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Tuesday, April 16, 2002, Chandigarh,
India  
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NDA’s
withdrawal symptoms Bridging
the gap |
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Keeping
balance “IF I were your wife”, said an agitated lady parliamentarian during an acrimonious debate to the gutsy British Prime Minister, Sir Wintson Churchill, “I would poison you”. “If I were your husband”, retorted the ever-ready cool wit, “I would drink it.” Such witty exchanges are a rare treat in the world’s largest democracy. In fact, the Indian Parliament has often been a mute witness to verbal and physical clashes of very low level. The now frequent spats between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, far from being clever or amusing, are often personal and undignified.
General
Musharraf’s new experiment
Past as
present
Rajdharma
vs coalition dharma
Lottery
our next national game?
Different
smoking behaviours
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NDA’s withdrawal symptoms POLITICS
has seldom been as amusing and entertaining as it has become lately with the so-called secular allies of the Bharatiya Janata Party doing flip-flop on the issue of withdrawing support to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. One may agree or not with the position that the BJP has taken on Godhra and the subsequent wave of hate crimes in Gujarat, but the leadership deserves unqualified applause for putting the allies in a position that leaves them with the option of issuing daily threats without actually withdrawing support. The concern writ large on the faces of the allies is genuine. Look at Mr Ram Vilas Paswan or Mr Sharad Yadav or Mr Nitish Kumar or Ms Mamta Banerjee. Only Mr George Fernandes is more happy holding the brief for the BJP. All of them want to protect their secular image not because it needs to be protected, but because they cannot face the electorate if and when the situation arises with the shadow of post-Godhra developments hanging over them. For the BJP Godhra is important, for the allies the post-Godhra riots. The Telugu Desam Party is, of course, more worried than others because of what can be called “domestic electoral compulsions". But the BJP strategists had evidently done their homework before the leadership decided to up the ante on the issues that have hurt the political interests of the allies. The green signal to explore the possibility of forming a Bahujan Samaj Party-led coalition in Uttar Pradesh is part of the strategy for letting the allies know where they stand if they decide to walk out of the National Democratic Alliance. As of today, there is no threat to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's government. But if the situation really gets out of hand and the allies carry out their threat of withdrawing support, the BJP is prepared for that eventuality too. After the recent setback in assembly elections the BJP has clearly revised its strategy and is prepared to play the double or quits game of political poker. The allies have a dud hand. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu went through the motion of withdrawing support if Mr Narendra Modi was not removed as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. He was politely told that the NDA was formed for providing a government at the Centre and not for the allies to tell the BJP what it should do in the states where it is in power. The allies have only themselves to blame for the predicament they find themselves in now. When the NDA was formed they insisted that the BJP should put its communal agenda on the backburner. The BJP was not asked to
discard it. It agreed. As of today, there is nothing "official" about the revival of Hindutva as was made clear at a Press briefing in Panaji by the BJP's spokesman. It is a Catch-22 situation for the allies. If they remain in the NDA the BJP continues to gain politically at their expense. If they withdraw support, they know that the electorate might snub them for having done political business with the BJP. It may not be wrong to say that the allies compromised their long-term interests for short-term gains while the BJP did exactly the opposite. From here the game gets interesting. |
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Bridging the gap THE infrastructure development in the country can be called anything but adequate. In this state of deprival, one would expect every new road or railway line to be thrown open to the public double quick. But that is the sensible way of expecting things. In real-life situations, you have to take into account ridiculous red-tape imponderables as well. A bridge may be ready but it cannot be used till a VIP has the time and the inclination to declare it open! He can condescend to do so tomorrow if he is in an obliging mood or he may delay it for a month if he is hard-pressed for time. The suffering public has no option but to grin and bear it stoically. That is what happened in the case of the railway overbridge on the busy Chandigarh-Ambala highway recently. It got ready nearly three months ago but could not become operational because its inauguration was postponed thrice. Commuters had to suffer severe traffic congestion. Finally, the matter went to court. Flimsy