kaif. The youth brigade made Dravid do the double duty of keeping wickets as well as holding the middle order. It was a combination of talent, experience and pressure that made the Karnataka star shine before and behind the stumps. India has found the right combination for next year's World Cup. All that is needed is a bit of fine-tuning. Now is the time to scout for fresh talent to make the reserve look as formidable as the playing XI. Fitness played an important role in helping India make an impact as a team. Ajit Agarkar in spite of his slender frame has stopped getting injured. And that is good news for Indian cricket. In the defence forces tales of valour are narrated to help boost the morale of the troops. There is plenty that past and present players have done for sustaining the new-found element of self-belief of the members of the present squad. The players must be constantly reminded that India was the first team to successfully chase a 300-plus score to beat Pakistan in fading light at a football stadium in Dhaka. On Saturday it set a new benchmark of 326 runs for teams batting second for achieving victory. There are other tales that should be resurrected and told for lifting the morale of the team. For instance, the impossible-to-break opening wicket Test partnership of 400 plus between Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy. Or the three centuries in consecutive Tests on debut by Mohammad Azharuddin. Tendulkar is of course yet not through with setting impossible records in both forms of the game. And the team management should not forget to play and replay the 1983 World Cup final against the mighty West Indies at the same majestic ground where India again made cricket history by successfully chasing a daunting target of 326. |
Psychic inheritance DHIRUBHAI
AMBANI not only proclaimed but also proved that birth is not what holds back the Dalits. While accepting the Wharton Dean’s Medal in 1998 he said, “Pedigree is no longer of any significance in democratic India; it is performance that is crucial.” Born to a school teacher in a small town of Chorwad in Gujarat he started selling bhajjia in his home town just as millions of Dalits do today. But he moved on. He first got a job as a petrol station attendant in the Gulf. Then became a clerk. He gave up the security of that job to return to India and put all his savings into a trading company. By the time he died, the Reliance group was providing almost 5 per cent of the Central Government’s total revenues. Surely, if birth determined the individual’s progress, this would not have happened. The same Dhirubhai, however, also believed that birth did set the course of one’s life. Gita Piramal, the author of “Business Maharajas” and “Managing Radical Change”, writes that Dhirubhai believed that “every individual is born into an orbit in which he will probably remain for the rest of his life. The world is a series of orbits, hierarchically stacked up with peons and clerks at the bottom and leading industrialists and politicians at the top. To be successful, you must break out of your orbit and enter the one above. After a spin in the orbit, you must break into the next one, and so on until you reach the top.” So, the birth does not matter, and also it does. One may be born to a school teacher but one may rise to become a grand industrialist or a politician. Birth does not matter. The social status or profession of one’s parents need not hold him back. Yet, one is “born into an orbit”. The trajectory of one’s life is, so to say, predetermined. Dhirubhai was born with the dream of becoming a big businessman. He pursued that dream relentlessly. The psychic inheritance of the child determines the path of his life. Somewhere in his early childhood, even in the womb, the dream of becoming a big businessman was planted in his mind. And he was stuck with in that path throughout his life. While accepting an award from a financial daily, he said, “I accept this award as the son of a village school teacher from Gujarat. For me this award has one simple message. For those who dare to dream, there is a whole world to win.” Perhaps it was the Kathiawadi spirit of adventure that he inherited which made him dream. This ability to dream, nay this compulsion to dream, was implanted in his mind somewhere along the way. It is this dream that he pursued throughout his life. This dream, this psychic inheritance, like the yoke of a bullock, made him spin in that orbit relentlessly. Inheritance has two dimensions — the social and the psychic. Pedigree is the social dimension. Dhirubhai’s father was a school teacher. He overcame that social inheritance. But the psychic inheritance stuck. This distinction is of great significance for the Dalits today. They keep harping on the discrimination they face due to their social inheritance. In some areas of Tamil Nadu the Dalits are still required to take tea in a separate tumbler in the tea shops. Certainly these are evil practices and the Indian society deserves credit for recognising it as such and removing the same. But what about the psychic inheritance? No upper class person is preventing the Dalits to dream as Dhirubhai did. At a