E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

The Goa constrict
THE Goa conclave of the Bharatiya Janata Party has offered pundits and political adversaries plenty to write about. From the tone and tenor of the speech delivered by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee even the admirers of his poetic temperament may have come to the conclusion that he has decided to discard the mask of moderation.

A matter of governance
CONGRESS President Sonia Gandhi made a startling claim at the Guwahati conclave of the party's Chief Ministers that ended on Saturday. She said the people in general had begun to realise once again that the Congress was "the only party that can give them a good government".

OPINION

Improving export performance
Exim policy won’t help unless India gets its act together
G.K. Pandey
NOW that the hype over India's first millennium exim (export-import) policy, also sometimes referred to as the first post-quantitative policy, is over, the question is whether it will deliver. As Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran expects, will the export growth rate jump from the near zero right now to nearly 12 per cent per annum and that too in dollar terms? It seems unlikely.

MIDDLE

Portrait of a miser
Darshan Singh Maini
THE phenomenon of miserliness is so much a part of a person’s, a family’s experience as to arouse little beyond a sneeze — or a sneer in really pathological cases. There’s something in human nature which loves hoarding, and this trait when extended links up with Freudian fears and fixations.

ANALYSIS

The Sufi orders’ role in Kashmir
H.N. Rafiabadi
THE Naqashbandi order was introduced in Kashmir during the reign of Sultan Sikandar (1389-1413). It made its presence felt with the advent of Khwaja Mahmud towards the close of the 16th century. The Naqashbandi order was introduced in Kashmir by Saiyid Hilal (d. 861/1457).

Miscarriage risk if you swim in public pools
NEXT time you want to take a dip in the public swimming pools, think twice, and more so if you are pregnant. Researchers in the UK say that these pools contain high levels of chloroform, a chemical linked to miscarriage and the formation of chloroform is due to chemical reactions between the disinfectant chlorine with organic compounds present in water reported the New Scientist journal.

Too many taxis threatening income
STREET demonstration was the way in which the taxi drivers of Leh, the tiny capital town of Buddhist-dominated Ladakh registered their protest against unbridled issue of licences to light commercial passenger vehicles. Their ire was directed towards to the Hill Development Council for granting too many permits.

• Proteins culprit in Alzheimer’s disease

Ants may wreck your home
IN blissful ignorance of what is going on beneath us, we sit in our homes while tiny ants are eating away the very foundations. Beams and floors are burrowed into and in time reduced to crumbling dust by the little known termite, the destructive white ant.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

The Goa constrict

THE Goa conclave of the Bharatiya Janata Party has offered pundits and political adversaries plenty to write about. From the tone and tenor of the speech delivered by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee even the admirers of his poetic temperament may have come to the conclusion that he has decided to discard the mask of moderation. The primary reason for the sense of dismay and disappointment among his close circle of admirers is the sharp difference between the language he used during his visit to Gujarat and the thrust of his speech at Goa. To be fair, Mr Vajpayee has many qualities and being able to make his point without offending even his detractors is one of them. It is the charisma of his personality that is said to have attracted the secular parties to the National Democratic Alliance. And they know that Mr Vajpayee has never made any secret of his special relationship with the Sangh Parivar. He was in his elements during his visit to the USA not during his meeting with President George W. Bush, but when he was among his soulmates at a function organised by the international chapter of the VHP. In any case, it must be remembered that he had visited Gujarat as Prime Minister and, therefore, spoke the language that was meant to provide the healing touch to the wounds inflicted on innocent persons by the relentless wave of hate crime. The purpose of the Goa conclave was different. It was meant to take stock of the factors that had seen the BJP being rejected by the electorate in election after election. And It was not only Mr Vajpayee, but also BJP President Jana Krishnamurthi, who reiterated the party's position on its Hindutva agenda. The BJP President went to the extent of endorsing the RSS resolution that Muslims must earn the goodwill of the Hindus for ensuring their security in India.

