P A G E
Wednesday, October 20, 1999
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Wednesday, October 20, 1999 |
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Haryana
hits wrong road
MANAGING
MANIFOLD PROBLEMS |
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When
the drive to be thin thins out
Slogan-mongering
October 20, 1924 |
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Haryana hits wrong road PUNJAB and Haryana are set to take opposite roads on so important an issue as electricity tariff to the farm sector. In the grip of a first-rate financial crisis, Punjab is seriously thinking of rolling back power sector populism. That should hopefully herald a thorough restructuring of the system. Haryana, perhaps eyeing an early midterm election to the Legislative Assembly, has decided to stall the tentative reforms introduced by the Bansi Lal government. This step will not only hit revenue but also derail the plans for augmenting generation of electricity so as to partly wipe out the present 25 per cent shortfall in availability. A newspaper report says the Chautala government is against increasing the tariff for agriculture by 25 paise a unit — from 50 paise to 75 paise. It is a commitment the state made to the World Bank while seeking a massive loan to modernise the HSEB. The increase ought to have been in place in January last but the beleaguered government postponed the evil day and then election intervened. If the present government breaks the contract, a promised $600 million loan will dry up and subsidy will shoot up to Rs 750 crore. The intended hike would have brought in about Rs 250 crore; there is no other way to reduce subsidy as the industry already pays Rs 4 a unit, one of the highest rates in the country. Reneging on World Bank commitment will influence other international financial agencies to turn off their aid taps. There is a wrong
assumption behind the 1997 largesse by Punjab and the
reported decision by Haryana. The political masters, in
both states with strong and live rural roots, assume that
kisans want everything free. This is scandalous, apart
from being illogical. They want quality inputs and
remunerative prices; they want nothing more and nothing
less. As it is, the difference between the generation and
administrative costs and the tariff collection of the
state electricity boards is broadly treated as subsidy to
the rural areas. Hidden in this simplistic calculation is
the “salary” subsidy thanks to overstaffing,
“inefficiency” subsidy for low plant load
factor and frequent breakdowns, “theft” subsidy
to industry and commercial units and “leakage”
subsidy by way very high transmission loss. As farmers
have repeatedly complained, power comes their way when
there is no demand from the urban areas — that is,
at the dead of night. Whenever demand shoots up in towns
and cities or if there is a sharp drop in generation, the
supply to rural areas and slums is cut off. Not long ago,
Haryana villages used to go without power after 9 pm,
when a primetime soap ended. Kisans are not a parasitic
class and that distinction, to go purely by popular
perception, goes to the political class. Charge a
reasonable rate, considering that they use electricity at
a time when otherwise the power boards have to switch off
generation. But in the same spirit, rationalise the staff
structure, modernise the plants, tighten the distribution
system, improve collection and ensure regular
availability. For long the state governments have
targeted the agricultural community to cover up the
serious ills in all other aspects of the working of the
power boards. |
Not in good taste OFFICIAL silence on the utterances of members of the Sangh organisations against the Pope's four-day visit to India from November 5 is likely to be read as tacit support to the anti-Christian stand of bigots. Of course, when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal announced their plan of action for stopping the Head of the Vatican from visiting India Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Council of Ministers had not assumed office. However, it is not clear why the new government even after one week in office has not shown its hand on how it plans to stop the hothead from generating communal tension in the country on the eve of Pope John Paul II's visit. Neither Mr Vajpayee nor Mr L. K. Advani, who in a recent interview to a Delhi-based English weekly has stated that "I abhor communalism", has so far taken the nation into confidence about measures the government proposes to take for isolating the anti-Pope malcontent from the Indian mainstream which draws its strength from giving equal respect to all faiths. The VHP and the Bajrang Dal have kept their promise of starting a yatra today from Goa to Delhi for "educating" the people about the "anti-Hindu" acts of Christian missionaries. They suggest that since the Pope is the spiritual head of the Catholic church he should tender a public apology on Indian soil for the forced conversion of Hindus to the Christian faith.Their rhetoric is as strident as it was when they launched the campaign for "liberating" Ayodhya and building a Ram temple at the site of the razed Babri Masjid. According to the national convener of the Bajrang Dal, Mr Surinder Jain, who was in Chandigarh on Monday, there has been no effort so far from the Prime Minister to "stop us from our campaign against the Pope". The Sangh organisations