excuses were forwarded to justify the delay and an attempt was made to pass the buck. But a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered that the flyover should be thrown open to the public immediately. The happy outcome was that it was inaugurated on Baisakhi, not by a VIP but the seniormost labourer who had toiled on it for years. Now that the needful has been done, there is every risk that the old policy of forgive and forget will be adopted. After all, all is well that ends well. But that will be a wrong approach because there is every possibility that a similar mischief may be repeated in the future. Certain uncomfortable questions must be asked. Why should any important project hang fire at the mercy of a VIP? There should be a mechanism by which immediate inauguration of a project becomes compulsory. By agreeing to inaugurate a project a VIP is not doing a service to the public. On the contrary, the public is doing him a big favour by extending to him the privilege of seeing his name inscribed on the inauguration stone for all time to come. Secondly, why should the courts' precious time have to be wasted on ensuring even basic facilities? It is only when the government refuses to discharge its essential duties that the judiciary has to divert its attention from the task of interpreting law. It is this obstinacy which has saddled the country's courts with an unmanageably large number of cases. |
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Keeping balance “IF I were your wife”, said an agitated lady parliamentarian during an acrimonious debate to the gutsy British Prime Minister, Sir Wintson Churchill, “I would poison you”. “If I were your husband”, retorted the ever-ready cool wit, “I would drink it.” Such witty exchanges are a rare treat in the world’s largest democracy. In fact, the Indian Parliament has often been a mute witness to verbal and physical clashes of very low level. The now frequent spats between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, far from being clever or amusing, are often personal and undignified. A new low was reached when Mrs Sonia Gandhi, quite uncharacteristic of her though, said at a Press conference in Guwahati the other day that the Prime Minister had lost his mental balance.
Unka mansik santulan bigad gaya hai were the exact words used. To her credit, however, she retracted the remark the next day and also expressed regret. On earlier occasions, too, she had provoked Mr Vajpayee by calling him a “traitor”, a “liar”, and charging him with “political desperation, intellectual insolvency and cultural regression.” During the recent debate on POTO, Mrs Sonia Gandhi had remarked: “Will he (Vajpayee) be submissive or will he uphold the prestige of the high office he holds? His moment of reckoning has come.” To this, the Prime Minister reacted angrily. Mr Vajpayee said he had been in politics since 1957 when Mrs Sonia Gandhi was “miles away from politics... I have been facing a test everyday. And today I am being put in a witness box. What right have you to do that?” It is not that Mr Vajpayee has never stooped low in attacking his political rival. He had slighted the entire womanhood when he denigrated the Leader of the Opposition for being a videshi and a woman. While repartee and humour enliven the otherwise dull and drab parliamentary proceedings in a democracy and are welcome, bitter and personal putdowns, the kind of muck hurled by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition at each other speaks volumes about the depth to which the murky Indian politics has sunk in recent years. If the two top leaders of the country behave in an unbecoming manner in public, none can fault their ordinary and less enlightened party followers for indulging in rioting and physical assault inside and outside Parliament. Such political bickering and oneupmanship for electoral gains are highly avoidable. That this should happen at a time when the country is passing through a critical time and the communal divide is becoming sharper ever is all the more unfortunate. The leaders of all parties need to sink their political differences and help restore peace to Gujarat and the public faith in fair governance and democracy. |
General Musharraf’s new experiment WHAT is happening in Pakistan is like the re-run of an old movie. A military leader comes to power through a coup d’etat, promises to bring progress and prosperity to the country and settles down for the long haul because he claims to be the essential instrument of change. And to seek legitimacy, he tries to enforce his form of democracy. Pakistan saw the “basic democracy” of the Ayub Khan variety, General Zia-ul-Haq’s experiment with it after finally installing his protégé Nawaz Sharif while empowering the presidency with the right to dismiss the Prime Minister and dissolve the assemblies. Apart from Ayub’s long spell and Zia’s innings cut short by a still unexplained accident, it has been a revolving door for politicians in office. The irony is that after all these experiments, the country’s three main political leaders are either in self-exile abroad or sent abroad under pain of otherwise being punished at home. And now comes the latest of the men on the white charger deciding to hold a referendum — a page from Zia’s copybook — to retain the