E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

It rained gold for India
To say that the Indian contingent performed beyond its own wildest expectations at the Commonwealth Games at Manchester would be an understatement. Not even an incurable patriot or an optimist or a gambler would have expected the Indian contingent to bring home so many medals. 

Drought politics
It is unfortunate that leaders of various parties are taking potshots at each other even at a time when the country is fighting a common enemy in the shape of a debilitating monsoon failure. 

Unprecedented unity
The endorsement of the Union Government’s Representation of People (Amendment) Bill, 2002, by the all-party meeting last Friday was not entirely unexpected. The unprecedented unity forged by the members of Parliament cutting across party lines was only to be expected, given the simmering discontent among the lawmakers against some of the provisions in the Election Commission’s June 28 directive. 

OPINION

Handling threats from the underworld
Is penetration of gangs by intelligence men possible?
Joginder Singh
The country’s media has highlighted excerpts from film actor Sanjay Dutt’s conversation on November 14, 2001 with an alleged gangster named Chhota Shakeel. Sanjay is the son of Congress MP Sunil Dutt, himself a film artist of yore. These tapes were played by the prosecution before a special court, trying film financier Bharat Shah and three others in the underworld Bollywood nexus case. 

MIDDLE

An unbelievable transformation
Shiela Gujral
As soon as my daughter-in-law got down from the car she said in an excited voice: "Mama, we have brought some fruits for you from Moscow". When she handed over the fruit basket to the butler standing nearby, I could not believe it. Fruits from Moscow? 

REALPOLITIK

Prisoners of pressure politics
P. Raman
Two decades back, Kutchch veteran Mahipatrai Mehta had contested the election on the issue of setting up a development board for the region.  It was when Indira Gandhi was striving hard to romp back to power.  The Congress swept the poll all right.  

Women have better memory than men: study
Matrimonial lore says husbands never remember marital spats and wives never forget. A new study suggests a reason: Women’s brains are wired both to feel and to recall emotions more keenly than the brains of men.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Helping brain injury patients remember
Traumatic brain injury, often sustained in road accidents, is one of the most common causes of disability in young adults, who frequently complain of memory problems, but a new research has now found that people who suffer moderate to severe TBI can recover some of their memory using alternate brain networks.

• Hum your way out of sinusitis

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

It rained gold for India

To say that the Indian contingent performed beyond its own wildest expectations at the Commonwealth Games at Manchester would be an understatement. Not even an incurable patriot or an optimist or a gambler would have expected the Indian contingent to bring home so many medals. There was a time when the medals could be counted on one's finger tips. This time not all the fingers and toes are enough to count the gold medals. The final tally has already generated some entirely expected confusion over India's position at the Manchester games. It is simple. Going by the number of gold medals — and that is the procedure that is followed for placing teams in order of merit — it finished at the third spot behind Australia and England. However, Canada's overall medals tally, including the silver and the bronze, would place it ahead of India whether India finished third or fourth is immaterial. What should make every Indian hold his head high with pride is the unbelievable performance by the entire contingent. Leander Paes earned exclusive editorial notice because he won an Olympics bronze in tennis. Yes, winning a medal was reason enough for the nation to celebrate. However, the Indian contingent to the Commonwealth Games has given us 32 golden reasons to rejoice plus 21 silver and 19 bronze. Whose performance deserves special notice? Anjali Bhagwat, who led the contingent and bagged four golds in the shooting events or Jaspal Rana who bagged an equal number of gold medals in the men's event? And why should Kunjarani Devi and Sanamacha Chanu be placed a shade below the shooting super stars of India? Just because they both won just — yes, just! — three gold medals each does not make their performance less spectacular than that of Rana and Bhagwat. Weightlifting is certainly not kids' play, not when competitors from other countries have had the advantage of better training and balanced and wholesome diet.

