The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

Taxing controversy

THE salaried class has always been at the receiving end. Invariably, this is the most severely-affected section of society when the government introduces policy changes. In real terms the value of whatever these people earn with great difficulty keeps shrinking. There are fewer jobs. Those who are lucky to get one have to earn their living with job insecurity always hanging over their heads. In the prevailing climate of privatisation-globalisation, the easiest way for the employers to keep themselves afloat is to lay off some of their employees. In such circumstances, the salaried people cannot understand the logic behind the Kelkar Commiittee’s recommendations for doing away with the provisions that helped them keep their income tax-burden at an affordable limit. Few will believe Mr Vijay Kelkar when he says that the incidence of tax on various income groups will be “much less, and not more”. The benefit he has tried to give by increasing the tax-free income limit — Rs 1 lakh — has been more than wiped out by the recommendation to abolish Section 88 which enabled salary-earners not only to save more for the evening of their life but also to escape the rigours of the tax regime. Those of this class who invested their hard-earned money in shares will be feeling a little comfortable as the dividend income and the long-term capital gains on the equity of the companies listed on the stock exchanges will be tax-free. But the number of such people is very small. The majority has shown preference for risk-free savings avenues (at times the investment in shares leads to losses also). That the proposal on the income from shares will spur activity in the stock market, boosting industrialisation in the process, is a different matter. This is one of the reasons why trade and industry associations have welcomed the Kelkar report. Exporters are, no doubt, unhappy as the income tax concessions available to them so far are proposed to be withdrawn. But their case is being taken up forcefully by Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Shourie. One hopes their viewpoint will not be ignored.

After the salaried class comes the plight of the farmers. Those engaged in agriculture are under tremendous pressure at a time when subsidies on farm inputs are being gradually removed. They are caught in a morass of low returns and the increasing production cost. This is besides the threat to their survival from the WTO regime. In such a scenario, the Kelkar proposal for taxing the agricultural income seems unjustifiable. Since agriculture is not on the Union List in the Constitution, it is possible that most states refuse to implement the recommendation as the Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana, Captain Amarinder Singh and Mr Om Prakash Chautala, respectively, have already threatened. There are, however, indications that the situation will not reach such a pass. Going by the reaction of Mr Rajnath Singh, who heads the ruling BJP’s group on reviewing the Kelkar recommendations, the NDA government is unlikely to accept the highly controversial changes in the tax laws. Bringing the agricultural income under the tax net and withdrawal of savings incentives for the salaried class come in the politically uncomfortable category. A government which has to face assembly elections in many states next year cannot afford to annoy these two major sections of society — the salary-earners and the farmers.

Level OS playing field

IT is not easy to be the biggest player in the market. Various versions of Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) dominate the world and an estimated 90 per cent of the computers run on such OS. The beleaguered software giant has, however, been facing a slew of anti-trust suits from the US government attorneys and rival businesses which contend that it has broken US anti-trust laws by undermining rival Sun Microsystems’ Java technology and Netscape’s Web browser, which could together have competed with its Windows monopoly. Last year, US courts determined that Microsoft was guilty. It received another blow from a ruling by a Federal judge in Baltimore, USA, who ordered it to support software made by Sun in the Windows operating system. Sun had filed an anti-trust lawsuit, which also seeks at least $1 billion in damages. It has contended that the Java software used by Microsoft is outdated and not compatible with the Sun’s latest Java version, giving unfair advantage to the Net technology that figures prominently in Microsoft’s future plan. Java has the advantage of being compatible with all operating systems that support it and Sun contended that Microsoft had tried to sabotage Java by dropping it from Windows XP when the OS was introduced last year. Later, Microsoft said that it would support Java on XP, but only till 2004. It is not clear how much ground Java will be able to gain following this injunction, but we can’t but agree with the judge who said if Microsoft’s system was to remain dominant, “it should be because of .NET’s superior qualities, not because Microsoft leveraged its PC monopoly to create market conditions in which it is unfairly advantaged.”

While US judges are forcing Microsoft to play on a level playing field, Windows is also facing assault from the “open source” movement and the Linux software, which is fast being adopted widely. Linux is non-proprietary software and has attracted wide attention, including that of India. At a recent meeting of the IT Ministry in Delhi, there was a consensus that Linux was a secure, robust and cost-effective system. The meeting was attended by industry representatives, including those from HP, IBM, Sun and TCS, as well as governmental agencies. It is expected that government tenders will no longer specify a vendor name, read Microsoft, but will just spell out the requirements. This would open the field for other players too. The interest shown by security-oriented bodies such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and the National Information Centre is especially significant. As vendors work at providing better, more robust, versatile and cheap software, there can be no doubt about who the ultimate gainers are going to be — the consumers.

