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Wednesday,
March 27, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Wages of populism Left in the lurch! Another package for HP |
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Turmoil in the Air Force
Vitality event in City Beautiful
Where are Europe’s big ideas? A cup of tea keeps diseases away
Don’t go nuts over food allergies
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Wages of populism The White Paper on the financial situation of Punjab is an official acknowledgement of a bitter truth which was known to everyone in any case: the state has an empty treasury. Not only that, instruments of governance stand paralysed. Punjab cannot even pay salaries or pension to its employees. That happens to be the ultimate humiliation. It is another matter that the heavy expenditure on salaries is one of the major factors which brought the prosperous state to such a sorry pass. The revenue deficit gap is likely to touch Rs 3,500 crore by the close of the year. The Chief Minister has repeatedly asserted that the intention is not to apportion blame, but in reality the White Paper does exactly that. In a subtle manner, it lays the blame squarely at the door of the previous SAD-BJP government slamming it for its revenue sacrificing measures and bad governance. The basic rule of economics is that there are no free lunches. What goes without saying is that there can be no free power or irrigation either. Add to that steps like abolition of octroi and the cost to the exchequer mounts to an astronomical figure. The condition of the Punjab State Electricity Board is typical of PSUs. It will close the current financial year logging a commercial loss of a staggering Rs 2,000 crore. That means that the state can neither produce enough power nor buy it from other central agencies. Power shortage will make the financial situation even worse and the vicious circle will become even more ominous. Debt servicing, which consumes nearly 30 per cent of the total revenue receipts, will pull Punjab further towards bankruptcy. Since the present government knows what ails the state's economy, it is natural to expect it to plug the leaks, even if it is through some harsh measures. But have no illusions. The Chief Minister is unlikely to undertake the dirty work. He has shown no inclination of rolling back the freebies. On the contrary, he has stood by similar election commitments made by the Congress, which will put an additional burden of something like Rs 1,200 crore instead. Nor does he have a blueprint ready for remedying the situation although he says it will be prepared in the next three months or so. That makes one suspect that the drift and the slide will continue unhindered. The pattern so far has been to blame the previous government for profligacy and leave the harsh measures to the successor. Mr Amarinder Singh does not seem prepared to break the tradition. That is bad news because the situation is so precarious that it brooks no delay. |
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Left in the lurch! The re-election of Mr Harkishen Singh Surjeet as General Secretary of the CPM for a fourth successive term is an apt comment on the state of political health of the party. What can one expect of a party that has pretensions to being a national party? If only the CPM leadership would do a bit of honest introspection, it would realise how it has helped in the growth of the party it now wants to stop from spreading its influence. It must begin at the beginning And what is that? That is essentially a regional party with its area of influence extending to only one and a half states (West Bengal plus and in and out presence in Kerala). Mr Surjeet is a respected figure in Indian politics. But the CPM needs to reinvent itself as a truly national party instead of propping up unworkable political formations every now and then. Can he do it? Had he had the political vision he would have carried the CPM with him on the question of allowing Mr Jyoti Basu to become Prime Minister and lead a coalition of left and secular parties in 1996. In a moment of honest introspection Mr Jyoti Basu
described the decision as a historical blunder. The opportunity for Mr Basu to become Prime Minister came his way when the Congress was routed in 1996. But why blame the venerable General Secretary for the lack of political vision that the CPM leadership has all along shown in its dealings with other parties. Mr Surjeet did not make an earthshaking statement when he said, shortly after reelection, that the biggest challenge before the party was to counter and prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party from gaining strength. Pray, who was indirectly responsible for helping the BJP capture power at the Centre? The enquiry should begin in 1989 when the CPM was as vehemently anti-Congress as it is anti-BJP today. Did the CPM not prop up Mr V. P. Singh as Prime Minister by joining hands with the BJP? If the BJP indeed is anti-minorities and communal, both Mr V. P. Singh and the CPM abdicated the right to denounce it for these reasons