When Gujarat came up for discussion the majority point of view was that Mr Narendra Modi should not be replaced as Chief Minister. The Sangh Parivar feels that he has done a splendid job. Why should the BJP listen to the voice of the secular establishment at the expense of the parivar's point of view? The Opposition wants to decide the BJP's political strategy. Is it fair to let the BJP's adversaries rewrite its Hindutva agenda? Mr Vajpayee had not gone to Goa to address the nation, but share his perception of the post-Godhra development with the leadership. Obviously, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. How well did Mr Modi cook the new recipe for reviving the BJP can only be known by letting the dish be sampled by the people of Gujarat. The NDA allies are understandably not happy with the message from Goa. But the session was held not to please them; it was meant to test the post-Godhra waters for the BJP. It wants to find out whether its handling of the situation in Gujarat enjoyed popular support? Should that be decided by its rivals who want Mr Modi to be sacked? The conclave felt that holding early assembly elections in Gujarat was the better option to test the post-Godhra popularity of not only Mr Modi, but the party itself. A fresh verdict in Gujarat would decide the BJP's national strategy. The NDA allies who feel uncomfortable with the revival of the Hindutva agenda have only themselves to blame. The BJP had at no point of time discarded it. The contentious issues were merely placed on the backburner. They are still there. And if the allies want them to remain dormant, they will have to perform the unpleasant task of opposing the BJP in Gujarat if and when fresh elections are announced. A pro-Modi verdict would change the political equations at the Centre. Raising the bogey of communalism will not do. They should prove the BJP wrong through politically legitimate and democratic means.

A matter of governance

CONGRESS President Sonia Gandhi made a startling claim at the Guwahati conclave of the party's Chief Ministers that ended on Saturday. She said the people in general had begun to realise once again that the Congress was "the only party that can give them a good government". She made the statement while commenting on the track records of coalition governments, particularly the one at the Centre led by the BJP. Whether she is right or wrong will be known only after the next general election, but the undeniable truth is that some of the 14 Congress-controlled state governments have emerged as examples of a relatively good administration. The governments headed by Mr S. M. Krishna in Karnataka and by Mr Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh are often praised for their development-oriented approach. Here one must also mention the performance of the Congress-led ministries in Rajasthan and Maharashtra. However, this is mainly because of the dynamic and innovative leadership provided by the individuals at the helm of affairs, and not owing to any meaningful guidance from the Congress high command. In fact, the party's admirable showing in the recently held municipal elections in the National Capital Territory of Delhi and before that in the assembly polls in Punjab and Uttaranchal was basically the result of a powerful anti-incumbency factor at play plus the people's desire for change.

The Guwahati gathering of the Congress Chief Ministers, however, provided an occasion to Mrs Sonia Gandhi to display her leadership qualities in the manner never done before. Her overall conduct—keeping aside her controversial remark against Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's personality—makes one believe that she is learning her lessons faster than expected. She asked her party's Chief Ministers to be extremely careful about maintaining law and order and the quality of power supply. Perhaps, it is because of her clearance that the Amarinder Singh government in Punjab is going to scrap the irrational policy of free power supply to farmers—which, in fact, meant no electricity for hours together. The rule of law and order and an adequate power supply are the basic pre-requisites for attracting industrial investors to a state. These also have a direct bearing on good governance. At the same time, the Congress leadership has indicated that it is fully conscious of the party's weakness of not being in a position to form a government at the Centre on its own, contrary to the position till Rajiv Gandhi was alive. Hence the increased stress on fighting for protecting the secular ideals of the nation with the help of anyone willing to cooperate. There is the possibility of a strategy having been finalised by the Congress for bringing various political forces together on this sensitive issue. It is true that secularism continues to be dear to a vast majority of Indians despite the abberations like the painful Gujarat happenings. Secularism is the main ingredient of the country's cultural ethos. The Congress, however, will have to work hard to emerge as the nucleus for an alliance dedicated to the noble cause. Mrs Sonia Gandhi's declaration that her party is open to talks with any organisation, including the disgruntled NDA allies, on the issue is not enough. People still remember the questionable role of the Congress in the past which can be forgotten only when there is an overpowering desire for change.

OPINION

Improving export performance
Exim policy won’t help unless India gets its act together
G.K. Pandey

NOW that the hype over India's first millennium exim (export-import) policy, also sometimes referred to as the first post-quantitative policy, is over, the question is whether it will deliver. As Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran expects, will the export growth rate jump from the near zero right now to nearly 12 per cent per annum and that too in dollar terms? It seems unlikely. But before we get to why, let us just revisit the main philosophy behind the policy.