have gone so far as to suggest that neither the President
nor the Prime Minister nor any other senior dignitary
should meet the Pope during what they claimed to be a
private visit. Not to deal firmly with the leaders of the
anti-Pope and anti-Christian agitation would be a
monumental folly for which both Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani
would have to share the blame. They must realise that the
killing of Graham Staines and his two sons in Manoharpur
in Orissa and the attacks on tribal Christians and their
churches in Gujarat, Orissa and elsewhere have helped
steeled the resolve of the Indian Christians to bury
their denominational differences and fight back. When was
the last time when a Christian priest addressed a Press
conference? A day after Mr Vajpayee and his team was
sworn in the Archbishop of Delhi, Rev Alan de Lastic,
addressed reporters to make public the resolve of the
Christian community to ensure that the Pope is not
insulted or humiliated by Sangh organisations. He made it
clear that the Pope will not apologise to anyone for what
is being described as "forced conversions". The
Archbishop of Delhi uncharacteristically used strong
language to convey what he thought about the anti-Pope
agitation. "Pope John Paul II has full freedom to
assert his belief in saying that Jesus is the saviour of
mankind and it is up to the people to accept or reject
it. We propose but do not impose our beliefs." On
the question of apology for the alleged excesses of
missionaries he was equally firm. "How far in
history are we going back? I think that we will need to
apologise to each other for a lot of things." It is
clear as daylight to neutral observers that unless the
Centre intervenes effectively to restrain the hothead
among the Hindus and the Christians the Pope's visit may
result in raising the communal temperature in the country
beyond the danger mark. |
Calamitous situation ONE knows the sweeping and devastating menace by a brief name: cyclone. But seeing is believing. The sprawling region comprising Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and the northern part of West Bengal has been hit hard by a vicious and rotating wind system with a stormy character. The electronic media visuals of the damage are shocking. The casualty figures available so far are tentative but every life is precious and in already impoverished areas like rural pockets in Ganjam and Puri districts of Orissa or in places like Kalingapatanam, Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatanam in Andhra Pradesh, the loss of property is massive. People take years to build what a cyclone, a tornado, a hurricane or a typhoon breaks within minutes. This time, the distress of the northern Indian Ocean region has been particularly deep. Rain has brought down dwellings and other infrastructure. There is no Durga pooja for lakhs of people. Even Calcutta is finding itself swamped. What began as a crisis in the areas has become a calamity. Communication links have been broken and it would take months to repair the roads or to restore the electricity and telephone-linked facilities. The warning system has improved but still our primitiveness in the field has not ended. Orissa,
coastal Andhra Pradesh and northern (West) Bengal need
immediate help. The danger of the outbreak of epidemics
is looming large on the horizon. A telephone call from
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee or Congress President
Sonia Gandhi may bring solace to those who are involved
in crisis management. But despite the frequent
occurrences of this kind, protective steps were not taken
by the state governments concerned. This is a pity. It is
the duty of the nearby states to rush supplies of food,
clothes and medicines. Helicopters used by Chief
Ministers for joyrides can be put to proper use in such
situations. However, it is necessary to have a fresh look
at the five-year programme prepared to combat cyclonic
havoc in the northern Indian Ocean region. There is a
revised draft proposal prepared jointly by the
Inter-governmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), the
World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), UNESCO and the
International Hydrological Programme (IHP). Planning
essentially means a long-term preparation. We have failed
to understand this primary concept. |
