E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Of fake degrees & rewards!
FANTASTIC bungling is nothing unusual in government offices, but this one surely qualifies for an entry into Ripley’s Believe It or Not. A person who never went to a medical college joins as a medical officer in Punjab on the basis of fake degrees and goes up the professional ladder without being detected for 13 years.  

Angry words at the top
THEY are two of the seniormost politicians in the country and hence the daily exchange of wordy barbs between Home Minister Advani and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu makes dismal reading. It started in Calcutta, reached New Delhi and found an echo in Hyderabad only to reverberate in the eastern metropolis all over again. 

OPINION

BETWEEN INDIA & USA 
Implications of being “natural ally” 
by Bhupinder Brar
PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is back home from a visit to the USA that has been judged by the media here as a singular success. A qualitatively new kind of relationship is said to have been established between the two countries. The Prime Minister himself has said India and the USA are “natural allies”, and every American leader who matters said he agreed with this view.

Not the way to control population 
by Rahul Singh
THE Maharashtra Government has taken an extremely foolish and short-sighted step in its population policy. According to a recent news report, the state Governor, Mr P.C. Alexander, gave his approval just the other day to a recently enacted law that bars those with more than two children from standing for election to municipal corporations, municipal councils, zila parishads and panchayat samitis. In other words, to virtually all the political bodies below the level of the Legislative Assembly.

MIDDLE

To be or not to be... 
by Jangveer Singh
DON’T get involved personally is a cardinal rule I had been taught earlier on by my journalism teachers. But is this possible? I ask myself everyday as I see the heritage of Patiala being pulled down in the name of modernisation. Is it possible to remain indifferent to this? It decidedly is not.

POINT OF LAW

by Anupam Gupta
Apex court errs on who inherits! 
“THE Indian judgement is written to a pattern,” said Duncan M. Derrett, then Professor of Oriental Laws in the University of London and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Hindu law, despairingly in 1977.The judgement gives, he said, “only those reasons which are capable of legal inspection, and they are usually very formal, with no reference to the social aspects, and practically no reference to the merits of the rule of law under discussion. 

DIVERSITIES — DELHI LETTER

by Humra Quraishi
The French have arrived 
THE French have arrived! The newly appointed French Ambassador to India, Mr Bernard de Montferrand, interacted with the media last weekend. This meet/interaction was particularly relevant in view of the fact that France is the new president of the European Union and stressed that economic ties between the two countries should pick up and even listed out a whole series of programmes/events that will be coming up to strengthen the interaction between India and the EU.

Of fake degrees & rewards!

FANTASTIC bungling is nothing unusual in government offices, but this one surely qualifies for an entry into Ripley’s Believe It or Not. A person who never went to a medical college joins as a medical officer in Punjab on the basis of fake degrees and goes up the professional ladder without being detected for 13 years. An anonymous complaint ultimately wakes up the authorities to his game and puts vigilance on his trail. When suspended he promptly approaches a Central Minister, who makes sure that he is reinstated. He continues to draw his salary for several years. Only now, 22 years after joining the service and nine years after being suspended, has he been awarded two sentences of three years and two years along with a fine by the Judicial Magistrate (First Class), Faridkot. One shudders to think of the plight of the thousands of patients who had the misfortune of being treated by him. It has been reported that he conducted countless autopsies, prepared hundreds of medico-legal reports and even appeared in courts during his “illustrious” career. It is really remarkable that neither his colleagues nor his seniors had any inkling of the fact that he was a fake. This says a lot about the “meritocracy” prevailing in sarkari naukri. If this is not dereliction of duty, then what is? Even more remarkable is the fact that a Union Minister should get him reinstated despite a case under Sections 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC was registered against him and an enquiry was on.

