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Thursday,
May 2, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Where is
the healing touch? General
wins, democracy loses |
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Skeletons
in every cupboard THOSE who were appalled and amazed by the neat bundles of high-denomination notes tumbling out of PPSC Chairman Ravi Sidhu’s lockers should quickly get over their sense of shock, for he is not the only one to have made his crores. Scandals are erupting like goose pimples, with even a patwari in Amritsar having been found to have amassed property worth Rs 10 crore, of course, with political patronage.
US
interests and South Asia
India to
have pragmatic Chief Justice
Sri
Aurobindo’s vision of India
The dehumanising of
management
Device ‘lifts’
burden off nurses
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Where is the healing touch? PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's NDA government carried the day in the Lok Sabha's game of numbers in the wee hours of Wednesday. But the impressive victory in the censure motion with a margin of 94 votes does not reflect the nation's anguish over the tragic happenings in Gujarat for nine weeks. It is difficult to say who is wiser at the end of the marathon debate in the Lower House of Parliament. The thrust of most speeches by our MPs was either selective or partisan. Each one was speaking according to his/her political agenda which includes votebank politics. Mrs Sonia Gandhi accused Mr Vajpayee of doublespeak on the Gujarat issue. The harsh fact, however, is that every political leader (Mrs Gandhi included) was exhibiting double standards and indulging in doublespeak. Who has gained in the process? Surely, not Gujarat and its beleaguered people—both Muslims and Hindus. Who will wipe the tears of the riot-hit people and help them live honourably and peacefully? Where is the healing touch? No concrete suggestion came forth from any quarter during the 16 hours of the parliamentary exercise. Even the Prime Minister's relief package was not enough to sooth the hurt feelings. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has had its own crude calculations of face-saving, pleasing the Muslims in Andhra Pradesh without formally parting company with the NDA. Its abstaining from voting was a double-edged weapon of keeping Mr Chandrababu Naidu politically afloat without any loss of face and Muslim sympathy. Of course, along with the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Communists and some of the NDA allies, the TDP asked for the head of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. How the BJP-led government will ultimately respond to this demand is difficult to say. It can certainly afford to be magnanimous and gracious and ask Mr Modi to step down. But the moot point is: will Mr Vajpayee begin to assert as Prime Minister? It is a fact that Mr Modi has become a symbol of failures in the post-Godhra events. He has failed to act effectively against the trouble-makers. He has also failed miserably to establish the rule of law and restore communal harmony and peace in the state. What is disturbing is that killings and arson remain unchecked till date. Who are behind the mad acts? The nation wants plausible answers and urgent correctives. It is in the interest of the Prime Minister and his party not to allow Mr Modi's ouster to become a prestige issue. Politics, after all, involves compromises. A pragmatic response to the people's problems on both sides of the communal divide can go a long way in restoring normalcy in the state. More than anything else, what Gujarat needs today is a healing touch. But the voices heard in the Lok Sabha contributed little to that process. Our honourable MPs indulged more in shadow-boxing than addressing themselves to the substantial issue of governance with a view to taking Gujarat out of morass in which it has fallen. Non-governance has begun to hurt the Muslims as much as Hindus. So, the first priority ought to be giving the people a just and fair administration. Since Mr Modi has not come up to the mark on this count, he has no business to cling to power. He has lost the moral authority to rule. The Central Government, too, has lost its moral authority to shield the Chief Minister. The numbers game might have given Mr Vajpayee some respite, but he cannot run away from the harsh ground realities. The governments in Delhi and Gandhinagar ought to see the writing on the wall. Taking shelter behind the comfortable victory margin will not do. We hope that Mr Vajpayee will see reason and retrieve his honour as an enlightened secular statesman and set the pace for putting the Gujarat house in order. |