What about the achievements of other golden boys and girls and 40 others who won silver and bronze for the country? Paes at Manchester with his bronze would certainly have been lost in the crowd of Indian medal winners. However, the Olympics are a different ball game. The performance of Indian boys and girls in a range of disciplines at Manchester was indeed a welcome revelation. Quietly but surely various sports organisations have been working on improving the fitness and performance levels of the athletes. Without fuss. They deserve a round of applause. They would earn a second round of praise when the Indians raise their level of performance to the same golden heights in the Asian Games where the competition gets much tougher than it was at the Commonwealth. And the nation would earn the right to go crazy with joy if the Commonwealth form translates into even a handful of gold, silver and bronze medals at the Olympic Games. Be that as it may, the girls hogged the limelight more than the boys. Since hockey enjoys a special place in India's sports lore, the performance of the Indian women's hockey team deserves to be written with letters of gold. They compensated handsomely for the absence of the men's team through the application of a strange rule that saw less gifted teams from other regions being invited. The Madasamy episode provided a false note to the otherwise golden voice of India. The Indian weightlifter tested positive for dope and was made to surrender the three silver medals he had won in various categories. The Indian Olympic Association has asked for a second test. If he tests positive again, that should mark the end of his career. Yes, drugs and sports don't go together. And India has always set an example for others by punishing the cheats, whether it is cricket or any other discipline. 

Drought politics

It is unfortunate that leaders of various parties are taking potshots at each other even at a time when the country is fighting a common enemy in the shape of a debilitating monsoon failure. Charges and counter-charges are flying thick and fast as the Centre has announced a Rs 714-crore drought relief package for 12 drought-hit states across the country. The amount is low indeed but equally unrealistic is Mrs Sonia Gandhi's demand for Rs 12,000 crore for Congress-ruled states alone. She should remember that at present, the Calamity Relief Fund (CRF) has Rs 11,000 crore for a period of five years for all states put together, while the National Calamity Contingency Fund (NCCF) has a corpus of only Rs 500 crore. While the NCCF is a Central fund, the CRF is state administered, with the Centre contributing 75 per cent of the corpus of the fund for each state. Apparently she has tried to win over the sympathy of the voters who are to go to the polls in the near future. By posting her demands sky high, she has also saved her party's Chief Ministers from all accusations of neglecting the drought-hit. They can easily say that their hands are tied because the Centre has refused to come to their rescue. At the same time, the BJP has made itself prone to the allegation of "partisan approach" because of its previous deeds. It has not been as forthcoming in the matter of helping drought-hit states as it was while dealing with Mr Chandrababu Naidu's Andhra Pradesh and Mr Om Prakash Chautala's Haryana.

However, this is not the time for indulging in the odious pastime of passing the buck. The need of the hour is to judiciously utilise every rupee that is available. That has been a perennial Achilles' heel. Even when it comes to helping the victims of various calamities, be they drought or flood, the system shows an inhuman face. Middlemen invariably crop up to siphon away a sizable portion of the relief money. The Centre and the states should join hands this time to ensure that this barbaric "dastoor" is buried once and for all, and every paisa reaches the intended beneficiaries. While looking up to the Centre is inescapable, states have also to marshal their own resources. It is bizarre that while there is a loud demand for the Central aid, there has been no perceptible reduction in avoidable expenditure by state governments. Everyone will have to put his shoulder to the wheel to tide over the crisis. Equally vital is the question of providing relief in time. As it is , it takes interminably long in declaring a state drought-hit, as was the case with Himachal Pradesh. And, then, sarkari machinery takes its own sweet time to get cracking, if at all. This time lag becomes a matter of life and death for the victims. There is need for re-defining what constitutes drought. 

Unprecedented unity

The endorsement of the Union Government’s Representation of People (Amendment) Bill, 2002, by the all-party meeting last Friday was not entirely unexpected. The unprecedented unity forged by the members of Parliament cutting across party lines was only to be expected, given the simmering discontent among the lawmakers against some of the provisions in the Election Commission’s June 28 directive. The meeting, coming close on the heels of the earlier one on July 8, reflected the view that the commission’s fiat, following the Supreme Court’s ruling on May 2, was too harsh on the candidates and that there was a pressing need to endorse the fresh Bill with some modifications. The Union Law Ministry, which drafted the Bill, had earlier circulated it among the political parties for evolving a consensus on the proposals. At Friday’s meeting the parties agreed that candidates would not be disqualified unless convicted as against a proposal in the Bill that suggested disqualification of a candidate who was charge-sheeted in two cases of heinous crimes six months prior to the filing of nomination. The other proposal to be incorporated in the Bill, which is expected to be introduced in the ongoing session of Parliament, is the provision for the declaration of assets by only the elected representatives to the presiding officers of Parliament or state legislatures. This, in effect, seeks to nullify the Supreme Court ruling and the commission’s subsequent directive which made it mandatory for candidates and their family members to declare their assets to the returning officer.