MANAGING MANIFOLD PROBLEMS THE long drawn-out election of the thirteenth Lok Sabha is over. The government is in place. The Prime Minister has given a clear signal that he means business. He has warned the nation of hard decisions ahead. Yes, there is no escape from hard decisions. India’s economy, despite the process of deregulation that started in 1991, has failed to improve the quality of life of the people at large. The first priority for the government, therefore, should be to honour the trust of the masses and let them see a way out of grinding poverty. The number of people below the poverty line today is almost as large as was the whole population of the country at the dawn of freedom. It cannot be denied that the country has made tremendous progress, in spite of the “licence permit raj” it suffered in the wake of bureaucratised socialism. Although primary and high school education is at its poorest level, the nation is emerging among the world leaders in computer software. The scientists managing the space and nuclear fields have done the country proud. The nation has a middle class the size of the population of Western Europe. If the country now takes some hard decisions and faces the problem head on, India should be able to turn the tables on poverty within five years. The people of India, particularly its poor, understand the need for hard decisions, as has been proved by the success of the Chandrababu Naidu government in Andhra Pradesh. But when the government begins to take hard decisions let it avoid the temptation of targeting the common folk as the first to make sacrifices. A beginning needs to be made at home — in the management of the government. Both central and state governments have grown flabby through overstaffing. The central government is burdened with departments that were created by the British to meet the needs of World War II. What is the purpose now of such overgrown establishments as the Films Division, the Song and Drama Division, the Field Publicity Unit, and the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity, to name but a few? Each and every ministry is loaded with departments that have lost their usefulness. Can the newly appointed ministers be expected to take a close and critical look at their charges, with the aim of saving taxpayers’ money? The Ministry of Tourism has offices spread all over the world, at a cost that is hardly commensurate with the number of tourists visiting India. Other nations have attracted much larger numbers at far less expense by leaving the business of tourism largely to the trade. The dirty and unwelcome Tourist Information Centre in New Delhi at Janpath is a standing example of the apathy and inefficiency of this Ministry. During the Cricket World Cup tournament in the UK this year, the ministry mounted a major publicity drive to sell India as a tourist destination by reaching out to the large crowds at the venues where the Indians were playing. Department officials flocked to the country to distribute caps and other mementoes free. But the caps were made in China! Surely it is time that a ministry capable of such stupidity should undergo surgery. Why not close its offices abroad and hand over to India’s missions the job of publicising the country? At least their success would be audited automatically by monitoring the number of tourist visas issued. Let us look at the Civil Aviation Ministry. At a time when India needs to be easily accessible to the world, New Delhi has been virtually cut off from the global financial centres. London is the world’s financial capital, yet there are just four Air-India flights a week between Delhi and London, while British Airways is allowed a daily flight passing through the Capital at a most uncomfortable hour at night. Why is it that carriers such as Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, Thai International, United Airlines, and Air Canada have stopped flying directly between London and New Delhi? Is it because they have been made unwelcome? And it is not just London that has been cut off. There does not exist even one direct link with Hong Kong, yet another major financial centre. This, surely, is neither the way to expand business nor the road to growth of tourism. Taxpayers’ money is meant to be spent with diligence and thrift. Yet the perquisites that politicians have granted themselves in the last decade or so do not present a picture of thrift. Among the expensive non-productive burdens is that of looking after former Prime Ministers — whose numbers have been rising rapidly. Take, for example, the expenditure incurred on the health care of Mr V.P. Singh, the Prime Minister who unleashed a caste war in India. He spends almost six months of the year abroad at the state’s expense. He and his wife receive a daily allowance of $ 200 while abroad, while the State meets the expense of the luxury hotels where they stay, accompanied by security guards who take up four or more rooms, and Indian missions dance attendance on them. One recent estimate puts the cost of sustaining the health care of Mr. V.P. Singh and his entourage in the last few years at well over Rs 60 crore. In England Mr. Singh is looked after by an Indian doctor. Surely he could find one in India to treat him. While Mr V.P. Singh