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General wins, democracy loses AS expected, the controversial referendum in Pakistan has gone in favour of General Pervez Musharraf. Going by the official figures, nearly 60 per cent of the 62 million-plus voters participated in the much-publicised exercise to legitimise the General's rule for another five years. It is a different matter that he initially captured power through undemocratic means — a bloodless military coup — overthrowing a democratically elected government headed by Mr Nawaz Sharif. He will now boast of being an "elected" President. But is it really true? Agreed that over 95 per cent of the voters who exercised their right of franchise want the self-appointed President to stay put. But what about those who abstained from voting? Most of them can be presumed to have responded to the boycott call issued by the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, a conglomerate comprising all the major political parties of Pakistan. Those who have rejected General Musharraf's cunningly crafted strategy to remain in the saddle constitute a vast section — 40 per cent, that too if we believe the official figures to be true. Opposition assessments and independent media reports have an entirely different story to tell. The political parties in the anti-Musharraf camp — which means all those that matter — have claimed a voter turnout between 5 and 7 per cent. Leave aside what the Opposition says because it too has its own axe to grind. The credibility of the political class is woefully low. The despatches from media people — representing local, Western, Indian and other newspapers and TV networks — say that there has been widespread rigging, misusing the state apparatus to make the referendum deliver the desired result. Thus, it is a stage-managed victory for President Musharraf, irrespective of what the officially dished out statistics suggest. The movement for democracy has suffered a major setback. April 30, the day of the controversial referendum, deserves to be observed as a day of mourning by all the Pakistanis striving for the revival of democracy in that Godforsaken land. The General had promised to restore democracy when he grabbed the reins of the administration in October, 1999. He managed respite from an obliging judiciary which first gave him enough time to hold elections — or, perhaps, to consolidate his position in the meantime — by October, 2002, and then accorded legal sanctity to a sham exercise to trample democracy by misleading the gullible public. No doubt, the promised elections will be held but only to form a government subservient to the all-powerful General parading himself as a "popularly-elected President". One does not require much wisdom to foresee the shape of things emerging in India's immediate neighbourhood. The conduct of Pakistan's military rulers provides enough proof that India-baiting has been their primary weapon to keep their opponents at bay. General Musharraf's record has been the worst. As the situation prevails today, it is foolish to think of a change for the better in the area of Indo-Pak relations. |
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Skeletons in every cupboard THOSE who were appalled and amazed by the neat bundles of high-denomination notes tumbling out of PPSC Chairman Ravi Sidhu’s lockers should quickly get over their sense of shock, for he is not the only one to have made his crores. Scandals are erupting like goose pimples, with even a patwari in Amritsar having been found to have amassed property worth Rs 10 crore, of course, with political patronage. When Punjab is doing so well in corruption sweepstakes, can Haryana be far behind? The Vigilance Bureau of the state has indicted top officials, including the Managing Director of the Haryana Financial Corporation, for a scam involving Rs 97 crore. No, the money has not been found stacked in any lockers as yet, but it is alleged that the indicted officials caused this huge loss to the state exchequer by granting loans and lease finance to about 100 dubious firms between 1993 and 1996. Even the basic norms of verification, sanction and disbursement of loans were given a go-by in the case of the favoured firms by the obliging officers, who in the normal course harass a loan seeker so much that he shudders to approach the HFC. Obviously, all this was done to line their own pockets. That such a huge scam has come to light is not as important as the fact that the loot was kept under wraps for so long. Political and bureaucratic interference ensured that the case was allowed to linger for more than four years. Had it not been for the Committee on Public Undertakings, which ordered a vigilance probe, the scamsters might have gone scot-free. What is coming to public view is staggering enough but it is no more than the tip of the proverbial iceberg. One can well imagine the actual size of the loot. Equally mind-boggling is the extent to which corruption had moved upwards. Since such high and mighty are in the dock, a concerted attempt is bound to be made yet again to cover up the stinking scandals. It is now the duty of the government — or at least the minuscule section which is still untainted by the AIDS of sleaze — to ensure that a serious attempt is made to uproot the tree of corruption completely, instead of only pruning its branches. What the administration has to realise is that the revulsion among the public against the government arises mainly because of the fact that a large chunk of the money earmarked for them never reaches the targetted section since it is siphoned off by self-serving functionaries. Action against every corrupt official is a step towards restoring the honour of the government. While going about the cleanup job, not only the pointsmen but also the hidden beneficiaries should be brought to book. |