OPINION

Peace, politics, administration & living
Widespread decay gives way to hate
K.F. Rustamji

IT is a strange feature of human existence that war and calamity bring out the best in men — courage, self-sacrifice and mutual support. For women it is silent suffering — the loss of a husband, son or lover, bombed out houses and generous help from neighbours. When the World War ended, a whole generation of hippies arose. “Hate,” they said, “had ruined the world”. It is love that is a prime virtue. So, we had the “flower children”, a rosebud presented to strangers, and they developed a whole new type of music, dancing and living in sin, not with one lover but with two or more. I remember a film, years ago, “A Design for Living”, in which a woman lived quite happily with two men, except for the occasional scrimmage at the bedroom door for precedence.

I am leaving out the in-between years when cults like “dadaism” came out which meant that nothing matters, all is ruin, the “potty” is the only symbol of the age.

When peace came in our time, and endured for more than 50 years, we believed the human race would flower and flourish, drive out starvation, and fashion a new world closer to the heart’s desire. The human race multiplied but did not flourish. Consumerism took over, and with it came corruption and terrorism, farmer suicides, bank scams, even “tainted judges”, words we heard for the first time.

We have never been able to understand why the behaviour of the young suddenly took a violent turn in schools in the USA, the first signs of terrorism. The father’s gun was taken out, a military trench-coat worn, and rapid fire opened on a class-room or playground of children. They said it was due to drugs, but the evidence was not convincing. Why did the killings suddenly stop although the use of drugs went up? Before that there were the young killers who took up a vantage position on a high building and suddenly opened fire on crowds in a mall. Once again there was not proper explanation, no compelling reason except that it may be some copycat reaction. Was it a longing for recognition or for notoriety? Nostalgia for war’s glory. There certainly was no economic reason as there is, for instance in jehad or communalism. There was some compelling malfunction of the human spirit not connected with poverty, indirectly connected with affluence, probably connected with the pace, stress and quality of modern life, in which there is no credit for good behaviour, and no punishment for bad. Perhaps, there is the lingering hurt of a separated family or some unknown spark arising out of modern living.

An old friend said, “Talking to the young, I feel like a ‘Stranger in Paradise’ (an old song)”. To a certain extent one can say that the entire thinking of the young has changed. “Honesty” has not been heard of since “The Merchant of Venice”. “Therefore Jews, if justice be thy plea, consider this that in the course of justice, none of us should seek salvation.” Justice is a word used every day but without getting justice. The world “integrity” is considered the same as “stupidity”. “Charity, no more,” the young say. “She died in 1947”. “Character” is a disease of public schools and meant for controlling the natives morals. Who wants them when we have condoms.” The thinking of the young defies analysis.

The jehad syndrome or the new face of Islamic terrorism is coincident with recession in the world. When the economic stress of families becomes unbearable, the families turn on their young and say, “Go get a job”. The only job available is with terrorist who gives him a gun and asks him to shoot up somebody who he ranks as being an enemy. Terrorism has arisen out of recession, and will decline when the world economic situation improves, unless we apply the wrong remedies that cry out for revenge.

In India, our democratic leaders slowly began to slide, after Independence, from the high pedestal on which we had put them till they reached the stage when politics had become a business of making money. In a few years we found that political corruption had corrupted the whole system — “Paisa pheko kaam karao.” Even hospitals have become a thriving trade. Spurious medicines or drug adulteration cases, which deserve the death penalty, are hardly noticed. And who is supposed to look after labelling? Do the poor have magnifying glasses? In the midst of an operation, the parents are told to get Rs 5,000 to save their child. Is this not extortion? Every office of the government has its own methods of cheating the citizen, and the worst result is when even the judicial process gets infected and delay becomes a method of avoiding punishment, even for murder.

Years ago when we were beginning to think of juvenile delinquents as children that needed love and support, some teachers warned us that to do away with punishment was to damage an integral part of education. The cane, they said, kept the young away from mischief. We have not extended the idea to all aspects of criminal behaviour, and that at a time when consumerism has affected the world and everyone in any position of authority hopes to make illegal gains.

