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| Tuesday,
July 17, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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In the shadow of Taj UTI scheme for small investors Beijing makes it |
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Learning from past mistakes
When in Paris, do as
....
Are women too nice to get ahead?
Cantonment boards have become irrelevant
Widows’
pension scheme
Happy marriage depends on genes
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In the shadow of Taj THE Taj spirit pervaded the second day of the Indo-Pak summit on Sunday. The day started on a highly hopeful note. The one-to-one talks between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf were slated for a mere 15 minutes, giving the two leaders just about the time to size up the other. But the meeting lasted nearly an hour and a half, triggering speculation of an instant agreement. The day, however, ended on a sour note with the visiting side reinstating Kashmir as the core issue and demanding a solution to it as a prerequisite for a meaningful dialogue. That ensured a gloomy end to a hectic day. Hope revived on Monday with both leaders calling for extended talks and even indicating a joint declaration. This means that there is an agreement of sorts, not clear cut but vaguely spelt out. Sunday’s proceedings swung from uncalled for optimism to equally uncalled for pessimism. This also accurately reflected the popular mood of wanting peace and friendship with Pakistan and also profoundly disbelieving the neighbour’s sincerity. But much of the day generated confidence about a degree of success of the summit. Pakistani journalists, about 100 of them, who have descended on this country felt that India should shift its position on Kashmir and accommodate Pakistan’s perception that it is the central issue, if not the core issue. As a doyen of the visiting journalists commented in a national newspaper, India’s confidence building measures (CBMs) are meaningless unless the Kashmir dispute is resolved. Otherwise Pakistan’s core concern will weaken as will the popular support for the cause. The friendly understanding which President Musharraf showed on Saturday in New Delhi changed to a hard position at Agra the next day. Obviously his delegation had prevailed on him to go slow on seeking a rapprochement with India. The General is the all-powerful leader of his country but even so he has to submit himself to the hardline advice of the bureaucrats-turned-Ministers. As anyone who has even a nodding acquaintance with the bureaucracy knows, politicians are putty in the hands of the permanent establishment. This has happened to President Musharraf also. His invitation to Prime Minister Vajpayee to visit Pakistan for another round of talks and the possibility that the two leaders may meet at New York in September during the UN General Assembly meeting do not make good the scepticism kindled by the late night statement issued by the Pakistan delegation. Monday was another day to make or break the summit, scripted as a momentous one. Peace is paramount and Kashmir is still a stumbling block. |
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UTI scheme for small investors ULTIMATELY a bailout package has been agreed upon for those who have invested their hard-earned money in the Unit Trust of India’s flagship scheme US 64. A consortium of public sector banks, financial institutions and the LIC has assured the board of trustees of the UTI that they will pump in the needed funds to save the troubled scheme. Perhaps, the offer has come following a guarantee from the government for the recovery of any loan to the UTI. However, how the package has come about is not significant for the small investors. What is important for them is that the UTI has opened the window for the redemption of their funds invested in US 64 up to 3000 units at Rs 10 per unit in August and with 10 paise more after every succeeding month till May, 2003. They also have the option of going in for the net asset value from January 1 next year. The UTI strategy is that not all investors will rush in to get their investments back in a liquid form as it has attractively structured the repurchase scheme. This means that a person who decides to hold his US 64 units till May, 2003, will get an assured value — Rs 12 per unit. Not a bad idea if one looks at the investment climate today. But what the UTI strategists want can happen only when the UTI is able to regain the lost confidence of its clientele. In any case, the decision has come as a great relief to the affected people, though Rs 10 is a much lower value than Rs 14.2 and Rs 14.25 at which the Trust had allowed redemption to big corporate players like Reliance, Bombay Dyeing and Bajaj Auto in April and May this year. The UTI’s most popular scheme has been in financial straits for nearly three years. It had a total capital of Rs 15,141 crore in June, 2000, which eroded by 15.6 per cent to Rs 12,778 crore in one year — in June, 2001. It suffered a sharp income decline, from Rs 2,800 crore to Rs 1,523 crore — by 45.6 per cent — during this period. This was enough to send shivers down the UTI’s spine and it suspended the repurchase of the US 64 units. But it has to blame only