US interests and South Asia JUST a week ago, the United States Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, testified before the Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, claiming that the Bush administration had “reshaped a good part of South Asia “through” quiet and steady diplomacy” behind the “war on terrorism” since September 11. Nothing new, startling or wrong with that. But there are several significant nuances in his remarks which need careful attention and analysis, and this makes it truly shocking that of the 12 English language newspapers that I take only one cared to publish the PTI’s adequate summary of the testimony. However, let us overlook that and concentrate on the implications of what Mr Powell has said. To begin with, of the four reasons for the success of the American diplomacy in South Asia that the Secretary of State mentioned, the first was a “new US-Pakistan relationship”. The next was a “reinvigorated US-India relationship”, followed by a “new, interim administration in Afghanistan” and the fact that the “Taliban and the terrorists” were “either dead, in jail or on the run”. These were ringing words. But some of the subcommittee’s members were apparently not enthused. They were worried about Al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives finding sanctuaries in Pakistan. They asked Mr Powell whether the USA had asked Pakistan to deny these sanctuaries to the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda terrorists. On this issue there is much greater concern within the USA than is realised in India. The American media has been outspoken in its criticism of the Pakistani performance in this respect. It has also reported that covert US military teams have been taking part in attacks on suspected Al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistani territory, especially in tribal lands adjacent to the Afghan border. Between the lines the media reports have also suggested that these joint operations have not been a great success presumably because the US special forces and soldiers from the Army’s Delta Force were “operating in small teams”. By contrast, the Bush administration is extremely reluctant to say anything critical of General Musharraf’s government on the subject of Al-Qaeda and Taliban finding shelter in the federally administered tribal areas. No wonder then that the Secretary of State’s replies to the queries by legislators were true to type. “Washington”, Mr Powell said, “has been working with Islamabad on this issue. These are tough areas and it is not a matter of just going and occupying (them) militarily. It takes intelligence work and liaison work, and President Musharraf has been quite forthcoming — more so than people might have expected at the start of the campaign”. The question, therefore, is why is the USA bending over backwards to be respectful to General Musharraf’s sensitivities even when the American public opinion is dissatisfied with the amount of cooperation received from him. An obvious answer is that General Musharraf is gaining more from the “new USA-Pakistan relationship” than the USA is. The timing of the present debate is also a reason for the US government to be mealy-mouthed. Pakistan’s military ruler is engaged in his life’s biggest gamble otherwise called the referendum. Through it he hopes to secure a fig leaf of legitimacy as President for a further period of five years. As it happens, the fig leaf is a see-through one. Almost all counties ruled democratically have criticised the referendum as anti-democratic. The USA is the lone exception. Within Pakistan itself opposition to General Musharraf’s ploy is strong. Not only the mainstream parties — whose leaders are banned from even returning to Pakistan from exile, voluntary or otherwise — but also all religious parties have given a call for the referendum’s boycott. On Sunday a massive procession, starting from Minar-e-Pakistan marched through the streets of Lahore, chanting “Go Musharraf, Go”. This is a rather unusual development in a military dictatorship though the General’s strategem is a mere repetition of what Zia-ul-Haq did in 1984, to no great effect. Evidently aware of all this, the Bush administration has taken a policy decision not to embarrass the Pakistani President America considers a valuable ally. For this reason, Washington seems even willing to look the other way when General Musharraf, in order not to offend jehadi elements too much, lets the banned terrorist organisations function under new names or releases 70 per cent of those arrested after his famous January 12 speech. At the same time, Washington is coy also about admitting that any joint US - Pakistan military operations are taking place on Pakistani soil. But neither the American nor the Pakistani media is silent on the subject. Interestingly, before