In all this gloom about democracy comes the result of the Gujarat election which has elated the BJP and depressed others. Will hatred once again be the factor driving politics? We paid a heavy price at the time of Partition. If both sides, India and Pakistan, try to capitalise on hate, we will steadily move to the day when the hostility slides into war. It is only after the slaughterhouse effect is clearly notched in the minds of our people that we will see the need for cooperation and a confederation of South-East Asia.

MIDDLE

The ageing hill queen called Mussoorie
Punam Sidhu

ACCOMPANYING my husband on a mid-service training course, we drive into the town on a sunny October afternoon. The filth accumulated on the narrow winding roads is appalling. The stench of uncollected garbage and defecation, noxious. By evening, however, the chill sets in and we witness a spectacular sunset, with the fiery ball of the sun dipping into tall deodars and pines in the Garhwal mountains. The lights come on and by night, the city, she is still the Queen.

The darkness cloaks the wrinkles of pollution, and neglect. The warts of urban decay are precipitated by the pressures of the tourists who take the population of approximately 30,000 (91 census) to 2,50,000 in a season. Mansoorie, is named after the Mansur shrub (Coriana nepalensis) growing on the hillsides. Captain Young established this former British retreat in 1827.

The protagonist in Gurcharan Das’s “A Fine Family” refers to going to the Mall “to eat the air”. The Mall as a focal point of social interaction is common to all the hill-stations developed by the British. Mussorie’s Mall Road, situated 6950 feet above sea level, starts from the Library Point, past the Gurudwara Sahib Trust and Lakshmi Narain temple, down cobbled streets past porticoed shops to Kulri and the Landour Clock Tower at the other end of the bazaar. You can take a mule or a rickshaw until the old train station or wade through mule droppings on foot to the other end of the bazaar. Rudyard Kipling, Nobel prize winner, has portrayed ‘the Great Ramp of Mussoorie’ in his book “Kim”.

Mussorie in the 40s was quite the playground for the Talukdars of Awadh and other Indian Princes. Shimla being out of bounds for them, the funseekers sought out this lovely ridge town known for its active social whirl. No one was allowed on the Mall without a tie. A Regimental band played from the bandstand regaling the strollers savouring their favourite tipple. There were two popular hotels, the Savoy and Hackmans. Sukhbir Grewal told me about Hackmans having a Froth Drinkers Club. The gentlemen gathered to drink beer, at 11 each day and blow the froth. The one who blew it furthest, was declared the champion for the day and got a free beer. Hackmans has gone to seed and the Savoy, the hauntingly beautiful Heritage Hotel is barely surviving, brooding mistily, in the shade of the oldest and tallest Deodhars in all of Mussoorie.

But if heritage is what you want then, its all there at the Savoy. As you drive up, stables line the drive. The courtyard is surrounded by large urns and a filigreed boundary wall. At the reception desk, photographs of Nandu Johar, the Savoy’s owner, and his father with Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, The King of Nepal, Ethiopian Emperor Haille Selassie, and his Holiness the Dalai Lama occupy pride of place. Inside the hotel there are several wings furnished with Edwardian antiques, billiards tables, panelled walls, stuffed game trophies, carved balustrades and fine wooden floors. The ballroom is an architectural marvel. A large hall, with a balcony running right around it, it is hung with taper lit chandeliers. In 1907, the tapers were replaced with electricity. The Savoy orchestra played every night and the ballroom was full of waltzing couples.

Each bedroom has its own bathtub and dressing room. Lowell Thomas who visited Mussoorie in 1926 writes about the Savoy separation-bell. This was rung before dawn, “….so that the pious may say their prayers and the impious get back to their own beds”.

The Savoy Writers’ Bar was witness to a writers workshop in 2001, where they compiled a festchrift for Ruskin Bond, Mussoorie’s adopted son. He lives just beyond Landour, in his “room on the roof”, “Ivy Cottage”. He can be spotted at book stores signing autographs for visitors. The Writers Bar is dedicated to the authors who have an association with the Savoy. Rudyard Kipling (Kim), Phillip Mason, Commissioner of Garhwal who wrote under the pseudonym Woodruff, Lowell Thomas (India:Land of the Black Pagoda),John Lang (Botany bay) and John Masters (Bhawani Junction), Charles Allen (“Plain Tales from the Raj), Pearl S Buck (Good Earth) and Peter Hopkirk (In search of Kim) have all visited this watering hole. Ruskin Bond is a regular visitor and you can join him for a drink with Nandu Jauhar at the Writers Bar just after 6 PM.