The scandal is a pointer to the extent of the damage already done by the rot that has set in. While this has happened in the PCMS, things are said to be even worse in the case of services employing those with degrees in Indian medical systems, where academic scrutiny is even less vigorous. Quackery has mushroomed everywhere. There is a well-organised racket in handing out fake degrees or certificates of dubious merit. The case of “doctor” Jang Singh shows that once somebody manages to enter a service, there is nobody to monitor his work. Either others are of the same calibre or they are the least bothered about what happens around them. The impostor obviously knew that he could manipulate the system to his advantage. How he could carry on discharging onerous responsibilities as a senior medical officer for 13 long years defies logic. He exploited his political connections and administrative loopholes so well that there are reasons to suspect that his is not an isolated case. The confidence of the public is shaken. The least that the government can do is to launch a comprehensive enquiry to find out whether there are more Jang Singhs in the ranks of the Punjab Health Department and elsewhere. The faith that the common man reposes in a doctor should not be trifled with. At stake is the image of a noble profession.

Angry words at the top

THEY are two of the seniormost politicians in the country and hence the daily exchange of wordy barbs between Home Minister Advani and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu makes dismal reading. It started in Calcutta, reached New Delhi and found an echo in Hyderabad only to reverberate in the eastern metropolis all over again. The Chief Minister, who has put off his retirement plan to personally handle the developing confrontation with the Centre, is not provoked by the BJP-led alliance government as by the enemy within the state, Ms Mamata Banerjee. He has accused her of inciting violence and nursing violent thoughts. Mr Advani finds this unbecoming of a Chief Minister. On an earlier occasion when she took up the cause of some tenants and challenged the police and accused it of attacking her Mr Basu had called her a liar but lamented that the people supported her. Compared to that singeing remark, his latest verbal assault is mild, even if it shifts the blame for frequent rural violence away from the CPM cadre. It is possible that she does not find this description entirely objectionable since most people tend to mistake vitriolic accusations for an ideological struggle and if anything, she is vitriolic when it comes to referring to the CPM. She is a product of a political phase in West Bengal when driving out the communists was a subnational ideal of great urgency. Others have since outgrown it but not she and it is this that drives her election campaign and brings her votes. Her fight with the Left Front, mainly the CPM, is therefore understandable but not the Centre’s unqualified support to her. This is particularly so since she has toned down her threat to quit the government and has given up the demand for imposing President’s rule on her state. This is not to ignore the harsh words of Mr Basu. First he said somewhat irrelevantly that his job did not include an obligation to please the Union Home Minister. That was hurting even if he was merely answering a question from the media. When Mr Advani took him to task for his characterisation of his political rival as a violent woman he repeated this remark and explained that he was merely telling the truth. There was acid in the Home Minister’s response but as two men noted for their measured words, restraint was the expected reaction.

At a different plane, West Bengal has become a problem for the Centre. A recourse to Article 356 is out of the question. The advisories are not having the desired result. It will be patently illegal to amend the Disturbed Areas Act to bring law and order in five districts under the Centre’s control overlooking the state government’s objection. Election to the Assembly is barely six months away. Every action has to be calibrated to a favourable verdict in March, which severely limits the options. This dilemma was evident in the discussion and decision of the NDA on Saturday. West Bengal was the top item on the agenda but there was no final word. It is obvious that the Centre prefers to wait for some more days, hoping that the state government will take additional steps to contain violence. Also an unprecedented flood has diverted attention and given the Centre an opportunity to side with Ms Banerjee by announcing prompt and somewhat generous assistance. It is better to leave the matter at this point and activate the bureaucratic channel to work for normalcy. 

BETWEEN INDIA & USA 
Implications of being “natural ally” 
by Bhupinder Brar

PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is back home from a visit to the USA that has been judged by the media here as a singular success. A qualitatively new kind of relationship is said to have been established between the two countries. The Prime Minister himself has said India and the USA are “natural allies”, and every American leader who matters said he agreed with this view.

