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Saturday,
April 27, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Wooing
defaulters Time for introspection |
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Mob
fury in Ludhiana IMAGINE the agony of the family of a young child who goes out to perform a routine chore but does nor return home. The family members go to the police to report the case of the missing child. Just because they happen to be from the economically weaker section of society the police does not show any interest in helping the family find the missing child. Next morning the child's mutilated body is found not by those who are paid to investigate crimes, but by ordinary citizens.
Anatomy
of Gujarat violence
Heroes
all
Gujarat:
time for simplistic solutions over
The
nightmare of owning a car
Men in
odd jobs risk heart disease
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Wooing defaulters HARYANA has been issuing "pay up or else …" warnings to its defaulting power consumers since long. However, as the threatened whip has hardly been cracked, the ultimatums evoke only lukewarm response. The result is that the outstanding dues have reached a staggering Rs 1,000 crore. The situation is desperate. As a last-ditch attempt the Chief Minister has offered to write off 75 per cent of the payment provided the remaining 25 per cent is paid in one go. Even if the payment is made in instalments the consumer has to pay only 50 per cent of the money. It will be interesting to watch the response, particularly in the problem districts of Gurgaon, Rohtak, Bhiwani, Jind, Kaithal and Hisar where the consumers are notorious not only for not paying their bills but also for power pilferage. They are not the only ones to be blamed. The government is equally responsible. First of all, it has always been lax in bringing the guilty to book. That encourages others to follow suit. Second, nearly all leaders, including the present Chief Minister, have promised farmers free electricity when they were in opposition. The pampered consumers now feel that it is very much their right to draw electricity without having to pay their bills. Moreover, a message seems to have gone to each and every village that if they can hold out long enough, the arrears are either going to be waived off or will be reduced greatly. The latest concession has only strengthened this feeling. One only hopes that the consumers will not expect the government to bend even further. The Chief Minister has simultaneously emphasised that strict action would be taken against the defaulters after the May 15 deadline. Only if he lives up to these stern words would the habitual defaulters sit up. Why, it is not only private citizens but also government departments who do not pay up. These departments owe nearly Rs 250 crore to the Haryana Power Utilities. Big concessions are alright but to make everyone fall in line, it is necessary to wield the big stick, which politicians are hesitant to do because of electoral compulsions. Someone has to bite the bullet sooner or later, otherwise the power situation will worsen in the state further. In economics there are no free lunches. But since most lunches are on the house in politics -- at least till the situation goes completely out of hand -- the scenario is fast deteriorating beyond the limits of redemption. Now is the time to shed populism fully and be on the side of honest consumers instead of backing the rogue horses. |
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Time for introspection THE 150th anniversary of the Indian Railways is a momentous occasion for not only its officers and other employees but also every Indian. Though Gandhiji saw railways as an instrument of enslavement by the British, he did often travel by train to fulfil his socio-political goals. Jawaharlal Nehru felt that the only way to understand India was through train journeys. The train’s utility has increased so much today that it is inextricably intertwined with the progress and destiny of the nation. The lower middle class just cannot think of any alternative. Air travel is beyond its reach and buses are no answer for long-distance travel. Before Independence, Indian public opinion was generally hostile to the railways and found strong expression in the comments in the Press and the Central Legislative Assembly. The railways was considered a part of the government, manned at the higher levels by Englishmen for the domination of the country by a foreign power — an attitude amply justified by the apathetic response of the authorities to the needs of the vast majority of railway users. After Independence, the public perception of the railways has changed — from being a government organisation to a public utility service. But along with the rapid expansion of its network, people’s problems and expectations have also multiplied in nature and scope. One reason for people’s disenchantment with the railways