E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Cake in the soup
FORMER Union Minister and Madhya Pradesh BJP President Uma Bharati would not have imagined that she would land in trouble when she launched her Sankalp RathYatra from a Hanuman temple in Chhindwara district. After all, there was nothing new about misuse of religious institutions by politicians.

Growth with jobs
THOSE critical of India’s economic policy — privatisation and globalisation — because of its failure to create adequate jobs should revise their opinion. The country is well-placed to find job opportunities for its unemployed in foreign countries — at least 40 million of them by 2020.

Scaling new heights, stealthily
THE launching of India’s first stealth warship is, indeed, an occasion for the country to be proud of. As the recent war in Iraq has shown, it is not the numbers but the technological superiority of the military equipment that makes a major difference in a war. Iraq had one of the largest armies in the region.

OPINION

The real problem with POTA
Having ‘more safeguards’ will not do
J. SRI RAMAN
THERE is no need to argue any more for changes in the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002, in order to make it more acceptable. The architects of POTA now concede the case unreservedly. The latest statement in favour of “more safeguards” against its abuse has come from Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani. The case, however, cannot be allowed to rest there.

MIDDLE

No shackles
S.K. Chatterji
NOT too far beyond Tejpur, the road leaves the plains of Assam behind to wind its way up the slopes of Arunachal Pradesh. A few tin huts crop up in clusters with carefree children playing merrily. School bags and the burden that they imply have apparently no room in their lives.

CLOSE LOOK

Mid-day meals: hard to swallow
P. P. S. Gill
IT is nearly eight years, yet, the morsel of the mid-day meal scheme is still stuck in the gullet of many states. Given the novelty of the scheme and due to the enormity of the process involved, lack of logistic support and paucity of funds etc., the scheme has been variedly implemented by different states across the country.

• Punjab children malnourished

TRENDS & POINTERS

Diet doctor Atkins dies
WORLD famous diet doctor Robert Atkins, advocate of a popular but controversial high protein, low carbohydrate diet, died on Thursday, his spokesman said. Spokesman Richard Rothstein said Atkins (72) died at the Weill Cornell Medical Centre in New York, where he was admitted on April 8 after falling and hitting his head on an icy sidewalk.

• High BP ups heart disease risk

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

Cake in the soup

FORMER Union Minister and Madhya Pradesh BJP President Uma Bharati would not have imagined that she would land in trouble when she launched her Sankalp RathYatra from a Hanuman temple in Chhindwara district. After all, there was nothing new about misuse of religious institutions by politicians. But the lady in saffron robes overlooked the fact that she was crossing all limits of tolerance. She should have known that there existed a ban on holding political meetings at the Jam Sanvri Temple from where she began her electoral campaign. Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley, who shared the dais with her, could have warned her against trampling on the traditions of the temple. Unfortunately, her whole conduct at the temple — placing candles on the cake and singing “Happy birthday to you, Hanumanji”, performing arti with the cake, cutting it and offering it to Lord Hanuman and the people around her — made a mockery of the sacred practices in the temple. The traditionalist Hindus would not have even appreciated her entry into the temple when women are barred from setting foot in the temple. Her defence that she is a Sadhvi does not hold water if the Kerala High Court’s ruling in the Sri Ayyappa temple case is anything to go by. The court had upheld the temple’s tradition of barring women of certain age from entering its precincts. Seen in this context, it is immaterial whether the cake she offered to the Lord contained eggs or not, when offering of cakes has no religious sanction at all. She has only herself to blame for the controversy.

It would, however, be unfair to single out Ms Bharati for such questionable conduct. In fact, it has become a common practice for leaders of most political parties to misuse religion for narrow partisan ends. Though the BJP, because of its ideological underpinning, tops the list in this regard, the performance of the Congress is no better. Remember how Congress President Sonia Gandhi, on the advice of her Gujarat unit chief Shankersinh Waghela, launched her party’s election campaign in Gujarat from Ambaji temple at Hadod in December last? To go back in history, the developments that led to the eventual demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya would not have happened if the Congress ruling at the Centre had not found a window of opportunity when a lower court ordered the unlocking of the disputed structure. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s visits to Guruvayurappan temple in Kerala and her costly gifts to Lord Sri Venkateshwara in Tirupati from time to time are all well known. She has even started a scheme to provide free food to the priests of all temples in Tamil Nadu. It is doubtful whether such actions by a Chief Minister would stand the test of judicial scrutiny particularly because of the country’s avowed secular credentials. The issue in question is why should politicians misuse religious institutions to appeal to the voters and win elections? Surely, democracy has come of age in this country. The politicians are mistaken if they think that they can fool the voters by launching election campaigns from temples and by invoking religious symbols and icons.