Mr Vajpayee is known for choosing his words very carefully, and no one seems to have found the expression questionable in any way. It, however, appears odd to me. The reason it does so has to do with my memory of what happened nearly three decades ago. The expression was then used by Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Assuming the leadership of the nonaligned movement, he said the Soviet Union was a “natural ally” of the nonaligned states.

India was then ruled by the Congress, a party which those days fancied itself as socialist in its ideological orientation. Predictably, therefore, it took no particular exception to the expression. But there were many others in the Opposition who did. They did not think that the expression was all that innocent. They found it both shocking and revealing. How could the nonaligned States accept one of the two super powers as a “natural ally”? Wasn’t this a contradiction in terms? Wasn’t nonalignment all about keeping away from the two rival super powers? They raised these questions.

The statement, they said, revealed the extent to which, wittingly or unwittingly, the Indian Government of the day had allowed the movement to be misled. The Opposition emphasised that India must not dither or deviate from its chosen path. It must firmly renew its commitment to “genuine” nonalignment.

Times have changed in many ways since then. In India, those who were then in the Opposition are now in power. The Soviet Union no longer exists. The Cold War has ended. Bipolarity is gone. This made many commentators argue that under the changed circumstances India should abandon nonalignment.

Such suggestions were, however, dismissed emphatically. The new government argued that nonalignment had lost neither its meaning nor relevance. On the contrary, it said, the changed circumstances had increased its relevance further. The world had become even more hierarchical. Inequalities had increased. The nonaligned movement must, therefore, broaden its base further and strengthen its resolve to fight injustices which could go on now even more unchecked.

Since these pronouncements were made most unambiguously, they led me to believe that nonalignment would not only continue to be followed but also would be followed much more “genuinely” and firmly. The Prime Minister’s statement has left me more than a little puzzled. While India continues to consider itself a “natural” leader of the nonaligned movement, how can it also declare that its relationship with the sole and uncontested super power is that of a “natural ally?”

Mr Vajpayee’s statement may only help confirm what many have suspected for quite some time now — namely, that Indian leaders had been paying merely lip service to nonalignment. They did so because they did not want to forgo the benefits of leadership which this movement had historically brought to India. But they were unwilling to pay the price that the commitment might entail.

Now they seem to have taken the final plunge. And they appear actually keen to convince the USA that they will not let nonalignment come in the way of the new-found “natural alignment”. In return, they expect certain favours. One of these is the recognition of India as a major global player. They find it very gratifying when appropriate noises to this effect are made by US leaders.

One might argue: what is wrong with that? Why stick so seriously to a creed so outdated? What is wrong with repositioning the country in a radically changed international scenario? And what is wrong with a little hypocrisy, after all, if it works and while it works?

If you happen to be one more champion of realpolitik, you will naturally find nothing wrong with any of this. But then consider the following. If realpolitik has one rule, it is that there are no “natural allies” in world politics. All alliances are tactical and temporary. They are formed and abandoned depending on the changing interests of the allies.

Within the framework defined by this general rule, Indian champions of realpolitik must recognise that India is neither the first nor the foremost country wooing the USA these days. Given the position that it occupies today, I wonder if another caller on its door feeds even its sense of vanity. It has a vast array of eager candidates to pick up from, almost at random and will. It can declare them natural allies now, but there is nothing to stop it from declaring them unnatural a little later if that suits its interests then.

What sense does it make to declare the USA a “natural ally”? Will it not make greater sense to avoid such linguistic flourishes and simply say that there is a growing area of complementarities between the two States which India will want to benefit from? These complementarities are primarily economic and technological. It will be a mistake to confuse these with political and strategic considerations. It will be futile to expect that our new “natural ally” will want to declare Pakistan a terrorist State and use its muscle to contain it for our benefit.

More importantly, a country cannot go about asking for recognition as a major global player and at same time remain obsessed with an irksome, much smaller neighbour. You cannot be a major global player if your sense of well-being depends on others declaring your irksome neighbour a terrorist State. As a major player, you are expected to deal with your neighbours yourself, with self-confidence and sagacity. You may not succeed with each one of them, but the more of them you are able to turn into your “natural allies”, the more likely it would be that you would eventually succeed with the irksome neighbour as well.

