The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Demand for Telangana
Time to settle it one way or the other

Even as Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhara Rao’s fast-unto-death entered the 11th day on Wednesday, the movement for a separate Telangana state has intensified in Andhra Pradesh. The state is on high security alert and if students and pro-Telangana activists go ahead with their programme to storm the State Assembly in Hyderabad on Thursday, the situation could go out of control. It would, therefore, be prudent for Mr Rao to heed the appeal of Parliament and the state government and call off his fast immediately. Violence has been reported from many parts of Telangana. Hyderabad itself witnessed clashes after the police arrested several students and teachers of Osmania University to quell protests. The state government received a jolt on Wednesday after the Andhra Pradesh High Court directed it to re-open all schools, colleges and hostels in the state which were closed for a fortnight by the government as a precautionary measure.

Unfortunately, the issue of a separate Telangana state has been hanging fire for years as successive governments at the Centre and in the state have been dithering over it. The region, with 119 out of 294 seats in the State Assembly, has long been neglected. Indeed, lack of development of this region is the root cause of the problem. The Congress fought the 2004 elections jointly with the TRS, promising separate statehood. However, as the Congress backtracked, the TRS parted ways with it. Late chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was strongly opposed to Telangana. For, he felt that it would further trigger the demand for a separate Rayalaseema state, leading to the trifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.

Moreover, opinion is sharply divided over Hyderabad that falls in Telangana. As many people from the state’s other two regions — coastal and Rayalaseema — are settled here, they are opposed to the state’s bifurcation. Some are even demanding Union Territory status for Hyderabad for safeguarding their interests. The Centre has a tricky issue on hand. While taking a final call on Telangana, it would do well to take the TRS and all other parties into confidence and expeditiously resolve the issue one way or the other.

Genome breakthrough
It can lead to immense medical benefits

The human genetic map is a veritable “book of life” whose 3.1 billion base pairs together describe virtually every function in the human body. For instance, it can predict how a certain person may get a certain disease. It will tell who will get a common bipolar disease and who will get a single nuclear polymorphism. It can also throw light on why certain drugs don’t affect certain people and what are the chances of a particular disease affecting a population. In sum, this information can lead to low-cost health care and predictive medicine for the masses. As such, the success of a team of Indian scientists of the CSIR in decoding the genome sequence of a 52-year-old Indian is a signal achievement.

What is all the more laudable is that while the first human genome sequence was mapped in 2003 in the project undertaken by several countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Korea and China in 13 years, the Indian scientists have done so in only 45 days using newer technologies – with two years of background work. More important, while the first effort cost billions of dollars, the achievement of the young scientists of Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), led by Dr S Sridhar and IGIB PhD student Vinod Scaria, both in their mid-thirties, has cost only $30,000 (Rs 1.4 lakh approximately).

Even this much amount may be prohibitive for sequencing one man’s genes, but the cost is likely to come down substantially in say five years from now. Then genome sequencing can become a fairly common diagnostic tool, with the help of which doctors will be able to predict what drug will be useful for a particular patient. As time progresses, the “book of life” may reveal many more secrets. The Indian scientists have thus opened new doors of biomedical research, gene technology and health care.

Thought for the Day

The thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. — John Henry Newman

ARTICLE

Balance of power in Asia
India gets realistic on China
by G. Parthasarathy

The visit of Dr Manmohan Singh to Washington signalled a new and more realistic approach to India’s relations with China. For decades, our leaders and diplomats have been defensive, apologetic and even obsequious when speaking about China and our relations with our northern neighbour. China, in turn, has never hesitated to speak disparagingly about India in the capitals its leaders visit.

Moreover, apart from transferring nuclear weapons technology and arming Pakistan to the teeth, China has continuously encouraged anti-Indian sentiments in South Asia and spared no effort to undermine our “Look East” policy by seeking to exclude India from the emerging economic and security architecture of East and South-East Asia. New Delhi has remained tongue-tied even on the Chinese behaviour of violating its international commitments by its nuclear weapons and missile proliferation to its “all-weather” friend, Pakistan.