presidency he had conferred upon himself for five more years. Elections to the federal and state assemblies are promised later this year but his presidency will be outside their scope and he plans further tinkering with the constitution to ensure his supremacy. If the Pakistani people are suffering from a sense of ennui, it is understandable. Many of them are asking themselves whether there is any point to this charade. Indeed, there is, from General Pervez Musharraf’s point of view. Having enlisted himself in the American “war on terror” — the last time around the US-Pakistani alignment was to fight communism and the Soviet Union — he needs the proverbial fig-leaf to placate America’s rhetoric on democracy. Besides, the Supreme Court that legitimised his coup also required elections to be held by October this year. Watching his “rallies” on the box, one gets the impression that General Musharraf, who divested himself of his uniform in the second rally in the face of criticism, is enjoying his play-acting. The organised nature of these gatherings is not in doubt; the subcontinent is strikingly transparent in organising such events. And at the Lahore rally, his finger-pointing at the audience in seeking its mandate was reminiscent of World War II posters declaring, “The country needs you”. In fact, the French aphorism that the more things change, the more they remain the same could not be more apposite, down to the revived American alliance bringing the goodies and the toys of war. Like his predecessors, General Musharraf’s effort will be to install pliable politicians in office although as Mr Nawaz Sharif’s case indicates, such politicians tend to develop ambitions and agendas of their own. Field Marshal Ayub Khan was perhaps the most successful of Pakistan’s military rulers. He had not only cemented the military-bureaucracy nexus but also devised what he thought would be a lasting solution by eliminating politicians through a compact with local-level leaders who were provided money to buy support. But Ayub faced the inevitable cycle that greets any military man: great enthusiasm yielding place to tepid support, in turn yielding downright opposition. In the late sixties, during my short stint as a foreign correspondent in Islamabad, I recall how taxi drivers would berate the Ayub regime, particularly for the levels of corruption it had brought to the country and Ayub’s son Gauhar was the particular focus of ire. Which only shows that the Army, if given political power, can be as corrupt as the politicians that are decried. One has only to see the palatial homes of serving and retired Army officers in the Pakistani capital to divine the length of time the armed forces have been in saddle. Perhaps the most distressing aspect of General Musharraf’s new experiment with what he would call democracy is the absence of any larger vision that guides him. Given his Turkish sojourn in his younger days, he seems to have a vague notion of patterning the Pakistani polity after the powerful Army-inclusive National Security Council being the arbiters of the nation’s destiny. Zia had toyed with the same idea in the past and the country’s security structure as it exists does not quite follow the Turkish model because there are striking differences between the power structures of the two countries. In his new garb as the country’s leader, General Musharraf has proved to be an articulate leader and the sum total of what he has said is that he envisages a very limited role for the cut and thrust of politics as understood and practised in the democratic world. His instinct is governed by his middle class bourgeois upbringing, accentuated by a lifetime in the Army, which believes, despite all proof to the contrary, that it knows all the answers. A people are not like army recruits licked into shape by rigorous discipline and the threat of severe punishment, should they err. It is for Pakistanis to determine whether their cyclical alliances with the USA, now the unchallenged super power, have been to the country’s benefit. There was an obvious feeling in Pakistan of being let down when the Americans packed their bags and left, once the Soviet Union was humbled in Afghanistan. Pakistan had to cope with the consequences: a few million refugees, a culture of drugs and Kalashnikovs and unemployed mujahideen with time on their hands and mischief in their minds. Pakistan’s adventures in Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir rationalised their employment, with disastrous results. Whatever the immediate benefits in the shape of American economic and military assistance, the reactivation of the old alliance with the USA promises to act as a curb on Pakistan’s future political development, as it has in the past. There has already been a dramatic change. General Musharraf has been transformed overnight from his pariah status to a leader feted by President George W. Bush in the White House. His patent subversion of the spirit of his country’s constitution has met with the most tepid of protests in the Western media. It is obviously in America’s interest to enlist Pakistan in its “war on terror” even as the General alternates between proceeding against and placating religious extremists. The feeling of déjà vu is so strong among Pakistani intellectuals that they are beginning to grasp their basic problem: the alliance with America stunts Pakistan’s political development towards a truly democratic polity. In other words, in a basic sense, the interests of Pakistan and the USA collide, rather than coincide. |