Growth with jobs

THOSE critical of India’s economic policy — privatisation and globalisation — because of its failure to create adequate jobs should revise their opinion. The country is well-placed to find job opportunities for its unemployed in foreign countries — at least 40 million of them by 2020. This has been highlighted in an extensive report prepared by a group of economists and industrialists and presented to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Thursday. The government, it seems, had a role to play in the study of the global job market as the high-level group, set up by the All-India Management Association, was headed by Planning Commission Member N. K. Singh. The idea may be aimed at answering a disturbing question: what is the point in having economic growth if it does not lead to the availability of sufficient job opportunities? That there will be assembly elections in many states by the year-end and the Lok Sabha poll in 2004 adds a political angle to the whole effort. But the study has special significance as it lays stress on India’s strong point in exploiting the emerging scenario at the world level, particularly in the developed countries. During the coming years many developed countries will be faced with a severe shortage of skilled manpower with the US leading them by 17 million posts to be filled by people from abroad. India’s position will be different by 2020. It will have a surplus of 47 million skilled job-seekers, who can shift to the countries looking for additional workforce. The government will, however, have to play a role in all this to ensure that those going abroad for employment purposes are not exploited by middlemen. Indian embassies will have to strengthen themselves to help the country’s working class in foreign lands. After all, they will be adding up to $200 billion to the country’s GDP.

It is recognised the world over that India has a vast network of reasonably good professional institutions, especially in the areas of management and technology, besides those accepted as its USP — the IIMs and the IITs. These can provide manpower of world standards and in almost all areas of knowledge. But this does not mean that we should get complacent. Quality maintenance and upgradation should not be neglected at any stage. Ultimately, it is the quality that will come to the country’s rescue. It must be remembered that if the world needs us for its workforce requirement, we too need jobs for the products of our educational institutions. So, it is going to be a two-way traffic.

Scaling new heights, stealthily

THE launching of India’s first stealth warship is, indeed, an occasion for the country to be proud of. As the recent war in Iraq has shown, it is not the numbers but the technological superiority of the military equipment that makes a major difference in a war. Iraq had one of the largest armies in the region. It was many times the number of coalition forces, but it more or less collapsed in the face of a numerically inferior but, otherwise, superior military force. The US Navy played an active role in the campaign, and its ships and their armament were used with devastating effect as force multipliers. The stealth warship launched from Mazagon Docks on Friday is an important step towards increasing the effectiveness of the Indian Navy. The ship, called Shivalik, is named after the range of the Himalayas that runs near Chandigarh and its vicinity. It is indeed a precursor to a new class of ships which have state-of-the-art technology, modern stealth features and weaponry and the latest in electronic warfare systems. It is in the latter that Indian ingenuity has been put to good use to integrate indigenous systems with components from sources as diverse as Italy and Israel. Thus our ship builders are not dependent on any single supplier, and their products will be a formidable force multiplier for the Navy.

Shivalik has primarily an anti-submarine role to play, and it will be home to helicopters which will support it. As such, it will be able to perform multiple functions. It is expected that the stealth warship will be equipped with the latest in weapons systems, including anti-ship cruise missiles, anti-submarine torpedoes and, of course, anti-air missiles and guns. However, the best feature of this class of ships, of which two more are planned, is the small signature which enables it to evade detection. The ship is also said to be capable of taking on six targets simultaneously, which gives it formidable capabilities. It is indeed heartening that the Navy is being modernised, and for once something other than a lighter shade of grey is being used to make detection difficult. There has been a paradigm shift in military thinking and we have to ensure that when Indian defence forces go into harm’s way, they are equipped with the best possible weapons of war.

OPINION

The real problem with POTA
Having ‘more safeguards’ will not do
J. SRI RAMAN

THERE is no need to argue any more for changes in the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002, in order to make it more acceptable. The architects of POTA now concede the case unreservedly. The latest statement in favour of “more safeguards” against its abuse has come from Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani. The case, however, cannot be allowed to rest there.

