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Wednesday,
August 15, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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A matter of faith The nation as fortress A new problem point |
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Fundamental mistake, historical blunder
I-Day musings: have we run dry?
Building up logistic support for
Army
Heart failure rates, treatment options
grow
Shakespeare with bare essentials IT all started 20 years ago on the streets of San Francisco with a condensed Hamlet. Now the Reduced Shakespeare Company has conquered the globe with its “Bard-bites.’’
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A matter of faith TODAY'S
is a red letter day in the history of free India. Independence symbolises the will of people. It also holds out the promise of equal opportunities to citizens without bias or discrimination. Equally crucial is the spirit of freedom that makes a difference in the quality of individuals and the nation as a whole. In independent India, freedom has come to mean different things to different persons and different institutions. As a result, socio-economic imbalances and political distortions continue to haunt the polity. Regrettably, even after 54 years the majority of our countrymen are yet to grasp the true meaning of freedom. Freedom is not a self-centred thought; it is an all-embracing dynamic concept in qualitative upliftment of citizens for a better tomorrow. The balancesheet of 54 years of Independence is not flattering. There are more minuses than pluses in nation-building. The failures are manifold but these are either leader-made or system-generated. The colonial mindset and the antiquated system cannot take the nation far. What has made matters worse is the mafiaisation of the instruments of governance. Where is the hope for citizens if the rulers use power as a money-making device for near and dear ones? The old order has to change. A new forward-looking system has to be ushered in. We need selfless rulers like Raja Harishchandra. We need a viable system which is committed to the poor, the have-nots and the underprivileged. We need a social revolution that frees our society of age-old ills and practices. We need an economic revolution that is free from the stranglehold of redtapism and helps to throw up entrepreneurial skills of Indians who are basically a talented lot. We need an honest and responsible system with accountability so that those with ill-gotten wealth cease to flourish. Is this an exercise in day-dreaming? Perhaps. But then lofty dreams alone can induce us to turn them into a reality. There is no justification for pessimism. India has enough resilience to come out of the messy situation of terrorism and non-performance. There is enough fire within us at the individual level which is waiting to be explored as a collective expression of the people. The real problem is, of course, the quality of leadership. The fact that the people have begun to recall the leadership quality of Indira Gandhi shows that they understand what is what. Indeed, the saving grace for our vibrant democratic polity is the people's common sense in a crisis situation. There is no need to shed tears, real or crocodiles'. Nor should we be apologetic about our failures. Our basic objective should be to draw appropriate lessons from past mistakes and move forward. India is a great nation, inheriting an ancient civilisation. We must not settle for a second place in the comity of nations. Herein lies the real challenge. And also, herein lies the message of Independence Day. The rest is a matter of faith. Sri Aurobindo wanted the Indians to have "the firm faith that India must rise and be great". Much now depends on how we conduct ourselves and make the leaders at all levels accountable for the job done or not done. India will have to rediscover itself, rebuilding its structures on modern scientific lines and value-based foundations. |
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The nation as fortress WHAT
is the value of freedom that is denied to the people in the name of security? Security for whom against what? These and related questions are being asked by concerned citizens through television interviews and letters to newspapers and magazines in the context of the unprecedented scale of security across the country against possible attacks on VVIPs during the Independence Day celebrations. Television images of the laughable level of security arrangements at sensitive points in the national capital, the main target of possible terrorist attack, has accentuated the anger of the common citizens. Can the people feel secure when a television channel shows a policeman holding the metal detector the wrong side out for frisking passengers and their baggage at a railway station in Delhi? In areas beyond the reach of television a pompous administration usually overreaches its brief and turns the security arrangements into a source of harassment for the people who make the mistake of turning up at designated points for participating in the Independence Day celebrations. Must normal life come to a standstill on a day which should actually see the unrestricted participation of every citizen in the celebration of the country's Independence? Logically the entire nation should come alive with boundless joy at least on Independence Day. Sadly the entire North-East was sealed because of the threat from separatist and insurgent-groups. In Jammu and Kashmir there were more policemen and para-military troops in every lane and street, throwing normal life out of gear for the people, in the name of stepped up security against terrorist strike. The situation in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar was no different because