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Protest within limits Misunderstood disease Fresh US drive on Iraq |
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Bane of the system
The bastion of free speech
AIDS: Silence is complicity Young minds in hi-tech turmoil China’s great leap into biotech rice
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Protest within limits THE concern of the members of Parliament over the conviction of a fellow member and minister in as heinous a crime as murder is understandable. They are certainly within their rights to raise it in Parliament. But what both Houses witnessed on Wednesday is not something one can write home about. They created ruckus forcing the presiding officers to adjourn the Houses repeatedly. And at the end of the day, precious time of the Houses was wasted as no business could be transacted. Needless to say, this does not show the members in a good light. It is not that the rules of Parliament are heavily weighed against the members, particularly those sitting on the Opposition benches, in raising issues of public importance. In fact, there are several ways in which they can do so. Asking questions, moving adjournment motions and, in extreme cases, even no-confidence motions are some of them. Parliament is the highest forum in the country for debate and discussion. Every issue that is raised in a House is supposed to be debated threadbare before the motion concerned is voted for or against. Thus it is incumbent upon the members to show readiness to hear the other viewpoint and adhere to all the rules that govern parliamentary debate. Adherence to the rules prevents the MPs from “rushing to the well of the House”, shouting down the opponents and turning a deaf ear to the pleadings of the presiding officer. Instead, some members seem to believe that showing aggressiveness in their conduct in the House is what will endear them to their constituents. In their competitive bid to be one up on one another, they resort to behaviour which is not in the best traditions of Parliament. When the nation bears a heavy financial burden on the running of Parliament, it is only natural that it expects a lot from it. And when uncertainties cloud over the horizon, the people expect certainties from Parliament. This is possible only if the members are diligent in their work and adhere to all the parliamentary norms. They should use all the means at their disposal to express their anger over allowing those accused of murder to sit in the Union Cabinet but not by forcing repeated adjournments of the House, which only hampers Parliament’s work. |
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Misunderstood disease MYTHS abound about AIDS. One of them is that it is all hype and no substance. Those who subscribe to this view even aver that it is a Western conspiracy to sell their costly drugs. There are others who believe that it is a disease, which affects only the sexual perverts. The series of stories on AIDS in Punjab and Haryana this newspaper carried in recent days proves how well-entrenched the disease is and how it affects even children born to HIV+ parents. News that a whole family has died of AIDS in Punjab no longer shocks the people because newspapers are replete with similar reports. What they reveal is at best a tip of the iceberg. In fact, for every known case of HIV, there are several such cases, unknown even to the victims themselves. Inadequacy of information is one of the greatest drawbacks in the fight against AIDS. Though a permanent cure has not yet been found, medicine has advanced to a stage where it can prolong the life of an AIDS patient and even improve the quality of his life. What to speak of medicines, even the tests to determine the disease are beyond the reach of the poor. As the widow of an AIDS patient, who is herself HIV+, told The Tribune, she preferred feeding her children to undergoing a test. The state has to intervene in a big way to help such people fight the disease. The misconception that the disease is spread only through sexual contact needs to be dispelled in an area where drug abuse is becoming rampant. AIDS should not be dismissed as a problem, which affects only the migrant labour, the truck drivers and the drug addicts. There is need to instill in the minds of the common people the fact that it can even spread through contaminated needles and shaving razors. Thanks mainly to the campaign by civil society organisations, including the media, there are now villages in Punjab where the people have taken a vow to check the HIV status of boys and girls before they marry. Such examples need to be replicated in thousands so that what has happened in several African countries where AIDS has decimated communities does not happen here. It’s against this backdrop that the slogan “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise” for World AIDS Day, which falls on December 1, assumes significance. It is a reminder to all those who are engaged in fighting the menace of the promises they have to keep in their fight against AIDS. |