Starting with the visit of the Dalai Lama to Tawang, India has signalled that it will not countenance China’s outrageous territorial claims on Arunachal Pradesh, its absurd practice of issuing a separate category of visas for residents of Jammu and Kashmir and its attempts to block multilateral development assistance for projects in Arunachal. India has, for the first time, objected to China’s aid projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir even as it sits in illegal occupation of Indian territory in the state. India has also rejected the notion that China can send thousands of unskilled workers to implement the projects for which it has been awarded contracts in India, misusing the provision of “business visas,” which India liberally issues. Most significantly, for the first time, Defence Minister A.K. Anthony has publicly expressed concern about the growing security ties between China and Pakistan.

Dr Manmohan Singh has a reputation of being restrained and understated in his comments on all issues. But one did see a new resolve and a new facet to his diplomacy during his visit to Washington. New Delhi has realised that in Mr Barack Obama the United States has a President who appears unsure of the intrinsic strengths and resilience of the country he leads. He is also unsure about whether the US can surmount its current economic difficulties.

The Obama Administration has tended to be deferential in its approach to China, leading the Middle Kingdom to assume a new assertiveness in its relations with the outside world. This was apparent after President Obama sent an emissary to tell the Dalai Lama that he would be unable to receive the Tibetan spiritual leader prior to his visit to Beijing. Evidently, emboldened by the Obama Administration’s approach, China’s has manifested increasing assertiveness on issues of its maritime and land boundaries with countries like Japan, Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. China has become aggressive in excluding India and the US from the emerging architecture of cooperation in East and South-East Asia. It has even sought to undermine international confidence in the US dollar by instigating oil-producing countries to delink oil prices from the dollar.

In his very first interaction in Washington, Dr Manmohan Singh made it clear that he did not share the prevailing pessimism about the future of the US economy. And affirming his confidence in the US resilience of the economy, he added: “As far as I can see right now, there is no substitute for the dollar” while describing the US economic downturn as a “temporary setback”. But it was at the Centre for Foreign Relations in Washington that the Prime Minister really gave vent to his feelings. Responding to questions about China’s “superior” economic performance compared to that of India, Dr Manmohan Singh retorted: “I have no doubt that China’s growth performance is superior to India’s performance. But I have always believed that there are other values which are more important than the growth of the GDP. I think respect for the rule of law, respect for multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious rights are important values also”.

In effect, the American audience was told that the absence of democratic freedoms and the inability to respect the sentiments of non-Han minorities like the Buddhist Tibetans and Muslim Uyghur’s in Xingjiang were not worthy of a country with pretensions of being an emerging super power. The apparent modesty about India’s economic performance was subtly combined with references to India’s high rates of savings and investment and the reminder that, despite the bleak global scenario, India had grown by 6.7 per cent last year.

In a perceptive analysis about the growing misgivings on the Obama Administration’s policies in India, the Heritage Foundation’s leading scholar on South Asia Lisa Curtis noted: “Backsliding on India-US relations are fed by a perception that the Obama Administration seeks a conciliatory policy towards China that facilitates its growing influence throughout the Asia-Pacific, including India’s traditional sphere of influence in South Asia.” Curtis speaks about justifiable concerns in India that Obama is “more interested in placating China than managing the balance of power in Asia”.

That Dr Manmohan Singh had concerns about the US conceding the role of a regional hegemon in Asia to China was evident from his account of his discussions in the White House, when he confirmed that his talks with President Obama not only covered traditional issues like high technology transfers, cooperation in space and nuclear power, terrorism and the “Af-Pak” region but also “covered the need to have an open and inclusive architecture in the Asia-Pacific region”.

It remains to be seen what impact Dr Manmohan Singh’s candid observations will have on the emerging American policies in India’s extended neighbourhood. While US security experts like Bruce Reidel have been cautioning of the disastrous consequences for the US and the civilised world if the Taliban triumphs in Afghanistan, much will depend on how firmly and dextrously President Obama handles the Af-Pak challenge.

Ill-advised American efforts to talk to the Taliban using Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (long-standing supporters of the Taliban) as intermediaries have been contemptuously spurned by Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Similarly, having encouraged Chinese ambitions and bloated Chinese egos, will the Obama Administration be able to fashion policies that promote a stable, equitable and viable balance of power in Asia and the Asia-Pacific?

New Delhi, in turn, has to carry forward its more assertive and long-overdue policies on China. While it is imperative for India to avoid jingoistic or provocative rhetoric, there should be no hesitation in exposing China’s continuing nuclear and missile proliferation activities in relation to Pakistan and its efforts to contain India across the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean Region while making it clear that Indian territory is not negotiable.