is that its officers and babus still seem to follow their English predecessors in their style and approach. Problems such as the staff’s rude behaviour with passengers, dry taps, stinking waiting rooms, soiled toilets are a sad reflection on the image and performance of the Indian Railways. True, passengers also need to be blamed for the present mess. How many of them flush the toilets after use or keep the train interiors tidy? In some stations like Chandigarh, our elite class does not bother to buy even platform tickets, but expect the railways to improve amenities. This, however, does not absolve the railways of blame. The authorities will have to respond to the new challenges. Recognised as the nation’s lifeline once, the railways has gradually lost ground to other means of transport. Economic bus services and heavy truck haulage have affected the railway revenue, implying that the economy is no longer dependent on the railways for its transport needs. The railways needs to ponder over the reasons for its downhill slide and apply the necessary course corrections. It will have to regain its lost glory by improving the passenger amenities at the stations and in the trains. The entire organisation from top to bottom has become flabby, affecting its overall performance. The 150th anniversary celebrations should serve as an opportunity to our railwaymen to improve their performance and prove their mettle. We are proud of the Indian Railways for its rich history, but sadly, it has a poor track record. |
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Mob fury in Ludhiana IMAGINE
the agony of the family of a young child who goes out to perform a routine chore but does nor return home. The family members go to the police to report the case of the missing child. Just because they happen to be from the economically weaker section of society the police does not show any interest in helping the family find the missing child. Next morning the child's mutilated body is found not by those who are paid to investigate crimes, but by ordinary citizens. The mob fury that erupted in Ludhiana on Wednesday over the indifference of the police in launching a search for the missing child should be treated as a warning to a comatose
administration to wake up. Had the police acted promptly the child's life may have been saved. The eruption of public anger against the insensitivity of an organ of the state should not be dismissed as an isolated incident. The days of ordinary folks looking up to the police or any other "sarkari afsar" as their "mai baap" are over. Govind Nihalani had made a futuristic film captioned "Akrosh" on the suppressed rage of the underclass against an indifferent system. Om Puri represented the burgeoning class of wronged people whose silence is wrongly mistaken as subservience by an arrogant administration. Beware. Times have changed. What was witnessed on the Ludhiana-Chandigarh highway was just the beginning of a new and alarming face of an assertive and often aggressive public. Yes, the public destroyed its own property to give vent to its sense of outrage against police apathy. Did it have a choice? Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh is moving at amazing speed to set things right on many fronts. His initiatives have given some hope to the people of Punjab that the administration would henceforth be more responsive in dealing with their grievances. He should accord restoration of the rule of law in the state the same priority that has been given to combating acts of corruption in high places. He does not need lessons in understanding the basics of what Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee calls "Rajdhrama". He understands its complex nature better than ordinary politicians. The principles that ensure justice and fairplay to the "praja" from its "raja" are no different from the ones that the elected representatives of the people are expected to follow in a democracy. Capt Amarinder Singh should take a personal interest in the unhappy episode that resulted in the brutal killing of eight-year-old Sanju, son of a tailor, as also the factors that forced the people to go on the rampage. Paying money as compensation to the family for the death of the child would amount to adding insult to their wound. A routine enquiry into the reasons for the mob fury would send out a loud and clear signal that the administration is buying time and that the police would continue to remain the handmaiden of the rich, the famous and the powerful and a ruthless and arrogant master of the underclass. Capt Amarinder Singh would earn the gratitude of the people if he were to ensure the revamping of the style of functioning of the members of the police force to ensure that Ludhiana is not repeated elsewhere or even in Ludhiana itself. The public expects its servants to perform the duties assigned to them faithfully and diligently. Is it an unfair expectation? |