itself for its nightmarish experiences. The government perhaps believes that its direct involvement in the management of the UTI may turn the situation in the mutual fund’s favour. This inference can be drawn from the appointment of a serving IAS officer, Mr M. Damodaran, as its new chief. Never before in the recent history of the Trust had a non-retired bureaucrat been allowed to undertake this responsibility. The decision has not been received well by the private sector, but that is a different matter. If he is allowed to run India’s largest mutual fund without any government interference and succeeds in infusing a new life into the ailing UTI, everybody will forget the departure from the established practice. Currently Officer on Special Duty at the Reserve Bank of India, Mr Damodaran is not inexperienced at handling difficult situations. However, his latest assignment is quite different from those he has held
earlier. The whole nation will watch his performance, and with great anxiety. One hopes he comes up to the investors’ expectations, particularly of the small category. |
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Beijing makes it WHICH city gets to host the Olympic Games depends on two factors. One is, of course, the facilities it offers and its capability to organise the mega-event. On that count, Beijing indeed is an odds-on favourite. It was way ahead of challengers like Paris, Toronto, Osaka and Istanbul. Sporting tradition also backed it: China — home to one-fifth of the planet’s population — clinched 28 gold medals and finished third in the overall medal standings at the Sydney Games and deserved to stage the Olympics. But the Games are not about sports alone. They are also about the political climate in a country. That is why there is worldwide condemnation of the decision of the International Olympic Committee to allocate the 2008 Games to Beijing. This is being seen as a stamp of international approval on Beijing’s human rights abuses. Critics draw parallels with the decision to hold the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany and highlight such gruesome atrocities as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the repression of Tibet, the jailing of Chinese-American scholars, mass executions and the suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The IOC was flooded with messages about these black marks, but apparently decided to ignore them all and voted overwhelmingly in its favour. The line which prevailed is that the Olympics would rather accelerate openness in China, as in Seoul after the 1988 Olympics. In sum, it was all about deciding whether the glass was half empty or half full. China has been finally brought out of the sporting ghetto. Now that the die has been cast, what needs to be ensured is that it does fulfil the promises it made. These include building bridges with the rest of the world and following through on political reforms. Many see the decision as a prelude to its entry into the World Trade Organisation later this year. Small wonder that there are wild celebrations in the country and even staid leaders like President Jiang Zemin have shed their normal reserve. Besides China, the real victor is big business, because the Moscow vote has thrown open tremendous commercial opportunities. IOC Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch has finally bowed out after 21 years but it will be impossible for the Olympics to shed the characteristics that it acquired while he was at the helm: mercantilism, gigantism and, yes, corruption too. It is rumoured that stung by the Salt Lake City bribery scandal, the IOC delegates did not accept any money this time for voting in favour of any city. Only
favours! |
Learning from past mistakes THE decision of the Group of Ministers to set up a separate Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) has predictably drawn flak from the country’s intelligence (not necessarily intelligent) community. In India it is invariably a question of defending the turf rather than viewing an issue on its own merit, even if it is of vital national interest. The vested interests are so self-centred that any attempt to trespass into their narrow domains or any move to even slightly shift them from a position of primacy, invites instant adverse reaction. The thrust develops towards maintaining the status quo. Every ploy is deployed and attempt made to denigrate the proposal, sabotage the very idea by deploying willing journalists and pseudo-experts to debunk the issue in the press. If the proposal is put into practice then its operation must be stymied, derailed and undercut in every possible way to establish its failure. The spate of articles appearing in the press opposing the DIA idea are in line with this well-established technique. Similar is the case pertaining to the proposal for a CDS (Chief of Defence Staff). The post is being named “Defence Supremo”. Visions of a military takeover or, at best, a metamorphosis of the country into a “paramilitary state” are being conjured up to frighten the politician and the public, notwithstanding the fact that every democracy has this very arrangement. Similarly, the integration of the MoD with service headquarters is being painted as dilution of civil authority, not crediting the