MIDDLE

The doctor’s dilemma
by Harish Dhillon

Almost a lifetime ago, I studied Shaw’s “The Doctors Dilemma.” For those not familiar with the play the story is about a doctor who discovers a cure for tuberculoses.

The medicine he has, can stretch to include just one more person. He has to choose between a mediocre doctor, who has spent a lifetime bringing comfort and hope to countless patients and a brilliant artist who, though he paints masterpieces that uplift the spirit, is an obnoxious human being. The doctor finally chooses sheer goodness over sheer brilliance.

All through the years I had felt that the doctor had made a terrible mistake in choosing mediocrity. Then two incidents happened which made me reconsider.

A very highly decorated, retired, legendary General came to visit me. He was spending a holiday in Kasauli and had expressed a wish to visit the school. I told the Liaison Officer I would be very happy to host him from 6 p.m. onwards because our house matches finished at 5.30 p.m. Imagine my shock and dismay when I reached home at 5.45 p.m. and found that the General had been there since 5 p.m. I introduced myself but there was no response from him. I had invited the senior staff to meet him but he went through the introductions with a resolute indifference. He refused to eat or drink anything. At exactly 6.00 p.m. he announced:“Since the Headmaster has no time for me, I’ll make a move.”

When I pointed out that I was the Headmaster, he admonished me: “Well, Headmaster, if you want to get on in life you must be sure to be at home when a person of my calibre comes to meet you.”

In vain I attempted to point out that I had in fact been 15 minutes early for our appointment. He just ignored me and stomped out of the house.

The second was a famous TV and radio journalist, who too had become a legend in her lifetime. The teacher in charge of debates’ had succeeded in persuading her to come and judge one of our debates. She was put up in the school guest house which was in the same building as the Headmasters’ House.

The two senior staff members who were in charge of the guest house had taken the trouble to find out that she liked non-vegetarian snacks with her tea and chicken samosas had been special procured from Chandigarh. She took one bite and spat it out into her quarter plate. “Don’t you know that I eat only mutton!” she said angrily and while I apologised she stormed off to her room.

But my relief at her departure was short-lived because, she reappeared shortly afterwards holding a lilac coloured towel in her hand. “Didn’t anyone tell you that I only use royal blue towels?”

I have now come around to endorsing the doctor’s choice – give me the mediocre, good, general practitioner any day. I’d rather have his goodness and kindness than all the brilliance in the world.

OPED

Heads they win, tails we lose
by Amar Chandel

As a child, one remembers seeing a comic act by two circus jokers. One would tell the other: “Now let’s settle this through a fight. When I say ‘start’, we start; when I say ‘stop’, we stop”. The gullible one agrees. The first one starts beating him with his slapstick and when the second is about to hit back, the first says: “Stop”.

Something similar is done by the West to the developing world almost every day. Take the latest controversy over the carbon emissions and global warming. The West had been spewing carbon like nobody’s business for over two centuries. When India, China and other developing countries reached the stage where they needed to fire their industry and to feed their billions, it has become a sin.

Such scare stories are put out as if the very future of mankind is at stake. The media bombardment is so saturated that voices which say that the fear is greatly exaggerated – as by V K Raina, a former Director-General of the Geological Survey of India, who insists that there was no retreat in 2009 of Himalayan glaciers and no “ alarming” decline even otherwise – are drowned out in the din.

And now that graphic details of how British and US scientists tried to fudge data to hype the threat ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference have hit the fan in what has come to be known as “Climategate”, the tainted scientists, instead of being embarrassed, are trying to blame those who leaked out those scandalous e-mails.

The act of illegally hacking into the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the UK, and subsequently publishing 1079 emails and 72 documents on the Internet may be reprehensible but the fact remains that the scientists did manipulate the data evidence.

The scandal is indeed the “greatest in modern science”. In one email the CRU’s director, Phil Jones, writing to Michael Mann, discussed two scientific papers that deny the link between human activity and global warming. He promptly blacked them out. Research which talked of a similar warming in medieval times was also hidden under the carpet.

That is why Britain’s Viscount Monckton, a leading climate sceptic, has denounced the CRU and its partners as “not merely bad scientists – they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and US taxpayers”.

More than the concern for the environment, the whole hullabaloo is aimed at maintaining their own supremacy. Senior US Senator Dick Durbin (Illinois) gave the game away when he said: “If we put our head in the sand, we are going to find countries like China leapfrogging us, moving forward. That’s going to create jobs for China, but not for us”.