Anatomy of Gujarat violence AT Godhra a bogey of the Sabarmati Express carrying 58 women and children was set on fire by persons widely believed to be Muslims on February 28. At Mehsana, Ahmedabad and Vadodara over 100 Muslims were charred to death by the Hindus as revenge of Godhra. Godhra is the symbol of a new religious divide. We may see more manifestations of it throughout the country in the near future. This purposeful violence carried out coldly and precisely is something new. The violence we saw following the bringing down of the Babri masjid in December, 1992, in Delhi, Mumbai, Surat and elsewhere also resulted in killings and destruction of property on a large scale, larger than what we have witnessed at Godhra and other towns and villages of Gujarat. But they did not betray a distinct political design that we are witnessing now. Careful reading of the Gujarati dailies inclined towards the BJP, the Congress or the Janata (still important in Gujarat) and talking to academics, journalists, human rights activist and lawyers, politically neutral or politically committed, tell you how the Gujaratis see Godhra. They see it as an event planned and executed by the Muslims in collaboration with the ISI. Even those journalists, lawyers and academics who oppose the BJP and strongly disapprove of Narendra Modi’s handling of the violence are convinced that the Godhra killings were planned. They also think that had Godhra not happened Gujarat would have been quiet. It all began at Godhra, Gujaratis of all political beliefs say. Prime Minister Vajpayee basically expressed this unanimous view of the Gujaratis when he recently said at a public rally in Goa that Godhra was the beginning and the cause of the Gujarat bloodshed. The anatomy of this violence is different from the kinds of violence we have seen in the past. Unlike the Hindu-Muslim clashes of the past which took place in cities and mid-size towns, the Gujarat clashes took place also in the villages. The countryside of north and central Gujarat witnessed terrible violence, though the residents of these areas say that the perpetrators came from outside. Then again in the pre-Godhra riots people involved were generally urban slum dwellers and they competed with each other for small jobs. Here the Hindus and Muslims would fight each other for as small a thing as water from public taps. This time in Vadodara, Ahmedabad and Surat middle class professionals, doctors, teachers and lawyers took part in violence and loot; sometimes they even led the mobs to attack the
Muslims. Godhra is seen by the Gujarat Hindus as an assault on the Indian nation. Even those who condemn the violence that followed the Godhra violence feel that Godhra has deeply wounded the Indian national pride. They believe that it is either the ISI or their collaborators here who planned the Godhra killings. An edition of Sandesh, a mildly pro-BJP daily, described the killings in response to Godhra as
tandav nritya, the angry dance of Shiva to wipe out evil. Gujaratis, however, critical of all that has happened after Godhra, think of Godhra as a defining event. They are dismayed at the outpouring of condemnation by the “secularists” of killing that followed Godhra. How can anyone solely blame us for riots in Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Mehsana or Rajkot without blaming those who lit the fuse of religious hatred at Godhra, a law abiding, tolerant Gujarat would ask. The Hindu-Muslim divide in Gujarat is deeper than perhaps anywhere else in the country. It cuts across, party lines. That the Congress is secular and the BJP is sectarian simply doesn’t hold true in Gujarat, perhaps nowhere else either. The point is well illustrated by what happened to the Khichadi Kitchen Dalshuk Prajapati, a Congress MLA from Vadodara started for the Muslims driven out of their homes by the Hindu mobs. Prajapati was roundly criticised by the local Congress people and his Khichadi Kitchen forced to be closed. and it’s the Congress members who violently demonstrated, besides the BJP and VHP members, against Medha Patkar’s visit to the Sabarmati Ashram to help and console the grieving Muslims. Why is Gujarat, the most industrialised state in the country and with a long tradition of civic culture, so divided along religious lines? The usual social and economic explanations do not really explain why the religious divide should also prevail in the villages. In the cities Hindus and Muslims living cheek by jowl in the overcrowded urban slums and compete with each other for livelihood. But in Gujarat villages became the scenes of Hindu-Muslim clashes. Even the Adivasis displayed virulent hostility towards the Muslims. Part of the reason lies in the fact that the VHP and the RSS have sunk deeper roots in Gujarat than anywhere else in the country. It’s the Gujarat VHP that provided the largest share of both money and muscle power for the Ram temple agitation. It’s Gujarat again that first permitted persons with