There is nothing to suggest that some better drafting of secondary provisions would have made the experience more palatable. The problems encountered in the enforcement of the law in one year (completed on March 28) could not have been averted at all by the mere addition of “safeguards”. The problems were predictable and inevitable. They were the logical corollary of the larger, concrete context of the enactment. This gave the law an extra-legal import, a political purpose that state-level implementation of POTA could not be expected to serve.

Two major illustrations of the problems have been official actions under POTA in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Detentions under the law of Mr V. Gopalasamy, alias Vaiko, by the Jayalalithaa government and Mr Raghuraj Pratap Singh, alias Raja Bhaiya, by the Mayawati regime were what provoked the most dangerous controversies for the rulers of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its National Democratic Alliance at the Centre, drawing their promise to review the law.

POTA has attracted strong criticism on the same grounds as the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987 (TADA). Summary arrests and continuing detentions of scores of “usual suspects” from the most helpless sections of society, including children and the aged, on unsubstantiated charges of terrorism, have been reported from several states. The controversies over the arrest of Vaiko and Raja Bhaiya were more consequential, however, because they threatened the stability of the coalition in New Delhi.

The controversies presented a sharp contrast except on that single score. The BJP was embarrassed by both arrests but for entirely different reasons. It found Ms Mayawati’s action indefensible, but could not say so for fear of undoing its alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party. The national leadership had to cope with the stronger opposition (on caste grounds) to the arrest from the state BJP under Mr Rajnath Singh, to which the BJP-BSP ‘social contract’ did not matter quite so much. The party could not really fault Ms Jayalalithaa on her action but could not say so for fear of upsetting Vaiko’s Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Karunanidhi’s DMK, both junior partners in the NDA. The national leadership had, in this case, to cover for an alliance that had all but collapsed in the state.

It is the Tamil Nadu case that illustrates better the main problem inherent in the implementation of the latest anti-terrorism law. Ms Mayawati’s can be more easily shown to be a move of mere political vendetta: her victim cannot readily be associated with terrorism as targeted by the law. All the more so as Raja Bhaiya is not associated with any of the organisations outlawed as “terrorist” under POTA.

Vaiko, on the contrary, was arrested last July for addressing a public meeting in support of one of the banned organisations listed under POTA — the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In his special pleadings for the LTTE, in this case as well as several past instances, the MDMK leader has made common cause with two other organisations to figure in the list — the Tamil Nadu Liberation Army and the Tamil National Retrieval Troops.

It may be hard to establish any link between Mr R. R. Gopal, Editor of Tamil periodical Nakkeeran, arrested days back under POTA, and the LTTE or Tamil separatist groups. Vaiko, however, has always proudly worn his pro-LTTE politics as a badge of honour and never concealed his pro-Eelam conviction.

Officially, the authors of POTA were as anti-LTTE as Ms Jayalalithaa. In a newspaper article in November 2001, defending the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO), Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley said: “But for the special rules of evidence under TADA (the same as under POTO), not a single conviction of the conspirators in the (Rajiv Gandhi assassination) case would have been possible. India would have appeared a pathetically soft state, where terrorist groups kill a former Prime Minister and no one is convicted.” Whether India’s need not to appear a soft state warranted a draconian law, under which a confession obtained under duress was admissible evidence, is a different matter. The point here is that Mr Jaitley and Ms Jayalalithaa apparently saw the LTTE as the kind of a threat to be met with an anti-terrorism law.

Mr Jaitley like other BJP leaders appeared unprepared for this particular consequence of POTA. They seemed to be surprised by Ms Jayalalithaa’s strike, though they knew what the law said and what Vaiko had said. So did Vaiko himself, who strongly supported POTA in Parliament, despite his reservations about the provisions under which he was going to be arrested. There lay the rub: POTA’s authors presumed that the weapon of the law was to be wielded against only the kind of terrorism they had in mind.

POTO, promulgated in October 2001, was a product of the post-September 11 situation. Of those days long before the Iraq war when New Delhi enlisted in the US-led coalition against “global terror” and entertained dreams of countering the regional terrorism that rankled it. This made the objective of the measure clear beyond doubt.

Piloting POTA in the joint session of both Houses of Parliament on March 26, 2002, Mr L.K. Advani talked of it as a post-September 11 imperative. POTA, he said, would “meet a call made by United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 1373, passed on September 28. This resolution said: ‘All states shall ensure that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts is brought to justice’.”