is in the UK, he enjoys painting the stunning landscapes of the countryside, and his work is usually exhibited at the Nehru Centre for sale. One wonders whether he pays the Nehru Centre for the service. Or whether it is true, as it is alleged, that Air-India carried 700 kilograms of his paintings back to India free of charge. But Mr V.P. Singh is not alone among the former Prime ministers who benefit from the taxpayer. Each of them has been provided with a palatial New Delhi bungalow, and more than a dozen personal staff. Each enjoys protection by a police force about a 100 strong. Add to this the telephone bills, electricity and water supply charges and so on. These are the kind of unproductive expenses that run up government deficits. They should be met by the political parties, and not by the State. Mr V.P. Singh has frequently said that he does not need the special security cover of “Black Cats”. But when an attempt was made to remove them, he wanted at least two to be transferred to his Delhi police protection force, because he had become used to their services as personal cook and valet. Hardly what one would expect from Raja Sahib, the great socialist? The story does not end with costly former Prime Ministers — they are the tip of an iceberg composed of former Deputy Prime Ministers and scores of other leaders who have been provided government bungalows and security cover. Would it be such a hard decision for the government to cut this cost? No hard decision was called for at the time of the much respected Gulzari Lal Nanda, who served the nation in a humble way as Prime Minister and then lived his life away from the comforts of New Delhi’s colonial life. Then there are all the junkets that all kinds of people indulge in around the year at the cost of the taxpayer. This last summer London was the venue for a World Hindi Sammelan. Nothing wrong with that, and the organisers insisted that it was funded privately. But who paid for all the worthies who travelled from India? Was the expenditure incurred by the Government of India directly or indirectly at all justified? According to the figures issued by a leading UK media organisation, Asia-1TV, the composition of the ethnic languages spoken by the people of Indian origin in the UK leaves those with Hindi at a mere 1 per cent Punjabi leads with 44 per cent followed by English, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Sylheti, Hindi and others. Was the World Hindi Sammelan trying to encourage the 99 per cent non-Hindi-speaking people of Indian origin in the UK to learn Hindi? There is talk of a Kargil tax being imposed on an already over-burdened taxpayer. Perhaps no one would mind that. India as a nation has always risen to the occasion, as in 1962 when, in the wake of the Chinese attack, people gave not only money but also their personal gold to help re-arm the country. In return they got a regulatory regime that became a way of life and spawned the stultifying “licence permit raj”. Before embarking on any new taxation measures, it would be fitting if the government took a close look at the wasteful expenditure that it continues to make. Why not remove the facilities expensively enjoyed by former prime ministers and ministers? What about shutting down the government departments and offices that are doing hardly any useful work? Perhaps a start could be made by repossessing government bungalows from the families of those beneficiaries who have died. There is urgent need to make the public sector profitable, or, failing that, to dispose of the non-performing assets. There is also need to watch carefully the manner in which the profitable enterprises are being run. A case in point is the way the financial institutions and banks have been granting loans and making investments. If the Unit Trust of India has survived, it is not because of its efficiency but because the government came to its rescue. The Ministry of Finance, particularly its Department of Revenue, has to do a lot of explaining for the abysmally low number of taxpayers in India. Why is the department failing to increase the tax net? Why does the Department of Income Tax follow the time-beaten policy of harassing the high bracket taxpayer year after year through repeated yearly scrutinies. The tax evaders don’t file high tax returns; they usually file low tax returns to escape scrutiny. These departments are not doing their job the way they should be. A surprise visit by the ministers to the taxation, customs and excise offices will show the kind of dirt, squalor and mismanagement in the sections and the way of their functioning with files stacked in corridors, stinking toilets, etc. India will have to do a lot to create a modern government that is able to manage the country’s affairs well in the new millennium. The old colonial methods won’t work. The hard decisions require the concern of the government and how its structure can be made lean and responsive. That is the only way to save money to plough back into projects that will lay the foundations of a prosperous India. The Prime Minister can