Anything which can see the developing countries zoom ahead has to be squashed by hook or crook.

All this is one of a piece with numerous other incidents in the past. Take atomic tests for example. They are kosher as long as they are undertaken by the West. The moment they are used by anybody outside the charmed circle, like India for example, even if the purpose is peaceful, they become a threat to humanity. India has an impeccable record of non-proliferation, but it still remains a pariah while Pakistan, despite all its shenanigans, continues to be the blue-eyed boy.

And pray which is the only country to have actually used atomic bombs? Yet, the US pot has the right to call the Indian kettle black!

The message is simple: a crime is a crime only when it is committed by an “outsider”.

This fetish at times goes to ridiculous lengths. The then US President George W. Bush had said last year that increased prosperity in India was pushing demand that was leading to higher prices globally. Participating in an interactive session in Missouri in May 2008, he held forth: “It (prosperity) also, however, increases demand. So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India …classified as middle class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the prices to go up”.

So, the poor Indians were demonized even for getting proper nutrition!

Bush being what he was, could be excused for his “Bushisms”. But even his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also on the same wavelength: “Apparent improvement in the diets of Indians and Chinese, and consequent food caps, had contributed to the current global food crisis”.

Such being the mindset, cut and dried wisdom handed out by the West to us has to be taken with more than a pinch of salt.

Even the avowed concern for the exploitation of child labour in the developing countries has an economic angle to it. Many of these countries are in such dire financial straits that the choice before many boys and girls is to either work for a pittance or to go hungry. While it sounds very noble to ensure that they should not be working at all below a certain age, nobody explains how they will fill their bellies.

And who left developing countries in such a mess? In the case of India and many other Asian countries it was the wanton exploitation by western masters which pauperized them.

During the World War, thousands of boys eight to 10 year olds were employed in Britain and the US to carry telegrams and do other menial jobs. That was not exploitation. But those were exceptional times, they say. What they totally ignore is that children in Asian countries work only because of a similar emergency. If they don’t, they will die of hunger. The choice is that stark.

Yet, it is the West’s birthright to give us sermons on human values and exploitation!

Now this is Obama’s war
by Rupert Cornwell

Be careful what you wish for. Barack Obama wanted the American presidency, and with a brilliant campaign he won it. As late as early this summer, disbelief could still be suspended. Cartoonists were still depicting him as Superman, leaping over every problem mere mortals might put in his way. But he too has now been exposed as a mere mortal. He's not soaring over problems. Rather, he may be crushed by them.

"America – we are passing through a time of great trial," he told the assembled cadets at West Point as he presented his new strategy for Afghanistan, and never was a truer word spoken. His country is struggling to cope with unprecedented deficits and debt, stretching as far as the eye can see.

Iran grows more truculent by the day. His signature issue of healthcare could well die a slow death in the Senate. We knew the chalice he inherited was poisoned. We just didn't realise quite how venomous was the brew inside. And then there's Afghanistan.

Watching Obama make the most important speech of his presidency on Tuesday was a profoundly depressing experience – and not just because the man who will receive the Nobel Peace Prize this week is plunging deeper into war.

Yes, the address was deftly calibrated. The generals have got most of what they want; if Nato chips in as promised, General Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 men will roughly be met. Liberals, and not only liberals, in his own party can be consoled at the prospect of a withdrawal starting in mid-2011, just when Obama's re-election campaign will get going in earnest.

But it's virtually impossible to believe this timetable. The goal is to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" al-Q'aida, and to break the momentum of the Taliban. That however is a huge gamble, however intense the pressure on the Karzai government and however skilful the suborning of tribal leaders. Can either the central or local Afghan authorities really start taking over from the US within 18 months, even if the extra troops put the Taliban on the back foot?

And then there's the even huger gamble of Pakistan, without which a durable success in Afghanistan is impossible – but whose size, nuclear weaponry and instability make it even less susceptible to American influence.

Yet he failed to convince that this rolling of the dice was worth it. Watching and listening to Obama, you felt this was a commander-in-chief whose heart (and stomach) were not in this war, but whose head, guided by political realities, had convinced him he must continue. You can't blame him for that: politicians who ignore political realities have a very short shelf-life. But in a deeper sense, that's why the spectacle was so sad.