Tying this up with the “terrorism” of his government’s special concern, Mr Advani said: “...state-sponsored cross-border terrorism is a kind of war and not just a law and order problem...this is the first factor for the government to think of an extraordinary law like POTA”.

This invited criticism that the law was linked to the BJP’s and the Sangh Parivar’s communal politics. Apprehensions on this score were not allayed by a conspicuous difference between the lists of terrorist acts in TADA and POTA: left out in the latter was an act committed to “create disharmony amongst different sections of the people”. Nor by the fact that the 30 organisations listed in POTA included 11 Muslim and four Sikh bodies, but none of the Hindutva bodies like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of Mr Praveen Togadia, now detained under a less draconian law.

The fears about the scope for predecessor POTO’s misuse proved well-founded when those arrested in connection with the Godhra tragedy of February 2002 were charged under the Ordinance, not invoked in the cases of the culprits of the subsequent Gujarat carnage. The BJP and government leaders’ repeated plea for POTA’s use for its intended purpose only reinforces such fears.

Such references to the real purpose of the law, which the uninitiated cannot easily read between the lines, explain why the Centre could not care less about ensuring that POTA is employed against organisations listed in its schedule but outside the party’s and the parivar’s primary political purview: like the People’s War Group and the United Liberation Front of Assam. Or even the LTTE, by implication.

Linked with the real purpose of the law is the real problem with its implementation. For, all the BJP arguments boil down to this simple proposition: POTA was never intended to be used against such forms of terrorism as did not fit into the party’s own definition and description.

The writer is a political commentator based in Chennai

MIDDLE

No shackles
S.K. Chatterji

NOT too far beyond Tejpur, the road leaves the plains of Assam behind to wind its way up the slopes of Arunachal Pradesh. A few tin huts crop up in clusters with carefree children playing merrily. School bags and the burden that they imply have apparently no room in their lives.

On being posted to Arunachal, we were allotted a house at Chindet Top, about 20 km from Bomdi La, and the breeze after gushing through the pass, lashed us sharply aggravating the wind-chill factor in the process. My wife went about setting up house simultaneous with our scouting for a household help. After a rather protracted endeavour, a young boy turned up for enrolment.

We grabbed him. He had an infectious smile; was unaware of anything akin to shirking and sported a carefree demeanour. He would walk off as soon as he had finished his work to stroll all over the hills and return at will. All efforts to discipline him failed beyond eliciting an ear-to-ear grin that would disarm us totally. Soon, my wife became a little protective about him and insisted on his resting for a while after lunch rather than soaking up the mountains. He took it in his stride, but was uneasy. As the days went past, she initiated him in to the alphabets. He would sit down grudgingly, his eyes straying beyond the windows to the mountains that beckoned him. However, he never resisted the schooling.

As he began picking up the rudiments of English alphabets, he also grew restless. And, by and by my premonition that he would quit, grew acute. Every time my wife insisted on his resting, the desire to roam the hills was naked in his eyes. As she sat with him teaching, his hunger for whistling in to the breeze was palpable. And one day, he never returned. He had left with nothing but the shirt on his back.

At home, my wife wondered! Having served him the same food as we ate, new clothes, enough play time (by her count), elementary education and more importantly, abundant affection, she was at a loss. My insisting that he had relished every bit of her care but was not ready to trade even an ounce of his freedom for no such gains, did not cut much ice. The woman in her could not come to terms with the failure to bind the boy in a bond of love.

I made an attempt to search him out, but the locals offered no better response than just dismissing my queries with the response that he was not interested in working for us. A few days later, as I was walking down to the club for my evening tennis, I spotted him climbing up the trail along the slopes beyond the lawns. I switched to a brisk pace. The least that I wanted to do was pay him his month’s wages. I called out to him as I gasped breathless trying to close the distance between us. I guess it isn’t quite possible to overtake a mountain goat. Panting from the effort, I had just about turned back when he whistled. I swung around and there he was griming from ear-to-ear waiving goodbye, retreating further as he ebbed beyond the crest.

We lost him to the mountains.

CLOSE LOOK

Mid-day meals: hard to swallow
P. P. S. Gill

Official name: the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education.

Popular name: the mid-day meal scheme.