publishing a detailed story on such joint operations, The Washington Post did ask General Musharraf’s spokesman, Major-General Rashid Qureshi, for his comment. He replied that he had no knowledge of any such operation and added, “I think there is some confusion. What I had heard earlier is that the only thing that may be happening is a communication link.” Since there can be absolutely no doubt that General Musharraf, like the previous Pakistani military despots, would win the referendum with the prescribed 97 per cent vote, it remains to be seen whether the present prevarication by both sides would continue after the referendum or things would change. The crucial development to watch is whether or not the USA would be more demanding on President Musharraf making good the promises made on January 12, especially about ending the cross-border terrorism in Kashmir of which there is no sign yet. Even if judgement on this issue is suspended, as it should be, policy makers in New Delhi would do well to recognise that Mr Powell has said enough to destroy the Indian illusion that America’s alliance with Pakistan is “tactical” the relationship with India is “strategic”. It should be clear by now that the USA needs a Musharraf-led Pakistan for a long time. The war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban is far from over. Not only fire fighting within Afghanistan but also a vigorous hunt for the top terrorists sheltered in Pakistani tribal areas are, therefore, a must. Moreover, opposition from European allies and Arab nations notwithstanding, the USA is determined to take military action against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Early next year is the revised date that American sources are mentioning for this purpose. Washington would need at least one major Islamic country to support it. Once again Musharraf’s Pakistan is the answer to American prayers. Thirdly, the USA is establishing a long-term presence also in Central Asia - a subject on which Mr Powell spoke with great emphasis — clearly with an eye on the region’s rich oil and gas wealth. The new Afghanistan and the old Pakistan constitute the preferred route to the warm water ports for the export of Central Asians hydrocarbon. A highly significant part of Mr Powell’s testimony to the Senate subcommittee related to China and it included the curious statement that Beijing had “helped” Washington in “reducing tensions between India and Pakistan.” China, he went on, “has not tried to be a spoiler but instead tried to help the USA alleviate Indo-Pak tensions and convince the two parties to scale down their dangerous confrontation, which hopefully is happening.” Let South Block not take this lightly. There is an ominous echo here of President Clinton’s joint statement in Beijing with President Jiang Zemin in June, 1998, to the effect that “the US and China had a shared responsibility to maintain peace and stability in South Asia. Those likely to doubt this ought to read other parts of the Powell testimony. “We will continue to work with China as the situation evolves”, he had said, for the USA shared with China a relationship that was “candid where we disagree, constructive where we see some daylight, and cooperative where we have common regional or global interests”. Mr Powell admitted that there were differences with China over the “supply of US arms to Taiwan, human rights, religious freedoms and nonproliferation”. But he hastened to add, “we do not want interests where we differ to constrain us from pursuing those where we share common goals. And that is the basis on which our relations are going rather smoothly at present”. The bottom line could not be clearer. |
India to have pragmatic Chief Justice MR Justice Bhupinder Nath Kirpal’s rise in the legal profession has been steady and reaches its zenith when he assumes office as the Chief Justice of India on May 6. Considered a brilliant judge, Justice Kirpal has more than fulfilled his father, the late Amar Nath Kirpal’s ambition. He hails from a wellknown family, which held important positions in the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and settled in Delhi after the trauma of Partition. Born on November 8, 1937, he is a product of St Anthony’s School, Lahore, and Modern School, New Delhi, Justice Kirpal is an alumni of St Stephen’s College. Affectionately called “Cuckoo” by family members, Justice Kirpal did his LLB from the Law College and came into his own as a lawyer. He worked as-central government pleader in the Delhi High Court, additional standing counsel for the Income Tax Department and thereafter central government standing counsel since 1975. Justice Kirpal was appointed Additional Judge of the Delhi High Court in November 1979. He became a