The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy for Administration is located at Mussoorie in the old Charleville Hotel. It was formerly advertised as “the only hotel that was patronised by Her Majesty the Queen Mary” who visited Mussorie in 1906 when she was the Princess of Wales.

Mussoorie today is truly a mini-India. There is Kashmiri, Rajasthani, Saharanpuri and Benarasi handicrafts, Tibetans and the locals with their mobile woollen rehri markets. There’s also a large Punjabi trading population. Most like Sardar Harbhajan Singh of Nirankari Cottage Industries, emigrated from Pakistan after partition. His shop has over 600 Ganesha statues under one roof. Further down the road in Landour Bazaar, his brother stocks porcelain antiques and a collection of water colours exquisite in detail.

I experience a sense of déjà vu as we walk down the steep, winding, cobbled roads, of Landour past the porticoed shops with their lacey iron grills, wooden beams and sloping roofs. The tall lamp-posts cast shadows and there is a chill in the air. If I shut out the smells I could be in the United Kingdom.

If antiques are your destination head for Irfan Ahmed’s Ancient Palace at London house or Irshad Ahmed and Son’s shop in Hill Queen Centre, Kulri or Sabri’s at 11 Landour Cantt. Furniture, paintings, crockery, books, chandeliers and lamps, the list of memorabillia they stock is endless.

There’s food of every sort as well. Punjabi, Udipi, Tibetan momos or fast food, there’s a restaurant at every 10 yards to cater to appetites sharpened by the exertion and salubrious weather. We met Anil Kapur, a St Stephens alumnus, who runs the newly renovated Mussoorie Tavern and Brentwoods Sanctuary on Kempty road. His young son has just returned with a degree in hotel management and is responsible for the spanking new kitchen. The food is sumptuous and the chairs moved over after 10 to make place for the wooden dancing floor. The Manager, Mr Ashok Mahendroo, plays on the guitar and sings holding you in thrall to the tunes of a time gone by. “Once upon a time there was a tavern,……. where we used to raise a glass or two……. .”.

The cottages and buildings beautiful in their Elizabethan architecture are patchworked with new materials without respect for the antiquity or the heritage of the original construction. Only some like the State Bank of India , housed in what was earlier The Imperial Bank are carefully restored and maintained. Jim Corbett’s father was married in St Pauls Church, Landour, and served as Postmaster in Mussoorie. The stained glass windows of St Pauls backlit with Mussoorie’s setting sun are one of my lasting memories of Landour. That, and Conkers on the Chestnut trees and roasted chestnuts being sold by pavement hawkers. The magic of Mussoorie endures.

POINT OF LAW

“Bar needs capacity for indignation”
Anupam Gupta

“IT is the moral qualities of its leading personalities,” wrote Albert Einstein in 1935, “that are perhaps of even greater significance for a generation and for the course of history than purely intellectual accomplishments. Even these latter are, to a far greater degree than is commonly credited, dependent on the stature of character.”

Quoted by Columbia Professor of Law Eliot E. Cheatham in his book on the legal profession, published in 1955, these words come readily to mind as one reflects over the Supreme Court’s latest ruling in Harish Uppal’s case, declaring strikes by lawyers illegal except in the “rarest of rare cases where the dignity, integrity and independence of the Bar and/or the Bench are at stake”.

A formula as wide as “equity, justice and good conscience” — five words through which generations of colonial judges imported the English common law into India — “dignity, integrity and independence” go to the heart of some of the most critical issues affecting the Bench and the Bar today.

Such, indeed, is the propelling force of morality in the pubic domain that the veto power given by the Supreme Court to the Chief Justice (or the district judge in the case of subordinate courts) to decide whether or not an issue involves the “dignity” or “integrity” or “independence” of the Bar or the Bench would, if wrongly or lightly exercised, itself become a matter of public contention.

Nor, in all fairness to the Supreme Court, does the strong anti-strike tenor of its judgement detract from the not inconsiderable latitude it affords to the Bar to stage protest by other means.

“It must immediately be mentioned,” reads the December 17 judgement, “that one understands and sympathises with the Bar wanting to vent their grievances.”

Besides the medium of a one-day strike (on issues involving the dignity, integrity and independence of the Bar or Bench), this may be done, it holds, by lawyers “giving Press statements, TV interviews, carrying out of court premises banners and/or placards, wearing black or white or any colour arm bands, peaceful protest marches outside and away from court premises, going on dharnas or relay fasts, etc.”

