But a jamboree of the kind Chandigarh witnesses, which causes more confusion than content, hardly serves any purpose. It is true that the ISC meets in various sessions where only those interested in the subject attend. Even so, the sessions are so large that no meaningful discussion is possible. And when a mela-like atmosphere prevails, those who come with brilliant, innovative ideas to have them synthesised find that there are few people with whom they can share. Many a time, they are not even able to present their papers and they return disappointed. This has happened in the past and is bound to happen again if the size of attendance at the Congress remains the yardstick of its success. It is time the scientific establishment in the country thought about ways to make the ISC sessions more compact and meaningful.

In India, this move had been condemned by the SGPC and other Sikh organisations. Internationally, various groups are working to coordinate efforts to defeat the ban. They point out that like the other affected parties, the Sikhs have "contributed valiantly to the French aspirations of 'liberty, equality and fraternity' during the two World Wars when turban-wearing Sikh soldiers served in France in 13 Cavalry and 8 Infantry regiments." To be fair, the commission has also recommended that Jewish and Muslim as well as Christian holidays should be celebrated, that discreet signs of religious attachment should be allowed and that special meals should be supplied to observant Muslims and Jews.

This rally has been driven by FII money. The foreign institutional investors pumped in a whopping Rs 32,000 crore in 2003, while Indian mutual funds have invested Rs 821 crore during this fiscal so far. It all started with large investments in highways. The falling interest rates raised demand for housing. The cement and steel sectors were the obvious gainers. Increased demand from China firmed up steel prices globally and Indian companies benefited. Then the prospects of pharmaceutical exports to the US and European markets brightened up. A good monsoon boosted agriculture and fuelled rural demand for consumer durables. The IT sector is now expected to gain from the US recovery.

Where medicine and health are concerned, the focus should be on the quality, safety and effectiveness of drugs/vaccines. Many pharmaceuticals are scientifically and technologically complex. Most countries lack the capability to manufacture them. The premise of international trade is that each country should produce those goods and services for which it has a comparative advantage. In fact, rules agreed to by all World Trade Organisation members strictly forbid discrimination against foreign products. While tariffs are not prohibited by the WTO, many of its members have agreed to eliminate or substantially reduce tariffs on pharmaceuticals as an unwarranted tax on the sick and an unwanted barrier to treatment.

Although, apparently, there is a unanimous concern for making the essential vaccines and drugs available to the developing countries, the ground realities are different. The reality remains that pharmaceutical companies in the developed countries are only concentrating on the products with commercial value. Most of the basic drugs and vaccines are now out of patents, and the price has also come down considerably. Hence the developed countries’ loss of interest in manufacturing these drugs and vaccines.

The developing world has no regulatory facility; very few GMP grade companies are there, and the clinical research infrastructure is poor. The vaccine manufacturing facilities need to be of international standards and should have resilience to incorporate new rules. We have been able to put in place GMP and GCP guidelines through the DCGI’s new schedule ‘Y’ modifications which will go a long way in attaining this objective. Major vaccine companies like Panacea Biotech, Wockardt, Serum India, Ranbaxy, Shantha Biotech, Bharat Biotech and Reliance are now coming into this field. We may attain technology superiority at a given time and may reach a win-win situation. However, we need to understand certain areas a little more in order to succeed better. Harmonisation between scientific institutes/universities and vaccine manufacturing facilities is the need of the hour. A product made in a research institute/university many a times could not be commercialised in post-WTO regimen.

One of the reasons is that several of the components would already be under patent. We have learnt this in a hard way while dealing with the HIV vaccine issue. We were able to negotiate it with the help of IAVI. However, one major problem we are facing is the lack of proper animal facility for toxicology and evaluation and keeping up with new technology issues. Some western countries have raised questions about its continued use. Sometimes we have to take a decision at our own, keeping the health of our population as a priority. Now we have some new labs which follow the GLP set-up and we are offering a quality control and testing facility of international standards at the National Institute of Biologicals. This will help us in marketing our products in our own country as well as other countries.