minister, who in fact is the civil authority, with some intelligence, ability and administrative skills. The rationale behind creating a DIA is rooted in our traumatic experiences of the past and, more specifically, energised by the colossus failure of intelligence at Kargil. India has been a victim of repeated intelligence failure related to national security issues. The large-scale invasion of J and K in 1947 by hordes of tribals, preparations for which had been going on for a while, came as a surprise to the country. The intelligence failure pertaining to the events culminating in war with China in 1962 was of such horrendous proportions that in any other country heads would have rolled by the dozen and the intelligence agency responsible for the fiasco would have seen a complete overhaul of its organisation and manning pattern. Nothing of the sort happened, and it continued with business as usual. The country’s intelligence set-up carried on in the same old style to inflict yet another surprise when mass infiltration took place in the valley in 1965. There were many other intelligence failures related to the strength and equipment profile of the Pakistan army. Events leading to the deployment of IPKF in Sri Lanka and its subsequent employment was an intelligence and policy failure on a massive scale. While the past intelligence failure are legion, the more recent one is the intrusion at Kargil and the continuing failures related to infiltration and insurgency in J and K. The Kargil Review Committee in its report states, “The Indian intelligence structure is flawed since there is little back-up or redundancy to rectify failures and shortcomings in intelligence collection and reporting that goes to build up the external threat perceptions by one agency, namely the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), which has virtual monopoly in this regard. It is neither healthy nor prudent to endow that one agency, alone with multifarious capabilities for human, communication, imagery and electronic intelligence”. Elsewhere the committee records, “In India, defence intelligence effort is limited in relation to the role assigned to the external intelligence agency (RAW) except for limited tactical and signal intelligence. The resources made available to the defence services for intelligence collection are not commensurate with the responsibility assigned to them”. There are no checks and balances in the Indian intelligence system to ensure that the consumer gets all the intelligence that is available and is his due. The primary role of the Directorate of Military Intelligence is not the collection of intelligence, though it has limited capability to gather tactical intelligence through inputs from the Army’s Field Intelligence Units and Signal Intelligence, and some assessment from Defence Attaches abroad. Its main role is military assessment of inputs from other agencies and to build up a tactical and strategic picture. In the ever changing global geopolitical and geostrategic scene there is need for an uninterrupted flow of credible and real-time intelligence. While TECHINT (technical intelligence) and SIGINT (signal intelligence) means have brought a near revolution in intelligence gathering, the relevance of HUMINT (intelligence gathered through human resources) has not diminished to any extent. Increasingly, efforts would be made to decrease the possibility of leakage of information through TECHINT and SIGINT, which places HUMINT at the centre of the intelligence canvas. Foreign intelligence spans a wide range of issues of national interest — from economic, political, diplomatic, technological to military matters. How efficacious has been intelligence gathering in other areas need not be debated in this piece, but the repeated failures on the military intelligence front have been far too obvious and damaging to be glossed over. Intelligence gathering related to vital national security issues left to one agency has its own pitfalls and has been the bane of our national security scene. Intelligence failures in the areas of national security seldom give one time to apply correctives. In the absence of any means to corroborate and/or verify information, the possibility of being misled is distinct, as it happened in 1962. It would be appropriate to relate to the assertions of the then Defence Minister during the Kargil conflict that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not a party to the Kargil intrusion and that the Pakistan military had kept him in the dark. This was presumably based on the interception by RAW of telephonic conversation between the Pakistan COAS (from Beijing) and his CGS at GHQ. No one bothered to co-relate it to other available information. The fact that the scale, nature and extent of preparations required for the Kargil aggression were such as could not be kept secret from the civil administration, was never taken into account. Whereas the Kargil Review Committee records that “there are indications that the Kargil plan was approved as early as October, 1998, by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif when it was proposed to him by General Musharraf. Subsequently, in January, 1999, Mr Nawaz Sharif was briefed at GHQ. Presumably, the final go-ahead was given at this stage.” According