Past as present PAST, and to come, seems best, things present worst. This is how Shakespeare would have summed up the September 11 induced sickness pervading this planet. But my fondness for P.B. Shelley persuades me to purpose — “The world is weary of the past Oh, might it die or rest at last.” Not to be outdone, the faithful in me takes over, as it were, to order, though biblically, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Swinging from the spiritual to the temporal, back and forth, I’m on the horns of a dilemma. Do I look forward to the future or ruminate over the past? Or lament the present? Welcome to the world, sorry, kingdom of Bhutan situated along the southern slopes of the great Himalayan range. This is where I went into retreat recently, far away from the bad mad world. Yes, far away in time, though not in space. From New Alipurduar railway station we drove through Hashimara and Jaigaon on the Indian side to enter Phuentsholing, the gateway to Bhutan. Then the road winds north, over the southern foothills, through lush forested valleys and around the rugged north-south ridges of the inner Himalayas, to the central valleys of Thimpu and Paro. Hairpin bends on this breathtaking seven-hour drive are, to reassure the traveller, marked with tall colourful sculptures of the Tashi Tagye, the eight auspicious signs of Buddhism. Tradition ordains the use of signs rather that the human form as the Buddha had freed himself from the cycle of death and birth! Fluttering flags which dot the landscape are believed to communicate with the heaven. The monarchy holds the monks in high regard. Until recently, one son from each family entered the monastic order. Monks are represented in the National Assembly and the Royal Advisory Council. His Majesty the King, I learnt from the natives, married four sisters, on the advice of a lama, to secure longevity. The previous King died at 42. Their Majesties the Queens live in four different palaces. Shorn of the scourge of class or caste, Bhutan boasts of strongly egalitarian society. Men and women enjoy equal educational and social opportunities regardless of rank or birth, in all spheres of life including matrimony. This I found amazing in a patriarchal society. Quite unlike us. The monarchy prides itself on promoting the gross national happiness rather than the gross national product. Bhutanese people are healthy and happy. I hardly encountered a sullen face. Commercial hoarding, advertisements and road signage were conspicuous by their absence. A visitor is struck by their penchant for anonymity. Residential buildings bore no nameplates. What really left me dumbfounded was their ;proud proclamation: “Our past is our present.” And with everything official about it, that is, to assiduously safeguard their heritage, religion, culture, tradition and ecology in its pristine form. Tourism, technology, development et al may take a back seat. Bhutan appears to cherish it and stay that way. Looking forward to their past! Driving downhill back home, the chauffeur pulled up at the immigration check post. My eyes got stuck at a signboard which roared: “You are now entering the malaria prone zone. Protect yourself from the mosquitoes.” Long live the King. |
Rajdharma vs coalition dharma IN 1990, the then Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh had attributed the survival of his National Front government to his ability for “management of contradictions”. Narasimha Rao had field-tested the same theory with much more finesse. In Atal Behari Vajpayee’s case, the contradictions are of more serious kind — within and without, and involving severe personality clashes and policy conflicts. Hence Mr Vajpayee’s achievement in exploiting the contradictions should be rated high. While doing so, he has added an entirely new set of smritis, sutras and bhashyams to the theory and practice of coalitional realpolitik. V.P. Singh was weak in personnel management and thus he had concentrated only on policy contradictions. Maybe his was still the fag end of an era where such things mattered. From the very beginning, Vajpayee’s emphasis has been on the personnel management. This has been in sharp contrast to the Left Front’s programme-based system. The Left, which has coalition experience of a quarter of a century, spends hours and hours to sort out policy differences. Vajpayee has no use for such meetings. The BJP itself takes the core decisions and the entire NDA is expected to endorse them in a casual manner at formal Cabinet meetings. In case some parties air out their resentment on a decision, the big brother invariably takes it as an expression of some personal grievances. The underlying theory is that ideology, programmes and policies are only instruments to achieve power. The virtual reality is that every regional (provincial) constituent of the NDA is controlled by an individual. Once the latter is won over and nursed constantly, the support of the party is automatically ensured. In case some of their men in Delhi dare to disagree with an arbitrary government decision, a phone call