meeting of Dalit intellectuals in Tamil Nadu the following question was raised: why is it that India does not have a Dalit millionaire? There are a large number of Dalits who fill petrol in cars and see oil tankers coming in. Why is it that they do not dream of becoming oil magnates as Dhirubhai did? The reason is their psychic inheritance. Their parents do not implant these dreams in their minds. The parents are too busy demanding reservations in promotions for themselves. The dream that they plant in the mind of the Dalit children is that of getting a cushy government job and living happily ever after. That is the highest that the Dalit children dream off. As a result, they never become an Ambani and remain, at best, glorified servicemen. They are unable to break from the orbit of servitude — of the Shudra mentality of service — into the higher orbit of Vaisya business mentality. The real liberation of the Dalits will come not by becoming glorified Shudras but by breaking into the orbit of business and politics. We need more of Ambedkars and Mayawatis — especially in business. It falls to the task of the Dalit mothers to plant these dreams in the minds of their children. That alone will bring the true liberation of the Dalits. Rich businessmen have become the whipping boys of the Dalits. It is presumed that the businessmen “exploit” and impoverish the poor. The Dalits would have been happy persons but for this “exploitation”. This translates into a criticism of the upper castes — Manuvad. But look at Dhirubhai. He quit his secure and comfortable clerical job with Burmah Shell in Adeen to move to Mumbai. He started a trading house with his savings of Rs 15,000. He gave up the security of service for the risk of business. How many Dalit employees would take such a risk today? Most are more inclined to fight for reservations in promotions. They have started enjoying their servitude. The varna of a person is truly determined by his dreams. The correct word according to the scriptures is “vasana” or the innermost desires. Every being is born with some desire. It matters little whether these desires are inherited in early childhood, in the mother’s womb or in past lives. It is these desires that determine one’s orbit, as Dhirubhai would say. A person of his stature could certainly have become a politician or a saint. But he was born into the orbit of business and remained there. He only increased the size of his orbit from bhajjias to Reliance. He did not break through the orbit of being a businessman. His desires or dreams or “vasana” were those of being a businessman. That determined how far he would go. Ambedkar and Mayawati dreamt to become politicians. Namdev and Ramsukhdas dreamt to become godmen. Similarly, every Dalit is free to dream. He is free to determine his orbit or his varna. Reservations in government jobs and Parliament have removed the social stigma from the Dalit’s progress. But in the absence of dreams they remain only glorified Shudras. Reservations in government jobs are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they have enabled the Dalits to regain their self-respect. A Dalit IAS officer lording over the upper caste clerks sends a clear message. But an IAS officer is still a Shudra. He cannot determine the policies that he implements. He is but a glorified servant. If Dhirubhai had the benefits of reservations he would have retired as a mere Secretary to the government. Reservations are holding back the best of Dalits into continued servitude. The Dalits need to break free. |
Lions in winter WATCHING this year’s Wimbledon on TV, the fall of Pete Sampras in the first round, engineered by an unknown Swiss younger player, I was, like millions of Pete’s admirers (a gentleman in tennis, if ever) deeply grieved. And this decline and fall of one of the all-time “greats” in the game with a fabulous fortune was an event which has tragic echoes that lead me to examine the chemistry of this archetypal phenomenon. For, this kind of fall and “exit”, humiliating as it is, happens often enough in other fields of life also — a thing that has been fate of many a king and ruler, many a great writer and artist, amongst others. Even as one who has ruled the turf like a “king” for years finds himself out in the cold, he himself is unable to understand his situation clearly. And the more he goes into the shell of his own self, the more broken he feels. And now that the sunset has darkened his door, his great and glorious past would serve as his trove of memories and moments supreme. However, Pete Sampras, as you’ve guessed, is not really the theme of my story. His fate only serves to enlarge the universal argument. It’s not, however, only in the field of sports that the heroes who had “roses, roses all the way” at one time sink into oblivion, or become self-alienated. In the case of the celebrated writers, for instance, this kind of darkness seldom comes at noon; they usually wither away into parodies of themselves or worse still, become silly and senile, their pride in ashes. When their manuscripts are returned by their publishers, the rejection strikes them as an unjust blow on their old, greying head. I personally