Right-wing commentators in Washington have been praising Obama for his "courage" in deciding to escalate an unpopular war. They point out how in late 2006, when his presidency was at a far lower ebb than Obama's is now, President George W Bush ordered his surge in Iraq, in the teeth of fierce opposition, including from within his own party. And it is true that the surge has at minimum allowed the US to start the withdrawal now under way (though whether it has brought real stability to Iraq is quite another matter).

That is the most Obama can hope for in Afghanistan. But real courage this time would have been to declare, if not a withdrawal, at least that no more troops would be sent. Despite his despatch of more soldiers earlier this year, a window was still open to reverse course. Afghanistan until Tuesday night was still Bush's war. No longer.

A direct no to the generals, or a massive boost in troops, would both have made more sense in military terms. Instead, Obama presented a plan that split the difference. The immediate reaction has been relatively favourable. Remarkably, according to a new Gallup poll, 51 per cent of Americans support the new strategy.

But that surely reflects the lingering popularity of Obama the man, rather than any new embrace of a war of which the country is heartily fed up, and about whose outcome it remains pessimistic.

And this fragile approval may well evaporate when the Afghan war season returns in the spring, when a larger American force starts to sustain larger casualties. What then? What happens if this surge produces no measurable results? Come 2011, it is far more likely he'll be announcing a delay in withdrawal's start, or even be facing demands from his generals for even more men "to finish the job."

George Orwell once observed that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it – but losing a war is also the quickest way to lose a presidency, too. That reasoning prevailed with LBJ, though Vietnam forced him out of the White House regardless. For Obama, the stakes are as high now.

An open-ended commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan was out, he said at West Point, "because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own." Obama's quest is for a fairer society, offering health care for all and an end to financial excesses,, and an America whose future has not been hopelessly mortgaged to pay for the feckless present.

The great promise of this presidency was that it would usher in a new way of doing politics. It would, as they say, break the mould. But the Afghan speech, so full of politics as usual, gave the lie to that. We all should be careful what we wish for.n

— By arrangement with The Independent

Discovery on HIV testing may save a million lives
by Jeremy Laurance

Scientists have made a major advance in understanding the treatment of HIV which could see life-saving drugs extended to more than one million extra people at no additional cost. Researchers have discovered that routine laboratory testing of blood for signs of side-effects – long regarded as essential for HIV treatment – is unnecessary and a waste of time and money.

By abandoning routine laboratory testing, which is costly and requires sophisticated equipment only available in hospitals, the money saved could be used to buy and distribute extra anti-retroviral drugs.

In addition, removing the need for laboratory testing means treatment can be delivered in rural areas of Africa where two thirds of the continent's population live. At present one of the major bars to receiving treatment for many of those infected is that they live too far from the nearest hospital to be able to attend for testing.

Professor Diana Gibb, joint leader of the study, the largest ever conducted of anti-retroviral therapy in Africa, said: "At present there are 4 million people worldwide on treatment and 5 million who need treatment but aren't getting it. Our results show you could treat a third more than are currently being treated for the same cost. That is at least a million extra people."

Professor Gibb, of the UK Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit in London which funded the study, said: "These are very safe drugs. You don't need regular monitoring for side-effects. You don't need medically qualified people to deliver the pills. This is not just about money – it is about getting the treatment to where it is needed. Many people have to trek long distances to get their drugs instead of the drugs coming to them. But you can train healthcare workers to deliver the anti-retroviral pills to where people live."

The six-year trial involved 3,300 patients in Uganda and Zimbabwe given the standard HIV cocktail of three drugs contained in a single pill taken twice a day. One group had blood tests every three months and the results given to their doctor to check for drug side-effects and their CD4 cell count (to tell how well the drugs were working against the HIV). The other group had the same tests but the results were not given to their doctor unless they were seriously abnormal.

After five years 90 per cent were still alive in the first group compared to 87 per cent in the second group. The regular blood testing and medical checks made only 3 percentage points difference to the survival rate. The results are published today in The Lancet.

World Health Organisation guidelines say that treatment with anti-retroviral drugs should ideally be monitored with regular blood tests because that is what happens in the developed world. But they also say that where laboratory monitoring is not possible, giving treatment should be the priority.

In practice, countries have varied in their approach. In Malawi, treatment has been rolled out largely in the absence of laboratory testing while in South Africa leading scientists have refused to countenance it without testing.

Professor Gibb said, "In a time of economic crisis we need to get our priorities right. There are 5 million people who still need treatment."

— By arrangement with The Independent