permanent Judge of the Delhi High Court in November, 1983. In December 1993, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court and elevated to the Supreme Court in October 1995 and is due to retire after six months as the Chief Justice of India in November. Considered a pragmatist, Justice Kirpal has pronounced several far-reaching judgements in the present regime of liberalisation. These include the controversial Balco privatisation case where he observed that courts should be wary of interfering in economic policy decisions. Justice Kirpal has also been seen as being highly conversant with eco issues. The enforcement of the CNG deadline in Delhi is a case in point. Justice Kirpal has as a judge of the Delhi High Court probed the terrorist related Kanishka air crash over the Atlantic Ocean. He has been in the news lately for his forceful intervention in the Ayodhya crisis rejecting a Shila Pujan to be formed anywhere on the acquired land in Ayodhya. Justice Kirpal heads the 11-judge Bench taking a fresh look at the special educational rights of minorities. New Foreign Secretary Luck has favoured Kanwal Sibal the second time after he was pipped to the Foreign Secretary’s job last year by Chokila Iyer, who earned the distinction of being the first woman to be elevated to that post. Mr Sibal’s peers describe him as a thorough professional. Being the older brother of eminent jurist and Congressman Kapil Sibal, Mr Kanwal Sibal brings with him the reputation of being “one of the more competent officers” in the foreign office. Having the reputation of being a high flier, Mr Sibal, who is serving as Secretary (West) in the MEA, will be working with a hands-on Foreign Minister in Jaswant Singh. A postgraduate in English and a Bachelor of Law, Mr Sibal is fluent in French and knows Arabic as well. An officer of the 1966 batch of the Indian Foreign Service, he has served as India’s Ambassador to France from April 1998 to March 2002 before returning to headquarters last month. A seasoned officer and prior to moving to Paris as Ambassador, Mr Sibal headed the Indian mission in Cairo. Before that he was the Deputy Chief of Mission in the Indian Embassy in Washington from August 1992 to September 1995. He has also served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Nepal from July 1982 to September 1985. Mr Sibal, Kanwal to friends and acquaintances, is married to Elizabeth and has two children - Jaimin and Priyanka. He will be Foreign Secretary for a year and five months before attaining the age of superannuation in November 2003. |
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Sri Aurobindo’s vision of India THE Bible says where there is no vision, the people perish. In modern times, our sages like Sri Aurobindo, Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi were men of vision. In particular, there is no one in the history of human thought who has understood the special genius of India better than Sri Aurobindo. Following the long voyage of the spirit of India through the ages, Sri Aurobindo had a vision of India’s glorious future. For him, it was not an intellectual exercise but a living experience. He had really seen that despite the critical and turbulent times and the depths of darkness around, “India is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word”. There is still the “possibility of a new twilight — not of an evening but morning”. We need this vision of Sri Aurobindo today more than ever before. We must pursue it really aggressively. To the extent that we have forsaken it, we have come to grief and got close to disaster. The present crisis is not confined to the territorial limits of India. It is a crisis of global dimensions. It is a crisis of the spirit. There is a spiritual vacuum in the lives of most of us. The craze of competitive consumerism and the greed of possessivism have generated mechanisation, stark materialism and mad race for power and wealth. These have sapped all sinews of the spirit. There is widespread devaluation of all values. While the ancient Indian ideal was that of human unity built on the precept of the whole being one family, the present attempt of the so-called globalisation and liberalisation is to convert the world into a market where everything is bought and sold. A categorical imperative today is that of revival of our faith in the spirit and the genius of India. The need is for imbibing the vision of India as seen by Sri Aurobindo and devoting all our energies to bring about a spiritual regeneration. We must heed the voice of the great seer in the area of the evolution of the collective consciousness of the nation, growth of the integral personality, the process of the ascent to supramental levels and the descent to new consciousness. Sri Aurobindo was par excellence a seer. The solution to our present day problems is in his vision of Life Divine manifested in the allegorical epic person of Savitri. The greatest revolution of the modern age has been that of digitalisation of information. We are flooded with information. We hear of information superways, multimedia, internet, etc but information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. The vision of Aurobindo and the message of India is that of the spirit, it comes from realisation, from having seen reality which is metalogical — beyond logic, mind and matter. It cannot be digitalised and disseminated through a computer. It has to be seen, it has to appear to a true sadhak and a seer. For that we must have faith in the divinity of man and in his power to transcend himself to levels of higher consciousness. However dark the night, we cannot afford to lose faith in the dawn. In Sri Aurobindo’s words, the darkest nights prepare the greatest dawns. We must not despair and give up. Sri Aurobindo’s vision and faith in the future of India must inspire us and take us forward. We stand on the threshold of a new age of consciousness. The time for a regeneration of the spirit and genius of India and renaissance has arrived. |