to Chandrababu Naidu or Karunanidhi will do the trick. So far, no policy decision of the NDA was taken by way of prior consultations with the allies. For this, Vajpayee’s coalition sutra prescribes a perfect customer service window in the establishment. Every personal need has to be taken care of and attended to as the situation demands. There should be a deep understanding of the individual’s tastes and weak points. Thus conflict resolution is essentially perfect relation and no more a dialogue on policy parameters. If a Mamata Banerjee shouts about the need to remove Narendra Modi for the Gujarat genocide, all that needed to do is to utter the Cabinet expansion mantra through one of her close men. The firespitting lady would suddenly go silent. This was what had precisely happened right this week. There are different mantras for different situations. When Shambhu Srivastava had demanded Modi’s ouster with the clear permission from George Fernandes, the defence scandals mantra has to be quietly uttered to silence the flamboyant Cabinet minister. Even if it meant the resignation of the party spokesman. The “Jaya mantra” is effective in Chennai. The moment word reached Delhi through the official agencies that the minority elements within the DMK have been pressing Karunanidhi to utter a few harsh words on the Gujarat killings, media leaks about a closer NDA link with the AIADMK appeared. Karunanidhi soon went dumb. The other code in Vajpayee’s coalition smriti is that worth of a political party is decided purely by the numbers in a given situation. The PMO had rushed Kulkarnis to Kolkata and Northeast by special flight when Mamata could tilt the scale. The moment she lost the numerical magic, she also lost her importance to Delhi. Every addition of new groups to the NDA parliamentary group enabled the BJP establishment to ignore more Ramvilas Paswans and Sharad Yadavs. Pramod Mahajan had as early as 1993 attributed the admirably long survival of the LF governments to the CPM’s domineering position. Once the main party in a coalition attains a majority within the front, the smaller constituents would tamely submit to the leader. Thus the best way to keep the allies obedient is to make them constantly aware of their own irrelevance in terms of numbers. Once they realise the government would survive without their support, they would never venture to make any jarring voices. So the contemporary coalitions are essentially a game of parliamentary numbers, not policy conflicts. Once the number puzzle is resolved, the inconsequential allies will accept everything without a murmur. That Vajpayee relies so much on the new coalition realpolitik is clear from the frantic manner in which he has been encouraging Murli Manohar Joshi to once again hoist Mayawati as UP Chief Minister. An overwhelming majority of the UP BJP leaders are against the twice discredited arrangement. Each time this happened, the BJP’s image suffered. This time it is bound to further damage the state BJP. Mayawati will use the power to further enhance her influence. Everyone knows Vajpayee’s only gameplan is to improve his parliamentary majority and thus get rid of the TDP nuisance. The BSP has 14 members in the Lok Sabha and four in the Rajya Sabha. With this, and together with those of Jayalalitha and a new group of independent MPs, Vajpayee can reduce his dependence on Hyderabad. The other codes in the coalition sutra are the need to frustrate ganging up by the allies and avoiding unnecessary diatribe with the deserters. The latter is based on the premise that exit from and entry into a coalition are guided purely by the momentary power gains of the respective group. They might return if it suits their interests. Since the exits are not on any policy matter, there is no use of indulging in the old-style arguments and accusations which were aimed at educating the ranks. It is this golden rule of avoiding rancour that had facilitated the return of Mamata and Jayalalitha. The new coalition dharma lays much in store for preventing the gang-up of the allies. A slightest hint of it would alert Vajpayee’s disaster management group into action. Last month, Mamata, TDP, Paswan, etc, had ganged up on the Ayodhya issue. The latter came so sudden when the establishment was too busy with the VHP. Hence on Modi issue, it has been on extra alert to prevent gangups. The new sutras suffer from two deficiencies. First, Chandrababu Naidu does not exactly fit into its codes. So far, he has stood by the central coalition in all crucial junctures. But unlike others, he does not share power at the Centre and hence no lures could work. Left to him, he will continue to do so. But the problem is that he too has his coalition dharma aimed at his political survival. He will go to any extent to frustrate the Congress. For this alone he backs the NDA. But simultaneously he has to safeguard his composite electoral base from which he derives his strength. What worries the Delhi establishment most is that a word of condemnation from Naidu will have a snowballing effect on other secular allies like the DMK, Trinamul and Janata splinters. Vajpayee thus strives hard to add more numbers through all available means to neutralise the Naidu effect. Second and more crucial, the smart event managers in Delhi seem oblivious of the power of public opinion on the NDA allies. The sutras that may work in the ordinary situations, would turn outdated when the allies find their own existence threatened. |