RSS affiliation to enter government services in 1998. Hindu religio-political organisations have extensive presence in Gujarat and it’s these organisations that carried out violence in the state and now sustain Hindu-Muslim hate. Pravin Tagodia, General Secretary of the VHP, rightly says that Gujarat is the laboratory for testing the strength of Hindutva nationalism. Since Advani’s highly successful political mobilisation of the Hindus in the name of the Ram temple in 1990, Hindutva nationalism has flowered in Gujarat. This is despite the changing fortunes of the Gujarat BJP, which in the past 10 years has not greatly increased its strength. Here the people judge the party in terms of its performance and not the ideology it espouses. But Hindutva nationalism prospers here and as I have said earlier, it cuts across party lines. There are Congress supporters who are as ardent Hindu nationalist as the BJP supporters. This nationalism appeals to the Gujarati Hindus because they, perhaps, more than other communities, think of themselves as the torchbearers of Indian nationalism. Godhra is seen by them as an assault on Indian national pride by the Muslims, whom they regard as the agents of Pakistan. Their antagonism towards the Muslims has greatly increased after two events in the past six months: the September 11 event and December 13 one. Suicidal attacks on the World Trade Center and the Indian Parliament have greatly disturbed the Gujarati Hindus. Many Gujaratis link the Godhra event with those of September 11 and December 13. They see the terrorists as the religious warriors of Islam out to destroy India as a modern, secular democracy. Paradoxically many Hindutva nationalists see no contradiction between their ideology and secularism. They sincerely believe that a Hindu cannot but be secular. |
Heroes all ANDHRA Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is fully justified in demanding that a regiment of the Indian Army be named after his state. The heroic deeds of the “loyal” soldiers of various political parties reflect a glorious martial tradition. A few citations. Lance-Naik T. Anjiah
who, on hearing that the crown prince whose star was rising in the party hierarchy was due to make a brief stopover at the strategic Begumpet airport in Hyderabad quickly rounded up sycophants, hangers-on, cheer leaders and other lumpen elements and personally led a frontal assault armed with huge marigold and sandalwood garlands and bouquets and singing noisome
paeans of praise and singing the poems he had composed on the spot hailing the crown prince as the saviour of the nation only to be snubbed by the latter. For doltishness and bravery in the face of calculated cold shoulder, Lance-Naik Anjiah is cited. Rifle Sepoy Bhavanam Venkatram
was called from the remote picket of Local Self-Government and Panchayati Raj Minister and asked to take charge of the platoon after Lance-Naik Anjiah was evacuated from the front-line. Rifle Sepoy Venkatram, braving heavy and deadly accurate artillery and machine gun fire from dissidents and disgruntled turncoats, tried to hold the platoon together, making over 100 air dashes to Delhi to seek the party high command’s continued blessings and support. For courage, beyond and above the call of duty, Rifle Sepoy Venkatram is decorated. Second Lieutenant Vijaya Bhasker Reddy
took command of the rapidly shrinking perimeter, re-organised the defences and planned and personally led the combing operations against the Telugu Desam insurgent. Lt Reddy was frequently pinned down by heavy mortar and small arms fire from his own partymen who had been denied cabinet berths. Unmindful of personal safety, Lt Reddy inspired the bandwagon riders and political opportunists under his command and acted in the finest traditions of the Andhra Regiment. Subedar Major Baga Reddy
heard on the command post wireless that a fully laden cement rake had arrived overnight at the Secunderabad railway station. Disregarding heavy fire from snooping investigative reports and the Public Accounts Committee, Subedar Major Reddy executed a daring outflanking
manoeuver and reached the railway station and seized the cement rake, adding the entire quantity to his discretionary quota. For personal initiative and gallantry of the highest order, Subedar Major Baga Reddy is decorated. Sepoy Havildar T. Venkatswamy
on the night of December, Sepoy Havildar Venkatswamy was informed by a Despatch Rider that enemy land grabbers and real estate speculators had broken thru’ the outer perimeter of the posh and strategic Banjara Hills in Hyderabad. The Rifle Sepoy immediately rushed to the defence of the threatened pickets and single-handedly held off human wave attacks by the land grabbers and in the ensuing action, he made the supreme sacrifice of grabbing large parcels of valuable land himself in violation of urban land ceiling act. For exemplary courage and leadership, Rifle Sepoy Venkatswamy is Mentioned in
Despatches.