ISI agents now enter India via Nepal. In Delhi the Red Fort, from where the Prime Minister delivers the traditional address to the nation, was closed to the public two weeks before the celebration of Independence. The presence of a large contingent of crack commandos at the samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, presented a strange and sad spectacle. Why have the political leaders of the country become so insecure that each one of them needs a moving fortress of armed commandos for them to be able to perform their public duties? The better option for them would be to withdraw from public view at least on Independence Day so that the people may celebrate the occasion in the spirit in which it ought to be celebrated. A related and happy fallout of the political leaders decision to exercise such an option would be the saving of a huge sum of public money spent on providing security to those who have made a substantial contribution in making the life of the average citizen less secure. |
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A new problem point IT
is a bitter and bloody battle between two parties of the same blood line in distant Tamil Nadu. But it is narrowing the options of inaction of the ruling NDA alliance at the Centre. The Karunanidhi-led DMK is part of the NDA and hence wants the Centre to neutralise, if not punish, the Jayalalitha-led AIADMK government. But the Constitution and the past policy stand of the BJP, the leader of the alliance, stand in the way. So the DMK feels let down and Mr Karunanidhi let it be known to Mr George Fernandes as much. What happened in Chennai on Sunday and earlier in the wee hours of June 30 are condemnable but what is happening in New Delhi is highly worrying. Parliament has become the venue to project the conflict between the two rival Dravidian parties. With puny strength but with powerful lungs, the rival MPs feel free to stall the proceedings, not because they have a genuine cause but because they have to please their leaders. One member, Mr Vetriselvan, went to the extent of taking off his shirt and going on a display tour of the front benches to exhibit his prized bruises. Actually this was the least unacceptable part of Monday proceedings. What is totally unacceptable is to force the Centre to intervene in political disputes in states by invoking Articles 355 and 356. The shaky Centre is easily buffeted and invites more pressure. Back to Chennai. The DMK procession started on its 10 km route in the afternoon. It was all peaceful until the tail-end reached in front of the office of the Director-General of Police and raised offensive and obscene slogans. The police was properly provoked and low level constables were charged up to take revenge. This expressed itself in the form of brutal and unjustifiable attack on media persons, especially on television cameramen and news photographers. Their equipment was smashed and films were taken away. This is a dangerous trend. It is obvious that the Chennai police is suffering from the adverse effects of the Sun-TV filming of Mr Karunanidhi’s arrest. The manipulated montage lies behind the uncontrollable temper of the DMK supporters who poured into the city. The real confrontation between the processionists and the police took place on a stretch of road which has on one side staunch supporters of the ruling AIADMK. That explains the stab wounds and the death of two men. An enquiry has been ordered by a retired high court judge but this will not help subside the emotions. The death of a DMK MLA as a result of the shock he felt at police brutality will keep the couldron boiling. |
Fundamental mistake, historical blunder “A
fundamental mistake”. That was how Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, the greatest of India’s Muslim leaders, described the Partition of India on October 23, 1947. Many in both countries today agree that Partition was a historical blunder. The Mohajirs in Pakistan also say that it was a mad idea, it was the greatest blunder in history. Then there are those who ask what other alternative was there before the nation’s leadership. Dividing India alone could avoid a bloody civil war. This mistake can never be corrected now. Pakistan is a reality. For anyone today even to think of not accepting that reality and of the accession of Kashmir to India as an integral part of India would be the greatest of all fundamental mistakes that can invite a colossal calamity for the whole world. Partition was neither on the basis of Rehmat Ali’s idea of a nation nor on the basis of Jinnah’s two-nation theory. It was on the basis of Muslim majority states contiguous to each other forming the new State of Pakistan. It was not a geographical division either. As for the princely States, they were to join India or Pakistan according to their geographical contiguity. The final choice was left to the Maharajas. The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir did not join either India or Pakistan before August 15, 1947, in spite of advice to do so by Lord Mountbatten. The Governor-General also assured the Maharaja that if he acceded to Pakistan the Government of India would not consider that as an unfriendly act. In spite of that, the ruler, whose state was geographically contiguous to both India and Pakistan, opted to join India. Pakistan and terrorism were born together. Immediately after Partition, Pakistan organised border raids. When the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir realised that Pakistani nationals and tribesmen were going to capture Srinagar, he requested for India’s help. The Pakistani raiders’ presence was first reported on September 4, 1947. The Indian forces went to Kashmir to throw out the invaders. The raid continued throughout September. The longest of the