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Fresh US drive on Iraq THE US administration is under tremendous pressure from within the country to do whatever it can to control the insurgency in Iraq before it destabilises entire West Asia, putting Washington’s interests in jeopardy. Some of the US thinkers want President Bush to hold talks with Iran and Syria directly for the purpose, as these countries can influence the majority Shia extremists in Iraq. The insurgency is fast taking the form of a civil war, if at all it is not there already, with the Shia and Sunni militias pitted against each other. The writ of the dreaded Mahdi Army of the firebrand young Shia cleric, Muqtada Al-Sadr, runs in most of the Shia-majority areas. The Mahdi Army as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, which, too, is involved in the killings in Iraq, can be brought to sanity only with the help of Iran and Syria. Iran has offered to engage with the US, but its conditions like the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq immediately cannot be acceptable to Washington and its allies. Hence the US efforts to first convince its old Sunni allies in the region — particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan — to come to the aid of the Nouri Al-Maliki government in Baghdad in reining in Sunni insurgents. The idea is to impress upon the slightly liberal Shia rulers that their interests will be safe even if they do not listen to the dictates of the extremists in their community. This may also change the Baghdad government’s attitude towards the Sunni minority, which has been accusing it of siding with the Shia extremists. Once Sunnis repose their confidence in the Nouri Al-Maliki regime, the insurgents belonging to this section may lie low. But this tactic can work only if Shia extremists, too, are made to leave the path of violence. This means that Iran and Syria cannot be ignored. The Bush administration seems to have left the Shia aspect of the crisis to be handled by Britain. How the Tony Blair government accomplishes the task assigned to it will be interesting to watch, particularly when the UN Security Council has extended the mandate of the US-led multinational troops in Iraq for another year — till December 31, 2007. |
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I know of no case where a man added to his dignity by standing on it.
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Bane of the system
IRONICALLY, the high-powered conference of Directors-General of Police of all states has yet again advertised, vividly and painfully, what is wrong with governance in this country and why. The depressing process began with the inaugural speech of the Union Home Minister, Mr Shivraj Patil. After listening to him, a shrewd observer commented, “The job of the Home Minister, like that of the city kotwal, is to reassure the citizens that they are safe. Curiously, Mr Patil has scared the country, almost exactly as his predecessor, Mr L.K. Advani, used to do habitually”. There surely is a point to this. While there is no doubt that terrorist threats to nuclear installations, as to centres of high technology and brisk economic activity, are on the increase, is it a matter to be shouted about from housetops? The guardians of the country’s internal security must, of course, take stock of all intelligence reports they have and plan effectively to defeat the merchants of hate and death. However, they should do so in private, not in the marketplace. Another striking feature of the conference was the rather unusual speech of the Director of Intelligence Bureau, Mr E.S.L. Narasimhan, who is due to retire next month. He argued that there was a pressing need for a “new and stronger legal framework” against terrorism. Officials of his status must express themselves, but surely, within the government framework, not in public. As it happened, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected the DIB’s idea. Existing laws, he said, were enough, if they were used efficiently and imaginatively. This has been grist to the mill of the BJP that has been pillorying the government for being “soft on terrorism”, and particularly for allowing POTA, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, to lapse. The Home Minister’s concern over “sea-borne terrorism” is understandable, but it would be unrealistic to expect that jihadi terrorists would stop using the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir and the border with Bangladesh, where they are firmly entrenched, for infiltration. Far more pertinent is Dr Manmohan Singh’s point that the terrorists should be denied the cash they continue to get in abundance. But shouldn’t this have been obvious much earlier? This country should have learnt something from the firm action the United States took immediately after September 11, 2001. More importantly, can the inflow to money to terrorists in this country be stopped for as long as the seemingly indestructible hawala continues, especially, in a milieu in which almost all political parties are financed through black money? And about the greed of those in power, particularly the politicians, the less said the better. By a telling coincidence, a former senior functionary of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has just published a book, quoting chapter and verse to show that its investigations into the notorious hawala case of the nineties were “politically manipulated”. Nor has the situation improved one bit since then. In fact, the Supreme Court’s order on Monday — rejecting the CBI’s recommendation to “close the case” against the Bahujan Samaj party leader, Ms Mayawati, in the Taj Corridor scam, and clearing the decks for her prosecution — is a fresh slap in the face of the premier investigative agency. The CBI Director had taken the precaution of hiding behind the legal gown of the Attorney-General, Mr Milon Banerjee, whose opinion he had secured. The three-man Bench tersely told him that the “material” collected by his own officers, apparently ignored, should “prevail” over the AG’s “opinion”. If this is the plight of the investigative agency to which every complicated case is referred almost as a matter of course, and often against the wishes of the state governments, then it ought not be difficult to decipher why the Indian administration has become so comprehensively dysfunctional. To revert to the Home Minister’s worries, massive smuggling of both arms, including deadly RDX, and money, often counterfeit, has gone on