There is a tinge of upper-classism here, no doubt, and a fear of the unruly — “We may try,” said the distinguished American judge, Benjamin Cardozo, “to see things as objectively as we please; nevertheless, we can never see them with any eyes except our own” — but this allowance for non-violent professional agitation is a clear advance over previous Supreme Court and High Court rulings on the point.

Neither in the UP Sales Tax Service Association case of 1995 nor in the Ramon Services case of 2000, the two leading precedents on and against the lawyers’ right to strike, had the Supreme Court uttered a word about any other form or kind of protest by the fraternity.

Taking the cue from the apex court, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had, as late as in August this year, decried as “unethical” and irresponsible all forms of protest by lawyers, from bandhs to dharnas, holding that a society which tolerated such professional behaviour is “certainly not the society dreamed by the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi”.

Gandhi’s concept of mass action was quite different, of course, from what the High Court, in its wisdom, was inclined to believe. An unswerving adherence to non-violence was accompanied by an uncompromising resistance to evil, the administration of the law through the courts being, in the Mahatma’s scheme of things, an essential part of the evil.

“I regret,” said the Mahatma, addressing the Bombay High Court on February 27, 1920, “that I have not found it possible to accept the advice given by his Lordship the Chief Justice (to tender an apology). I have been unable to accept the advice because I do not consider that I have committed either a legal or moral breach..”

He was replying to a contempt notice issued to him for having written, as editor of Young India, an article highly critical of the district judge of Ahmedabad who had moved the High Court for disciplinary action against certain lawyers who had signed the Satyagraha pledge.

A few months earlier, in October, 1919, the Mahatma had flayed the High Court itself for laying down principles of legal conduct which were “open to question” and for presenting to the Bar “a mercenary view of their profession (which) confounded the functions of judges and lawyers.”

“The judgement of the High Court in the case of the Satyagrahi lawyers,” wrote the Mahatma, “is, to say the least, highly unsatisfactory.... For instance, what is the meaning of “these who live by the law must keep the law”? If it means that no lawyer may ever commit a civil breach without incurring the displeasure of the court, it means utter stagnation.”

Lawyers, he said, are the persons most able to appreciate the dangers of bad legislation and “it must be with them a sacred duty, by committing civil breach, to prevent a criminal breach.”

The judgement of the Bombay High Court thus assailed is reported in AIR 1920 Bombay 168, while the contempt case against Gandhi himself (alongwith Mahadev Desai) is reported seven pages later in the same volume of the law journal.

The Mahatma’s own remarks are included in the compilation “The Law and the Lawyers” edited by S.B. Kher and published by the Navjivan Trust in 1962.

The December 17 judgement of the Supreme Court is no less ahistorical in approach than the Punjab and Haryana High Court four months earlier and echoes, in fact, the very proposition that Gandhi so cogently questioned.

“A person cast with the legal and moral obligation of upholding the law,” says the judgement, “can hardly be heard to say that he will take the law in his own hands.”

Nor, it is obvious from the judgement, does the Supreme Court subscribe to the activist view of the lawyer’s proper role in the administration of justice, a view best expressed by Harry W. Jones, Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia, at a conference of leading judges, law teachers, practising lawyers and legislators way back in November, 1958.

“A lawyer, a real lawyer,” said Jones, “should react to unfairness, inequality or abuse of procedure as a bishop reacts to heresy or a painter to a meretricious composition.”

“What our Bar needs (he said) is a capacity for indignation — indignation against congested dockets and unregulated contingent fees that threaten substantial justice in half of the civil cases filed in our courts; indignation against universities, including the best ones, that take the lawyer’s role in society so lightly that they train doctors in clinical groups of two or three but support legal education only on a low-cost, mass production basis; indignation against political deals that put third-rate lawyers (as judges) on first-grade courts....”

Impressive though this counsel of indignation is on first principles, and conducive to legal and judicial well-being, it would be difficult to read it into the December 17 judgement.

Local, regional or even national issues, says the Supreme Court, spurning suggestions made by the Bar Council of India, such as disputes between lawyers and the police or other authorities, non-appointment of judicial officers for a long period or absence of infrastructure in courts, or matters relating to legislation, “are all matters which are exclusive(ly) within the domain of courts and/or legislatures.”