Against the current wisdom which seems to prevail on the issue, I believe that India will have to find “natural allies” in its neighbourhood before it can claim to be a major global player. India’s leadership should concentrate its creative energies on finding out how exactly to go about doing that.

The author is a professor of political science, Panjab University, Chandigarh. 

Not the way to control population 
by Rahul Singh

THE Maharashtra Government has taken an extremely foolish and short-sighted step in its population policy. According to a recent news report, the state Governor, Mr P.C. Alexander, gave his approval just the other day to a recently enacted law that bars those with more than two children from standing for election to municipal corporations, municipal councils, zila parishads and panchayat samitis. In other words, to virtually all the political bodies below the level of the Legislative Assembly.

Even those already elected to these local political bodies who decide to have a third child will be automatically disqualified after the cut-off date, which has been set as May, 2002. The only exception to the law is if the third child is an adopted one or if twins happen to be the second issue.

Apparently, the Bills to enforce this two-child norm had earlier been passed in 1995 by the then ruling coalition government of the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party but had been pending with the Governor for “lack of clarifications”, according to the news report in a leading national daily. Presumably, the Governor is now satisfied by the clarifications given. Hence his approval to the new law.

It would be interesting to know what the Governor’s initial doubts were and the “clarifications” which seemingly overcame those doubts. A short while ago, the state government had decided to deny ration cards and other social welfare measures to those who have a third child after January, 2001.

The news report also indicates that the state government intends to study the impact of the new legislation before extending it to the State Assembly. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh seems to be personally pushing for this rather harsh population control measure, reminiscent of the measures that Sanjay Gandhi took during his mother’s notorious Emergency rule.

Most sensible people agree that the country needs to stabilise its population growth, which is eating into the gains of development. India is adding about 18 million to its population every year, 18 million people who have to be fed, housed, educated and employed. But this is not the way to go about it. “Incentives” and “disincentives” should play no part in population policy. They are open to gross abuse.

In 1994, a historic United Nations conference was held in Cairo on Population and Development. A landmark document emerged from it which urged developing countries to look at the population issue in the larger concept of health, particularly women’s health, and reproductive rights. It declared that neither incentives nor disincentives should figure in the population policy.

The Government of India, after debating the matter at great length, finally came out with a population policy which, by and large, followed the guidelines laid down at the Cairo conference. The Maharashtra Government’s population policy, on the other hand, goes counter to both the Cairo conference consensus and the Central Government’s policy.

Since health and family planning are essentially state subjects, there is little that the Centre can do about it. But one hopes that the Centre has at least made its displeasure known to the Maharashtra Government. At least two other states — Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — have enacted population legislation similar to Maharashtra’s. They, too, are going the wrong way about it and displaying their complete ignorance on population issues.

China is the only major developing country that has a strong element of compulsion in its population policy. China has been enforcing a “one-child family” norm. But China is not a democracy and has a regimented system that ensures the success of such a policy. As a result, China’s population growth rate is less than 1 per cent a year, half that of India’s.

In any case, China has put into place the three essentials for a successful population policy: good health care, a high level of literacy (especially, female literacy) and the availability of a wide choice of methods of contraception.

India has not. Our literacy rate is only around 60 per cent, our health care system deplorable and the Indian family planning programme relies far too much on just one method of contraception — female sterilisation. Other methods, like male vasectomy, the intra-uterine device (IUD) and injectibles, all of which are widely used in China, have been neglected in India.

If the legislation barring local-level politicians with more than two children from standing for election is seriously pursued, it could have disastrous consequences. The “male child syndrome” is still powerful in India. Would-be politicians who have a daughter and know that the limit is two children for them, will try and make sure that the second child is a boy. This will lead to pregnancy testing and female infanticide. Is that what the Maharashtra authorities want?