with virtual impunity at least since before the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Bombay. Only the naïve would believe that this outrageous activity takes place without the connivance of the Customs and police officers in return for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver. The canker of corruption in this country’s body politic is a source of comfort for its sworn enemies. On Monday, the TADA court in Mumbai convicted, among others, a Customs officer who had merrily facilitated the unloading of one and a half tonnes of RDX on the Maharashtra coast 13 years ago. Curiously, a more senior officer, a collector of Customs — who broke down during the investigations, wept copiously and confessed that he had collaborated with the D-Company in the “honest” belief that the smugglers were bringing in the “usual contraband”, glittering gold — was not prosecuted. After some departmental proceedings, his services were terminated! Were this all, the situation would have been lamentable. What makes it too tragic even for tears is best driven home by another sensible decision of the Union government, to the effect that the still languishing victims of the post-Godhra Gujarat riots should get a compensation of Rs. 7 lakh each, as was done in the case of the sufferers of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Predictably, the opposition parties have attacked the government for taking this decision, “at the instance of the Congress president”, with an eye on the February elections in the key state of Uttar Pradesh. Equally predictably, the Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, has pronounced anathema on the Manmohan Singh government. The exact position is that the decision to make the Rs 7 lakh compensation the “benchmark” for all similar tragedies was reached long ago, and has only been “reaffirmed” now. Therefore, would someone please explain why it was not implemented earlier? In fact, there are victims of the anti-Sikh riots and the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 that are still being driven from pillar to post in search of promised compensation. Moreover, there is also the heart-wrenching case of the Vidarbha farmers of whom 300 have committed suicides after the Prime Minister went there and announced a Rs 300-crore “package” to ameliorate their pitiable plight. Obviously, the crop loans he sanctioned never reached the luckless ones who either swallowed poison or hanged themselves. Sad to say, India has been saddled with successive governments singularly incapable of making the Central, state and district administrations implement lofty policies proclaimed from New Delhi. Cry my beloved
country.
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The bastion of free speech
WORDS flow, ideas cross and smiles abound in a London park every Sunday as speakers and listeners take part in a free exchange of thoughts and beliefs. Located in a corner of Hyde Park, the Speaker’s Corner has for over a century served as a venue of freewheeling debates on almost anything under the sun. There is an air of informality as people move from one speaker to the other who stand on stools or chairs brought by them. Speakers are challenged for their beliefs and those who stand their ground through wit and quick repartees usually get more people around them. Hyde Park, which is not far from the area where public executions were held in London till 1783, emerged as a venue for protest meetings in the middle of nineteenth century. In 1872, the right to free assembly was recognised in the north-east corner of the park , now known as Speaker’s Corner. Since then, people have been able to say almost anything they like . The rules demand that speakers do not break laws against blasphemy or obscenity or constitute an incitement to the breach of peace. Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and George Orwell have been among the visitors to Speaker’s Corner which has come to be regarded as the bastion of values of free speech and free assembly. The speeches made here may have an element of theatre but the issues they touch have a global appeal. Listeners engage and provoke the speakers but rarely get provoked themselves. They enjoy the panorama of views from people of different faiths and persuasions. A speaker pontificating on the US intervention in Iraq should be prepared for queries on its role in Chile, Nicaragua, Somalia, Kososvo, Vietnam, Afghanistan and West Asia. Anyone speaking on religion and God should not be shocked by questions on sex and masturbation. There are people who use expletives to vent out their anger at despots back home and those who seek a change in the existing world order. Comments on race and religion, which can provoke a backlash in any other part of the world, are taken in the stride by both speakers and listeners. It is not uncommon to listen to an engaging debate involving two speakers with exactly opposite views on a prophet or a religion. Visitors from different parts of the world discover the beauty of human bonding and commonality of interests as they stand next to each other listening to same speeches. The sheer intellectual sweep of issues and passion of grips them. As people listen to speeches, they get a feel of London’s immense multi-ethnicity, its cultural diversity and its intellectual warmth. While most of the visitors are tourists, there are a few regulars at the Speaker’s Corner. They perhaps realise that no other public place in the world can take their words across continents and cities as far as Bangkok to Buenos