It is not clear whether the Centre would like to take up the issue of declaration of assets separately during the current session of Parliament itself or at a later date, though Union Law Minister Jana Krishnamurthy says that the Ethics Committee would formulate the rules for the elected representatives to file such a declaration. The proposal regarding the disqualification of those with criminal antecedents is understandable owing to the apprehension among the leaders of possible misuse of the provisions by the ruling party against political opponents and/or arbitrary exercise of authority by the Returning Officers. In this context, the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Dr Manmohan Singh, was forthright during a recent interaction with senior journalists of The Tribune that a Returning Officer could not make a fair assessment of the antecedents of the candidate just within 15-20 minutes during the scrutiny. But the key question is how to tackle known criminals and mafia gangsters getting into politics? The legal process is agonisingly slow and it takes years for one to be brought to justice. One way of addressing the issue with a sense of urgency is by setting up special courts, may be these could be called electoral courts, at the level of the Supreme Court or the High Courts, with the opportunity of just one appeal, so that criminal cases can be heard expeditiously and finally disposed of within a specific timeframe. Ultimately, what is of utmost importance to cleanse the political system is to end the criminalisation of politics.

OPINION

Handling threats from the underworld
Is penetration of gangs by intelligence men possible?
Joginder Singh

The country’s media has highlighted excerpts from film actor Sanjay Dutt’s conversation on November 14, 2001 with an alleged gangster named Chhota Shakeel. Sanjay is the son of Congress MP Sunil Dutt, himself a film artist of yore. These tapes were played by the prosecution before a special court, trying film financier Bharat Shah and three others in the underworld Bollywood nexus case. The tapes showed how Shakeel calls shots from Pakistan, and certain film personalities are more than willing to oblige the gang lord.

Transcriptions have it that Sanjay Dutt tells Chhota Shakeel that “Chikna” (Hrithik Roshan) had called up Karisma Kapoor and virtually threatened her. A sample of the conversation is as under: Sanjay Dutt complains to Shakeel about Hrithik: “Karisma ko phone karke bolta hai ke t***m**k*c**. Mere aadimi aake t*** m** c*** I* K* chale jayenge, B***** yeh kya hota hain Bhai.”

To which, Shakeel replies: “Bhai jyada din nahin hain” — meaning that Hrithik would not be around for long.

Shakeel’s remarks need to be examined in the context of the bad blood that developed between the Roshans and the Shakeel-Dawood gang, after Hrithik’s filmmaker-father Rakesh Roshan’s blockbuster “Kaho Na Pyaar Hai” appeared on the Indian scene in early 2000.

At places in the tape Sanjay Dutt complains to Shakeel about actor Govinda, saying, “Achcha Bhai, who Govinda bahut bada***hain Bhai.” That the latter comes for shooting late and he (Govinda) throws tantrums. To which, Shakeel says that he knows about Govinda’s character and assures Sanjay Dutt that he will set the matters right. However, the MCOCA (the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) court has rightly advised the media to observe selfrestraint while reporting on the case, in view of the fact that for admissibility of tape-recording evidence, certain parameters like continuous recording and non-editing with a view to giving a true picture have to be observed.

The tapes show that the underworld continues to flex its muscles, with a view to extracting as such as possible from the cash-rich personalities in the Bollywood. During the past few months, reportedly, at least 50 extortion calls have been made to the people in Bollywood, by using the names of gangsters like Dawood or Chhota Shakeel or Chhota Rajan. The Shakeel-Dawood gang, the Abu Salem gang and the Chhota Rajan splinter groups are the ones reportedly intimidating the Bollywood. Among the people facing the threat are filmmaker Rajeev Rai, actor Aamir Khan, actress Manisha Koirala, Manmohan Shetty and Rakesh Roshan. Despite the security arrangements, the most successful in Bollywood have reasons to dread the underworld.