four conflicts with Pakistan came to a close on January 1, 1949. The raiders were driven out from a major part of the state. About 35 per cent, however, remained under illegal occupation of Pakistan (PoK). Kashmir thus became the bone of contention between India and Pakistan. If Partition was a “fundamental mistake” or a “historical blunder”, taking the Kashmir question to the United Nations Security Council on January 1, 1948, was a diplomatic blunder”, some people argue today. The Security Council in its resolution on Kashmir (dated 13-8-1948), stated that “the future status of the State of Jammu and Kashmir shall be determined in accordance with the will of the people”. India accepted the resolution on August 20, 1948. But Pakistan, after extensive discussions with the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), accepted the resolution with “so many reservations, qualifications and assumptions”. Since conditions were attached and conditional acceptance was not possible, Pakistan’s acceptance was tantamount to rejection. Thus, the most referred to UN resolution of 1948, which spoke of “will of the people”, stood accepted by India and rejected by Pakistan. Since then Pakistan has resorted to exporting terrorism across the boundaries using the expression “will of the people” or “self-determination” as an alibi for waging war by proxy to grab the territory. It is difficult to think of Pakistan ever giving up such a ploy so easily. Kashmir has been the cause of three of the four wars the two nations have fought so far. The proxy war unleashed by Pakistan has so far claimed more than 25,000 lives. Even the long drawn-out freedom struggle of India (1857-1947) did not have that number of persons killed. The number of people martyred then was about 10,000. The four wars that India was forced to fight with Pakistan resulted in the loss of 8,733 Indian military personnel. Anti-India rhetoric of 54 years has only helped in creating a generation of people livid with anger, distrust and revenge against India. They in turn bequeathed to their progeny brains equipped with a circuit that motivates them only to hate and bleed India. Cooperation, not confrontation, should now become the guiding principle. Pakistan cannot afford to waste any more time and energy in the pursuit of their unnecessary pastime called “vengeance”. Leaders after leaders in Pakistan pursued this policy both in their internal and external affairs with single-minded objective and tenacious zeal. So much so that it has become the integral part of the state policy. Much of their time was spent either in making peaceful initiatives with India impossible or war with India possible. For nearly 33 years (from 1965 to 1998) Pakistan had believed that its deliverance was possible only through acquiring the nuclear bomb. Lying to the world, fooling its own people and with help from here and there, the bomb was made. Pakistan became a nuclear weapon state but remained unclear about its course. Well-known Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi wrote: “After 50 years, Pakistan is unable to agree upon who we are as a nation, where we belong, what we believe in.... Whose version of Islam do we follow.” The Americans now declare that Pakistan is a failed nation. Stephen Cohen said: “Pakistan belongs to that class of states whose survival is uncertain.” “A nation in search of an identity”, “a nation seeking mature political direction”, a nation seeking a role to play”, “a nation long on passion and short on hope” are some of the descriptions of Pakistan by well-known authorities on South Asia. Fifty-four years is a good enough period to bring a radical attitudinal change in the mindset of the people. If the Europeans can come out of their mindset, forgetting the memories of World War II, there is no reason why Pakistan cannot come out of the 1947 Partition syndrome. People on this side of the border are by and large a forgiving lot. The best example is the unprecedented display or goodwill for President Musharraf. What have the four wars achieved? Partition of Pakistan! Well, that is what happens to those who do not learn from history. They are condemned to repeat it. When war achieved nothing, they resorted to a fruitless proxy war wrongly calling it “jihad”. The absurdity in Pakistan is that they give a religious coat of paint to every wrong act against India. They have added the prefix “holy” with war and “Islamic” with the bomb, strangely classifying terrorists as “freedom fighters”. Pakistan has no doubt achieved a resounding success in at least one area and that is in building up a parallel army — a force that respects no boundary and law. Its members are loners and isolated people from society who are ready to entertain fanciful ideas for a price and for any cause — perceived or real. They live in the confines of their organisation or self-created world without social restraints. They know no skill but know how to kill the innocent, the unarmed and even pilgrims. They have little regard for the consequences of their actions and are willing to die. “There is despondency and hopelessness surrounding us with no light visible anywhere around.... We have reached a stage where our economy has crumbled, our credibility is lost, state institutions lie demolished”, said Gen Pervez Musharraf on October 17, 1999, immediately after overthrowing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. What he did not say is that Pakistan’s jihadi culture is responsible for it. Every development index measuring the well-being of people shows a decline. The world community has come to regard Pakistan as a backward marching nation deadset on a course of deterioration. Pakistan has to repay its $ 38 billion in foreign debt. The oddity in Pakistan is the religious law (Sharia) overtakes the rule of law. The result is tyranny in the name of divine sanction. When things go against the tenets of Islam, clergymen also do not condemn such acts. Democracy does not take roots there because military coups keep uprooting it repeatedly. A graffiti in Karachi reads: “We apologise for temporary democratic interruption. Normal martial law will be resumed shortly”. The writer, a keen observer of social developments, is a key functionary in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. |