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Lottery
our next national game? BUYING lottery tickets is now an act of decent mainstream people, who may soon find it as natural a thing to do as buying coffee. And the credit goes to the Mumbai-based Essel group, which is in the process of investing Rs 300 crore in online lottery under the brand name of Playwin. We are seeing ads of the enterprise all over the media. By the third year the company expects to break even and start making profits. The group also owns Zee TV, so much better to promote the new venture. This is a great social service, especially since the lottery tickets are being sold through a slick-looking machine at your friendly chemist’s, the family department store or the ubiquitous STD booths. The idea being: you can’t miss it. The promoters say they have introduced a whole new segment of people to lottery buying. We should thank them for it. What was earlier the practice of losers of society, or gambling addicts, undertaken in shady streets of towns, would now be the purview of housewives, children and the office-goer. In case you missed out on catching the addiction, here’s your opportunity. The promoters, unfortunately, left out on one good outlet for their lotteries—schools. After all, children do have Rs 10 in their pockets that can be taken; also, they’ll learn early how to make money. So here we are, lottery is the done thing. While Essel is at it, and is a pioneer in the entertainment business, has it ever given a thought to getting all the red-light areas out of the seediness and into the respectable domain? (Hey, just joking, after all you can’t expect a business firm to go on doing social work. We should be thankful for what they’ve done already.) The plans to make this lottery venture successful are big. With the backing of Zee TV, there are live draws on TV, bringing the excitement of winning crores to your bedrooms. Another KBC in the making? After all, only the Big B is lacking, but the multiple crores could probably make up for that. Though one hasn’t come across ratings for the show yet, they’ll sure be more than insignificant. So we might well see lottery becoming our national game, given the slogan of the business, “Khelo India, khelo.” Not to miss the icing on the cake: “20 per cent of the money collected from ticket sales will be spent by the state government on social causes like primary education and infrastructure projects.” Just what the children of Ambedkar’s country needed. So don’t you have any guilt about buying a lottery ticket, it’s now almost a fundamental duty; though you must be aware of it by now—A very touching message is flashed every now and then on TV, suggesting a child labourer might well be tomorrow’s architect from this contribution. State governments are said to be promoting the venture (the exact details are too complicated for me to understand). They need the money—especially when development funds are used up buying Balenos or laptops for history-sheeter ministers, innovative ideas such as these should always be promoted. At times state governments have tried to ban single-digit lotteries as some say they are immoral; online lottery might just be the saviour. Just to understand the importance of liberal thought, What would have become of the Afghan economy had it not been for the poppy fields? Opium saw them through the bad times, so what if a few million youngsters elsewhere bite the dust. If anyone thought this is being too optimistic and the funds won’t be that big, figure this: At present the paper lottery market in India is estimated at Rs 50,000 crore. Up to 20 million people buy lottery tickets each day. And now online lottery is adding a new dimension to it. This is big time. Let me not waste your time, and mine, I have a ticket to buy before the draw tonight. |
Different smoking behaviours MEN and women not only have different smoking behaviours but they also react to nicotine differently, says a new study. Four hundred smokers took part in the study, published in the Journal of Women’s Health and Gender-Based Medicine. Those who smoked less than 15 cigarettes a day were considered light smokers, while those who smoked more than 15 cigarettes a day were considered heavy smokers. The researchers collected their blood samples twice a day and also measured carbon monoxide levels from their breath. Although no significant differences was found between the number of cigarettes smoked per day or the carbon monoxide levels between the sexes, women had significantly lower nicotine levels than men. According to researchers, this was partly because of the fact that females smoked cigarettes containing less nicotine. And in their attempt to increase their nicotine load, they were likely to increase their puffing behaviour. Previous studies have revealed that men take to smoking at a younger age, smoke more cigarettes per day and report inhaling more deeply on their cigarettes than women. But despite this, the number of men diagnosed with lung cancer is leveling off while the number continues to rise in women, reason being that more women are now beginning to smoke than men.