This story of Chhota Shakeel and his famous phone dialogues with Bollywood bigwigs is two years old. It created a storm at that time and led to the arrest of Bharat Shah. It also showed the sordid world of film financing and highlighted how some of our best-known film personalities, were at the first name terms with mafia dons. It was a fervent wish of many, that this two-year-old exposure would lead to a massive clean-up and coordinated move by the Income Tax Department, the Enforcement Department, the Intelligence Bureau and the Mumbai police, and would show better results. One result of this was the passing of the tough Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act. A clean-up of the mafia, which consists of professional killers, who think nothing of bumping off those coming in their or their contacts way, appears to be a distant dream. The police has to operate within the laws and has to fight an uneven battle with gangsters who are not hamstrung by any law.

The Mumbai police had tapped only Shakeel’s mobile number, which he used from outside India, with a roaming facility. The police, without following the proper procedures, could not tap the phones of film stars, as it would be unlawful under the Telegraphic Act. If they had done so, it would not be admissible as evidence in court. The law requires that all telephone interceptions should be done with the knowledge and approval of the competent authority. The police has in its custody over 23 tapes, out of which 12 have been transcribed and submitted to the court as evidence. These tapes contain conversations recorded in the entire month of November 2000. This was done by the Mumbai police, as they had specific information that some Bollywood players were involved with the underworld dons.

A disturbing menace at present is the growth of criminal gangs, which have set up a parallel government and call the shots. It is just not possible to nail down the master brain, as ordinarily he is never on or near the scene of crime. He operates through his henchmen. The investigating officer is left with no option but to establish the guilt of the persons indirectly involved in the crime. The result is that the brain behind all gang activities cannot be nabbed. No legally sustainable evidence is available against the mafia dons, as most people play safe as long as any activity does not personally affect them. What comes to public knowledge about the activities of the mafia is only the tip of the iceberg. Only when there is a shoot-out in a public place, or some criminal gets killed in a gang war outside the courts or in a hotel or in his house, does public indignation find expression through the columns of newspapers. After some time, all such activities are forgotten, till the next incident. The police records show such incidents as an individual crime and not projected as the work of a gang.

Gang activities in our country have been ranging from settling property disputes to extortion or ransom or contract killings. Most often than not, only a verbal threat is enough to achieve the gangster’s objective. The result is that crores tumble out of income tax-evaded chests, which have been stashed away carefully. The gangs usually have a well-defined command structure. The easiest target of the gangs is a one-time operation for extorting money. It is indulged in with comparative immunity as the intended victim in most cases pays up on threats. He does not want to get involved, with the long drawn out legal procedures, as otherwise he and his family would become the victims of the wrath of mafia dons. Some gangs have controlling interests in Mumbai’s film industry as well. Not only do they dictate which hero should be given what role but also enforce their writ by threatening to eliminate the recalcitrant.

One solution, for dealing with the problem, is the penetration of gangs by intelligence sleuths. This can take weeks, months or even years, as first the confidence of the boss has to be earned. This is easier suggested than done, because some gangs make first entrants commit crimes in order to cement their loyalty. The victims and witnesses in most cases involving mafia dons, generally turn hostile at their first appearance in court. The menace is likely to grow and not come down, with consumerism raring its head. There is also need to change the laws where the onus that a person has no connection with the gangsters or crimes like kidnapping for ransom should lie on the accused.

Action should also be initiated for the dismissal of police officers who minimise the gang crimes like abduction to a missing person or get mixed up with gangs. Veerappan, a dacoit, had made the extortion from the states almost legal, where two state governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had vied with each as to who yields more ground to the criminal. It is also reported that Veerappan extorted over Rs 30 crore for releasing film actor Raj Kumar.

It is time to hit hard such gangsters and dacoits as hold society to ransom. The will to deal with the problem on the part of the government is the prerequisite. There are no easy solutions, but a sustained bureaucratic and political will is the sin qua non for dealing with this problem.

The writer, a retired IPS officer, is a former Director, CBI.