There is an even more serious objection to the legislation. The poor tend to have more children because they do not know how many of their children will survive to adulthood, due to our lamentably poor public health care system. Better-of Indians, on the other hand, can pay for better health care and thereby ensure that if they only have two children, there is a much better chance of those children living to a ripe old age.

In effect, therefore, the legislation discriminates between the rich and the poor and is bound to be challenged in court. The Maharashtra Government has been badly advised in the matter, as have other state governments that have passed similar legislation. The sooner it is scrapped the better. The population problem is a complex one and has no quick-fixes or short-cuts for tackling it.

The writer, a former consultant to UNFPA, is the author of “Family Planning Success Stories: Asia, Latin America, Africa”.

To be or not to be... 
by Jangveer Singh

DON’T get involved personally is a cardinal rule I had been taught earlier on by my journalism teachers. But is this possible? I ask myself everyday as I see the heritage of Patiala being pulled down in the name of modernisation. Is it possible to remain indifferent to this? It decidedly is not.

However, being a journalist I still would like to come back from the brink. Write whatever I want to about the topic at hand and then try to forget about it and go on to something else, leaving it to society to react. But does society react? The answer is no. Sadly, besides paying lip service to the cause of heritage, no one is even ready to shed a tear at the wanton destruction going around them.

It is not as if the eminent citizens of the city do not indulge in social service or other public service. One finds hordes of office-bearers of various social clubs and organisations attending functions presided over by heads of the district administration or other VIPs. The eminent citizens are content to jostle with each other to be clicked with the VIP and later see their names in print.

Nobody bothered to say anything to save the “deori” (welcome gate) and “chaubaras” of the gurdwara at Bahadurgarh from demolition by “kar sevaks” given the contract by the Shiromani Committee a few months back. The citizens of the city remained mute spectators even as “kar sevaks” demolished the “deori” and the “chaubaras”. It was difficult demolishing them despite the long passage of time since their construction after Guru Tegh Bahadur visited the spot.

The deori and the chaubara did not have to go just because they had become ruins. The chaubaras with their painted chambers made way so that a marble “parkarma” could be constructed around the main gurdwara, which had earlier replaced the old small one at the same spot.

Same is the case with “Kaur Sahab ki Haveli” in the heart of the city, which is under demolition. The Punjab Urban Development Authority (PUDA) has taken over the haveli and the three-acre plot surrounding it so that it can be put to “optimum utilisation”, by a cash starved government. PUDA will utilise the space for commercial purposes once the demolition is complete.

The demolition of the “haveli” again brought out the activist in me. After reporting the demolition on the first day I told my photographer if it could be possible to take a photograph of people resisting the move. He was game to the idea but said they would have to be asked to do so. Here I again balked realising it was not my job to become a party in the demolition exercise and that my job had been completed once I reported the matter. The haveli is coming down in bits and parts and I am left with no choice but to think why I did not resist its demolition in case no one else in the city was interested in saving it.

P.S. — My story was, however, appreciated. A university lecturer told me he and his colleagues had discussed the issue at length. Probably that is only what everyone in the city did!

Apex court errs on who inherits! 
Anupam Gupta

“THE Indian judgement is written to a pattern,” said Duncan M. Derrett, then Professor of Oriental Laws in the University of London and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Hindu law, despairingly in 1977.

The judgement gives, he said, “only those reasons which are capable of legal inspection, and they are usually very formal, with no reference to the social aspects, and practically no reference to the merits of the rule of law under discussion. This is because law (in India) is something handed down to the public by the legislature and the judiciary, much as medicines are handed out by apothecaries. One cannot complain one does not like the taste of medicine. One goes to law, and one must take the consequences.”

The Supreme Court’s judgement last month in the Khanchandani case, holding that the nominee of a national savings certificate, much like the nominee of a life insurance policy, is not actually entitled to the amount payable to him thereunder but only holds the same for the benefit of those who would succeed to it under the law of succession, fully deserves Prof Derrett’s sharp rebuke as to the quality of Indian judgements.