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The dehumanising of management MANAGEMENT is powerful stuff. Without it, as Peter Drucker says, the twentieth century wouldn’t have happened. Management coordinated and amplified human effort out of all proportion to put man on the moon, crack the human genome, develop the internet. Management made Shell, Exxon and General Motors almost unimaginably large, and General Electric and Microsoft almost unimaginably profitable. Management is also dangerous. It wasn’t incompetence that brought down Maxwell, Sunbeam, Waste Management and, of course Enron, but deliberate, powerful management directed to destructive ends. At the ultimate extreme, management is what makes an 11 September or a ‘final solution’ not only imaginable, but possible. There is a much finer line between the two than most people imagine. Just how fine is underlined in the March Harvard Business Review by Edgar Schein, emeritus management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a distinguished thinker in organisation psychology and leadership. Corporate boot camps, outward bound courses, even appraisal, are, he says, a form of ‘coercive persuasion’ — attempts to make individuals learn what the company wants them to learn. To make it crystal clear, GE’s vaunted Crotonville training centre was at one stage called the ‘GE Indoctrination Centre’. Today the terminology is less blunt but the effect is the same. Take GE again: ‘Jack Welch made his goals for GE non-negotiable: if you wanted to stay, you had to learn what he wanted you to learn,’ notes Schein. ‘Heavy socialisation is back in style in American corporations, though nobody is calling it that. We seem to have come full circle.’ Schein’s point is not that all ‘coercive persuasion’ is wrong — learning inevitably has a coercive element, he believes — but where is the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable? When the incentives are strong enough, it is easy for powerful management to tip into ‘asshole management’, which, in its single-minded attempt to internalise profits and externalise costs, destroys more than it creates. Enron is the obvious example, but it is not alone. ‘I don’t think Enron was an aberration,’ says Arthur Levitt, former Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. ‘It’s symptomatic of a cultural erosion of values prevalent in the business community... Far too many boards operate in a culture of seduction.’ Management’s great power needs strong values to stop it overbalancing. Here are a few of them: Free enterprise can’t be justified by what it does for business, but what it does for society. Society comes before business; politics before economics. A good example of a debate that is being conducted entirely in business terms is the accounting treatment of stock options. Treating them as a cost of employment, as the International Accounting Standards Board proposes, will, it is protested, hit stock prices and harm business by damping the entrepreneurial economy. That may or may not be true (and I doubt it), but even if it is, the correct answer is: tough. Honest disclosure is a value in itself. As Charles Handy points out, markets tell you what things cost, not what you must do. Management is about people. This simple truth became mere lip-gloss in the orgy of deals and financial engineering that fuelled the nineties stock market boom. For messianic managers, mergers and takeovers are far more exciting than the grind of improving operations and growing organically. Yet takeovers are the least reliable way for a firm to grow, and non-acquirers tend to do better. The dehumanising of management is reflected in, and aided by, its discourse. As with the language of warfare, management becomes abstract, and with the same result: dissociating acts from consequences and from responsibility. Like war by guided missile, corporate generals who manage by shuffling assets never see the effects on morale and productivity, let alone on individual lives. It’s time to put people back at the heart of management. Findings emerging from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development show that superior people management is not only right — it pays. A no-brainer or what? Management is not a neutral science, separate from its ends, but more like Drucker’s ‘liberal art’. You can’t take moral choices out of it any more than economic ones — that combination is what management is. So corporate responsibility is part of how it makes its products and treats its customers, suppliers and staff. It’s how its managers behave, not whether they give to charity. Companies do not belong to managers. The