to Mr Altaf Gauhar, contingency planning for the Kargil operation was formulated as far back as 1987 during the period of General Zia-ul-Haq but the plan was vetoed as being militarily untenable and internationally and politically indefensible. Later it appeared to have been revived in 1997 and the reconnaissance at Yaldor and the subsequent build-up related to this development. The Indian intelligence remained oblivious to all these developments. To add to the woes of RAW, it is often deployed internally to meet the peculiar requirements of the political party in power. The defence forces, which are the principal user of security-related intelligence, have the maximum at stake. Yet they have no resources of their own even to cover the neighbouring countries. They have been the greater and repeated sufferers of intelligence failures. There has also been lack of coordination, timely assessment, synthesis and dissemination of available information. There is no institutional mechanism for coordination or objective interaction between various agencies and the consumers at different levels. Not that there has been total absence of organisational structure, but the existing system lacks the mechanism to task, evaluate the quality of intelligence being provided, monitor the performance of various agencies and inject accountability. There is also this lack of checks and balances against its own culpability. Deficiencies in the existing system for collection, reporting and assessment of available intelligence must be set right. The taking away of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) from the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee after the 1962 debacle was irrational and illogical because the failures rested entirely with the intelligence gathering agencies and the MEA, and had nothing to do with the working of the JIC under the control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Upgrading the JIC and placing it under the Cabinet Secretariat was a typical bureaucratic solution to the issue of past intelligence failures without in any way removing the deficiencies and flaws in intelligence gathering and with the political leadership being none the wiser. Consequently, intelligence failures have continued to occur with unremitting regularity. The need for a DIA has been conclusively brought out by the Kargil Review Committee in its report and does not call for further emphasis. While the DIA may not spread its tentacles across the globe, it must cover India’s “strategic arc of interest”. It is imperative that we are not repeatedly surprised and perpetually caught on the wrong foot. At present we are not getting the value for money being spent on intelligence efforts. Like in the USA there is perhaps need to set up a national security agency to control all non-intrusive communication, electronic and technical intelligence gathering efforts. All noises being made against the requirement of a DIA are motivated and part of the turf wars and deserve to be ignored. The writer, a retired Lieut-General, was Deputy Chief of the Army Staff. |
When in Paris, do as
.... PARIS conjures up the image of a city full of life. Beautiful women and magnificent buildings. The Eiffel Tower, the Siene river, the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre housing, inter alia, the famous Mona Lisa, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc of Triumph, and its sprightly night life. In September, 1988, I, then a DIG in the CBI, found myself in Paris along with two others, having gone there to attend an international seminar on terrorism at Interpol headquarters, then at Paris. Two years before that, I had been to the United Kingdom on a three-month training programme and had visited a number of places, including London, Leeds, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and knew what it looked like to be in an advanced European country. People were disciplined, there was culture for work, places were clean and nobody discarded any waste material here and there in the open except in bins placed at convenient corners. There were public conveniences aplenty, very neat and clean, where one could wash and attend to the call of nature. After one of the delegates’ sessions at the seminar in which a Sri Lankan participant had lambasted India for her alleged support to the Tamil Tigers, he tried to be friendly with us and volunteered the information that if we got down at a particular metro-rail station, and walked straight, out of the station, a hundred yards, turned to the left and left again and then to the right, we would come across a cluster of street-shops selling branded electronic goods at very affordable prices. Unable to resist the temptation of buying some such items at cheap rates, we decided to visit the place that very evening. Remember, those were the days much before the liberalisation of our economy when foreign goods were not easily available in India. We hurried to our hotel as soon as the sessions of that day were over, had an early supper, got on to the metro-train and alighted at the station mentioned to us. We came out, walked straight a hundred yards and turned as advised. We came across a road on which hundreds of cars were racing past us at breakneck speed. However, we