by accepting its support for preventing Rajiv Gandhi from becoming Prime Minister. The CPM never learns from its mistakes. There is no denying the fact that the country needs a viable political alternative to replace the discredited BJP and the Congress. A left party coalition under Mr Jyoti Basu may have helped kickstart the process for the CPM to strike roots as a truly national party. Today Mr Surjeet is worried about the threat to the country's secular character from the BJP and its allies. However, unless the CPM learns to fill the political vacuum that it usually manages to create, it is pointless blaming others for the unhappy turn that Indian politics keeps taking with disturbing frequency. The CPM can emerge as a viable political alternative only if the leadership of the party is placed in younger hands. But who can reason with a leadership that evidently enjoys making historical blunders. |
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Another package for HP The Himachal leadership has discovered this bright idea to tide over the state’s almost perpetual economic woes: whenever the crisis deepens, invite the Prime Minister to announce a bailout. Aware of this, Mr Vajpayee commented light-heartedly: ”can a person come to Himachal only if he gives a package?” Behind the banter is the serious issue of distributing Central funds among the states which cannot be laughed off like this. The already fund-strapped Centre cannot afford to distribute the limited resources at the Prime Minister’s disposal so casually. The governing norms provide for only performance-linked Central funds for the reform-pursuing states on merit. But these norms, it appears, apply only to the non-BJP-ruled states. Well aware of the Centre’s tight-fisted approach and constraints, even the BJP leadership in Himachal was not sure of getting any prime ministerial package this time. Last time when Mr Vajpayee visited the state, he had handed over a gift of Rs 700 crore to the Chief Minister. A jubilant and emboldened Mr Prem Kumar Dhumal again tried the trick to cash in on the poet-Prime Minister’s fondness for the hill state (or is it a weakness for an own party-ruled state?) and extracted an additional special plan assistance of Rs 180 crore for the annual plan and an extra Rs 150 crore for the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund on Monday in addition to a Rs 480 crore aid announced at a public meeting in Shimla a day before. No one would grudge the poor hill state getting such a bonanza from the Prime Minister provided the Himachal government spends the money judiciously on public welfare and gets out of the financial mess. That is not the case. An expression commonly used to describe the situation in the state is “financial anarchy”. The state leadership has not made public any concrete plan to extricate itself from the self-inflicted crisis except asking for more sops like an income-tax holiday till 2007 or more levies like the generation tax on hydel power, while it has been accused of giving interest-free loans to big industries. A large part of the state budget goes into paying the salaries and pensions of the employees. Himachal’s debt is expected to touch Rs 20,000 crore by the end of the next fiscal. The state is pursuing some reforms like downsizing the administration, but only lazily. The vast potential of the state in horticulture, hydroelectric power generation and tourism remains untapped, apart from the emerging sectors of IT and biotechnology. The basic needs of the citizens for clean drinking water and minimum health services remain unmet. The recent outbreaks of plague and jaundice testify to this. The state, which depends heavily on tourism, can ill-afford a repetition of such occurrences. The release of liberal Central funds can be justified only if these are fruitfully and visibly ploughed into employment-generation, infrastructure development and uplift of the social sector. Otherwise, such unplanned giveaways would be an embarrassment both to the giver and the taker. |
Turmoil in the Air Force With the resignation of Air Marshal Manjit Singh Sekhon, AOC-in-C, Southern Air Command, on grounds of impropriety in seeking political help for career advancement, a sad and sordid chapter is over for the IAF. Yet another and more serious incident of an IAF transport plane, flying near the LoC, hit by a Pakistani surface-to-air missile (SAM) seems to bedevil the Service. The court of enquiry into this incident was conducted by Air Marshal Manjit Singh Sekhon. From the Press reports it appears that the court of enquiry has indicted Air Marshal Vinod Bhatia, AOC-in-C, Western Air Command, who was in the cockpit (along with the captain of the aircraft), for violating Pakistan airspace. It is alleged that the aircraft had gone across the LoC near Kargil where it was fired upon and hit by a Pakistani shoulder-fired, heat seeking SAM. Since Air Marshal Sekhon had been resorting to questionable means to obtain the command of Western Air Command, an enquiry conducted by him could be considered motivated with the possible aim of creating grounds for the removal of Air Marshal Bhatia from this post and opening the door for himself. Air Marshal Bhatia is senior to Air Marshal Sekhon and, therefore, if the latter, in the course of the enquiry, found that the evidence was leading to the former being blamed, he should have immediately stopped the proceedings and reported to the Chief of Air Staff on the impropriety of his continuing with the probe. He did nothing of the sort but, instead, went ahead with the blame game. It appears that Air Marshal Bhatia has asked for a fresh probe into the February 19 incident on the LoC at Kargil. Over a period of time, and quite thoughtlessly, the Indian commanders on the LoC have been inducting into the forward positions weapons of higher