managerial smash-and-grab raid of the last decade (those stock options again) was largely ignored, while shareholders were benefiting even more hugely from rising prices than their agents. But things are clearly out of kilter when the managers go on making a killing when other stakeholders are suffering, and even more wrong when they benefit directly from making workers redundant or even from their own firing. Finally, the silent accomplice of domineering management is human greed. Confronting it with Chinese walls is like trying to hold back a waterfall with tissue paper — witness the conflict-of-interest scandal engulfing the research departments of US investment banks, and the hopelessly porous boundaries between audit and consultancy at the big accountants. So the essential warning is: never underestimate the power of economic incentives. If, as someone once said, the essence of capitalism is ‘managed greed’, it’s about time the emphasis switched to ‘managed’. By arrangement with The Observer, London. |
Device ‘lifts’ burden off nurses A new device developed by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, will definitely come as a sigh of relief for nurses, who often complain of back pain while lifting or moving bed-ridden patients, reports BBC. The device, which looks a little like a giant cigarette roller, works by sliding a portable frame around the bed, attaching the sides of the sheets and starting to wind the electric motors which are built into the frame. The sheet then moves, lifting and turning the patient. Software is used to control which way the patient tilts by pulling the sheet one way or the other. The device is designed in such a way that it ensures smooth rolling motion. Using the sheet also means the patient’s weight is well-distributed. It is hoped patients will prefer it because they stay in contact with the bed while they are being turned, making it less distressing for them than existing mechanisms. According to Arin Basmajian, who led the team which developed the device, it was better than existing devices which could be expensive and bulky. “Nurses complain that the set-up time is too long and that patients feel unsafe being airborne,” she said. But some experts like Carol Bannister, an occupational health adviser for the Royal College of Nursing, UK, don’t seem much convinced.
“I doubt any hospital would use it. It sounds dangerous.” However, Dr Basmajian maintained even old cotton sheets would be strong enough, especially since the patient always maintained some contact with the bed when being rolled. But before being tested in hospitals, the device will first have to undergo safety trials.
ANI Women at high altitudes age faster Women living at high altitudes or mountainous areas tend to suffer from hormone deficiencies that makes them age faster, says a recent study, reports BBC. According to a team of researchers, led by Dr Gustavo Gonzales, these women have lower concentrations of two hormones, namely DHEA and DHEAS (dehydroepiandrosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate), which are important for maintaining health and youthfulness. These steroid hormones are produced by the adrenal gland and occur naturally in the bloodstream and brain tissue of all healthy individuals. Although they are important for physical and mental
well-being, their levels decline with age. ANI |
Let no one deceive another, let him not despise (another) in any place, let him not out of anger or resentment wish harm to another. As a matter at the risk of her life watches over her own child, so also let every one cultivate a boundless (friendly) mind towards all beings. And let him cultivate goodwill towards all the world, a boundless (friendly mind, above and below and across, unobstructed, without hatred, without enmity. —Khuddaka Nikaya. From the Minor Anthologies of the PaliCanon *** Through good conduct man gains spiritual merit, through good conduct he gains wealth, through good conduct he obtains beauty, good conduct obviates the effect of evil marks. A man who follows the rule of conduct established among the virtuous, who has faith and is free from envy, lives a hundred years, though he is destitute of all auspicious marks. —The Vashishtha Dharmasutra *** Enter ye in the life’s stream, With a merry heart and fearlessly, For God protects all those who are pure in mind and heart. The dead weight in life’s progress Is the love for the glitter of life Give up all sensual pleasures, And ye shall ever be free and happy. — Yogi M.K. Spencer, How I Found God *** I have befriended everyone I am a friend to everyone. —
Sri Guru Granth Sahib *** The real friends are those who make us remember the Name of the Lord. —
Sri Guru Granth Sahib *** Friendship with the foolish and love with the egoists is like a line drawn across water, of which no sign or mark is left. —
Sri Guru Granth Sahib *** There is no real friend except Guru and God. —
Sri Guru Granth Sahib *** Virtuous conduct leads a man to eminent greatness. Therefore it should be guarded as more precious than life itself. —
The Tirukkural |
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