could nowhere spot street-shops as promised to us. We checked and re-checked the route but with the same result. We took a particular road and walked along it for an hour or so in the hope that some such shops might after all be seen somewhere. Ultimately, after an effort of about two hours, we gave up and started back on way to the metro-station. We thought that the Sri Lankan delegate had pulled a fast one for reasons not difficult to divine. It was late night by now and quite cold out there in the open. We felt the urge to “pee”. However, we could not spot any public convenience nearby. We continued walking and hoped that we might come across one soon. But there was none. Our bladders seemed to be bursting. We did not know what to do. Metro-station was still far. We again looked here and there and around, but there was no place where we could have “done” it, certainly not on the road-side or in the open space, specially not in a foreign country like France and in a city like Paris. The thought of being sent to gaol, if we “did” it that way, haunted us. We walked a little more, and Presto! Two French men were standing in a row in the open space, a little away from the road-berm with their back to us and their fly open and pissing out there. Our joy knew no bounds. If the French could “do” it that way, why not we? We, too, stood in a row, close to them. They cast a nasty look on us. We looked hard into their eyes, opened out zippers and emptied our bladders. Having finished the job and with the pressure released, we walked back to the station, with our head held high and with the ever ensconced memory of “doing” it the Indian way in a city like Paris! |
Are women too nice to get ahead? IT was Lily Tomlin who said: “The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.’’ She was right, of course. Most of the time, office politics are as messy and combative as the party political kind. To join in, you need an extensive wardrobe, a fantastic hairstyle and an iron constitution. To rise to the top, however, there is one additional requirement: ideally, your conscience should be as small and wizened as a dried pea. It does not take much experience of office life to work this out — and to see that it is men rather than women who are most likely to put a tick in the last box. I cannot think of many blokes who empty the washing machine before they dash out of the house in the morning, or who mow the lawn, as I once did, in their pyjamas. Nor do they generally worry too much about childcare; so long as their own is sorted out, their colleagues can go hang. So it was with a familiar sinking feeling that I read about the recent research carried out by Glenice Wood, a psychologist from Melbourne. According to Wood, women are failing to rise to the top of their professions because they are too nice. They think they must be popular, attractive, sociable and deferential to win promotion when, in reality, their (mostly male) bosses just want to know if they can get the job done. Earlier this week, she told the Congress of European Psychology that this might be one reason why only 3-5 per cent of senior managers are women. It doesn’t take a genius — or even a psychologist — to work out that Wood’s findings say more about men than about women. In fact, stop and think about it all for more than a nanosecond, and you may find yourself banging your head against the photocopier in frustration. Here is the rub: men spent decades making it clear to working women that they should blend in, avoid sticking their necks out, be collaborative (isn’t that, after all, the touchy-feely way women are supposed to operate?) so as to avoid being thought of as shrill, ugly ball-breakers. Then along comes a sympathetic psychologist, clipboard in hand, and these men have the cheek to criticise their female counterparts for failing to reveal the one thing they were always told to hide - their ambition, their ruthlessness, their very own dried pea. How unbelievably disingenuous. You can bet your bottom dollar that most men wouldn’t like it one bit if their female colleagues began behaving in exactly the same mulish way that they do. It seems to me that this new-found devotion to ability and ambition is simply another stinking red herring strewn across the interminable road to equality. These chief executives, whoever they are, can spout as much nonsense about female talent as they like: the truth is that there is an awful lot of it out there that is going to waste, and they are responsible. Any woman who does manage to be successful and a well-liked, functional human being is a truly remarkable creature - and deserves to be put on the fast track to promotion without delay. Eight weeks ago, I lost my full-time office job and went back to writing at home. It has been weird watching my horrible office personality disappear into the ether and the real me — that strange, hopeful, smiley girl I last caught sight of in the looking glass about eight years ago — emerge once again. I feel nicer than I have done in ages: when people call me, I can spend time — get this — talking to them rather than rushing to get off the phone. Nowadays, there is no one hovering at the end of my desk or a zillion emails to be read before lunchtime. The dishwasher no longer has to be emptied in the dead of night. Office life isn’t good for anyone, really, but for women — conditioned, somewhere along the line, to feel guilty when the little things don’t get done and discriminated against, as Wood has unwittingly revealed, in ever more subtle and obscure ways — it’s an especially bum deal. You can’t win. And, as Tomlin said, even if you do, you might not like yourself afterwards. The Guardian |