I-Day musings: have we run dry? “I
have run dry. There is no message at all. If it is bad, let it be so.” So said Gandhiji when asked for a message on the historic occasion of “Transfer of Power” on Aug 15, 1947. Wry remarks these, coming from a person who led the freedom struggle during the best years of his life but had to eat the humble pie in agreeing to the Partition and its aftermath. What the Father of the Nation, as he is lovingly called, would have said, if he were amidst us today, is best left to our imagination. Does he not stand vindicated? Like many of you, I too feel enveloped by mixed feelings as we celebrate (really?) the 55th Independence Day. Scams and scandals of all sorts stare us in the face. One “Tehelka” seems to vie with another in size, spread and severity, leaving the common man numb and dumb. Poor people have no choice. Nor voice. But let us not forget that if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich, for long. Proof abounds, if at all needed. When the Indian Independence Act was being scripted in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill had cautioned: “Liberty is man’s birthright. However, to pass on the reins of the government to the Congress at this juncture is to hand over the destiny of hungry millions into the hands of the rascals, rogues and free booters... India will be lost in political squabbles. It will take a thousand years to know the periphery of the philosophy of politics. Today we hand over the Government to men of straw of whom no trace will be found in a few years.” It doesn’t take much intelligence to test this prophesy on the touchstone of reality. Discount the euphoria and gloss, and you are face to face with the reality which is brute and gross. Distance, in both space and time, lends respect and credence. Isn’t it? Similar sentiments were expressed by B.R. Ambedkar in his address to the Constituent Assembly: “It is not that India was never an independent country. The point is that she once lost the independence she had. Will she lose it a second time?... What perturbs me greatly is the fact that not only India has once before lost her independence, but she lost it by the infidelity and treachery of some of our own people... Will history repeat itself?” Dramatis personae of the infamous “Armsgate” exposed by Tarun Tejpal’s tehelka.com are shining examples of infidelity and treachery. Somebody said that was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. O Gosh, how big would be the iceberg! But corrupt people not only survive but thrive in our society. The so-called due process of law is apparently aimed at helping the innocent but ends up saving the guilty. A court case may stretch longer than a Neena Gupta serial. Corruption, like distributive justice, is all about sharing among and caring for one another. Hypocrisy, democracy and corruption make blissful bedfellows. O Freedom! What liberties are taken in thy name! Let us not lose hope. Let us not be pessimists who are never disappointed. That reminds me of the indefatigable John F. Kennedy, who on assumption of Presidency struck this note of cautious optimism: “All this will not be finished in the first hundred days, nor will it be finished in the first thousand days nor in the life of this Administration, nor perhaps in our life time on this planet. But let us begin”. So let us begin. Let us make a beginning on this august day of August. |
Building up logistic support for
Army THE recent announcement by the government to revamp the national security structure has brought into sharp focus the urgent requirement of restructuring the existing logistic infrastructure in the Army, aimed at improving users’ satisfaction both in peace and war. During the last two decades a few high-level committees were formed to go into the restructuring of logistic support. Their recommendations were examined by the Army as well as the Ministry of Defence but were not adopted for total implementation due to some intrinsic weaknesses. In the CAG’s recent report some logistic lapses were brought out which require to be looked into and eradicated. There is, however, no need to panic. Future wars are likely to be of short duration. The logistic support will be limited to equipment to equipment replacements. The scope of field/medium repairs will also be very limited. Light repairs generally will serve the purpose. In peace time, it, therefore, becomes important to keep the units’ entitlements fully made up and all equipment kept fully fit for any operational contingency. This depends on regular flow of stores from traditional sources. Apart from the procurement of equipment and stores from trade, there are 39 Ordnance factories and eight public sector undertakings in the country forming a defence base for the three services for the supply of weapons, equipment and ammunition. They enjoy a protected status with the defence forces as their captive customers. They have no competition from any quarter and, therefore, can dictate terms as regards price and deliveries. With this monopolistic attitude, the agreed delivery schedules are flouted with impunity and Ordnance depots, therefore, are unable to meet users’ requirements for a large number of items. A recommendation was made by a high-level committee to do away with