caliber to increase the reach of their fire across the border. Thus, anti-aircraft guns have found their way along the LoC in the “ground-firing role.” The other side followed suit in tandem. Consequently, these weapons reach out across the LoC in the anti-aircraft role as well. On mobilisation, even shoulder-fired SAMs have been deployed in forward positions, and they too can reach out a few kilometres across the LoC. Thus, an aircraft flying close to the LoC could be targeted. This happened at Siachen where first we brought down their helicopter and then Pakistan did the same to one of ours. Also the possibility of terrorists with a shoulder-fired SAM crossing into J and K has never been discounted. In fact, Indian intelligence and the Army have been apprehensive of such a development. From 1963 onwards the need for the IAF to operate from the Kargil airfield to support Army deployments in this sector has been felt. Later the civil government too has been pressing for the opening of this airfield. In fact, in recent years the administration has gone ahead in constructing a proper runway and putting up bare essential infrastructure. The Zojila Pass on the Srinagar-Kargil-Leh road is generally closed from the third week of October to the middle of May due to heavy snowfall. During this period all supplies, troops returning from leave or on posting, etc, have to be flown to Leh and then conveyed back to Kargil by road, across two high mountain passes, namely Fatula and Namikala, over a distance of more than 175 km. The same has to be done in the reverse order too. The civil administration and population also undergo the same set of difficulties. However, the IAF has all along been reluctant to operate from this location for various reasons. Those familiar with the airstrip at Kargil would know that a normal pattern of “circuit” by a transport aircraft during landing or take-off would, if it makes an error, take it very close to the LoC and could draw immediate fire. This is so even after feature Pt 13620, which completely dominates the airfield, was captured by us during the 1971 war. Given the stance taken by the IAF and the increased need to operate from this airfield, due to heavy Army deployment, consequent to the Kargil war and the ever increasing pressure from the civil administration, it is understandable that the AOC-in-C decided to be in the aircraft on the inaugural flight and, in fact, be a co-pilot, and check on the difficulties in operating from this location. The aircraft (AN-32) had taken off from Leh and was to land at Kargil, where a grand reception was organised by the civil administration to welcome the inaugural flight. The weather was fair and visibility good. Both the captain of the aircraft (Wing Commander S. C. Chapekar) and the navigator (Squadron Leader Awasthi) are highly experienced in their respective fields and hold the appropriate ratings. Further, they have carried out innumerable sorties at Siachen. Turtuk, Daulot-Beg-Ouldi, etc, on supply dropping missions for troops deployed on the LoC/border with China. Air Marshal Bhatia has over 5000 hours of flying experience on a wide range of aircraft. The flight path from Leh to Kargil is along a route which has well defined landmarks and the Leh-Kargil road runs almost alongside. As one approaches Kargil and turns to post side to align with the runway, there is a high ridge on the starboard side of the “flight-path”, beyond which lies the Indus river and the LoC. One can also “cut-in” and join the “baseleg” directly, making a shorter turn or complete the normal turn, and see upfront the wide open Kargil bowl with the airfield on the high of the two flat grounds. A normal turn does take one closer to the LoC, but never across it. Given the layout of the route with easily identifiable land marks, visibility conditions and the experience of the crew, the possibility of an error in navigation is indeed remote. The aircraft was turning in on the port side to align with the runway when the missile hit the starboard side engine of the aircraft, (the side towards the LoC, which itself tends to point that the missile possibly was fired from that direction). Once hit by the missile, there must have been momentary loss of control and direction, and possibly during this period the aircraft might have veered to the starboard side. Had the aircraft crossed to the other side of the LoC, it would