MIDDLE

An unbelievable transformation
Shiela Gujral

As soon as my daughter-in-law got down from the car she said in an excited voice: "Mama, we have brought some fruits for you from Moscow". When she handed over the fruit basket to the butler standing nearby, I could not believe it. Fruits from Moscow? All throughout our stay at Moscow for nearly five years there were no fruits available except rotten looking apples. Only for about a fortnight in summer months, we found water-melons with long queues around them. Even vegetables were scarce and except for potatoes, cabbage and sometimes carrots and onions, there was nothing available in the market. We could entertain vegetarian guests because my son sent us the choicest fruits and vegetables from Delhi. Thanks to Air India, we got our fresh supply of fruits and vegetables three times a month.

The Mission staff had experimented ordering fruits and vegetables from India a couple of years before we joined there, but due to lack of co-ordination, the scheme failed. When we reached there, officers' wives had to go at least twice a week in search of any fruit or vegetables available in "magazines". Fortunately, Indian families were confined to three buildings, so at least two or three ladies could manage to go together for shopping. Whenever they found some fresh fruits or vegetables in the market, one or two of them would keep on standing in the queue and the other would immediately go to the telephone counter to inform her friends about the tempting stuff available at the "magazine".

I remember once the horrid looking crushed bananas were available at one "magazine". A couple of officers' wives who located them there, bought baskets full of those bananas to share with friends. For the next fortnight there were celebrations of bananas pudding in at least half a dozen Indian homes!

Brinjals appeared in the market for 10 days in the year. Once when Swami Ranganathan visited Moscow for a week, he was, turn by turn, invited for discourse, followed by dinner, by all the officers. "Brinjal" was served as the most prestigious dish at every party. My husband's sister who also by chance, had come to visit Moscow, accompanied us at the first two dinners.

The maid insisted on serving them the most prestigious dish on both the occasions. Sick of brinjals they decided to stay at home for the next three evenings. Onions, though not in plenty, were generally available, almost throughout the year. Once there was a hue and cry in Indian circles because they completely vanished from the markets for a couple of months. Sheer chance! We got a 20-kg bag of onions and we could afford to share it with friends.

A small packet of green pepper was invariably in every deligate's briefcase when he came for an official visit from India. This was the most precious present for his colleagues!

We all planted some garlic in small wooden containers and kept them on the kitchen window facing the sun. The first green look and the aroma was enough to add zest to the food.

It seemed, indeed, a miracle that the same Moscow where we experienced all this nearly two decades ago, had such delicious large cherries, juicy and enormous sized red ripe tomatoes at the university fruit stall!

REALPOLITIK

Prisoners of pressure politics
P. Raman

Two decades back, Kutchch veteran Mahipatrai Mehta had contested the election on the issue of setting up a development board for the region.  It was when Indira Gandhi was striving hard to romp back to power.  The Congress swept the poll all right.  But Indira Gandhi declined to go by the promise. Similar has been the fate with Ratubhai Adani, who had promised to the electorate a development board for Saurashtra.  

In the case of Jambwantrao Dhote, the firebrand leader under whom Indira Gandhi had launched her bounceback during Janata Party rule, the original demand was for a separate Vidarbha state.  Later as a compromise he too had agreed to make it a development board. Indira Gandhi had rejected the demands from all the three trusted satraps on the ground that once accepted it will lead to similar outcries from everywhere.   Mehta quit the Congress. Others expressed anger. Yet the government did not yield.  

All this is to bring in to sharp contrast the functioning of the present weak establishment at the Centre which is under constant pressures from all those who could hoodwink it. The NDA government formed three new states carving out of Bihar, UP and Madhya Pradesh. The sole purpose was to appease certain influential sections within the coalition. Subsequent developments show that this itself has led to more parochial complications which no weak coalitions could firmly deal with.

Ajit Singh, Agriculture Minister, still insists on his Harit Pradesh comprising his Western UP areas. If he is able to muster the support of a dozen MPs, the government is bound to yield.  A week back TV channels showed arms — guns and what looked like mortars — training being given to hundreds of youths by a BJP legislator to admittedly force a separate Bundelkhand state. So far, the ruling party or the government has not come out with condemnation of the threats to use arms for such purposes.  