manufacture of low technology items by Ordnance factories. This must be implemented. In 1985, an apex body was formed to decide on offloading some items for the defence sector to private industry. Some firms who had the necessary skills, product support facilities and finance expressed willingness to take up the job, but were disillusioned by bureaucratic procedures and the defence reluctance to accept indigenous equipment. We cannot continue to remain dependent on imports if we have to increase industry’s share from 30 to 70 per cent by 2010. A start, though a small one, has been made but it needs to be given a big push towards integrating civil industry with the defence PSUs apart from the DRDO laboratories. The government must draw up a strategy of integrating private industry with the defence sector. Most suppliers of Army vehicles are reportedly willing to set up service and repair facilities and work out arrangements to replace the repairable engines and other parts, and offer a warranty for these. This will cause enormous savings to the defence budget as the dedicated repair organisation and supporting spares storage depots will be pruned considerably in terms of manpower, repair machinery and inventory carrying costs. The Ordnance procedures are basically sound. In the light of available information technology, however, they do need orientation so as to make them more result-oriented and give maximum user satisfaction at minimum costs. Towards this end, a central inventory control project is being developed to provide online processing for all stocking echelons. The inter-connection between Army Headquarters and various stocking echelons will bring about total assets visibility. The online analysis will lead to timely decisions. Modern forecasting and selective inventory control techniques are being adopted by the Ordnance depots to assess and monitor future requirements accurately. Forecasting needs a sound data base for which the Ordnance Corps has to depend on inputs from the General Staff as also on EME who are responsible for formulating technical scales of spares to be provisioned. If the inputs are faulty and are not provided to the Ordnance in time, the results will be erratic. Since the AOC is dependent for most of its inventory requirements on the Ordnance factories and PSUs, the Ministry of Defence should initiate measures to make them more responsive to the needs of the defence forces. All agencies that are required to give their inputs for sound logistic support also be accountable for their performance so that there is unity of purpose which will avoid recriminations. |
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Heart failure rates, treatment options
grow THE
first self-contained artificial heart to beat in a man’s chest is a dramatic development in the battle against heart disease, but there are a host of other medical advances quietly giving millions of heart patients a chance at a healthy life. Recent advances have been overshadowed by the attention given to the experimental total replacement heart implanted at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, in a diabetic male patient in his 50s suffering from heart failure. “We can have trouble with everything else, but we’re not having troubles with this heart,” University of Louisville surgeon Laman Gray said of the grapefruit-sized plastic-and-titanium heart that he and colleague Robert Dowling implanted on July 2. The severely weakened patient remains hospitalised. Unlike previous artificial hearts, Abiomed Inc.’s device has no outside wires, holding hope for a relatively normal life for the thousands who cannot obtain a donor heart. “The Abiomed (heart) is just as the artificial heart was envisioned 20 years ago,” said Alan Gass, Director of Transplant Cardiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. In 1982, Dr. Barney Clark (61) of Salt Lake City, Utah, survived 112 days with the first artificial heart, known as the Jarvik-7. He was confined to his bed, attached to protruding cables, tubes and the artificial heart’s noisy air compressor.
Patients in need Nearly one in five Americans — or 61 million people — have some form of cardiovascular disease, according to the latest government figures, and up to 3 million suffer from heart failure where the heart muscle loses some of its ability to pump blood. More than 700,000 of those patients die yearly. But as the number of heart patients steadily grows, so do the array of innovations to treat them. “The choices are multiplying for people who have advanced heart disease. The take-home message is that having advanced heart disease no longer needs to be perceived as a death sentence. There are any number of medical, surgical and biological strategies that can or in the future will be able to help,” said Clyde Yancy, medical director of the University of Texas Southwestern/St. Paul Heart Transplant Programme. Potential cures for sick hearts await advances in genetic engineering, stem cell use, new drug treatments and in making more donor hearts available for transplant. Transplants from still-scarce donors are now almost routine, with one-year survival rates over 90 percent, he said. And stem cells — a controversial area of research because of the harvesting of the undifferentiated cells from human embryos — hold promise for repairing damaged heart tissue. As scientists learn more about genomics, it will be possible to tailor therapy for individual patients, he said. “It would be ideal in the future to be able to do a genetic profile to understand exactly what kind of heart disease we’re dealing with and then we’d know exactly what medicine is the best fit,” he said. But for each emerging technology, there will be limitations based on suitability for each patient, experts said.