be sure that no one in the country will grudge hard
decisions and calls for sacrifices provided they are
aimed at moving the country towards a better quality of
life for all its people. The first step must be to bring
down the level of government expenditure on wasteful and
expensive perquisites that are bleeding the country
white. The road is clear. One hopes the government will
have the courage to move on it. |
Economic policy priorities THERE are discordant noises about economic policy priorities. With the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance winning majority in the Lok Sabha, the government headed by Mr A.B. Vajpayee has yet to bring back coherence after the din and dust of a bitter election campaign. The strident demands of the vested interests, Indian and foreign, and popular sentiments are, after all, not easy to reconcile. The idea that the government, in particular the Prime Minister, should be free to carry out the task of “development” as perceived by him without questions being asked is, however, wrong, misconceived, undemocratic and indeed authoritarian. The fact is that the national consensus on the problems and perspectives of development which had been fast dissipating in the nineties, has broken down completely. The successive governments may have stubbornly or mindlessly pursued what are euphemistically called the market-friendly economic reforms has predictably found less and less popular acceptance. It is not at all surprising that the last decision of the caretaker government, to raise the price of diesel though more rational and valid than many others, has provoked a sharp controversy in which the opposition from some partners in the ruling NDA is most strident. This probably has hustled the Finance Minister to announce the decision to drop his proposal to levy the “Kargil” tax to contain the fiscal deficit from burgeoning because of the sharp increase in defence expenditure. The drive of the Finance Ministry to speed up public sector disinvestment has been countered by the demand for funds to bring the public sector industrial and commercial enterprises out of the red. The Prime Minister and the Finance Minister may be very keen to attract direct foreign investment but the Commerce and Industry Ministry wants to wind up the Foreign Investment Promotion Board. Large segments of Indian industry are visibly nervous about having to face foreign competition in the domestic market which no country, not even the USA, permits. The trickle-down effect of economic growth is now widely admitted to be a fanciful notion. The fact, after all, is that the benefits of the hectic effort to “modernise” the economy by the market-oriented liberalisation-globalisation growth strategy and open door for foreign investment has tended to be foreclosed by hardly 10 per cent of the Indian population. The key issue with respect to the impact of economic growth so far as the mass of the people are concerned is unquestionably an equitable distribution of the gains of growth. If some part of the gains of growth did percolate down in the period of planned development and had some positive impact on social relations, especially in the years of good agricultural production, the position has significantly deteriorated under the regime of market-oriented policy. It has been possible for the upper classes openly and brazenly to monopolise the gains of growth and only throw about crumbs for the benefit of a small segment of the middle class, with the mass of the people barred from any share. This is only emphasised by the tendency to increase the supply at relatively stable prices of private transport and consumer durables, together with entertainment gadgetry and facilities for high living of the upper and a section of middle classes even as essential mass consumption has tended to shrink in the nineties. The economic reformers and their political representatives have become prisoners of false notions and effete idea borrowed from foreign experts who may be brilliant in dealing with the problems of the developed economies. But they have little understanding of the social and economic conditions in the under-developed countries, and even though they might be well-meaning, their ideas and advise are inappropriate and likely to aggravate rather than resolve development dilemmas. It is not surprising, therefore, that the inspiration for economic policy-making in India is tending to be based more and more on wrong presumptions. The market-friendly policies naturally and spontaneously arouse the anger and resistance of those whose access to the market is limited or wholly barred. Those in politics, the academia and the media who like instant converts to a new faith everywhere are always very enthusiastic and outspoken, have been trying to spread the notion that the World Bank / IMF-sponsored and delineated structural adjustment programme is designed to dislodge vested interests which have grown and