Besides building infrastructure for vaccine manufacture we need to invest in the capacity building exercise. We need trained manpower to work in this area. Whether it is carrying out clinical trials, monitoring adverse reactions or understanding economic projections, we need trained people in each of these areas. For any new vaccine to be introduced we need prevalence and incidence, disease burden and antibiotic resistance patterns which will lead to creating economic projections and finding the target group. Unlike many developing countries — for example, Thailand — we do not have too many health economists. The strength of epidemic intelligence, which is an important innovation, is also missing in our country. The government has come up with a vaccination policy for the country and already a regional vaccine policy is in place. All these will go a long way in providing infrastructure which we need.

Even when we have the best vaccine manufactured as per the GMP guidelines, we should be able to show its efficacy in the population in which it is going to be administered. For this we should be able to carry out good clinical trials. Ethical issues are very important while carrying out any clinical trial and we would like to negotiate these in a particular fashion which is very important although it looks daunting. We are facing this problem in introducing an HPV which will prevent cervical cancer, a major concern for women in India. Worldwide the HPV vaccine is given at the age of 12-13 years, but this is not possible in India owing to a different socio-cultural mileu.

Therefore, this vaccine may have to be given in India at 18 years of age and this will be a big decision.

A daunting challenge is that of developing a cold-chain system at the field levels where immunisation programmes are to be implemented. For the polio vaccine programme, we have been able to put in place cold chain facilities even at the village level and use them very effectively. We need more such technologies along with vaccine vial monitors which show the potency of the vaccine in field conditions. Thus, developing technologies relevant to our own situations will be a challenge. Advanced technologies in the areas like stabilisers, viability monitors and vaccine delivery are needed.

In our own country, scientific advancement led to the development of the world’s best leprosy vaccine. However, it was 15 years late as multiple drug therapy was working very well and was able to control the disease significantly. We have also found that whether it be drugs or vaccines, access is another major issue. Studies on five major life-saving goods like vaccines and oral rehydration fluid have shown that access in 20 per cent of the poorest is very low. However, access in rich societies was found to be fairly good. Even the subsidy that was meant for the poor was being utilised by the rich and did not reach the poor. We need to come up with innovative financing for the poor, otherwise we may not succeed. We also need to educate the masses to deal with misinformation. The need for educating the masses became particularly clear while running the polio vaccine programme in the country. The rumour that the polio vaccine reduces fertility affected the implementation of the programme in many states.

Another major bottleneck is not being able to prepare disease-burden estimates. However, in another decade India could be a major vaccine manufacturer for the developing world for the vaccines whose prices have fallen, as the developed world will not manufacture those vaccines because of their high manufacturing cost.

The Mashelkar Committee’s report on strengthening our regulatory structure will go in a big way in product development and marketing. Good IPR structure and patenting facilities are also the harbingers of success.

Financing R&D is very essential. In our country, DST and CSIR (through TDB and NIMTLI respectively) provide adequate financial support to the vaccine manufacturer in the form of soft loans and technological evaluation with future projections. With all this happening, India is bound to be the vaccine supplier to the developing world in the near future and to the developed world later on.

We also need a national policy to prevent pure cannibalisation as it happened with the hepatitis B vaccine. Owing to the fact of too many players manufacturing this vaccine, it has lost its commercial value. India also needs a vaccine regulatory board (on the lines of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) so that more opportunities are created for vaccine manufacturers both nationally and globally.

We are on the fast track to become a pharma-giant and our next attempt will be to become a global vaccine giant. If this happens, India will benefit in terms of science and technology development and an increase in the GDP.

In those hapless days, our dreams invariably consisted of sharp, smooth blades mowing the beard much like a zephyr would blow thistledown — nary a pother. And in one of those moods I made a prediction that soon twin edged blades would be invented! My hostel mates attributed this to a particularly bad gash on my right cheek — thanks to the hostel barber. But they had only to eat their blades, sorry, their words. Twin edged razors did come and shaving became a dream.

And then, when the second edge had just been commercialised, I made my second prediction. There would be a triple edge supplanting the twin edge. I had impeccable logic — the first edge mows, the second clears, the third eliminates! And here is my new prediction. There will be five — edge razors in conformity with the number of tenets in the doctrine of Panch Sheel. After all, all human concerns, including their gadgetry, have to bow down to the dictats of geopolitics and the principles governing it. No principle governs India better than Panch Sheel, though often as a face-saving measure. And pray what a good razor does — it does save face!