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Gujarat: time for simplistic solutions over JUST before the violence in Gujarat gave Hindutva such a bad name a group of scholars wrote to the President and the Prime Minister urging them to reform Indian education to make it more Hindu-oriented. Despite the terrible events in Gujarat, the suggestions made by the International Forum for India’s Heritage (IFIH) are important which is why I write about them this week. I also write about them to draw attention to the irony that it should have been a BJP government that should have turned Hindutva into a bad word when there are aspects of it that are not just valuable but essential if India is to shake off its colonial past and possibly find a way out of the communal madness that we have seen engulf Gujarat. The IFIH was launched in November last year at a convention in Delhi attended by scholars, educationists, artists, scientists and thinkers from India and abroad. The idea behind the forum is to emphasise that there is much that Indian civilisation has give the world that remains unappreciated in India because we have made no attempt to reform an education system that was set up by our colonial masters for the needs of colonial times. So most Indian children continue to come out of schools and colleges with a deep respect for Western thought, literature, art and music without any respect for their own civilisation. As the letter to the President and the Prime Minister points out, “They knew Shakespeare better than Vyasa, Valmiki or Kalidasa and Western classics in preference to the Shilappadikaram or even the Panchatantra. Nor are they made to appreciate how far world civilisation is indebted to India in the spheres of science and technology, spirituality and arts, thought and culture. Are all these pioneering advances something we should feel so ashamed of as to conceal them from our children?” The IFIH sent a copy of their letter to our Minister for Human Resource Development, Murli Manohar Joshi, but it would have only left him puzzled since he believes that his contribution has been to “Indianise” the education system. In fairness to him he has tried, but his problem is that he failed to see the big picture and ended up interfering only in areas that would inevitably lead to suspicions that his motives were more political than cultural. He also seemed to be more interested in some peculiar revivalist and divisive version of Hindu culture instead of in a future that was based on a real understanding of ancient India’s contribution to world civilisation. The IFIH, on the other hand, emphasises that revivalism is not their objective. “We do not advocate a return to the past or an unintelligent rejection of all things Western, on the contrary: the best and most modern teaching and learning techniques must be used in order to give new and more living forms to our heritage in the eyes of the younger generations. There lies the key to a constructive modernisation of India that will enable her to play her role on the global scene.” Why do I dare write all this at a time when Hindutva has so disgraced itself in Gujarat? Because it is my view that what we saw in Gujarat was not Hindutva but murder and evil in the name of religion and what we need to worry about once the violence abates is why so many supposedly “normal” people participated in this madness. Many of the murderers in Ahmedabad and Baroda were educated, middle-class people. So there must be something very wrong with their education, if it can be called that at all. The leftist view is that the education system in Gujarat has already been ‘saffronised’ because the BJP has been in power in that state for more than 10 years. This is too simplistic a view because it overlooks the fact that Ahmedabad has been one of India’s most communally sensitive cities long before it was ruled by a BJP government. It also overlooks the fact that communal riots were a regular, yearly event in the 40 years that we were ruled by ‘secular’ Congress governments. Once the violence abates in Gujarat and the time comes to stitch together its torn social fabric we need to go deeper — much deeper — into understanding what has gone wrong than we have so far. Education is only one of the things that have remained unreformed since colonial times. Our justice system and security forces also remain unreformed. Although we have replaced our colonial masters with elected representatives, they continue to rule India with colonial methods. In Gujarat we have seen police officers and senior civil servants resign because they have been so ashamed of what happened. It would be useful if they got together with some of their colleagues to evolve a system of policing and governance that was more responsive to the aspirations and requirements of ordinary Indians than what we have right now. Why, for instance, is India about the only country left in the world where the police shoots to kill instead of dispersing a mob? Why do they use real ammunition instead of rubber bullets? Why do they think nothing of shooting women and children? Why do senior officials not dare to disobey orders from politicians they consider wrong? Why were Narendra Modi’s minister allowed to sit in police control rooms to interfere in what appears to be a partisan manner? The only good thing that can come out