Target group: primary school children of government and aided schools countrywide.

Objective: to improve students' enrollment, attendance, retention and provide nutrition.

Date of launch: August 15, 1995.

IT is nearly eight years, yet, the morsel of the mid-day meal scheme is still stuck in the gullet of many states. Given the novelty of the scheme and due to the enormity of the process involved, lack of logistic support and paucity of funds etc., the scheme has been variedly implemented by different states across the country. From giving ''free'' raw ration (3 kg of wheat or rice, per student, per month) to supplying vouchers for procuring raw ration to providing either cooked or ready-to-serve-and-eat food, the mid-day meal scheme has had a chequered progression with varying degrees of success and failure, including instances of food poisoning!

Often, the Supreme Court had also to intervene when the People's Union for Civil Liberties filed a petition on the ''right to food''. In its interim order, the apex court on November 28, 2001, directed that every child in every government and government-aided primary school must be given ''prepared'' mid-day meal with a minimum content of 300 calories and 8 gms to 12 gms of protein, each day of the school for a minimum of 200 days in a year.

The court also directed the states and the Union Territories providing dry ration to switch over to cooked meals. Both the Centre and the Food Corporation of India (FCI) were also directed to ensure provision of quality grains for the scheme on time. It wanted a joint inspection by both to ensure the quality of grains was maintained.

This order had put the states and the UTs in a soup. Those responsible for implementing the court directive were in a tizzy. Of course, there is always scope for improvement, both in terms of wider coverage and quality of meals. Several states went full steam to find innovative ways to implement the new orders on providing cooked meals.

When the scheme was first launched in 1995, it was estimated that in 1996-97 it would cost Rs 1477.91 crore to cover 3.35 crore children in 2.25 lakh primary schools in 378 districts. The scheme was intended to cut down the school dropout rate, besides it aimed at providing some nourishment to primary school children, who came from impoverished families. The National Health Survey then had already rung an alarm bell when in its report on the prevailing ''malnutrition'' in children across the states it had stated that 53 per cent children, less than 5 years of age, were of below standard weight or ''wasted'', 52 per cent were below standard height or ''stunted'' and 75 per cent suffered from severe ''malnutrition''. Also, child labour was all pervasive, estimated between 73 million and 115 million. The mid-day scheme was intended to be a means to attract children to schools.

Tracing the course of journey of mid-day meal scheme in different states, it was observed that after experimenting at least eight states had achieved some degree of success, while in majority of the states the scheme failed to take off. It had developed a snag even before the target group—primary school students—was covered. It is this snag which had led the People's Union for Civil Liberties to knock at the door of the Supreme Court, whose interim order had once again activated the states.

The problems faced in giving free ration of wheat or rice ran into trouble because of lack of means with schools to fetch the grains from FCI stores. This required the creation of storage facilities in schools, arranging transportation etc. Given the state of infrastructure available, the primary schools did not have even classrooms and toilets, what to speak of storing of wheat or rice, perceived as an additional burden. Complaints of poor quality grains being palmed off emanated from several places. Teachers, who were invariably asked to arrange for collecting grains from the FCI were at a loss and reluctant to get involved. In several states, funds of the parent-teacher associations or student welfare were diverted to meet expenses. In some states, the problem of ''caste'' also came in the way of implementation of the scheme.

While states and schools were still struggling with these problems even after five years, the Supreme Court order on providing cooked meals. precipitated their problems and meagre means to implement the scheme. This task was neither easy nor impossible to perform. But this required expert and experienced hands to cook for which schools needed kitchen, big cooking utensils, store, spices, fuel and what all goes with such a project. Would ready-to-serve-and-eat meal serve the purpose, if the prescribed calories were there? A search began for the types of meals that could be cooked or procured. States looked for ''local'' recipes and flavours, as also volunteers, individuals or institutions (NGOs) to prepare cooked or provide ready-to-serve-and-eat meals.

Dieticians and nutritionists were involved and experiments began to provide affordable, nutritious meals. The range of such meals thus suggested and provided was wide and varied: 'pinnis', 'mathis', biscuits, 'dal-roti', 'panjeeri', rice ladoos, rice and nutritious 'palao', soybean and 'moong dal khichri', 'rice-dal' or 'halwa' or typical Rajasthani ‘ghooghri’—a mixture of gur (jaggery) and boiled wheat and so on.