Well, as one of the country's pink papers (financial dailies) put it in its headline, Mr Maran's attempt was to inoculate India's exporters from the India virus! Essentially, as Mr Rahul Bajaj keeps reminding us, the main reason for India's exports not picking up is that our exporters face several disadvantages vis-a-vis their foreign counterparts. The world over, for instance, industry pays the lowest rates for the power it consumes — in India, it is the exact opposite. Interest rates in advanced countries are just a few percentage points, in India they are above 10. Close to a thousand crore rupees are paid by our exporters in what is called demurrage, or the late fees for keeping the shippers waiting at the country's congested ports to discharge their import cargo.

So, what Mr Maran has really done is to try and compensate the export sector for this, in a more WTO-compatible manner (after all, you can't just give exporters, say, 15 per cent of their export cost, a subsidy to take care of all this, and not expect to be hauled to the WTO dispute settlement panel). So, for instance, banks are to be allowed to set up special branches in export zones — and since they will not have to deposit part of their money in government securities (what is called the SLR requirement), they will be able to lend money cheaper to exporters. What is even better, exporters in the export zones will, for the first time ever, be allowed to access international capital markets to borrow funds for even their working capital needs. All exporters will be given a subsidy to compensate for high fuel costs they incur; a transport subsidy is to be given to compensate for the extra time spent by exporters in transporting their goods on India's pathetic road networks, and so on.

While all this is very good, my view is that it will take a lot more to just increase India's exports. Let's take the issue of fuel subsidies, for instance, to compensate for higher electricity costs in India. It sounds very good, but the point is that to take the benefit of Mr Maran's subsidy, the exporter will have to set up a captive power plant first! After all, you can't get the subsidy on the high-cost power you buy from the electricity board. Besides, how is the exporter to be compensated for if he lives in Uttar Pradesh right now, with 16 hours of power breakdowns every day? Only India's big exporters can afford to set up captive power plants of the type that Mr Maran will give fuel subsidies for, and even most of these export houses (they used to be called Star Trading Houses in the past) source a lot of their exports from small units which most certainly do not have such a facility.

Or let us take the special dispensation given to banks — by the way, this has to be notified by the Reserve Bank of India and there is no telling just how long this will take. It is certain, as Mr Maran would have liked, that freeing up banks from the SLR obligations will certainly lower the interest rates they will charge from clients — but at most this would reduce the rates by a fraction of one percentage point as the SLR itself is constantly going down and banks do get a decent return on this anyway.

The main reason for bank rates in India being high, however, is quite different. One, the deposit rates are quite high. Second, with banks saddled with huge non-performing assets and not so efficient, they need a spread of at least 3-4 per cent in order to survive. How is it that setting up specialised branches in export zones takes care of this problem? It won't, in case you are still looking for an answer.

The same kind of argument, incidentally, applies to some of the other sops announced — transport subsidies, for instance, are a great idea, but what do you do if there is no transport?

This, by the way, is not the end of the problem, it is just the beginning. Let us take some specific sectors, on which India's export growth hinges, to see just how serious the issues are. Let us take agriculture, where Mr Maran expects a big push, and hence his moves to remove quantitative and other restrictions that strangled our export effort. Again, freeing up India's agricultural exports from all manner of stupid restrictions is welcome, but will it help? The crux of the problem why India's farm exports are so low is that our productivity is a fraction of global averages. And this, as we all know, is directly related to the poor levels of investments being made — real investments in the area have stagnated over the past decade or so, as the latest Economic Survey shows.

The low level of investment itself is a result of the policy of excessive form subsidy — with the government spending too much on subsidies, it has precious little left for making investments.

Similarly, the removal of restrictions on exports is all very well, but the fact is that today several state governments don't even allow farm products to move freely across state boundaries. In such a situation, how can India's farm exports ever be really competitive?

Or let us take the case of textiles which account for a huge chunk of India's export basket. As Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said at a CII gathering a few days after he presented his budget, if there is one sector that is completely unreformed, not ready at all to take on the challenge, it is the textiles sector.

Today, as Mr Sinha alluded in his speech, India's textile exports are doing well primarily because of the Multi-Fibre Agreement — an arrangement which puts a fixed quota on the textile exports that can be made from each country. So, despite the fact that even if Bangladeshi T-shirts are better than the Indian ones, US importers cannot buy all their needs from that country. This was originally done to restrict access to the markets of developed countries like the USA and Europe but has actually helped countries like India whose textile industry is still not very competitive. The problem is that when in another few years the Multi- Fibre Agreement will be completely phased out, what will happen to India's textile exports?