In such cases, it holds, representations can be made. Representations by lawyers ought always to be seriously considered. “However, the ultimate decision in such matters has to be that of the concerned authority. Beyond making representations, no illegal methods can be adopted.”

Capping this philosophy of submission, visibly at odds with the Gandhian injunction to commit a civil breach in order to prevent a criminal one, is the following observation in para 32 of the judgement:

“Lawyers must also accept the fact that one cannot have everything to be the way that one wants it to be. Realities of life are such that, in certain situations, after one has made all legal efforts to cure what one perceives as an ill, one has to accept the situation.”

That is all very well, one may ask, but how does this square with the court’s unqualified approval for resort to agitational methods such as protest marches and dharnas conceptually denied in the past?

It does not.

More on the contradiction, and the judgement, next week.

Grooming daughters-in-law
Rohit Ghosh

WANT your daughter to be an ideal homemaker and daughter-in-law some day?

Send her to a unique school in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, that promises to give women of marriageable age all the tips they need for a happy wedded life.

The school, Manju Sukhramdas Sanskar Kendra, says it teaches young women the qualities and responsibilities of an ideal daughter-in-law, how to adjust to a new household and how to behave with her husband and in-laws.

And all this comes for no charge.

The school, managed by a society called Navyuvak Parishad, claims about 4,500 girls have “passed out” since it opened in 1987. The only teacher is 60-year-old Aaildas Hemnani, who says 99 per cent of her students are leading a happy married life.

Popularly known as Bhauji, Hemnani rues that more and more marriages are breaking these days because of increasing materialism and Western influence.

“I try to inculcate the values of our culture in the girls and keep them away from the Western culture. Also, I stress on tolerance. I tell the girls that in case their in-laws are hostile, they should tolerate as much as possible,” says Hemnani.

“But that does not mean that the girl should tolerate harassment. In that case, she should take every possible step to give a befitting reply to her in-laws.”

And Hemnani says the few of her students who did not have happy marriages had the odds stacked against them.

“The marriages of 1 per cent of the girls who passed out from here failed because their in-laws did not budge even an inch from their stand.”

An officer with the state government’s Tribal Welfare Department, Hemnani opted for early retirement to dedicate her time to what she sees as a social cause.

Asked how this unusual idea struck her, Hemnani told IANS: “Some of my friends were very impressed with the behaviour of my daughter after her marriage and advised me to train other girls for their marital life.”

Hemnani has also penned a book: “How to become a good son-in-law”.

“Whenever a student gets married, I gift the book to her to present it to her husband on the first day of their marital life,” she says.

From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., Hemnani can be seen sitting in the school in front of a group of 20-25 young women, sharing tips on how to become a good daughter-in-law. The classes run for three months.

Says Jaya Thavnani, a post-graduate student: “I joined the school because I will get married soon and want to get adjusted in the new household very smoothly.”

Rashmi Chandwani, another student who joined the school in November, says of Hemnani: “She teaches us how to control our anger and how to dress after we get married.”

With tips like that, Hemnani’s students hope they are dressed for success at marriage. IANS

Keep pets for better health
Alex Cukan

AS people look to making New Year’s resolutions to attain better health, getting a pet may be one avenue — animals not only boost emotional wellbeing, they also play a special role in physical health and in the recovery of illness.

“Sometimes we need science to back up what everybody knew all along — such as smoking is not good for health — but animals are very good for people’s health, both physically and mentally,” Alan Beck, Professor at Purdue University, told United Press International’s Animal Tales.

“The heart attack study of 1980 was the first objective measure that found the survival rate one year after a heart attack was 94 per cent among pet owners but 72 per cent for those who did not own pets,” said Beck, head of Purdue’s Center for the Human-Animal Bond at the School of Veterinary Medicine.

Beck, a pioneer in the study of how the dynamic relationship between man and animal influences the psychological and physiological state of each other, created a series of studies on the health benefits of pets.

One landmark study showed a person’s blood pressure went down while stroking an animal. In addition, the study found such stroking also reduced anxiety and produced a general feeling of wellbeing.

“Our most recent study found that people with Alzheimer’s disease, who often have a hard time focusing and therefore lose interest in eating, had a better appetite when looking at fish in a fish tank while eating,” Beck said.

“The beauty of pets is that they don’t hold grudges. They provide unconditional love and the interconnection between human and animal is rewarding for both,” Beck said. “The research shows that people find talking to animals less stressful than talking to people and often people will ‘try out’ a conversation with a pet first before attempting it with a human.” UPI