Interestingly, there is no single nodal central agency to monitor the mid-day meal scheme. New Delhi accepts what the states and the UTs submit when it comes to the action taken report or implementation. There is also no system to solve functional and financial problems. So much so that the FCI had recently refused further releases of wheat and rice because the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development had failed to clear the pending dues of more than Rs 500 crore.

Despite some ''modifications'' in implementing the mid-day meal scheme, flaws and faults still remain. Several teachers, who had spent from their pocket on arranging for wheat and rice have not been reimbursed so far. Reports of pilferage have also made the teachers shy away from the scheme. No one wanted to take on additional responsibilities of arranging the raw material, cooking, maintaining accounts etc. Reports of food poisoning in some states also frightened the teachers. The involvement of village panchayats or social or religious or voluntary organisations has not helped much. Recently, the Planning Commission's Working Group on Elementary Education on 10th Five Year Plan, reviewed the scheme. An ''overview'' did not indicate any serious lapses or ignoring of the Supreme Court directive on the implementation of the scheme. Of course, there is always scope for improvement, both in terms of wider coverage and quality of the meals. Several states went full steam to find innovative ways to implement the new orders on providing cooked meals.

The scheme, according to the Working Group, has not made any significant change in either the attendance or nutritional requirements. But these had impacted positively in at least eight states, which account for 20.53 per cent of the total enrollment. The cost involved in meeting just the original requirements of the mid-day meals is considerable. The Planning Commission calculation is that the Centre alone would need in the 10th Plan period Rs 10,536.25 crore for providing 100 gms of foodgrains to primary school children for 200 days every year with 85 per cent attendance. Add to this the share of the states as well.

The states, it has suggested, should have flexibility in organising cooked or processed meals, which must have at least a shelf-life of a fortnight. Most of the states have reported ''broke'' to the Centre, which, the Working Group says should pick up at least 50 per cent of the cost involved. The states should be provided funds in advance every half yearly to enable them procure foodgrains from the FCI, rather than continuing with the present system of reimbursement.

Importantly, though, the group wants the teachers to be kept out of the scheme and bring in NGOs, it is felt that the networking of NGOs and the state administration, schools, students, teachers and parents is imperative to achieve the listed objectives of the mid-day meals scheme, despite all the systemic and logistic constraints that have caught the states in a bind.

Punjab children malnourished

CONTRARY to the general impression, children in Punjab, particularly in villages, are under-fed, malnourished, anaemic and often engaged in household or farm labour chores, according to a case study. The incidence of dropout children at the primary school level is also pretty high -- 22.17 per cent (1995-1999) against an enrollment percentage of 67.5. The dropout rate among the boys is 24.12 per cent and the girls 20 per cent, as per the Punjab Human Development Report—2001 of the state Planning Department.

In several states, the governments have involved other departments as well to implement the scheme. Mostly it is either social welfare or women and child development departments. Punjab is involving village panchayats. In Rajasthan widows are encouraged to come forward to cook food for the primary school children.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Diet doctor Atkins dies

WORLD famous diet doctor Robert Atkins, advocate of a popular but controversial high protein, low carbohydrate diet, died on Thursday, his spokesman said.

Atkins fell on his way to work at the Atkins Centre for Complementary Medicine in Manhattan during an unusual spring snowstorm that hit the New York region on April 7. In addition to his wife, Veronica, Dr Atkins is survived by his mother, Norma Atkins.

High BP ups heart disease risk

Women who suffer from high blood pressure during pregnancy may have an increased long-term risk of developing heart disease, doctors warned on Friday. Although their blood pressure returns to normal after the birth, they are more likely than other women to have a heart attack or stroke 20, 30 or 40 years later.

“Women who have raised blood pressure during pregnancy have a two to three times increased risk of developing hypertension in later life,” said Professor Cairns Smith of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. “They also have about three times the risk of having a stroke and just under twice the risk of having heart disease,” he added in an interview.

About 10 percent of pregnancies are complicated by raised blood pressure. It is more common in first pregnancies. “Women should bear in mind that they may be at increased risk of hypertension later in life and that their doctors need to be aware of it,” Smith explained. Reuters

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Drive far away

the rapacious demon,

whoever he may be!

Drive far the godless,

the man who is false.

Drive far all sorrow.

— Rig Veda, IX, 104