Anybody with some resources at command could scare the present establishment into submission. Everyone tries to dictate terms with the government, the impact depending on the extent of damage they could inflict. If you can mobilise bigger numerical strength to hurt the power centre, you can expect Fernandeses, Kulkarnis and Goyals running to you with offers of apologies and power packages. Jayalalithaa has Advani himself to apologise to her.  If you are not so lucky, suffer the humiliation like a Sharad Yadav.

Down south, the PMK, an NDA constituent, has threatened to launch agitation for forming a ‘Vanniyar Nadu’ consisting of a few districts of Tamil Nadu. These are the areas where the backward Vanniyars — PMK’s vote bank — are dominant. The demand has no other justification, economic, cultural or geographical. Jayalalithaa has strongly condemned the division of the state. She has appealed to the BJP to stop such moves, which she felt, were aimed at forming a greater Tamil Eelem in association with the banned LTTE.  

It is not that the ruling establishment in Delhi is unaware of the potential dangers from such anti-national movements.  Yet it has not so far condemned the PMK’s diabolic move. Apparently, they fear that an open rejection of the PMK proposal would also antagonise the MDMK, whose boss Vaiko has been in detention under POTA. Both these pro-LTTE parties have ministers at the Centre. It is such mindless compromises for the sake of power that has led to the erosion of federal spirit.  

Most of us have misinterpreted the Mamata episode as the ‘high command’ successfully demonstrating its firmness and the ‘Didi’ pleading for face-savers. This is only partial truth. The episode has only demonstrated the power of the bigger political bidder. The BJP government was not concerned with the efficiency of the Railways or the economic justification for adding seven more zones to the existing nine with all its clumsy size and additional staff requirement.

All practical functioning of the Railways is done at the divisional level. Hence adding more zones or shifting the existing ones to the favoured spots are entirely populist games aimed at safeguarding the vote banks of Samata or Mamata.  A strong government that has the integrity of the nation at heart instead of petty party politics, should have put the whole zone flabs in the cold storage.  The question for the BJP was who could do more harm to the government — Mamata or Nitish Kumar — and who could bring more numbers to the coalition in the Lok Sabha.  

The BJP has certainly more stake in Bihar than Mamata’s West Bengal and the ‘loss’ of  Nitish Kumar’s Samata Party will be more disastrous for it.  The state BJP itself needs Nitish’s support to put up a fairly good fight against Laloo Prasad Yadav.  Vajpayee has 10 ministers from Bihar.  Thus the ruling party has cynically colluded with a more powerful NDA partner to encourage narrow parochial feelings on both sides.  Instead of resisting attempts by its constituents to whip up inter-state hatred for partisan political gains, the government should have firmly spurned the whole divisive move.  

What we witness today is an erosion of the federal spirit and the revival of a cultivated parochialism to serve the narrow political ends of a few. The original separatist outfits like the DMK in early days had certain genuine apprehensions, however, unfounded they might have been. But gradually, political and economic realities of a developing world had convinced them of the benefits of a healthy federal system. Job and business opportunities accompanied by transport and communication growth and the need to be part of the entire India, broke all such old inhibitions. Even the Shiv Sena had to abandon its anti-outsider image.  

The emergence of successive opposition governments at the Centre had further given a fillip to the process of the evolution of healthy federalism.  Here we are faced with a paradoxical situation.  While the 1980s and 90s saw greater provincialisation of politics with strong regional parties emerging as pivotals in about three-fourths of the Indian states, they had hardly raised regional demands not to speak of separatism. The end of one-party hegemony and share of  power under the coalition governments made them more responsible.  Each one of them found it profitable to be part of an all-India front.  

The present retrograde trend is driven entirely by the NDA’s “support-in-exchange-of-power-share” policy. There is nothing else to bind the NDA constituents together.  Some allies use their support to the government to wrest more central funds and facilities.  Others like Trinamul repeatedly claim that certain ministries alone facilitate its home state’s interests.  Some ask for new states as a price for their support.  The coalition itself survives on such regular deals. The return of provincialism and regional demands becomes inevitable when petty political deals become an accepted tool of power. 

Women have better memory than men: study

Matrimonial lore says husbands never remember marital spats and wives never forget. A new study suggests a reason: Women’s brains are wired both to feel and to recall emotions more keenly than the brains of men.