Heart pump An implantable heart pump is under study to determine whether the device, the size of a human heart which boosts the heart’s ability to pump blood, can be used in lieu of a donor heart or only as a temporary bridge to a transplant. Pete Kenyon (63) has suffered two heart attacks but says he has had no serious problems since a heart pump was implanted near his abdomen in 1998. Kenyon of Darien, Connecticut, has been on a waiting list for a donor heart since 1997. Before receiving the pump, he was prescribed drugs and a device that controls heartbeat irregularities. “The pump was experimental when I got it, but it beat the alternative. I feel good now, I’m in good shape, I work full-time and I can do most things I want to do. I just can’t be in the water or I’ll short out my equipment,” he said. No one knows how durable the pump is, Gass noted. The longest a patient has had one is five years, while most patients keep the pump for six to 12 months, he said. For those who suffer from an irregular heart beat, which can lead to heart failure, an increasingly popular device called an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) can correct potentially lethal abnormalities and even monitor the heart’s electrical activity. The latest devices can detect and treat problems before the harm occurs. For long-time heart patient Vice-President Dick Cheney, who has suffered several heart attacks, an ICD was the solution chosen to control his irregular heart beat. About the size of a small pager and weighing less than 3 ounces (85 grams), ICD devices are implanted in the chests of roughly 150,000 Americans each year. The newer generations of ICDs and pacemakers — which speeds up slow-beating hearts — have shrunk to matchbook size and can improve the heart’s performance and efficiency. The limitation of Abiomed’s artificial heart is its large size. “It needs to be much smaller, and in 10 years I think it will be smaller. The trend in all of these assist devices is toward miniaturizing,” Gass said.
Drug therapy Meanwhile, progress continues to be made in drug therapy for heart failure, although drugs have significant limitations for late-stage heart patients, doctors said. Three classes of drug therapy have been the standard treatments for heart failure: vasodilators, which dilate blood vessels; inotropics, which increase the heart’s ability to contract; and diuretics, drugs that reduce fluid. A fourth class of drugs, beta blockers, prevent adrenalin from stimulating heart receptor sites, which affect the frequency and force of cardiac pumping and are often associated with severe heart failure. Because beta blockers also reduce the pumping action of the heart in the short term, they have not been used until recently for treatment of heart failure. Newer inotropic agents like phosphordiesterase inhibitors are improving cardiac function and the overall quality of life in thousands of patients, said Craig Olesen, Director of Resuscitation Research and Education for the American Medical Resource Foundation in Libertyville, Illinois. These agents cause the heart to work more efficiently, while not raising the oxygen consumption as much as other drugs, he said. “What approach to take depends upon many factors. Any one of these may or may not be useful for an individual patient,” Olesen added.
Reuters |
We draw the attention of our readers to a Press communique appearing elsewhere recapitulating, for the information of the public, the rules and bases of franchise for the local and the central
legislatures. The preliminary electoral rolls for the Punjab will be published on the 9th of August and any objections to the inclusion or exclusion of names must be made within 21 days of the publication. One thing which has to be particularly borne in mind is that the right to vote exists irrespective of sex and all males or females answering the requisite qualifications have the right to be enlisted as voters. |
Shakespeare with bare essentials IT all started 20 years ago on the streets of San Francisco with a condensed Hamlet. Now the Reduced Shakespeare Company has conquered the globe with its “Bard-bites.’’ The brainchild of three American street performers has taken off beyond their wildest dreams — a six-year run in London’s West End
theatreland, summer seasons at the Kennedy Centre in Washington and tours from Estonia to Uruguay. And brevity pays — they have also encapsulated The Bible and performed The Complete History of America (abridged). But Shakespeare was the perfect inspiration for Austin
Tichenor, Reed Martin and Adam Long, still bemused at the international success of their never-ending story. The show has now come full circle — back to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it was first performed in 1987. Britain’s greatest playwright is debunked — but with affection in a show that mixes Monty Python and the Marx Brothers. The troupe turn Othello into a rap song, the history plays are a “War of the Roses Bowl’’ American football match and Hamlet is performed backwards. Titus Andronicus is a television cookery show for cannibals. Audience participation is encouraged. British reserve crumbles as they get people in the cheap seats to chant Ophelia’s unusual lament: “Cut the crap Hamlet, my biological clock is ticking and I want babies now.’’ The show must be every chilhood dream come true for kids who laboured long and hard being force-fed Shakespeare in school. “Our world record is getting through all 37 plays in an hour and seven minutes once in London,’’ Adam Long boasted. “We have had productions in Norway, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Estonia. A lot of South America has had the show. The script has been translated into dozens of languages,’’ he said. The original trio draw on a corps of about a dozen actors — mostly North Americans — to perform worldwide.