knew of one such celebrity whose writing, though still brilliant in patches, had begun to wobble, and his control over the language began to be questioned. A peculiar infirmity of body and mind had compelled him to lean heavily on trashed dreams. In England, for instance, Wordsworth’s later poems had little fresh, little to offer to the imagination, but the late poet of the nation had no visions of “immortality” in his Grasmere Cottage, only a brooding, chilling presence. In the history of art and literature, there are not many examples of the once-great ones who can readjust their sights and insights. But, here and there, a genius breaks out into a rash of immortal paintings or poems. I recall, to begin with, the case of Van Gogh whose later works executed in acute suffering — and madness, not “the madness of art”, to recall a Jamesian phrase, but real, clinical madness — blossomed out in yellow “fever” on the canvas. Which remind me of R.D. Laing’s book, The Divided Self, where it’s argued in all seriousness that the greatest masters were either “mad” with a split mind, or suffered moments of insanity in their moments of highest creativity. And then there is the inexplicable case of W.B. Yeats whose “muses grew younger as he grew older”. His earlier filigree poems pale into insignificance in the face of his stone-hard, bitter erotic poems of his declining years. With “seventy winters on his head”, he produces a poetry that has both the madness and gaiety of youth. So as these fallen “idols” sit of evening twilight and rotate the hourglass of memories before their distraught minds, the images of success overwhelm them, drowning them in a warm bath of emotions. The imperious British monarch Henry II when pitted against the spiritual power of a godly high priest Thomas Beckel frets and fumes, and rouses himself to a pitch of kingly pride when his ageing frame and bones are unable to match the silent power of the saint. The tragedy of his martyrdom, one recalls, is the theme of T.S. Eliot’s verse-play, Murder in the Cathedral. I cite this example because, as you may have guessed, I owe the title to A Lion in Winter, a great movie of yester years.
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Exercise lowers estrogen, breast cancer risk A new US study presented recently at the 18th UICC International Cancer Congress in Oslo, Norway, says that regular exercises can help lower levels of blood estrogens in postmenopausal women. Led by Prof Anne McTiernan, Director of Fred Hutchinson’s Prevention Studies Clinic and Exercise Testing and Training Centre in Seattle, Washington, the study is the first randomised clinical trial to assess the effect of exercise on blood estrogens in postmenopausal women. It included 173 women in the 50-75 year age-group who were previously sedentary, overweight or obese, and not taking hormone-replacement therapy (HRT). The women were carefully screened for eligibility and were assigned at random to either a moderate-intensity aerobic exercise group or a stretching control group. The exercise group exercised 45 to 60 minutes, five days a week, for a year. The control group met weekly for a 45-60 minute stretching class for a year. The exercise regimen consisted of facility-based and home exercise. The participants met three times a week with an exercise physiologist at an exercise facility, where they performed treadmill walking and stationary biking. They also exercised two days a week at home. At the beginning of the study, there was a strong, statistically significant correlation between body size and levels of estrogens: heavier women had higher levels of all three estrogens studied (estradiol, estrone and free estradiol). After three months, women in the exercise group had a seven per cent decrease in the level of estradiol, the most potent blood estrogen, while women in the stretching group had no change in estradiol levels. Among exercisers, there was a 4 per cent decrease in estrone levels compared with a three per cent increase in controls. After 12 months, there was still a difference in blood estrogens between exercisers and controls, though the effect was lower than at three months. Among the exercisers who lost body fat, the effect of exercise was strongest: exercisers who lost more than two per cent of their initial body fat had a 14 per cent decrease in estradiol levels. Controls who lost body fat, however, did not experience a decrease in estradiol levels. The changes in estrogen levels were not due to dietary changes; on average, exercisers did not change the amount of calories they took in, and controls had only a slight, decrease in calorie intake. The results of this study are very significant, says Prof McTiernan, also a member of the centre’s Cancer Prevention Research Programme in the Public Health Sciences Division. “We know that women still make estrogen after menopause, although they make it in their fat cells instead of in their ovaries. Women who have high blood-estrogen levels after menopause have a high risk of developing breast cancer. Therefore, it is important to find ways to lower estrogen levels for women who want to lower their risk of breast cancer,” she says.