have drawn fire from the anti-aircraft guns and MMGs, besides other small arms and there would have been some hits on the fuselage of the aircraft. The crippled aircraft was flown back to Leh by the crew without any further mishap. It is equally plausible for Pakistan to push one or two infiltrators with a shoulder-fired SAM across the LoC and let them lie in wait for the aircraft on the inaugural flight, to take a pot shot at it. In this case they had to infiltrate only a few kilometres to be able to target a plane landing at Kargil. Further, had the aircraft drifted across the LoC Pakistan would have launched an immediate protest against the violation of its airspace. When the Pakistani spokesperson finally raised this issue, he was a bit mixed up on the date the incident occurred. The Indian enquiry, alleging that our aircraft crossed into PoK, gave the alibi that Pakistan must have been desperately looking for. The act of sending an infiltrator armed with a shoulder-fired SAM of firing one across the LoC and bringing down an aircraft with the AOC-in-C, Western Air Command on board, would have been something too serious for Pakistan to handle. The experience of the crew, good flying conditions, easily recognisable land marks along the flight-path and the circumstantial evidence does point to an unlikely possibility of the aircraft crossing the LoC when it was hit by a SAM. Further, an element of doubt on the fairness and objectivity of this enquiry into the incident and the suspicion of malafide on the part of the enquiry officer persists, given his exertions to get into, the chair of AOC-in-C, Western Air Command. Added to this, the presence of the AOC-in-C in the co-pilot’s seat does not absolve the regular crew of its full range of responsibilities and yet the enquiry has essentially focused the blame on the AOC-in-C. The on-going turmoil in the IAF has done incalculable damage to this fine fighting force. All sorts of ill-informed questions are being raised in the Press as to why the Air Marshal was at the controls, that he was not authorised to fly this aircraft, that crossing of the LoC could have started a war with Pakistan the “black-box” of the aircraft indicates that it had crossed the LoC. Not content with that alone, a hiatus is being created between the transport and fighter pilots and so on. These are very unfortunate developments for the IAF, coming as they do on the heels of discontentment created among the technical staff by the Fifth Pay Commission, and later, inadequately addressed by the top brass. Finally, it is an essential facit of command in the defence services for commanders to know and be familiar with the equipment handled by officers and men under their charge. They are expected to lead from the front and, given the IAF’s reluctance to operate from Kargil airfield, Air Marshal Bhatia was merely seeing for himself, at first hand, the difficulties in operating from this airfield when the unfortunate incident took place. The “black-box” in an AN-32 is not integrated with the GPS (Global Positioning System) and, therefore, does not record the precise “flight path” followed by the aircraft. Considering all the aspects, an element of doubt in the objectivity of the enquiry persists and, therefore, there are reasonable grounds to go into this incident de novo. The writer, a retired Lieut-General, was a Deputy Chief of Army Staff. |
Vitality event in City Beautiful As an aspiring seminarian and an ardent lover of the "City Beautiful", I was pleased to get an invitation to a brainstorming session on the "Vitality of India" organised at Chandigarh. Neither the ignorance of the existence of the Luxumberg Institute for European and International Studies from which the "vitality vibes" emanated nor my own declining vitality dampened my enthusiasm to join the conclave. Perhaps it was due to the fatal attraction of the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID) and Chandigarh I guess! The amazing array of grey eminence ranging from fading socialists to free-wheeling globalisers who gathered at the CRRID campus for the vitality session slightly unnerved me at the beginning. But soon while making uncertain attempts at concealing my discomfiture, I discovered to my relief that most of them shared, in varying degrees, my vague state of mind about the impending "vitality storming". For two days as eminent historians delved into the antiquity of Indian civilisation, erudite anthropologists deliberated on the diversity of Indian culture and its many manifestations over the centuries and scholarly sociologists searched for the rationale of the violent versions of "Chaturvarnam" erupting amongst the passive practitioners of the Karmic philosophy, the "idea of India" played hide and seek with its vitality in the corridors of CRRID! By the time the pundits of contemporary political chaos started chanting the Panchayati Raj mantra to reinvent the aging Bharat mata and the other participants nearly drained themselves to exhaustion, my vicarious pleasure knew no bounds! Of course, tasty nutriments and invigorating libations graciously served and generously consumed in agreeable company have had their invisible but decisive impact on me too. Whether the labours of her septuagenarian seminarian helped Mother India to revitalise herself or not, the salubrious surroundings of CRRID did energise them, I mused, as I watched some of them shaking its Director Rashpal Malhotra's hands rather vigorously and others patting the backs of his enthusiastic young colleagues before proceeding, hopefully, to their next "vitality event". |