entrenched themselves in the Indian economy, society and polity during the failed experiment in planning socio-economic development based on political direction and bureaucratic regulation. The vested interests against whom they advocate a jehad are identified by them as businessmen who have thrived in a protected market, skilled professionals, workers in both public and private sector employment and rich farmers. These vested interests, they argue, have been able to foreclose for themselves incomes, assets and facilities far in excess of their productive contribution to India’s economic progress by exploiting and depriving those eking out existence in the unorganised segments of the economy. It is suggested, finally, that in order to be able to break their resistance to the World Bank/IMF “reform” programme, the Indian market has to be opened up for some benevolent external economic, presumably also political, forces to usher in competitive conditions and share the rewards for economic activity. This benevolent external force in their scheme of things is direct foreign investment, above all, the transnational cooperations, which, given free access, will shake up and globalise the stagnant Indian economy, society and polity. Admittedly, this shaking up will hurt the mass of the people in India, 80 per cent of the Indian population which, as it is, has been kept out of the socio-economic development process during the past five decades but also many more, who have been involved during the era of development planning in economic growth process. The excited talk of
embarking on what is called the second phase of the
economic reform programme to accelerate the rate of
economic growth with social welfare driven down the order
of economic reform priorities is ominous. The first phase
of the much-advertised market-friendly
liberalisation-globalisation policy has aggravated the
economic ailments of the country and its fallout on the
polity and social relations has been visibly adverse.
This is the truth which can no longer be obfuscated.
Reform cliches have, therefore, become ridiculous and
will not make good the promises made to the people by
political leaders of all hues. |
Slogan-mongering IT is a matter of pride that the country has achieved near total self-sufficiency in the manufacture of slogans. Let the habitual India-baiters take note of this no mean achievement. A senior official of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) has been informally talking to mediapersons about this notable milestone in India’s march towards the 21st century. “Western capitalistic countries were having a monopoly stranglehold on slogans”, he said. “The United States with its New Deal and Great Society and the United Kingdom with its Let’s Put Britain Back to Work and poor, developing countries of the Third World were denied means with which to con the common man.” “So, the Government of India, in close consultation with the Planning Commission, took a deliberate policy decision to achieve self-sufficiency in this vital sphere of national development within the shortest possible time and a crash, time-bound programme was launched as a national mission. The results became apparent in 1971 when the euphonious slogan ‘Gharibi Hatao’ emerged. A mid-term appraisal confirmed our belief that it was a runaway success with more people than ever before — 82.7 per cent for the benefit of the statistically minded — slipping under the absolute poverty line and becoming destitutes. “Heartened by this success, the government took several major policy initiatives and bold strategies for taking the country along the road to self-sufficiency in the manufacture of slogans and strengthen its in-house capabilities to coin catchy slogans capable of taking the maximum number of people for a de luxe ride on minimum capital investment — a classic example of macro-level development planning. “The Prime Minister’s New 20-Point Programme is a case in point. More people than the planners imagined possible are pinning their faith on a mirage.” The PIB official continued, “India is now in a happy position to supply proven, field-tested slogans and manufacturing knowhow to other friendly developing countries. In fact, to trigger-happy Gen Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, India supplied a most satisfying slogan — ‘Guided Democracy’ — a significant example of south-south cooperation.” The official concluded, “However, we are not being complacent and the country is constantly updating its capabilities to manufacture hi-tech slogans, lest the gullible masses get wise to the glaring fact that they are being ‘taken in’ by their rulers. “In 1980, the country manufactured the slogan, ‘Government That Works’, and in 1984, the ‘Government That Works Faster’. This shows that the struggle to safeguard the self-sufficiency the country has achieved the hard way is unceasing. “Right now, the
Central Government has on the anvil a greenfield slogan
that is a potential block-buster, ‘New Delhi for