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Cantonment boards have become irrelevant RECENTLY, a proposal was mooted by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) that all cantonment boards should be abolished and the civic administration of cantonments should be taken over by the Army and that the Indian Defence Estates Service (IDES) should be merged with the Military Engineering Service (MES). The proposal having drawn flak from some political parties, civilians living in cantonments and a number of social organisations, has been shelved for the time being. But then, since this issue keeps coming up time and again, it needs to examined in its entirety. What was known as the Military Lands and Cantonments Service during the British regime was redesignated as the IDES in 1951. The present strength of officers in this service is 138. The majority of these officers are employed as Cantonment Executive Officers (CEOs) who manage the cantonment boards, and Defence Estate Officers (DEOs) who look after the management of military lands. The MOD’s proposal involves four issues: one, control of military lands. Two, control of civilian areas in the cantonments. Three, merger of the IDES with the MES. Four, abolition of the cantonment boards and handing over of their administration to the Army. For the Army to take over control of the military lands and civil areas in the cantonments will not be possible, for the Army authorities already have their hands full with their operational and administrative commitments. Since the work load involved in the control of defence lands is colossal, it would be better if the DEOs continue to administer these lands but they should function under the control of the Army. The administration of civil areas in the cantonments is a whole-time job which involves dealing with the civilian population and the civil administration. It should, therefore, be given to a civil organisation. As for the merger of the IDES with the MES, these services have nothing in common between them. For the IDES has no engineering background and is designed to provide administrative cover to the cantonment boards and manage defence lands. The MES, on the other hand, undertakes construction of buildings and roads and their maintenance in the cantonments. Since the Army is not equipped to control defence lands, the DEOs belonging to the IDES cadre should continue to manage these lands under the control of the Army. The remaining IDES cadre officers who are employed as CEOs should be merged with a relevant civil service. The cantonment boards, which are a “colonial legacy”, have lost their relevance in the current set-up because there is no more requirement of the civilian population in the cantonments. For, the present day units and formations are self-contained in allied services and do not need any help from the tradesmen and others residing in the civil areas. Every cantonment had two separate military and civil areas. The military area had barracks for the troops, with ancillaries, accommodation for married personnel, training areas, playing fields, hospital, schools, parks and cemetery etc. The civil area had its bazaar and tradesmen such as tailors, barbers, conservancy sweepers, malis etc, who catered to the remaining needs of the troops. A civilian officer from the IDES designated as CEO heads the cantonment board office under the overall control of the Station Commander, who is a military officer. The station commanders, who are too busy with their military duties, find it difficult to attend to the burgeoning and complicated problems of cantonment boards. In some old cantonments, the civilian population has grown beyond 1.5 lakh. This has not only increased the workload of the cantonment boards but has also given birth to a whole host of new problem such as encroachments, unauthorised constructions etc, leading to disputes and court cases. Besides, cantonment boards do not have the wherewithal to provide civic amenities and other essential services to such a large population in the civil areas. These areas have become so untidy that they present an ugly contrast to the ship-shaped military areas. Most of our modern cantonments do not have civil areas. Many new cantonments have come up in the eastern sector and in J and K without them. Bathinda in Punjab which is the biggest cantonment in the country, does not have civil areas. It is designed on a sector basis with each sector being self-contained in allied services. Because of the change in their character, the new cantonments do not function under the Cantonment Act. Given the fact that the present day units and formations are self-contained and do not need the services of the civilian tradesmen, the military authorities should not get involved in the administration of these areas. They should, therefore, be handed over to the respective municipalities. Incidentally, the civil areas of Ambala Cantonment were taken out of it in the late seventies on the recommendation of a committee which examined the problems of this military station. The other old cantonments should also follow suit to come in line with the new military stations. Having done this, the cantonment boards which would then become irrelevant, should be abolished. As for the defence lands, the Army should not get directly involved in their management. They should continue to be managed by the DEOs under the overall control of the station commanders. |