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Where are Europe’s big ideas? In the coming six months, the people of Western Europe’s two biggest countries will be bombarded by rhetoric as politicians vie for their votes in national elections. They will be promised sunny horizons and warned of impending doom if they vote the wrong way. More than five decades after the end of its last great conflict and 12 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, Western Europe is in pretty good shape. Yes, unemployment is unacceptably high in some countries, pockets of poverty and social tension persist and the shine has gone off the economic expansion that heralded the new century. But, on any broad view, most of the continent’s citizens enjoy comfortable lives. This has come with a price. The dearth of new ideas, of major cultural innovation, of serious debate about the future has become a hallmark of the way we live now. All the innovation in the world may go into developing mobile telephone facilities or selling deodorants, but where is the equivalent of the flood of thinking about society, politics and the economy that characterised the continent in the last century? Which European authors or thinkers set the world alight as they once did? The French film Amelie was highly enjoyable but is this the best that the cinema of Renoir and the nouvelle vague can produce — and what happened to German and Italian films? Art has become self-referentially repetitive. Post-modern irony excuses anything. And who built the Louvre pyramid in Paris and the museum in Bilboa? A Chinese-American and an American. Perhaps the cosy snooze Europe is having under its comfort blanket is the inevitable result of a society where, for most people, most things work, the sad state of Britain’s transport and public services being the exception. Even as massive a change as the introduction of euro notes and coins went with hardly a hitch, and is now taken for granted. In such a climate, all we ask of politicians is that they are efficient managers. Forget about the vision thing. Put the next great development, the future shape of the European Union after enlargement to the East, into the safe hands of a 75-year-old former French president and hold your breath for protracted wrangles about qualified majority voting and farm subsidies. Or take the election campaigns in Germany and France. Both contests have a deadening air of deja vu about them. The contenders have been around for decades. The themes are as old as the hills. Germany is at a crucial stage of evolution from post-war guilt into the major continental player, but the September showdown between Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and the right-wing Bavarian premier, Edmund Stoiber, will be all about the former’s responsibility for the economic downturn and the latter’s promises to produce a recovery. In France, where there will be a two-round presidential election in April-May followed by a parliamentary poll in June, voters have a choice between a 69-year-old, neo-Gaullist who has been in public office almost continuously for 35 years, and a 64-year-old veteran of the Left. President Jacques Chirac is putting his faith in a highly unoriginal platform of tax cuts and law and order; in a bid to appeal to the centre, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin says that, while he is a Socialist, his programme is not — a fair reflection of the state of the ideological debate. French voters are expected to show their contempt by continuing the upwards graph line of abstentions. The polls show two-thirds of the electorate expressing no interest in the outcome, and three-quarters saying they see no difference between Chirac and Jospin. The decline during Chirac’s seven years in office of what was once Europe’s most powerful elected post is no Gallic aberration. Silvio Berlusconi’s dodging and weaving hardly inspires respect for the Italian premiership. Tony Blair’s problems with credibility have become a given of British politics. His good friend, Jose Maria Aznar, the Prime Minister of Spain, may speak well on issues such as economic liberalisation, but has a decidedly spotty reputation at home. Where new politics does emerge, it is all too often as a rancid smell. As seen in Holland and Austria, emerging parties base their appeal on anti-immigrant rhetoric. The French search for a `third man’ to break the Gaullist-Socialist logjam has come up with Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front and the former minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, who peddles a left-wing brand of nationalism that sounded