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AIDS: Silence is complicity Also head of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which funds community-level efforts to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa, he is an ardent advocate of social and gender justice as being the answer to the AIDS pandemic. Lewis was also a strong advocate for the recently announced new UN agency for women. This agency will combine several existing UN agencies — such as UNIFEM, the Office of the Secretary General’s Adviser on Women and Gender Issues and the Division on the Advancement of Women — and will be headed by an Under-Secretary General. It is believed that it will have greater visibility and status than its component parts have had. He talks here about why oppression of women is a “ghastly, deadly business” and how the UN agency for women could be the ideal vehicle for change. An interview: Q. What drives your burning desire for social justice and gender equality? What formative experiences led to your career as an internationalist and outspoken advocate for women? I come from a left-wing family. We’ve been Social Democrats for generations, so the basic principles of social justice have always driven my convictions. My father was active politically in Canada and my wife, Michele Landsberg, is an ardent feminist who wrote a column for 20 years. We always told our children they had to be feminists or they would be disinherited! And I have two outstanding colleagues — Paula Donovan and Anurita Bains — who like others I’ve worked with over the years, share and influence my commitment to social justice and to equality for women. Now with the AIDS pandemic and what is happening to women as a result, I’ve never felt the urgency for gender equality more sharply. Q. You are recognised, respected and, many would say, loved internationally for your work on behalf of the world’s women, especially those who are bearing the burden of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Would you explain why you feel so passionately about their plight? The most vexing and intolerable dimension of the pandemic is what is happening to women. It’s the one area of HIV/AIDS that leaves me feeling most helpless and most enraged. Gender inequality is driving the pandemic and we will never subdue the gruesome force of AIDS until the rights of women become paramount in the struggle. The demeaning diminution of women is evident everywhere, particularly in the developing world, where freedom from sexual violence, the right to sexual autonomy, to sexual and reproductive health, social and economic independence, and even the whiff of gender equality, are barely approximated. It’s a ghastly, deadly business — this oppression of women in so many countries on the planet. Q. Do you think this new independent UN agency for women will deal more effectively with women’s needs than the UN has done historically? The new agency represents an extraordinary move forward, if implemented and funded as recommended. One must exercise the necessary caution, but if the contents of the proposed agency come into play, it will be the most significant breakthrough for women in the entire history of the United Nations. For the first time we have a vehicle which can truly transform the lives of women and can make a huge difference in saving women’s lives. I’m pleased that Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, and his successor, have both indicated that women’s recommendations are very important as the agency moves forward. Q. What are some key elements in making it work? There are three critical pieces that will determine if the new agency will truly be a turning point. First, we must understand that women’s empowerment and equal rights are central to development and peace. That’s why the high-level panel recommended that this new entity be “fully and ambitiously” funded. To make up for lost time and to turn the rhetoric into reality, the agency will need an initial budget of US$ 1 billion, which is only half of UNICEF’s budget last year. Second, success hinges on the development of sharply focused operations, high-quality, substantive technical expertise and strong leadership at the country and regional levels. Targeted programmes based on the 12 areas addressed in the Beijing Platform of Action are needed in every country. Finally, the new agency for women will need a leader with vision, expertise, authority, empathy and devotion unparalleled in the history of multilateralism. This Under-Secretary will be part of the UN governing body and will serve on its central executive board. She will be part of senior administration and will, therefore, have the flexibility and opportunity to inform governments and the UN body. A search for the Under-Secretary General to head the agency will begin before the end of 2006 and the position will begin in 2007, so there is a rapid timeline. Q. Where will the funding for this agency come from? Bilateral governments, major western donors and those interested in changing the gender equation in the world will now have a focus for mobilising funds. The American election is a big plus too. More women in Congress will mean more money and a much more enlightened and sympathetic response from the US. Q. I suspect you have been a thorn in the side of many politicians, bureaucrats and UN officials. Have you been censored or told to back off very often? I’ve only been asked once by the Secretary General of the UN to curb what I was saying. I was asked not to attack the US for its abstinence over condoms policy in Uganda because it might upset the US President who was scheduled to attend a meeting at the UN. In the end, he didn’t come anyway. People often assume you have to engage in self-censorship to make an impact. I don’t agree. To me, that’s a recipe for selling out. Silence is complicity. We are talking about AIDS, gender, life and death issues and these are non-negotiable items. People are dying. It’s nonsense to strangle what you have to say in the face of catastrophe.
