P A G E
Sunday, October 25, 1998
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Sunday, October 25, 1998 |
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Brownian
motion
Spearheading
Congress party’s poll campaign |
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Countless
quacks
A
council campaign |
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Brownian motion in Janata Dal
IS there any theory explaining the dynamics of the eternally splitting, eternally merging Socialists? The answer doesn’t lie in the works of political theorists from Kautilya down, but in the observation of the Scottish naturalist Robert Brown. Looking through his rather primitive microscope, Brown observed minute particles coming together, colliding, and then veering off in opposite directions. There was no discernible pattern; it was an utterly random phenomenon that has come down in textbooks as Brownian motion. You can’t hope for a better description of proceedings in the Janata Dal. A Janata Dal man was the Prime Minister of India in January. Today, the party has been reduced to single figures in the Lok Sabha and it has only one state government under it. Any normal organisation faced with such a situation would have tried to strengthen that remaining citadel in Karnataka. But not the Janata Dal! For no discernible rhyme or reason, it indulges in ferocious civil war, ignoring the Assembly elections due in 1999. It is a textbook display of Brownian motion, random collisions that make no sense. However, the Janata Dal is merely following in the footsteps of various illustrious Socialists. There was the Congress Socialist Party of the pre-Independence era, a pressure group within the Indian National Congress. It didn’t achieve much, being famous chiefly for its incessant internal squabbles. The Congress Socialist Party broke off from the parent body after 1947 to form the Praja Socialist Party. The very name is symbolic of its muddled thinking: half Hindi and half English. True to form, it split in due course, giving birth to the plain Socialist Party. To return to Brownian motion, the discovery turned out to be of greater importance than Brown himself knew. It was the first direct proof of the atomic theory of matter. In 1905, Brownian motion was the subject of one of the three great papers delivered by Einstein which became the foundation-stones of twentieth-century physics. Not bad for something first noticed by an obscure naturalist! In 1977 the Socialist Party too got a shot at greater glory than ever before. It helped found the Janata Party to challenge the ghastly Emergency. But the Janata Party had inherited the family curse. Fittingly, one of the Socialist contingent, Madhu Limaye, bore a fair share of the blame for the split in the Janata Party two years later. But the dynamics of Brownian motion brought the Janata Party back into touch with others. It formed the core of the Janata Dal, a group created to fight under VP Singh. (One small chunk refused to join up, still retaining the original title under the leadership of Subramaniam Swamy.) In 1989, VP Singh became Prime Minister and the Janata Dal was in business. Predictably, the Janata Dal split eleven months later. Today, it is frankly too complicated to enumerate the components of what was once India’s ruling party — the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Biju Janata Dal, the Samata Party, the Haryana Lok Dal, Chandra Shekhar’s one-man outfit, Ajit Singh’s solo... And recent events in Karnataka indicate that the Janata Dal is fast descending from the molecular to the atomic level! Incidentally, the result of Einstein’s calculations was a formula giving the average distance that should be covered by a particle in the course of its wanderings over a given time. But even he might have boggled at predicting an HD Deve Gowda’s peregrinations — losing an Assembly seat one day, becoming Prime Minister the next, and then returning to state politics. I am not criticising that
if it happens incidentally. After all, Rajaji agreed to
become Chief Minister of Madras after serving as
Governor-general of India. So nobody should object to
Deve Gowda becoming the top man in Bangalore once more
— it won’t be long before Brownian motion
knocks him off his perch again anyway! |
Countless quacks spreading TB NEW DELHI: Chest specialists say the Union Capital’s 30,000 quacks are mainly responsible for the recent rapid spread of the deadly multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) which is a virtual death sentence on victims, reports UNI. According to Dr Rajesh Chawla, a well-known chest specialist and current President of the Delhi Medical Association (DMA), quacks cannot be expected to know the scientific basis for the new Directly Observed Treatment — Short Course (DOTS) therapy. Dr Chawla and the DMA have been spearheading an agitation to get the Delhi Government to ban quacks but with little success beyond the tabling of the Delhi Anti-quackery Bill on the last day of the final session of the Assembly. “The problem is much more than the ethical practice of medicine. There is a serious danger posed to society by the indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics by quacks and it is for the government to act,” says Dr