2004 A.D. Olympics’.” |
When the drive to be thin
thins out IT hardly seems possible but Calista Flockhart, aka Ally McBeal, appears to have lost weight. The actress, whose body now looks to be constructed out of flesh-covered pipe-cleaners, has just had her holiday snaps published in the tabloids accompanied by headlines that purport to be concerned about her size. “Ally, the ocean waif” reads one. “Ally McMeal” quips another. Cruel, yes, but celebrity weight-watching has become a spectator sport, fuelled by the ever shrinking waistlines of top female stars. In America, this week’s People magazine carries a cover story posing the earnest question “How thin is too thin?”Along side gruesome photographs of Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox, Victoria Beckham and Helen Hunt, as well as Flockhart. “I swear I eat more now than I ever did in my life,” Aniston says, not entirely convincingly. Liz Hurley was also recently lambasted in the press for her malnourished appearance. In this month’s Elle, she talks openly about the self-imposed pressure for women in the public eye to lose weight: “If it’s any consolation, I threw away two-thirds of my wardrobe and lost 15 pounds after first seeing paparazzi pictures of myself — the celebrity version of a vicious Polaroid.” But behind the headlines lurks a curious ambivalence. While anyone can see that these women are drastically underweight, it doesn’t seem to occur to anyone closely involved with their careers that they might be putting their health at risk, never mind setting a poor example to young female fans. The photographs of Posh Spice are particularly alarming, showing her dressed in a chainmail halter top and tight black trousers, accessorised with jutting collar and hip bone. Clearly she has lost a lot of weight, but she is unimpressed at the suggestion that there’s anything wrong. “It’s irresponsible to say I’m anorexic. After a baby you are dashing about all day. I never sit down.’’ This is not a common condition in new mothers but maybe being a famous new mother is different. Flockhart is similarly defiant: “I don’t think of myself as too thin. Am I anorexic? I guess my answer would have to be no.” The actress, who once starred in TV docudrama “The Secret Life of Mary-Margaret: Portrait of a Bulimic, is at pains to point out that she eats “whatever I want, whenever I want. I don’t have a messed-up relationship with food.” She describes her typical diet as a breakfast of egg whites and spinach, a chocolate chip cookie for lunch and chicken or sushi for dinner. To any woman who has ever worried about whether to save the second packet of chocolate HobNobs till after lunch, I’m sorry but her diet does sound seriously messed-up. “It’s not only irresponsible, it’s deceitful,” argues Deanne Jade, director of UK’s National Centre for Eating Disorders. “These women talk about eating whatever they like and it makes young women feel like freaks because it doesn’t seem to work like that for them. I go into classrooms and try to get the message through to teenagers that in a lot of cases these women are lying. They eat whatever they like, yes, then they go and throw up. Or else they take cocaine to keep their weight down. Or they’re addicted to exercise and can afford personal trainers.” It is ironic that these new photos of Flockhart appear just days after the death of the British singer Lena Zavaroni, the tragic manifestation of how fame can impact on a woman’s self-image. To this we can add the other news that toddlers in Britain are officially “overweight”, which can only mean that the pressure to diet is going to begin earlier and earlier. “Half the problem with the girls I see is that not only do they have these skinny women in the public eye, but they have mothers who are on diets too. It’s a powerful combination,” Jade says. “For teenage girls, dieting becomes an endorsement of being female; talking about having to keep their weight down makes them feel like `proper’ women.” It is hard to see how any of these women, particularly Flockhart, can possibly be appealing role models, with their grey skin, lank hair and sad expressions. Not so long ago, Ally McBeal featured on a Time magazine cover alongside Gloria Steinem and Susan B Anthony, America’s First Suffragette, under the headline “Is Feminism Dead?” Flockhart was not best pleased. “I was quite depressed. Ally McBeal is a woman who falls down, who throws her shoes. I’m afraid that’s all I’ll be known for.” As her weight continues
to shrink, we can count on her being remembered for
something else entirely. — Guardian News
Service |
The