out of date when he first joined the government in 1981. The picture repeats itself when one looks further afield. After much delay, Europeans got themselves together and took action in Bosnia and Kosovo. They have a scattering of troops in Afghanistan. They have defended the Kyoto protocol and made proposals on debt relief. But initiatives elsewhere, such as in the Middle East, ran into the sand, and officials in Washington have made it clear that President Bush is going to do what he wants in his war on terrorism regardless of criticism from Chris Patten or the French Foreign Minister. As Blair has shown clearly in lining up behind Washington, EU leaders still insist on conducting their own national foreign policy and are not going to give that up in search of joint policies that could propose fresh solutions with the weight of the whole community behind them. It is common currency to call the last 100 years the American century. That is partially true — but only if you start in the 1940s. It was in Europe that the great battles were fought intellectually and with blood — above all, between democracy and authoritarianism, be it of the fascist or communist variety. After the two hot wars, the continent sensibly decided that it had had enough and set about constructing a peaceful union. After the end of the cold conflict, the logical step is to extend that to the former Soviet bloc. In that, it may have been too successful for its own good. In the process, it has lost its edge. The old mantras are not enough. Politicians live in a world of their own. The people have lost the belief that things can be changed for the better, that innovation means more than digital television. The danger is that, if prosperity ebbs away, we lack the social and cultural resilience to meet the challenge in the way the democracies did in the last century. That is the kind of issue the EU leaders should have been talking about in Barcelona this weekend, rather than electricity liberalisation.
By arrangement with The Observer, London. |
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A cup of tea keeps diseases away A cup of tea a day can be a “panacea” for several chronic diseases and the drink that cheers even has a “potential role in preventing cancer”. “Diseases like cancer, diabetes and cardiac ailments can be prevented by having tea, the largest consumed beverage in the world today,’’ Dr P R
Krishnaswamy, Director of Manipal University and convener of the Scientific Advisory Board of Brooke Bond Tea said in
Kolkata. “Tea may be regarded as part of a balanced diet because it is rich in
flavonoids, generally found in vegetables, fruits and all green plants,’’ Dr Krishnaswamy said. “There is strong evidence to link high intake of vegetables and fruits with a decreased risk of heart attack and, in the last decade, both epidemiological and experimental research suggest that tea also maintains heart health,’’ he said. Recent research have supported the role of flavonoids — they contain high amount of anti-oxidants — in protecting the heart. “Anti-oxidants protect the body against the damaging effects of free radicals, which are formed in the body during conversion of glucose and fat to energy as well as during exercise and by the action of sunlight on the skin,’’ he said. Similarly, consumption of tea has a potential role in prevention of cancer. “Cancer occurs when cells in any tissue lose their natural control mechanisms and undergo unregulated growth. Tea, enriched with
flavonoids, prevents the initiation of cancer with its anti-oxidant potential by inducing enzymes that help eliminate toxins,” he said, adding that flavonoids might also exert protective action by helping maintain normal cell growth. He said tea was also helpful in preventing cataract formation. “A clinical experiment conducted on the Chinese, the world’s heaviest tea drinkers, showed they have a below-average incidence of cataract,’’ Dr Krishnaswamy said, adding that tea should be regarded as a herbal drink and considered part of a healthy habit. Asked if the fertilisers used in tea gardens negated the benefits of tea, he said, “Fertilisers do not affect the beneficial effects of tea, but use of insecticides may have an adverse impact.” Coffee-BP link: Drinking coffee plays a small role in increasing blood pressure but does not appear to increase the risk of developing hypertension, according to a new study. Dr Michael Klag of the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and his team said the link between drinking coffee and high blood pressure had been generally accepted without any proof for 60 years. “Over many years of follow up, coffee drinking is associated with small increases in blood pressure...but appears to play a small role in the development of hypertension,’’ the study said. The team has studied just over 1,000 former male medical students over the past 33 years who consumed an average of two daily cups of coffee. According to the results, non-drinkers were at a lower risk of hypertension than coffee drinkers, but there was no progressive increase in risk with higher levels of coffee intake.