ANI Harmone replacement effect on women A new research reveals that by taking supplements of DHEA, a hormone that has been shown to affect the body with age, postmenopausal women can increase their mental and physical sexual arousal. Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle looked at how DHEA replacement could affect sexual response. Sixteen postmenopausal women participated in the clinical trial. The women were either given DHEA or a placebo an hour before watching an erotic video. Then, the researchers measured their blood DHEA sulfate (DHEAS) changes and mental and physical sexual responses. The women also watched non-sexual videos in between the erotic ones and had their responses measured. The results, published in the Journal of Women’s Health & Gender-Based Medicine, indicated the concentration of DHEAS increased two to five times after the women took the DHEA supplement. These women showed greater mental and physical sexual arousal to the erotic video than the women on the placebo. Specifically, the women on DHEA had increased vaginal pulses and increased vaginal blood volume during the erotic film segments. Researchers admit that although these results are promising, further research needs to be conducted to understand the role DHEA may play in a woman’s sexuality.
ANI Furniture-related injuries on the rise Parents, watch out. A new Australian report has revealed that household furniture can prove to be fatal for children, with an increasing number of them either getting injured or dying as a result of furniture-related accidents, reports news.com.au. According to the report, prepared by the Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit shows, the most common injuries sustained by kids were cuts and breaks, with chairs, beds, tables and benches accounting for about two-thirds of all injuries, while TV sets associated with injuries mostly among children under five. “They are coming in with fractures and wounds caused by running into coffee tables, fridges and even birdbaths. Television has also become a problem — toddlers are pulling them down on top of them, said Dr Kieran Cunningham, Emergency Medicine Fellow at the Mater Children’s Hospital and injury-surveillance spokesman. He also said that since an increasing number of children were being treated for injuries that could have been prevented, parents should play a more active role.
ANI |
Criticism of excise policy IN the Bengal Council today, the demand of Rs 22,98,000 for excise was further discussed. The Swarajists and Mahomedans condemned the policy of the government and urged for total prohibition, failing that they demanded a government scheme leading to total prohibition in a short time The demand was carried without any cut. The demand of Rs 22,98,000 under Registration was also granted without any cut. The next demand of Rs 1,13,85,000 for expenditure under Education Transferred was then taken up. The discussion was not concluded when the Council adjourned. |
Acts of sacrifice (yajna), gift and penance should not be relinquished; they must be performed at all events. For sacrifice, gift and penance performed by wise men, purify the heart. Having created mankind along with the spirit of sacrifice at the beginning of creation, the creator Brahma, said to them, “you shall multiply through this; may this yield the enjoyment you seek”. The sacrifice which is offered as enjoined by scriptural ordinance, by men having no desire for fruit, under the firm belief that it is a duty which must be performed, is the sattvic type of sacrifice. That sacrifice, however, which offered with a view to fruition and also for the sake of ostentation, know it to be Rajasika, Arjuna. That sacrifice is said to be Tamasika, which is without sanction of the scriptures, in which no food is distributed, no sacred formula is chanted, and no fees are paid (to the officiating priests) and which is devoid of faith. — The Bhagavadgita *** Yajna consists in showing due respect to the wise and the learned; in the proper application of the principles of physical and mechanical sciences and chemistry; in the dissemination of knowledge and culture, and the performance of agnihotra which, by contributing to the purification of air, rain, water and medicinal plants promoted the well being of all sentient creatures. I hold its performance as highly commendable. — Swami Dayananda, Swantavyamantavya *** Pleasure is a freedom song, But it is not freedom. It is the blossoming of your desires, But it is not their fruit. It is a depth calling unto a height, But it is not the deep nor the high. It is the caged taking wing, But it is not space encompassed. — Khalil Gibran, The Prophet |
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