consumerism of breast cancer OTTAWA: Since 1950, treatment protocols for breast cancer have multiplied and women are offered a range of options from radial and conservative surgery to externalprotheses, multiple drug reginents and genetic therapies. What bothers breast cancer activists like Sharon Bhatt is learning that the mortality rate from this dreaded disease has remained constant over the past 40 years. “When baby boomers like me get breast cancer we feel bewildered rather than privileged by the treatment choices we face,” says the award-winning journalist and president of the Montreal-based non-government organisation, Breast Cancer Action. Though breast cancer advocates have led the lobby for increased spending on research, Bhatt urges a re-think on what she terms the “win-win” theory of consumerism and health which believes that if you spend money on medical equipment, drugs and research both health and economy will flourish in tendem. Bhatt says this obsession with technology and the “magical medicines” is shifting focus from an important aspect of breast cancer management and prevention. One of the first questions that women diagnosed with breast cancer ask is why they contracted the disease. “When women began to compare notes and to research the scientific literature, we realised that research into causes of breast cancer got short shrift compared to the research on treatment,” she said in an opening address at the recent World Conference on Breast Cancer in Ottawa. The known risk factors account for only 30 to 50 per cent of the cases and less than 10 per cent of cases have a hereditary component. Yet the search for genetic tests for breast cancer was fast tracked in the early 90s, leading to the discovery of the so-called breast cancer genes, she observes. According to her, breast cancer treatment drugs illustrate some obvious problems with the modern, Western view of medical progress in research on breast cancer. Only 20 years ago, surgery was the first-line treatment for breast cancer in industrialised countries. Drug, when used at all, was an adjunct to try to prevent spread of the disease in women at high risk of metastasis. Surgery didn’t work very well and was usually extremely mutilating. But today, the picture has a different focus. “Surgery is less mutilating but its importance in the therapeutic picture has been downgraded. They still are not all that effective but we’re told they will be and new drugs are held out as our hope for effective treatment and eventual cure of the disease,” she says. The point is debatable, but at what cost, asks the breast cancer survivor. She discusses some of the drugs on the market — while one of these costs only $ 12.80 for a month’s supply in Canada, it is priced at $ 156.42 in the USA, a 1,122 per cent price difference, points out Bhatt. The reason why the drug is so cheap in Canada is because that country has developed a health care system which allows generic drug companies to make inexpensive copies of certain drugs, she says. Unfortunately, this is not case in many countries. Taxol is a newer breast cancer drug and it’s considerably more expensive than tamoxifen. The reason for this is that the US government allowed a single company the exclusive right to manufacture and sell the drug and that company decided to price taxol at $ 4.87 per milligram, more than 20 times the cost of production. And now researchers have come up with a still newer “magical” cure — Herception. “The only problem is that Herception costs $ 5,333,” comments Bhatt. “Researchers tell us Herception is just the beginning of the new therapies that exploit recent genetic discoveries. It makes you wonder....” Sharon has authored a book, “Patient No More”, a passionate critique of the breast cancer industry where she exposes the consumerist forces taking control of the disease and its management. She explains that three profitable industries related to breast cancer are mammography, drug treatments and genetic research. Policy thinking is also geared towards projecting the message that biotech research, a hot investment sector, will bring predictive tests in breast cancer, new therapies and a better understanding of the disease’s basic biology. Industry-sponsored
organisations are proliferating in the USA, Canada and
Europe, warns Bhatt. The bottomline for women with breast
cancer, she says, depends on the choice they make.
“We can find humane, effective treatments and make
them universally available to women in all countries. But
for this we must work together, following a global,
ecological vision”. (WFS) |
October
20, 1924. WE are sincerely pleased to learn from an Associated Press telegram that the leaders of both the communities at Allahabad held a conference on Saturday last to take steps to ensure peace during religious festivals, and that it was decided to form a committee to go round the mohallas, forming sub-committees of the residents of those mohallas whose business would be to maintain peace between the two communities. This, as we have said
again and again, is the only way in which collisions
between the communities can either be averted altogether
or, at any rate, prevented from assuming serious
proportions, and it is a matter of sincere congratulation
that the leaders of the two communities have been able,
so soon after so deplorable an incident, to take this
sensible step. |
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