Defying common practice and understanding and reducing all nominations to a nullity, the judgement follows the easy path of precedent to lay down that nomination does not operate as a third mode of succession — the first being testamentary, or by way of a will, and the second, non-testamentary or by way of natural succession — and a nominee cannot be treated as being equivalent to an heir or a legatee.

The path was shown by the Supreme Court in 1984 while examining the status of a nominee of a life insurance policy under-Section 39 of the Insurance Act.

A “mere nomination” under Section 39, the court had then held (in Sarbati Devi vs Usha Devi), does not have the effect of conferring on the nominee any beneficial interest in the amount payable under the life insurance policy on the death of the assured. The nomination only “indicates the hand which is authorised to receive” the amount, on the payment of which the insurer gets a valid discharge of its liability under the policy. The amount can, however, be claimed by the heirs of the assured in accordance with the law of succession governing them.

The Act has been in force from the year 1938, the Supreme Court remarked, and “all along almost all the High Courts in India have taken the view” that a nomination does not deprive the heirs of their rights in the amount payable under a life insurance policy. “In such a situation, unless there are strong and compelling reasons to hold that all these decisions are wholly erroneous, the Court should be slow to take a different view.”

And saying so, threw out of the window a brilliant, absolutely brilliant, judgement of the Delhi High Court of 1982 which alone, amongst the procession of judgements on the point, dared to think originally and take a different view.

“Nothing was wiser,” said Justice M.L. Jain of the Delhi High Court (in Uma Sehgal’s case), “than to follow without questioning the footprints of the great, and cast one more vote on the side of size. But as I went through the numerous precedents one by one, I felt that that was exactly what was being done and that what the young lawyer was advocating (to the contrary) had much to commend.”

There is no indication whatsoever in the law, he ruled, that a nominee is a mere collection agency. And why would anyone agree to act as such if that were his only function? “A nomination will be self-frustrating if the nominee just refuses to collect the money in order to avoid an accountability out of which he derives no benefit.”

Strange that logic so obvious and practical as this has escaped everyone else, even the Supreme Court.

A nominee has no rights, Justice Jain said, in the lifetime of the assured. His rights are then still inchoate, rather an expectancy, and spring up only if the assured dies before the policy becomes mature for payment. But where does Section 39 say that the policy holder constitutes himself as a trustee for his legal heirs? And how can it be presumed that he could have intended no beneficiaries other than his legal heirs, whether there be any or not and whether he liked them or not?

What Section 39 actually does, he held (and I entirely agree), is to create a “statutory testament”, which can be defeated only by cancellation, execution of a will or assignment of the policy subsequent to the nomination.

In case of national savings certificates, such a statutory testament is created even more explicitly and beyond any doubt by virtue of Section 6 of the relevant statute, namely, the Government Savings Certificates Act of 1959.

“Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force,” it reads, or in any “disposition, testamentary or otherwise in respect of any savings certificate,” the nominee shall, on the death of the holder, “become entitled to the savings certificate and to be paid the sum due thereon to the exclusion of all other persons...”

Whichever way one looks at it, the Supreme Court’s verdict last month in the Khanchandani case does no credit to its reputation as a creative, law-making institution of final resort.

The French have arrived 
Humra Quraishi

THE French have arrived! The newly appointed French Ambassador to India, Mr Bernard de Montferrand, interacted with the media last weekend. This meet/interaction was particularly relevant in view of the fact that France is the new president of the European Union and stressed that economic ties between the two countries should pick up and even listed out a whole series of programmes/events that will be coming up to strengthen the interaction between India and the EU. In fact, an EU-Indian meet on urban development “Cities Of Tomorrow” will be held here, from October 16 to 18. More events are coming up.