of Gujarat’s terrible, shaming violence is for someone to try and evolve systems that would prevent it from happening anywhere in India ever again. In the old days when Hindu-Muslim riots were a routine, annual occurrence, the explanations that came afterwards were usually simplistic. One of the most popular of these was to suggest that a larger percentage of the Muslims in the police and administrative services would be the solution. This is not so much a solution as an admission that the only way Hindus and Muslims can live together if everything including governance is ghettoised and given a specific religious identity. The time for simplistic solutions is over; we need to go much deeper to the roots of the disease if we are to survive as one country. The Prime Minister has so far done almost nothing to try and heal the wounds of Gujarat. In fact, since his speech at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Goa he has been charged by some with putting salt in the wounds. If he wants to do something now to absolve us of the shame, he needs to start looking for real solutions. In the quest for them organisations like the IFIH can play a useful role. Since it is clear that the politicians have failed us we need to find other Indians who can help us understand why a country that prides itself — albeit superficially — on its ancient civilisation should find it so easy to descend into barbarism. |
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The nightmare of owning a car THAT
gleaming status symbol sitting in your drive may soon be outmoded. Parking problems and traffic jams in towns and cities are turning the pleasure of owning and driving a car into a daily nightmare. And it can be an expensive one. In the UK, urban car owners face rising parking charges in key shopping areas and a shrinking number of spaces and parking permits near their homes, while many a suburban or rural motorist will have to pay London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s planned US $ 7-a-day congestion charge to visit the capital, on business or pleasure, from next January. Last year, another hazard cut the so-called kudos of car owning. The UK Government told all councils to cut the number of parking spaces allotted to new homes and offices. What does this mean for a family that has to move house for personal or work reasons? They will probably have to rely on an unreliable public transport system, or park several streets from their home, raising the risk of their car being damaged or stolen. A scheme pioneered in Switzerland shows, however, that there may be another way. Called Carvenience, it is a network of car clubs whose members drive cars without the problems of owning one. You pay a US $ 220-a-year fee, a charge for the kilometres you drive and get an electronic key fob to let you into its cars. The scheme is being adopted by two south London boroughs, Southwark and Sutton, in partnership with car hire company Avis, using money from Transport for London and the European Union-backed Moses project. Other boroughs are keen to join, subject to good progress by the two pioneers. Each club has between two and four cars. They are parked in agreed, pre-paid spaces in shopping areas, near bus and rail stations, or outside housing and office developments. The new Vauxhall Astras and Corsas resemble the trophy cars you see displayed at tennis and golf tournaments, but they are merely waiting for the next club member to take them to their chosen destination. Ian Saxon, manager of Avis car clubs, says: `Our aim is to replace six privately owned cars or company pool cars with one club car. ‘The clubs enable local residents or company staff to make shopping or business trips without the problems of inner city parking, while commuters can pick up a car near a station or bus link, instead of having to make long car journeys into London and other towns and cities with traffic problems or sit in jams on motorways.’ The clubs also provide a handy new selling-point for estate agents and developers. Alison Blease of estate agent FPD Savills said: `Parking in London and the suburbs is a nightmare. Our new projects are being built with 40 to 50 per cent fewer parking spaces, and some with none at all. This means new residents either have to sell their cars or rent a space at great expense in a city car park.’ Perfect candidates for clubs cars, you might say. Savills, fellow London estate agent Lane Fox and developer St James’ Homes are now including a year’s Carvenience membership in the selling price of new homes. It looks as though the club concept is here to stay. Its ten-year existence in Switzerland has already spawned 30,000 members and reduced the number of new cars registered, and similar schemes are starting across Europe in Bremen, Turin, Genoa, Palermo, Ghent and Stockholm. The only snag comes when several club members want to use a car at the same time, perhaps during peak commuting hours and the school run. The only answer — and it’s not perfect — is that members may drive any club car in their borough, whether it is on a nearby site or further afield. Pip Howson of Southwark council’s planning department said: `The more the scheme catches on, the greater the number of cars there will be for each member to use.’ That aside, it seems the Swiss have set an example for other cities to follow.