— Women’s Feature Service |
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Young minds in hi-tech turmoil IS modern life cooking up a new kind of human being, whose altered circuitry will cause them to think and act differently from people today? It sounds like science fiction, but a growing number of specialists feel that tomorrow's classrooms are likely to be filled with pupils who will think more episodically, have shorter attention spans, communicate through pictures rather than words, have more learning difficulties, and be less able to control their impulses and emotions than the children of today. Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, is one leading neuroscientist who believes that using computers could profoundly affect how children think. Earlier this year she warned that the computer culture could lead to a loss of the ability to set information in context. Now she has set up an all-parliamentary group to bring together the work of brain scientists and educationists. Meanwhile, public health scientists are warning that we could face a "silent pandemic" of developmental disorders such as autism and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), from damage done by untested chemicals to unborn babies. Writing in The Lancet this month, Philippe Grandjean, of Denmark, and Philip Landrigan, of the United States, point out that 10,000 chemicals are approved for use in the European Union, many hundreds of which are likely to be toxic to the foetal brain. And a growing body of research is indicating that busy parents and sub-standard childcare could be changing how children grow up. It is now known that babies are born with their full complement of brain cells, then build links between them in the first years of life. Cuddles, singing, eye contact, talking and movement are all known to pattern a pre-schooler's brain and to help with reading and writing, and social and emotional well-being later on. But today's children are getting less of them. "There is a massive amount of research that shows that children in nurseries where there isn't a high ratio of adults to children - which is an awful lot of nurseries - have raised levels of cortisol," warns Professor Margot Sunderland, director of education and training at the Centre for Child Mental Health and author of The Science of Parenting. "And that means they have a hard-wired stress response system. But this often doesn't show up until adolescence." In adolescence, she points out, the brain has another big growth spurt, but many teenagers do not get what they need for healthy brain development. "About a third are using the television or Game Boys to go to sleep, which activate dopamine, which is a stimulant. Yet sleep deprivation leads to irritability, aggression and poor learning. It's the same with testosterone. Adolescent boys have 50 times as much of it as when they are little, and this leads to a lack of concentration, aggression and poor learning. But when boys get enough quality time with their parents this surge does not seem to affect behaviour and learning. Yet the average child now watches 21 hours of television a week, and spends only 40 minutes with his or her parents." A lack of active play could also be affecting how children's brains develop. Sally Goddard Blythe of the Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology says that many children now retain primitive, baby responses long after they should have developed higher levels of brain functioning, and that these reflexes impede learning. A new report from the Institute, on the progress of more than 1,000 children in primary schools, shows that just 10 minutes of structured exercises a day can improve not only children's balance and coordination, but also their concentration and achievement in maths, spelling, reading and writing. In the United States, Jane Healy, an educational psychologist, has charted how children are becoming less attuned to written and spoken information, lack perseverance, are impatient, and show little curiosity about the world. Neuroscientists say that the physical structure of the brain is the product of long years of evolution, but the way it works constantly adapts to circumstances. "The brain is just tissue," says Professor Usha Goswami, director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education at Cambridge University. "So if the environment changes, it will change too." John Geake, professor of education at Oxford Brookes University, says "the big problem with knowing what is happening in children's brains is we can't do the experiment. You would need to compare modern day kids with kids from the past and that can't be done. So then you need to ask: what is it about the brain that could be different? But it is very early days in this field. What will be really useful is when educators start to drive some of the neuroscience."