It is issues such as these that make me convinced that India's exports are unlikely to pick up dramatically in the years to come. Mr Maran may well be the greatest chemist born in recent times, and so may have produced the best inoculation drug ever made, but his patient is so diseased that it is not going to help. Until the cancer is cured, there is no way that an individual hand or leg is going to be able to function efficiently. A country's export performance reflects not just the efficiency of the export sector but also that of the entire economy. We would do well not to forget this truth.

MIDDLE

Portrait of a miser
Darshan Singh Maini

THE phenomenon of miserliness is so much a part of a person’s, a family’s experience as to arouse little beyond a sneeze — or a sneer in really pathological cases. There’s something in human nature which loves hoarding, and this trait when extended links up with Freudian fears and fixations. To husband one’s resources, to preserve them, to generate money and to gainfully employ it is prudence, and has always been a subject of Sunday-school catechism, and of the sermon from the pulpit. However, when the desire for money turns into a lust, and one’s spirit goes whoring after in securing it, miserliness becomes a disease of sensibility. It seizes the imagination and commoditises everything — from love, family and friendship to any type of human traffic or commerce. In other words, it becomes a fetish. Almost each race, nation or community has such delinquents framed in its folklore. And there are endless cracks and yarns about such creatures. For instance, Punjabi folklore in which the woman’s mother-in-law is inevitably the victim of vitriolic verses called tappas or bolians, scores of satirical songs and stories are there to regale the village urchins, and to enliven wedding preliminaries. The creature called mother-in-law is always a shrew, a low-minded person hiding and hoarding all manner of “goodies”, a varitable nagan sitting coolly over a dubious pile. And she’s pictured as such in her next Janam, such being her karma!

Most school primers carry at least a story or two about “our miser”, and I can recall a couple of them from my own school days. But, for the moment, I leave them aside, for they are meant to amuse the school kids. Accordingly, I turn to some classic portraits of misers in English and French literature, for they have become archetypes, and continue to touch the comic muses of playwrights, novelists and film-makers. The theme is “eternal”, and therefore, never fails to create its own clientele.

Though the French playwright Moliere’s study of such types is mordant enough to engage the imagination of indignation, I pass that celebrated writer for Balzac whose knowledge of the money-grubbing, mean-minded French petit-bourgeoisie has left behind a gallery of small-souled tyrants at home, and in society. And of these the portrait of Eugenie Grandet in the novel of that name, is a deeply psychological study of miserliness. He dramatises powerfully the irony of the situation in such homes: the power of the purse and the penuery of spirit to turn wives and daughters to domestic slaves!

However, I would like to confine the concluding — and conclusive — remarks, to that monstrously pathetic and warped character, Shylock who in The Merchant of Venice symbolises the cruelty inherent in close-fisted, cribbed characters. Shakespeare’s Shylock is at once a tragic and a comic person, and his howling for his fugitive, absconding daughter, and for his hoarded ducats, brings out “the buffoonery of his emotions”. But it’s in the final scene where he insists on his “pound of flesh” that the inhumanity of ingrained miserliness becomes a chilly reality.

As I’ve said earlier, fables and folklore, in particular, have kept their figure of fun alive. At times, even racial and communal and regional stories of miserliness become a current coin. To cite only one example, the Scots are known for their proverbial tight-fistedness. Hence that saying: “Roll a penny down the Pall Mall, and you’ll see all the Scots running after it”. Very unfair perhaps to the makers of scotch whiskey that keeps the whole world wondering and inebriated, but the joke stays.....

ANALYSIS

The Sufi orders’ role in Kashmir
H.N. Rafiabadi

THE Naqashbandi order was introduced in Kashmir during the reign of Sultan Sikandar (1389-1413). It made its presence felt with the advent of Khwaja Mahmud towards the close of the 16th century. The Naqashbandi order was introduced in Kashmir by Saiyid Hilal (d. 861/1457).