The Observer |
Men in odd jobs risk heart disease MEN in non-traditional jobs, such as stay-at-home dads, are at high risk for heart disease and their chances of dying of cardiovascular disease are greater, a study has said. The study presented to the American Heart Association’s Asia Pacific Scientific Forum in Honolulu on Friday examined whether stress linked to certain jobs translated into increased heart attacks and death, though it stopped short of establishing a direct connection. But researchers were surprised at finding a higher frequency of heart disease among those in non-traditional jobs. Men who work in the home for the better part of their adulthood are 82 per cent more likely to have a shorter life-span than their counterparts who work outside the home, the study found. Likewise, women who work in positions commanding a great deal of authority are three times as likely to suffer from heart ailments than women who do not. “These findings may indicate that people who perform work or social roles incongruent with what is socially expected suffer greater heart disease and death during the 10-year study,” said study author Elaine Eake of Wisconsin’s Eaker Epidemiology Enterprises. “Perhaps those men and women on the cutting edge of social norms experience negative health consequences.” Eaker expressed hope that as “social roles and norms change with time... the harmful effects of having jobs or social roles that are considered outside the norm will be diminished.”
AFP
Fighting cataract with tea Scientists have found that tea may help prevent cataract, which accounts for over 42 per cent of blindness around the
world. "Tea, both green and black, is a rich source of antioxidants called flavonoids which are 10 to 20-time more powerful than vitamin C, and has ability to retard the progression of eye lens cataract,” researchers from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad and Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation, said in their study published in the journal of Experimental Eye Research. Cataract of human eye lens accounts for over 42 per cent blindness around the world and it is estimated that there are 28,000 new cataract cases every day, hence chemical approach for delaying the onset or retarding the progression of cataract is valuable, they said. A cup of tea provides an approximate 20 mg of flavonoid, and addition of milk does not reduce its effect, they said adding minimum of one or two cups of tea daily can help delay the onset of cataract.
PTI |
True devotee has good deeds to do Pursues learning, acquires wisdom Serves humanity, meditates upon God Unlike the unlearned who talks rot. —
Autar S. Deshi, Heritage *** In all the thousand births through which I may be doomed to pass may my faith in Thee, Achyuta, never know decay. May passion, as fixed as that which the wordly-minded feel for sensual pleasures, ever animate my heart, always devoted unto Thee. —
Bhakta Prahlada’s prayer. Vishnu Purana. *** The cultivation of devotion is by meditating on the object of devotion, by worshipping Him, by reading about Him, and by listening to, talking to and associating with those who are superior in devotion. —
An Advanced Textbook of Hindu Religion and Ethics *** Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye, abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches; he that abideth in Me, and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you; continue ye in my love. —The Bible: John *** There are five types of devotees: 1) Hirsi — those who practise devotion only superficially, simply because they see others who are devoted and try to imitate them. 2) Arat — restless persons; 3) Jigyasu — seekers; 4) Artha Arthi — selfish persons 5) Gyani — intellectual persons. True devotees are always welcome at the Gates of God..... But this quality can be developed only through the grace of the True Master who is himself dyed in devotion to the Lord. —
Huzur Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters *** Now you are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you. —
The Bible: John |
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