UNI, Reuters |
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Don’t go nuts over food allergies Food allergies are being blown out of proportion, the latest research suggests. A British medical study says the number of children who die or become severely ill after eating peanuts, cashews, milk, eggs and other food is very low, although the risk is enhanced if the child has asthma. Doctors led by Andrew Cant of Newcastle General Hospital looked at national death statistics for children aged up to 15 years and found that over the previous 10 years, eight children died from an allergic reaction from food, four of them after drinking milk. No child under 13 died from peanut allergy during this time, although peanuts were implicated in five out of six near-deaths in 1998- 2000, a period which was studied in greater detail. That translates into a rate of 0.006 deaths for every 100,000 children, and the figure is even lower for children under 10, many of whom in any case grow out of their allergic response. "The finding of so few deaths in such a large population should reassure parents and doctors that the risk of death is small," they report in Monday’s Archives of Disease in Childhood. Meanwhile, research by the British market analyst Data monitor has found that one adult in three mistakenly believes he has a food allergy, whereas the true number of people with this condition is only one in 50.
AFP Accidents that happen at home Roger Vincent of the UK’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) describe home accidents as a `hidden epidemic’. Which is horrifying. Isn’t the home supposed to be a sanctuary? A place where we can close the door and feel safe from the outside world? According to Roger Vincent, part of the problem is letting our guard down too much at home. “When we leave our homes most of us tend to be more regulated, more ordered. Certainly at work there are usually much stricter guidelines as to what you will and won’t do to protect your safety. An increasing number of people are attempting jobs that they’re not qualified to do and often use the wrong equipment.” The range of accidents that can happen in the home are, of course, too various to detail. However, RoSPA does divide home accidents into three main categories. First, there are `impact accidents’ which account for more than half of all home accidents, most of which are falls (the elderly are particularly vulnerable), but also include being hurt by falling objects and bumping into things. Next there are the dreaded `heat accidents’, which don’t happen as much as impact accidents, but can be nastier and have very serious consequences. Heat injuries include scalds and burns which are usually the result of contact from a `controlled’ source, such as a kettle. Firemen also attend 50,000 home fires each year where the main sources of ignition are from cooking fat, misused or faulty appliances, wiring and smokers’ materials. Finally there are mouth/foreign-body accidents which are every parent’s special nightmare. This category includes accidental poisonings, suffocation, choking and objects in the eye, ear and nose, and, unsurprisingly, children are particularly vulnerable. These three categories account for two-thirds of all home accidents and share a common feature in that, while some of them may be caused by faulty goods or bad design, by far the biggest cause of these accidents is human error.
The Observer |
The God of Infinite Love and the object of Love sublime and infinite is painted blue. Krishna is painted blue, so also Solomon’s God of love. It is a natural law that anything sublime and infinite is associated with blue colour. Take a handful of water, it is absolutely colourless. But look at the deep wide ocean; it is as blue as anything. Examine the space near you; it is colourless. But look at the infinite expanse of the sky; it is blue. — The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. VI. Notes of Class Talks and Lectures. *** Blue represents the religious or spiritual phase of mentality. That is to say, it stands for that part of the mental activities which are concerned with high ideals, altruism, devotion, reverence, veneration etc. It is manifested, in its various hues, tints and shades, by all forms of religious feeling and emotion, high and low. High spiritual feelings — true spiritual unfoldment — are indicated by a wonderfully clear light blue, of an unusual tint, something akin to the clear light blue of the sky on a cool autumn afternoon, just before sunset. Morality, of a high degree, is indicated by a series of beautiful shades of blue, always of a clear inspiring tint. Religious feeling rules by fear is indicated by a shade of bluish grey. In Sharavanabhava Aum we visualise light-blue fading into white and fading back into light-blue, back and forth — “Sharavanabhava Aum, Sharavanabhava Aum, Sharavanabhava Aum.” Blue is the colour of the Akasha, ether and Sharavanabhava takes you there. — Satguru Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami, Merging with Shiva Hinduism’s Contemporary Metaphysics *** The body becomes cleansed by water The mind and speech by speaking the Truth The ego by practising penance and realising the Supreme Essence And the intellect by knowledge. — Mahatma Sri Nathuram Sharma, “A Short Series of Spiritual Instructions” *** We need to foresake blind avarice and meditate deep on the Word of the Ineffable Lord.... When vision is clouded with our petty ego, We lose sight even of the merit of selfless service. —
Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Asa Di Var, Pauri X |
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