Widows’ pension scheme RUGBY:
In connection with the Widows’ Pensions Scheme which came into
operation at the beginning of the year, it is announced that during the
first six months of the operation of the new Act, widows pensions to the
number of nearly 14,000 have been awarded. These pensions, with allowances for children, cover about 420,000 persons. over 13,000 orphans have also benefitted under the scheme. These numbers fall considerably below the estimate originally given by the ministry of Health, but claims are still being received. |
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Happy marriage depends on genes A
HAPPY marriage may be largely determined by a couple’s genes, according to a published report. New research into the marital history of twins has revealed that, while genes appear to make no difference to one’s chances of marrying in the first place, they can exert a strong influence over how long a marriage might last, said the report in the Times. The study, which looked at 8,000 identical and non-identical male twins who served in the US Military during the Vietnam War, found that identical brothers who share the same genes were much more likely to follow the same patterns of divorce. Among fraternal twins who are as genetically different as siblings born at different times there was no such correlation, the scientists at Boston University in Massachussets found. The Times quoted the researchers as saying the findings are probably explained because of psychological traits that are partially determined by genetic factors. Strong genetic elements are thought to lie behind drug addiction, alcoholism and depression, and all these are frequent causes of marital breakdowns.
Reuters
Asthma linked to being overweight
A link found between asthma and being overweight could mean that adults who get rid of the fat might also ease their asthma, researchers said on Sunday. But their study was not able to determine if the added weight caused the asthma, or if asthma resulted in the weight gain. About 10.3 million Americans, or nearly 6 percent of the population, suffer from asthma, a chronic constriction of the lung passages that makes breathing difficult. Asthma sufferers are also more likely to suffer from other maladies such as ulcers, hypertension and depression, according to the study of 1,130 adults aged 17 to 96 living in the U.S. states of Oregon, Idaho and Washington. The "significant" association found between asthma and having a higher body mass index, a computation that assesses weight for a given height, showed that a person's weight "is a potentially modifiable risk factor for this disease," wrote study author Sylvia Young of the U.S. Navy's Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit in Sigonella, Italy. Nearly 55 percent of Americans are considered overweight, and 22 percent qualify as obese, the report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine said. "Instead of parents or clinicians discouraging strenuous exercise in obese children or patients with 'exercise-induced bronchospasm' to manage asthma symptoms, better management may prove to be a program stressing reduced energy intake and increased physical activity aimed at achieving an ideal body weight, thereby reducing asthma symptoms," Young wrote.
Reuters |
If the Lord could be obtained through holy baths, I would have wished to be a fish. If by eating berries and wild fruits one could attain Him Then are not monkeys better placed than men? If by eating dry leaves one could reach Him, Should not the goat have done so? If worship of stone could lead one to God, I would have adored a mountain. But says Mira, without love, my friend, You can never meet the Lord. — From Mira: the Divine Lover by V.K. Sethi * * * I do not need your garlands and fruits. They are not genuinely yours. Give me something that is yours, something which is clean and fragrant with the perfume of virtue and innocence and washed in the tears of repentance. Mere formal worship or mechanical routine performance of rituals cannot induce God to recite in the heart. Merely going to the temple and offering worship offering a coconut, expecting some reward — all these are a wrong way of understanding devotion. — From the discourses of Shri Sathya Sai Baba * * * Bless that we be sinless in Thy judgement, O the supremely Virtuous Lord, Thou showest mercy even to the sinner. Bless, that we obey the commandments of Mother eternity. May She preserve us with Her blessings. — Rigveda, 7.87.7 * * * Bless me, O Lord of Resplendence with prosperity and lusture of fame and magnificent majesty, So that I may shine like the blazing sun in the sky. —Atharvaveda, 10.3.17 |
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