Reuters
Forgetful with faces ? Don’t worry Forget names? Can’t recall a face? Suddenly lost for words? Psychologists have consoling news for older people with faltering memories. They are not forgetful. They have just lost the art of forgetting the right things. The Malcolm MacLeod of the University of St Andrews in Scotland has been awarded a $ 41,000 grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh to take a closer look at the links between memory and forgetting. He thinks that a welling up of too many memories may be what makes recall difficult for older people. “Forgetting is simply a problem of accessing relevant material,’’ Dr MacLeod said. “You are trying to remember the telephone number of a friend. You might not simply access the friend’s telephone number, but his previous telephone numbers as well. Now how does memory deal with that level of unwanted competition?’’ Dr MacLeod is proposing a series of quizzes for volunteers aged between 60 and 75 to test a theory of memory. He and his colleagues believe the mysterious machinery of memory has a clever way of dismissing details that seem not to matter. They call it inhibition, or suppression. He said: “Imagine you have a threshold above which items are available for conscious inspection: you can retrieve them. Inhibition or suppression comes along and stamps on this or that particular item, and pushes it below the threshold. Then it is no longer available for inspection. So far as the memory systems are concerned, it no longer exists.’’ But the “irrelevant’’ details should not be suppressed for too long, the theory goes: it might not matter now, but it could be vital at some point. So according to the theory, older people who cannot remember a name might not be suffering from clinical aphasia, or dying brain cells, or collapsing cognitive powers; they might just have lost some of the capacity to forget. There might be too much information in their brain cells competing for retrieval. The theory has its ironies: younger students with better inhibition, who are indulging in a spot of last-minute swotting for exams, might run the risk of suppressing stuff they learned earlier. “The process of remembering actually produces forgetting,’’ said Dr MacLeod. ``But you can look at it the other way round. The process of forgetting results in remembering, if you see what I mean.’’
The Guardian |
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The real self, the real me, the true I dies not!.... Realise, realise that you are the Infinity within. Know that. The very moment that a person knows himself to be that the very moment that a man realises his true nature, he is free, above all danger, above all difficulty, above all suffering, above all tribulation and pain. Know that, be yourself. *** The bodies, the minds, are like the different glasses; one body may be like a lens, another prismatic, another a white glass, another a red glass, another concave, another convex. The bodies are different But you are not the bodies only, the apparent unreal self. Through ignorance you call yourself the body.... You are the infinite power, the divinity, the constant, immutable, unchangeable One. That you are; Know that and you find yourself inhabiting the whole world, inhabiting the whole universe. —
Swami Ramatirtha, In Woods of God Realisation, Vol I *** Why do religions degenerate? Rain water is pure, but by the time it reaches earth it gets dirty owing to the medium it passes through. If the roofs and the pipes and the channels are all dirty, the water discharged through them must also be dirty. —
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna. 1031 *** If you must play your part in society or go through the rituals of orthodox religion, you may do that. But the real religion is beyond these things. It is not only real but sane because it demands nothing from you which intelligence cannot accept. It demands no blind adherence to dogmas which even the merest school boy senses to be untrue, nor does it demand allegiance to customs and habits which are antiquated, futile, empty and unreasonable. —
Paul Brunton, The Inner Reality, chapter III. *** Without contentment no one gets satisfaction. —
Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Gauri M. 5; Sukhmani *** The realised sage proclaims: I am full of spirit and bliss, Material gains do not tempt me, Neither does the craving for fame attract me. —
Rigveda 10.119.8. |
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