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China’s great leap into biotech rice IN myth, seeds of rice came to China tied to a dog's tail, rescuing the people from famine after a time of severe floods. Ancient writings held that grains -- rice foremost among them -- were more precious than jade or pearls. Now China is deliberating whether to allow farmers to plant rice seed born of biotechnology, modified by scientists in the laboratory. If China decides to go forward, it would become the first nation to commercialize this genetically engineered staple on a significant scale. It also would mark a watershed in the history of a food synonymous with Asia's culture, potentially opening the floodgates for such crops throughout the region. But China's relatively swift march toward government approval has slowed in recent months, amid concerns that biotech rice could cause environmental damage or meet resistance from consumers. There has been a fierce backlash against gene-altered food in the West, particularly in Europe. European Union countries recently required all U.S. rice imports to be tested after a contamination scare. Awareness is growing in China that making the leap into commercialization would put the country under the microscope, internationally and at home. China, the top producer and consumer of rice, is under considerable pressure to boost its agricultural output. It has 20 percent of the world's population but just 6 percent of its arable land. Amid its rapid conversion of farmland and labor to industrial use, China was forced to take the rare step of importing rice in 2004, when it consumed nearly 150 million tons and produced 124 million, according to the University of California, Davis Agricultural Marketing Resource Center. China has pumped billions of dollars into biotechnology since the 1980s, driven by the need to feed its growing population and a desire to stake a claim as a scientific superpower. Its research has extended to people and animals, including one well-known project to clone the panda. To many in China and elsewhere, biotech crops are the future of farming, a way to produce higher yields and hardier plants while making agriculture less harmful to the environment and human health. Scientists have developed genetically modified plants that are insect- and bacteria-resistant, requiring less pesticide, and strains that need less water and fertilizer. They also have targeted nutritional gaps, engineering varieties such as so-called golden rice, which its developers say would add vitamin A to the diets of many poor Asians. Over the last decade, biotech crops have gained a foothold in 21 countries, with much of the growth fueled by U.S. agricultural giants, which have planted millions of acres of genetically modified soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, squash and papaya. Gene-altered crops also have faced determined resistance. Consumer groups have campaigned against them, warning that a small group of multinational corporations could come to control the seed industry through patents and that “Frankenfoods” could ultimately prove unsafe. There is no irrefutable evidence that biotech crops pose a threat to human health, but Europe, Japan and South Korea have blocked the import of genetically modified foods, and retailers in some countries have refused to stock them. U.S. rice farmers, who export half their crop, have chosen not to plant biotech rice even though the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved several varieties as safe. Environmental groups also have raised concerns about the effects of “biotech pollution,” in which genetically modified plants mix with conventional ones through error or by being blown by the wind. In Asia, the “mother source” of rice, the effect of such contamination could be even more profound because biotech varieties could disrupt wild species' ability to compete in nature, said Susan McCouch, a rice geneticist at Cornell University. “I'm not concerned about human health,” she said. “The flames may be fanned in Europe, but that's not where we should be focusing. I'm concerned about ecological upset.” In early 2005, after extensive field trials, China's National Biosafety Committee approved several varieties of rice for consumption. The Ministry of Agriculture indicated that the decision to license biotech rice for commercial growth would come later that year and that the crops might enter the food chain within 12 months. But no announcement came.
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NOTED Canadian diplomat, AIDS activist and women’s advocate Stephen Lewis will step down from his post as United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa in December, 2006.