Saiyid Hilal left only one disciple, Mir Saiyid Amin, popularly known in Kashmir as “Wusi Sahib”. He led a life of retirement at Asham. After the death of Saiyid Hilal, Saiyid Amin moved to Srinagar and confined himself to a room near Koh-i-Maran. Saiyid Amin seems to be an ardent advocate of the doctrine of Wahdatul-al-Wujud (Unity of Being). He says:

The world and the men of the world are endowed with the essence of the Eternal, if you look deeply (you) will find everything in the human being. “The entire universe is with me. My abode is beyond lamakan (spaceless world). O‘alim (religious scholar)! My body is (itself) a universe. Know! The soul of universe is my soul”.

He was a broad-minded Sufi. “Do not scorn infidelity. To those who have found out truth, it is not different from faith”. Again he says, “To an ‘arif (gnostic) the difference between a mosque and a temple is meaningless. Men endowed with spiritual eminence, find both good and evil identical”. About the mystical union with God, he says: “I want ‘visal’ (union). I do not want either this world or the other. I worship God. I do not worship houses or walls”. He was killed in 1484 along with 15 members of the family. He was later buried at Alikadal.

Another Naqashbandi saint was Khwaja Khawand Mahmud (d. 1642). He did not stay in Kashmir for a long period and soon left for Agra. However, in the 17th century, he made several visits to Kashmir and helped in the popularisation of the Naqashbandi order in Kashmir.

The impact of Shaykh Ahmad Sarhindi was reflected on the Sufis of Kashmir also. For example, Shaykh Murad Teng was a disciple of Shaykh Abdul Ahad Sarhindi Faruqi, who was a son of Shaykh Ahmad Sarhindi. Apart from this influence, he imbibed impact from Muhamad Yousuf Kawasa, Mulla Abdullah, Khwaja Muhammad Naqashbandi etc. Shaykh Ahad Sarhindi came to Kashmir and Shaykh Murad went to Sirhind along with his peer in 1081. Ahad returned to Kashmir after getting complete Sufi training and the letter of authority to initiate others in the Order of the Sufis he belonged to. Among his illustrious disciples was Khwaja Azam Deedah Mari, who is a famous Kashmiri historian and author of Waq’aat-i-Kashmir. He remained in the company of his Shaykh for 12 years. Among the novices of Shaykh Murad were other people like Khwaja Sayyid Sharif, who died in 1114 A.H.

The Qadiri order was introduced in Kashmir in the second half of the 16th century by Sayyid Ni ‘matullah Shah Qadri. Before coming to Kashmir, he was living in India, where he was a disciple of Shaykh Muhammud Dervesh Qadiri. Saiyid Ni ‘matullah did not stay long in Kashmir and so left for India. Among his disciples in Kashmir was Shaykh Mirk Mir. He was the son of one Saiyid Shamsud-din Andrabi, whose ancestors had migrated to Kashmir from Andrab, Khurasan Iran, in the reign of Sultan Sikandar. Shaykh Mirak Mir spent most of his time in meditation at a Khanqah in Srinagar, known as Khanqah-i-Andrabi. He died in 1582 A.D., and was buried at Mallaratta in Srinagar.

Another Qadri saint who came to Kashmir in 1581 A.H. from somewhere in India was Saiyid Ism‘ail Shami. He did not stay long in Kashmir and returned to India, but during his brief stay there, he firmly laid the foundation of the Qadiri order in Kashmir. His famous disciple was Mir Nazuk Niyazi. Mir Nazuk did not approve of the practice of Sama, unlike the first Qadiri saint in Kashmir, Sayyid Ni ‘matullah. He died in 1614 A.D. and was buried at Qazi Kadal in Srinagar. Mir Nazuk’s Khanqah at Khanyar in Srinagar was taken up by his eldest son, Mir Yousuf (d. 1617), who was initiated to the Qadiri order by his father. Mir Muhammad Ali (d. 1660 A.D), the third son of Mir Nazuk, popularised the Qadiri order in Kashmir.