Chawla. According to him even many qualified doctors are unaware of the new World Health Organisation (WHO) — approved DOTS which requires close monitoring of TB patients for up to eight months while they take a cocktail of four to five powerful anti-TB drugs every alternate day. Other TB specialists like Dr SM Govil of the Ryder Cheshire Foundation, which has a major anti-TB programme running in the Capital and five other states, say much of the problem comes from that fact that anti-TB drugs are freely available at chemist shops. “Anti-TB drugs must never be sold except on the prescription of a specialist and it is time that the public is made aware of the dangers”, says Dr Govil. One of the dangers, Dr Govil says, is that an MDRTB patient can infect someone with resistant strains who then has to be given appropriate treatment after testing the cultured strains for drug sensitivity. According to a primary study conducted by the WHO, up to 14 per cent of the estimated 14 million TB patients in India would be suffering from the drug-resistant variety and many of them could be spreading it further. Other estimates place the MDRTB percentage higher. At the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) up to 70 per cent of the TB patients reporting for treatment have the drug-resistant variety. Few patients can be getting adequate treatment because of lack of drugs, doctors and basic facilities at many of the Primary Health Centres. A case in point is the sprawling Jhandewalan slums in Central Delhi where half of the 35,000-odd dwellers are estimated to be suffering from TB. According to Dr Shalu Puri, a chest specialist working until recently with the non-governmental organisation (NGO) “Street Survivors,” many of the victims are suffering from MDRTB and entire families have been wiped out because of indifferent treatment. Although public health centres often turn patients away without giving them the right complement of medicines, there is no dearth of anti-TB drugs at the clinic run by a quack in Jhandewalan. Residents of Jhandewalan say it is common knowledge that drugs meant for free supply through the Government-run PHC regularly find their way to the quacks. In fact, there is a flourishing black market in anti-TB drugs. One of the reasons why drug delivery for TB patients needs to be supervised by, medical personnel is the tendency among poor patients not to swallow their pills but sell them to quacks. While India is committed to introducing DOTS across the country in phases under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), there are fears that because of the black marketeering it would go the same way as the National Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) begun as far back as 1962. (It failed miserably). According to Dr G.R. Khatri, Additional Director-General of Health Services in charge of tuberculosis control, implementing DOTS would require huge inputs in terms of manpower and infrastructure which means it cannot be implemented in a hurry. But a 200-million-dollar loan from the World Bank and the involvements of non-governmental organisations like the Ryder Cheshire Foundation are expected to make a difference. The WHO is closely watching the progress of the DOTS strategy in India because a third of the world’s TB patients live in India with more than 1,000 people dying of it every day in the country. India, because of its indifferent approach to TB, including the involvement of quacks in its treatment, is turning into a giant incubator for MDRTB which poses a global threat, say WHO officials. The only way to prevent MDRTB is to catch fresh TB cases and treat them with a knockout cocktail of four drugs — Rifampicin, Isoniazid, Pyrazinamide and Ethambutol. Sometimes, injections of Streptomycin are also called for. According to Dr Chawla there is already 30 per cent resistance among patients to Isoniazid but luckily it still has value in the combination therapy. Treatment should never be started unless the doctor can be sure that he can see his patient through the full-course, Dr Govil says, because of the danger of MDRTB developing. Quacks often withdraw drugs prematurely when symptoms cease without caring for MDRTB. Often they have a vested interest in keeping patients hooked to drugs for longer periods. “DOTS requires uninterrupted drug delivery to the patient without which there are high chances of drug-resistant strains developing in the lungs. Once this happens, there is “little chance of survival”. The doctor says that he has never seen anyone surviving MDRTB. Even in the West where
serious efforts are made to cure MDRTB cases costs are
unaffordable for most patients and can go beyond Rs 5
lakh. |
Spearheading Congress party’s poll campaign