It is not as if it is all recent history. The celebrated open razor — the cutthroat — was obviously the invention of Narcissus. It required strong nerves, a good whetstone and a reliable mirror. In the olden days, where good mirrors were a rarity, Narcissus obviously used the pool for reflection. It sure was a walk on the razor’s edge! In many places one still sees the old faithful, bought 50 or so years ago. German or English, with a strop. It can still give the triple sundae of a razor run for its money, provided the hand that uses it is not of a “Great anarch”!

Till recently one of our traditional barbers used the cut throat without any soap on one’s bristles! It was test of manhood, he explained. Dipping his fingers in a mug of cold water he rubbed them over the face, and with one almighty sweep, brought the bristles on the right cheek to their knees. Another big stroke and the left was clear. Two upward swipes and the thing was done. You could not run away as he held the crown of your head in his vicelike left hand. If you as much as flinched, upwent his brows in shock. “So this is what the new generation has come to. Wanting soap to soften the beard? Since when beards have started demanding soap? It is all the handiwork of the firangis”, he would holler.

And while Ajeet is aggressive in her verbal onslaught, Arpana is quiet and subtle as she goes about painting. Perhaps she is one of the few whose works have been on display in all the major galleries across the world — at the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), Chandigarh Museum, Stockholm’s Ethnographic Museum , the UK’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Japan’s Glenbarra Museum and Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art, Singapore Museum of Modern Art and Rockefeller Collection, New York.

I could go on and on for the list seems unending. But what seems absolutely important is that she hasn’t lost touch with ground realities and is sensitive enough to be affected by the troubled times we are living in.

In fact, her latest exhibition is titled “Nanak” and she has her reasons laid out: “it’s important that Nanak’s message of compassion and to rise above rigidities reaches out in these turbulent time”.

In fact, she took to depicting Nanak soon after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in which she lost her close workers and friends. The more she delved into the life and times of Nanak, the more convinced she became of his teachings.

In fact, as she took me around this exhibition (ongoing till mid-January, 2004 , at the Siri Fort-situated Academy of Fine Arts and Literature where her works depict Nanak and the different aspects of his life and times), she came up with a commentary of sorts as we went from one painting to the next. “Guru Nanak’s life was that of a visionary who began questioning rituals at the age of nine. To the despair of his parents he remained indifferent to worldly things, descending into silence for days ...Nanak’s endless journeys took him to several of Hindu and Muslim pilgrimage.

The incident of watering his distant fields in Punjab from Haridwar on seeing people offer water to the sun, thus questioning this ritual, the incident of turning his feet in the opposite direction in Mecca to show that God is everywhere, his dialogue with Sidhas in the Himalayas, his descent into water for several days, his expression of disgust at the oppressive rulers in these words: “the rajas are lions and the ministers dogs, they pounce upon the people day and night”, his concern at the injustices meted out to the common man, at the inequality women had to go through and at the economic oppression”.

In fact, each one of her paintings has a message to carry forth to highlight the greatness of Nanak and the manner in which he traveled far and wide. “His close disciples Bala and Mardana were his co-travelers. Mardana, the musician who he would request to play the ‘rabab’ every time ‘Bani ‘(the scared sound) descended upon Nanak. His over 2,000 hymns in the Granth Sahib are set in 18 ragas. He rejected his own son and chose a disciple Lehna or Angad (a part of his body) as his successor.

Such was his deep love for nature etched so very vividly and sensuously in his “seasons” verses “Baramaha” that at the end he closed his eyes recalling the flowering trees. As the Hindus and Muslims argued about the last rites of burial or cremation, all they found beneath the sheets was a heap of flowers for he was truly “Baba Nanak Shah Fakeer/Hindu Ka Guru, Musalmaan Ka Peer.” And as Arpana tells me these details from Nanak’s life, it’s little wonder that to this day he is called Peer Nanak by the Muslims (not just in India but even as far as Baghdad) and he is called Lama Nanak by Bhuddists all across (be it in Sikkim or Ladakh) and Guru Nanak by the Sikhs and Hindus.