Then, the Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre (one of the most active cultural centres of the city, in fact, perhaps the only centre which has a full range of activities, right from jazz evenings to carol singing sessions to discussions on Amrita Sher-Gil to readings from translated works) is going in for a new director. Professor Geza Bethlenfalvy is being replaced by Dr Aliz Radnoti and a farewell reception stands lined up. Hopefully complete with Hungarian cuisine.

On Begum Akhtar

Then, the dead are being made to arise. Begum Akhtar’s niece, Rafia Hussain, has caught hold of her late aunt’s 84th birth anniversary and has arranged for a musical programme, to be held at the IIC, on October 6. I am told that a video film on her life and times (hopefully it should include those details of her various romances — official and unofficial) will be screened, followed by the rendering of some of her favourite ghazals.

The ghazal singer for that evening will be Anita Singhvi. I have heard Anita before and I must say that she has a deep rich voice and the other aspect about her, which many of you perhaps don’t know, is that she has mastered Urdu poetry and shairi to such an extent that she even manages to settle all those little tiffs with her husband by rendering one couplet after another. Not an easy job otherwise, for the husband is none other than one of the leading lawyers of the capital, Abhishek Manu Singhvi. Anita says “he finds it difficult to counter any of those couplets and stands floored”.

I think this (using couplets) can be a useful tip for other spouses too — wedded to lawyers or even to tinkers, tailors, soldiers — all those who are still in the arguing stage of their marriages, for a stage comes when you simply give up! Anyway, let me not distract you all with the various stages of the strange institution called marriage. Back to Begum Akhtar. Her life and times have been strange and interesting but the best aspect about it all is that her husband, the late Ishtiaq Abbasi, fell so very madly in love with her (although he was from the aristocracy and a barrister and she a mehfil singer) that he married her against all odds, which included forgoing career opportunities. But to the best of my knowledge (on the basis of the facts one hears) their marriage couldn’t really be termed a happy one. Continued, but just about somehow.

The salt story

As the deadline for the removal of the ban on the sale of non-iodized salt picks up, the lobby — doctors and scientists — which had been working against the lifting of this ban are all set to restart their campaign. In fact here I must write some offbeat facts that Professor N. Kochupillai (Head of the department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, AIIMS, New Delhi) told me, “People of the entire eastern UP belt had always remained meek and could not be educated because of the presence of the non-iodized salt in their diet, as the climatic conditions (flooding etc) were such that the natural salt didn’t contain iodine in it.

And when we introduced them to iodized salt they immediately became active and no longer showed those meek tendencies.... In fact here let me also state that one has to go beyond Dr Amartya Sen statement that the masses have to be educated. The question that should be raised is that can the masses be educative, for those affected by iodine deficiency cannot be educated as their brain developments was affected.”

But Kochupillai’s best lines were “its this present setup at the Centre which had so very enthusiastically coined this slogan “Jai Vigyan” and now almost like a teaser it is trying to bypass the very advice of our top scientists and medical experts of the country, vis-a-vis lifting the ban on the sale of non-iodized salt.”

Book on Lala Amarnath

Sitting in this so-called happening city, one wonders why just a small band of people manage to make things happen (for themselves, that is). What happens to the rest, who are not aggressive or over ambitious enough. Your guess is as good as mine. They sit at a disadvantage. Their talent not making waves, nor reaching out to the masses. I can come up with hundreds of such instances but the immediate provocation for mentioning this is to bring to your notice that though writer and erstwhile sportsman Kishen R. Wadhwaney has written a total of 12 books (six already published and the other six in the pipeline) on sports and sportsmen but, then, he’s not got his due recognition. His latest book is on the late Lala Amarnath — a Stormy Petrel of Indian Cricket — (published by Ajanta only very recently, after Lala Amarnath’s passing away). And released with none of the formal frills — “I would hate to waste 10,000 to 15,000 on all those release parties. I don’t believe in that sort of publicity” says Wadhwaney. Glad to know such men still exist here.