Apart from these Qadri saints, mention may be made of Mullah Shah Badakshani, who stayed in Kashmir for more than 22 years. He was among the disciples of Mian Mir Qadri of Lahore, who laid down the foundation stone of the Golden Temple at the instance of the then Sikh Guru. In this way Suharwardi, Naqashbandi and Qadri were very important Sufi Orders, which influenced Kashmir in several ways and prepared the way for the Sufistic interpretation of Islam, which was the hallmark of the Kubarawi and Rishi Silsilas (orders) of Kashmir. The Wahdat-al-Wajud (Unity of Being) philosophy was advocated by almost all Kashmiri Sufis, which ostensibly seems to have several resemblances with Hindu vedanta darshan. Even the famous kabarawi, sufi Saiyyid Ali Hamadani (1314-1384) was an ardent advocate of the same philosophy. Although Sayyid Ali’s teacher Allaudin Simnani was fiercely opposed to the theory of Wahdat-al-Wajud, he wrote a tract in defence of the Wujudi doctrine entitled “Risala-i-Wujudiyya”. He wrote two commentaries on Ibn Arabis’ acclaimed book “Fusus-al-Hikam”. According to Prof Khaliq Ahmad Nizami and Farooq Bukhari, Sayyid Ali was the first to introduce Ibn Arabi’s thoughts in South Asia.

The Wujudi trend of philosophy is also adopted by the founder of Rishi movement of Kashmir, Shaykh Noorudin (d. 1440 CE), in the 14th century. He says, for example, “After abandoning myself, I found the Being (Mujud).” And he says further: “I looked for my benevolent God with an undivided mind, and then alone I recognised the reality of my own self”. And he adds:

“Oh fool! why do you want to waste your life in seclusion? Learn self-introspection and talk to God, Who is within you”.

Thus, Sufism in Kashmir was unique in the sense that it accommodated Suharwardi, Naqashbandi and Qadiri orders within the broader framework of Islam and developed its own school called Rishism, which was the culmination of the indigenous mystical ethos fruitioned into a universal phenomena.

Moreover, Kashmiri Sufism became a bridge between the outside saints and their counterparts in the valley and thus paved a way for interaction between this part of the world and the Sufis of Medieval Indian subcontinent much before it was annexed by the Mughals.

Miscarriage risk if you swim in public pools

NEXT time you want to take a dip in the public swimming pools, think twice, and more so if you are pregnant. Researchers in the UK say that these pools contain high levels of chloroform, a chemical linked to miscarriage and the formation of chloroform is due to chemical reactions between the disinfectant chlorine with organic compounds present in water reported the New Scientist journal.

Better showering of people before they go into the pool and better filtering might help reduce organic matter and so THMs.” ANI

TRENDS & POINTERS

Too many taxis threatening income

STREET demonstration was the way in which the taxi drivers of Leh, the tiny capital town of Buddhist-dominated Ladakh registered their protest against unbridled issue of licences to light commercial passenger vehicles. Their ire was directed towards to the Hill Development Council for granting too many permits. Leh is almost clogged with vehicles these days. The agitators, who took out a march said that their livelihood was at stake as more taxis in the already saturated market meant additional pressure on the total earnings during the short tourist season.

A major tourist destination, Leh attracts visitors from across the world. They depend entirely on the local taxis for conveyance. ANI

Proteins culprit in Alzheimer’s disease

New research suggests illnesses as diverse as Alzheimer’s, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and adult-onset diabetes are caused by proteins that fold themselves into defective shapes, rather than proteins that have undergone harmful chemical changes. As they develop, these aberrant protein forms can clump together and wreak molecular havoc on healthy cells, according to two studies in the journal Nature.

Previously, scientists believed that misfolding was an unusual occurrence limited to perhaps 20 or more protein types.

Instead, the effect may be common to any protein in the body. Why it occurs remains unclear, but the process is believed to be associated with diseases that take decades to develop.

“There is lots of evidence that any protein can form these structures in principle,” said Christopher Dobson of the University of Cambridge in England, who helped lead one of the studies. AP

75 YEARS AGO

Ants may wreck your home

IN blissful ignorance of what is going on beneath us, we sit in our homes while tiny ants are eating away the very foundations. Beams and floors are burrowed into and in time reduced to crumbling dust by the little known termite, the destructive white ant.

In one instance a piano fell through the floor of a house; a sofa fell through the ceiling of another. The damage to private homes from white ants has resulted in bills amounting to hundreds of dollars.

Special building precautions are necessary to combat these white destroyers, says TE Shyder, entomologist of the US Department of Agriculture. Complete insulation of all untreated wood from contact with the ground is sufficient, since all the forty-two species of house-wrecking ant are underground borers. Cresote-impregnated wood, and the facing of all subterranean brickwork with concrete, are recommended.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

— The Nokar Mantra of Jainism