SHEILA DIKSHIT may legitimately claim to be a daughter of Delhi but she is also daughter-in-law of the city of fragrance, Kannauj, a sleepy little town in Uttar Pradesh. Kannauj is globally renowned for producing perfumes or, as they call it in the local language, “itar” by indigenous techniques. The “itar” was used by maharajas, rajas and nawabs in olden days and the viceroys and the governors and their “memsahibs” admired its aroma during the British raj. The famous Kannauj “itar” was said to be much superior to the perfumes of Paris and its scent lasted much longer. The Congress party’s unannounced chief ministerial candidate, Sheilaji, as she is popularly known, rarely uses perfumes; certainly not the Kannauj “itar”. She is, however, sure to become the Chief Minister if her party ousts the BJP in next month’s Assembly elections. Her rival, the youthful Chief Minister of Delhi, Sushma Swaraj, is 15 years younger to her. Though originally belonging to Haryana, Sushma too is now a full-fledged Delhiite. Sheilaji was born in Punjab and her ancestors hailed from Kapurthala. Sheila Dikshit’s father-in-law, the illustrious Uma Shankar Dikshit, hailed from Kannauj and has an ancestral house there. Though Sheilaji never lived in Kannauj, the people of the constituency elected their “daughter-in-law” to the Lok Sabha in the 1984 elections. Uma Shankar Dikshit was a confidant of the Nehru family and a trusted lieutenant and political manager of the late Indira Gandhi. A bright, dashing and charming Delhi girl having been educated in Jesus and Mary School and Miranda House, she married Dikshitji’s only son, Vinod Dikshit, an IAS officer of the UP cadre, and became “bahu” of an orthodox Brahmin family. Sheilaji was born in Kapurthala in 1938 but her parents subsequently moved to Delhi and settled down at Neelkatra locality in Chandni Chowk. Her’s was not a political family but the course of Sheilaji’s life changed in her new home where politics was talked about all the time, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Groups of Congressmen thronged Dikshitji’s house both in Lucknow and Delhi and she managed the Dikshit’s household very efficiently, looking after the visitors, guests and top leaders. This was her first exposure to politics and Sheilaji, sharp as she is, learnt her lessons well. The great split in the Congress in 1969 was perhaps, the biggest challenge of Mrs Gandhi’s political career. She relied on only a handful of her supporters for advice and strategy formulation and Dikshitji was one of them. His schedule became hectic and busy and he needed a reliable secretary to help him. Having known everybody who mattered in politics by then Sheilaji was the right person to assist her father-in-law. Sheilaji managed his affairs very well and Dikshitji was heard many times telling middle-rung Congress leaders to “talk to Sheilaji”. She listened to their problems with patience and sympathy and conveyed them faithfully to her father-in-law and often provided solutions too. Her grooming in politics has been long, gruelling and perfect and even Indira Gandhi was impressed by her dash and nominated her a member of the Indian delegation to the UN Commission on Status of Woman. Sheilaji had a miraculous escape when militancy was at its height in Punjab in September, 1985. Accompanied by Mahendra Prasad, MP from Bihar, popularly known as “King Mahendra”, she was driving to Amritsar after addressing an election meeting at Batala. She wanted to drive non-stop to Amritsar but King Mahendra and others in the car insisted that they must halt somewhere for lunch. Sheilaji broke her journey and proceeded to a wayside hotel. The moment they sat down and ordered cold drinks, there was a loud explosion. The Toyota car belonging to King Mahendra blew up in flames. Someone had planted a time bomb underneath the car. Sheilaji and the other occupants of the car escaped death by a few minutes. King Mahendra still preserves the mangled car as a reminder of the dark days of militancy in Punjab. Soon after Rajiv Gandhi inducted Sheilaji in his government and within months she was moved to the PMO as Minister of State entrusted with the task of political management. With years of experience, having worked with her father-in-law, she did the job exceedingly well and became an influential Minister. The biggest tragedy of Sheilaji’s life occurred when her husband died suddenly following a massive heart attack while travelling from Kanpur to Delhi and emergency medical aid could not be given to him. She was shaken but took the irreparable loss with great courage. Vinod was only 49 and left behind two children; a son and a daughter. Matured over the years in politics and now spearheading the Congress party’s poll campaign in Delhi, Sheilaji weighs every word before speaking and every sentence has a meaning. She says times have changed vastly since the Lok Sabha elections early this year. “People have seen
five years of the BJP rule in Delhi and eight months of
the Vajpayee Government at the Centre. Just compare it
with the Congress rule of any period and the answer will
be loud and clear”, she says. |
A council campaign L DUNI CHAND of Ambala and . Swami Ramanand of Simla will start on a council campaign soon and observe the following programme. They will utilise their time in organising Swarajya Sabhas holding informal meetings with a view to exchanging views and addressing public meetings wherever necessary. It is earnestly requested that those who support the Swarajya Party programme will try their best to make their tour successful in every way. Both gentlemen will represent the Swarajya Party. Programme of L Duni Chand:- Panipat, Delhi, Rohtak,
Riwari, Bhiwani, Hansi, Hisar, Sirsa, Ferozepore, Kasur
and Lahore. |
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