A team of psychologists tested groups of women and men for their ability to recall or recognise highly evocative photographs three weeks after first seeing them and found that women’s recollections were 10 to 15 per cent more accurate.

The study, appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also used MRIs to image the subjects’ brains as they were exposed to the pictures. It found that the women’s neural responses to emotional scenes was much more active than the men’s.

Turhan Canli, an assistant professor of psychology at State University of New York Stony Brook, said the study shows that a woman’s brain is better organised to receive and remember emotions.

“The wiring of emotional experience and the coding of that experience into memory is much more tightly integrated in women than in men,” said Canli, the lead author of the study. “A larger percentage of the emotional stimuli used in the experiment were remembered by women than by men.”

Diane F Halpern, director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children and a professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College in California, said the study also supports earlier findings that women, in general, have a better autobiographical memory for anything, not just emotional events.

In the study, Canli and his colleagues individually tested the emotional memory of 12 women and 12 men using a set of pictures. Some of the pictures were ordinary, and others were designed to evoke strong emotions.

Each of the subjects viewed the pictures and graded them on a three-point scale ranging from “not emotionally intense” to “extremely emotionally intense”.

As the subjects viewed the pictures, images were taken of their brains using magnetic resonance imaging. This measures neural blood flow and can identify portions of the brain that are active.

Canli said women and men had distinctively different emotional responses to the same photos. For instance, the men would see a gun and call it neutral, but for women it would be “highly, highly negative” and evoke strong emotions.

All the test subjects returned to the lab three weeks later and were surprised to learn that they would now be asked to remember the pictures they had seen.

In a memory test tailored for each person, they were asked to pick out pictures that they earlier rated as “extremely emotionally intense”.

The pictures were mixed among 48 new pictures. Each image was displayed for less than three seconds. For pictures that were highly emotional, men recalled around 60 per cent and women were at about 75 per cent.

Canli said the study may help move science closer to finding a biological basis to explain why clinical depression is much more common in women than in men.

She said a risk factor for depression is rumination, or dwelling on a memory and reviewing it time after time. The study illuminates a possible biological basis for rumination. AP

TRENDS & POINTERS

Helping brain injury patients remember

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), often sustained in road accidents, is one of the most common causes of disability in young adults, who frequently complain of memory problems, but a new research has now found that people who suffer moderate to severe TBI can recover some of their memory using alternate brain networks.

The study was published in Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, led by scientist Brian Levine of the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

"The brain is a flexible organ that can compensate for damage by engaging new systems to perform the same memory tasks," says Dr. Levine. "A major goal of clinical research is to find new ways of enhancing the recovery process, both through behavioral techniques and with drugs. Brain imaging studies can help to track these changes and to understand why some patients make a good recovery and others do not." ANI

Hum your way out of sinusitis

A new study by Swedish scientists has revealed that humming increases sinus ventilation dramatically, raising the prospect that daily periods of humming could be helpful to prevent sinusitis in certain patients where bad ventilation is a part of the disease process.

The findings, which appeared in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, may also lead to a more accurate way to diagnose sinusitis. The illness has so far defied effective diagnosis and treatment.

One measure of how well the sinuses are ventilated is the amount of nitric oxide being expelled. When the sinuses are working properly, exhaled air contains a high concentration of nitric oxide. Less nitric oxide can indicate the presence of a problem, including asthma. Humming might end up as one of the easiest diagnostic tools available. ANI

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

People are differentiated according to the gunas

Seer and leader

Provider and server;

Each has the duty

Ordinated by his nature

Born of the gunas.

The seer’s duty,

Ordained by his nature,

Is to be tranquil

In mind and in spirit,

Self-controlled,

Austere and stainless,

Upright and forbearing; To follow

wisdom,

To know the Atman,

Firm of faith.

In truth that is Brahman.

The leader’s duty

Ordained by his nature,

Is to be bold,

Unflinching and fearless,

Subtle of skill

And open-handed,

Great-hearted in battle

A resolute ruler.

Others are born

To the tasks of providing;

These are the traders,

The cultivators,

The breeders of cattle.

To work for all men,

Such is the duty

Ordained for the servers:

This is their nature.

— The Bhagvad Gita

***

— Taittiriya Upanishad