ANI |
Bush saving corporate America or himself ? “MY friends are crooks. The companies they run look corrupt. The regulators I appoint are too soft. My colleagues in government face lawsuits for fraud. But I’m going to solve corporate crime with some ass-kicking laws. Hey, and trust me, I’m the President.” After a week in which markets globally were badly wounded by the Dow - which fell 700 points, dragging the FTSE down by nearly 400 - it is clear that not only Americans but people around the world are in no mood to take George W Bush and his promised crusade against corporate corruption on trust. In fact, the attempt to appear tough on WorldCom, Enron, Andersen and the rest ahead of mid-term elections in November turned out disastrously. Day 1: Bush held a rare press conference to gain the initiative ahead of his key Wall Street speech. Instead, he was rocked onto the defensive over allegations concerning his own financial dealings in the oil company Harken Energy. Day 2: In Tuesday’s speech, Bush said ‘too many corporations seem disconnected from the values of our country’. He listed measures, including a task force that would be a ‘financial crimes Swat team’, anti-shredding laws, a $ 100m boost for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the forfeiture of pay gained by deception, greater accountability for CEOs, and an increase in prison terms for fraud to ensure ‘those who breach the trust of the American people are punished’. It read like a plea for credibility. It was snubbed. Democrats, led by the presidential hopeful Tom Daschle, ridiculed both the rhetoric and substance, highlighting Bush’s refusal to endorse a tough package of laws being proposed by a Democrat, Senator Paul Sarbanes. Bush was the ‘unconnected’ one. As the Dow slid, a Democrat aide said: “The markets clearly don’t think he has gone far enough, and neither do we.” Then it got worse. Day 3: Vice-President Dick Cheney was named in a civil action against construction group Halliburton and its accountants Andersen. The details of the contested action, in which Halliburton directors are accused of colluding to inflate the company’s earnings, read disturbingly like the Enron case and follow the opening of a separate SEC investigation in March. Day 4: It emerges that Bush received a low-interest loan from Harken - something that WorldCom chief executive Bernie Ebbers (currently under investigation) did, and which Bush said should be banned. Throughout all of this some critics made a direct link to Bush and his well- known connections with rich businessmen, particularly fellow Texans. Chuck Lewis of the Centre for Public Integrity, which investigates links between politics and business, says: “The reason that he does not have credibility in trying to deal with big business is that in the public mind he is seen as in their pockets.” New York Representative John LaFalce, senior Democrat on the House of Representatives financial services committee, says: “He denied debate for the past year and a half - especially since Enron - as the problems were beginning to surface, and did so very little. Then because of WorldCom and because of growing sentiment against corporate America and Wall Street, he felt compelled to do something. But neither his words nor his demeanour on Tuesday had any credibility.” Republicans retort that Bush’s speech was tough. Several of Bush’s proposals - forfeiting pay, preventing executives trading shares during closed periods, preventing analysts misleading markets - sound similar to the Sarbanes programme. But this, says LaFalce, is misleading. For example, the $ 100m SEC budget increase is dwarfed by more than $ 700m proposed by Democrats. The shredding proposals are a ‘smokescreen’ to keep attention on Andersen, not Bush’s Texas friends at Enron. Instead of a catchy ‘Swat team’, Sarbanes proposes a prosaic but independent Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. This will have the power to inspect big accounting firms every year and investigate complaints about firms. Companies should not be able to offer consulting to firms they audit. He demands compulsory rotation of firms. The controversy is set to rumble on, to the delight of Democrats. Sarbanes’s Bill is expected to clear the Senate next week, but it must then be combined with weaker measures proposed in the ‘Oxley’ Bill from the Republican-held House. LaFalce indicates Bush’s support for Oxley will be used to beat him. “He praised the House-passed Bill, which gave away everything. That revealed his true colours.” As a member of Sarbanes’s staff said: “My boss is not going to compromise on this. And he has support - many in the House have come to us after WorldCom, saying they now think we need tougher laws.” Whatever happens, Bush will be portrayed as wobbly on this issue - one where Democrats feel they can dent his gleaming post-9/11 popularity. And for those who want to believe that the reason for Bush’s lack of conviction is chumminess with businesses that like to bend rules, the circumstantial evidence is well known and easily available. In the 2000 presidential election, WorldCom, for example, gave 70 per cent of its $ 1.9m political donations to the Republicans. For Andersen it was 71 per cent of $ 1.4m. Enron - led by ‘Kenny Boy’ Lay - gave their buddy $ 113,800 between 1989 and 2001, while Al Gore got $ 13,750. Enron gave $ 300,000 to the Bush inaugural fund in 2001, and helped out with the costs of the 2000 poll recount. There is also the criticism over Bush’s sale of $ 849,000 of shares in Harken in 1991. Soon afterwards the company reported heavy losses and its shares nearly halved. The SEC found no wrongdoing on Bush’s part, but did on the company’s, of which Bush was a director. It is not just Bush. Harvey Pitt, his choice as SEC head, has been ridiculed for suggesting a ‘kinder and gentler’ approach to accounting issues last year, before the Enron scandal broke. Pitt formerly worked in accountancy. Then there is the Cheney lawsuit, dismissed as politicking by the White House. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which is bringing the case, says: ‘We believe Cheney ordered the change in accounting policy which allowed this to happen... as CEO he has responsibility for what went on. They should be taking these issues seriously but their response to our action shows they’re not. “That’s why the speech did not work. It didn’t distract attention from the issues at hand. He has got into it too late.” By arrangement with the Observer, London
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Spare a thought for battered men A majority of studies tend to focus on men who commit domestic violence, but what about females who batter their male counterparts? According to the 1996 British crime survey on the extent of domestic violence in England and Wales, 4.2 per cent of women and 4.2 per cent of men said that they had been physically assaulted by a current or former partner in the past year. Responding to a recent editorial on domestic violence published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), two letters in this week’s issue of the journal have made an attempt to bring this very disparity in domestic violence studies. One, written by Dr Mark Horner argues that though there is no denying the fact that men are the oppressors and women suffer, it is sadly far from revealing the whole picture. Indeed, when one considers that most violence against children is committed by women, in terms of gender it is women who are most likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence, he says. The second letter written by Dr Chris Carlston, says that the justification for this slant in the domestic violence literature has been that female victims vastly outnumber male victims. However, many data suggest otherwise. For example, one study found that 86 per cent of marital aggression was reported as reciprocal between husbands and wives, while another found that female-to-male violence was reported to be higher than male-to-female. Such reporting bias ignores many thousands of male victims and alienates those who demand a more balanced presentation, says Dr Carlston. “Let’s keep working to get better data, but let’s recognise the bi-gender nature of this societal ill.”
ANI |
Mother is in one A radiant nurse whose very voice and presence bring strength to... a sick child; An angel of mercy; A patient teacher; A watchful guardian; A compassionate attorney; A fountainhead of courage. — An anonymous American poet. Cited in The Kalyan Kalpataru *** The cheat and the thief are notorious for stealing people's property. These take secretly, but the cunning steals in one's presence. Sins become virtues by a change of circumstances. That is virtue which is applauded by the many; that is vice which is cried down by all. The theory of morals is very intricate and cannot be understood by any body. Excessive charity, penance and truthfulness lead to adversity in this world. Man is the slave of wealth, not wealth of any body. So one should always carefully labour for wealth. Through wealth men get virtue, satisfaction and salvation. Insult from even the significant leads to great enmity. Gifts, honours, truthfulness, valour and humility lead to good friendship. One should never for a moment be careless as regards servants, wife, children and enemies. — The Shukraniti *** A stupid servant, a niggardly monarch, an adulturous wife and a false friend — these four are painful like a pike. — Shri Ramacharitamanasa, Kishkindha Kanda *** A master's visit to his servant's house in the root of all blessings and a foe to sorrow. — Shri Ramacharita
*** Even the Sannyasi whom all people pay obeisance should pay obeisance to the mother with care. — Skanda Purana, Kashi |
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