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Nowhere Front Rape or assault |
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Smoke-free city
Fighting a losing battle
Is this pandering?
In Baghdad’s rival, a Bohemian melody “Poison paint” to improve cancer therapy Delhi Durbar
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Nowhere Front THE presidential race is everyday becoming more comic than it ought to be. The Italian poet, Dante, said in his work, Divine Comedy, that the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. If that indeed is the case we know where the United National Progressive Alliance, popularly known as the Third Front, is hurtling to. There is no doubt that it is a democratic right for any voter to abstain from voting but for a group of political parties, which together aspire to rule the country, it is improper to abstain from the presidential election. It amounts to a boycott and as such it cannot be justified. The Third Front has chosen this option on the ground that neither UPA candidate Pratibha Patil nor NDA nominee Bhairon Singh Shekhawat deserves its votes. In that case, nothing prevented it from fielding its own candidate, who could have been more suitable and eminent than these worthies. Alas, the Third Front has been playing the role of a spoilsport in the presidential election. It publicly proposed the name of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam for a second term without doing any spadework worth the name. In the process, the Front caused considerable embarrassment to the President and the NDA nominee, who said he was ready to withdraw if the President chose to contest. When this gamble failed, it should have promptly announced the name of a candidate, who could have filled the bill. The argument that a UNPA candidate did not have any chance, given the composition of the Electoral College, does not wash. In the past, Opposition parties have fielded candidates in presidential elections knowing full well that they had little chance of victory. By joining the presidential race, the Third Front could have consolidated its own position. Despite all its claims to the contrary, it is a heterogeneous group, which has very little in common except its dislike for the Congress and, to a lesser extent, for the BJP. Having forfeited an opportunity to prove its credentials as a claimant for power at the Centre, the Third Front has now talked about fielding its own candidate for the post of Vice-President. After spurning both the UPA and the NDA, how can the UNPA expect either of the two alliances to support its candidate? In other words, it is all set to lose its face in the vice-presidential election, too. This is the price the Third Front has to pay for its neutrality.
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Rape or assault FOR some women at least, India never moved out of the dark ages, when their status was worse than that of beasts of burden. Whether it is a case of honour killings or inter-religious marriages, it is they who always bear the brunt. Bhinga in Uttar Pradesh witnessed a naked display of this mindlessness on July 10. In revenge for the “misdeed” of a boy from a minority community who eloped with a girl of another community, nearly three dozen women from the village of Dhanni Deeh were allegedly disrobed, beaten up and paraded naked in the village. The humiliated women say they were also sexually assaulted. But the FIR registered against more than 100 unknown persons does not mention rape. Could all these women be just lying? Anybody who knows how shabbily women who have been raped are treated in Indian society would not believe that they are making all this up. But the police thinks otherwise. The medical examination of 17 women - done full three days after the ghastly incident — has not established rape. Strangely, the medical examination did not take into account the clothes worn by them for the simple reason that the police did not hand over the clothes, as was its duty. No wonder there was chaos in the State Assembly, with the Opposition alleging that a minister of state was shielding the accused and had put pressure on the police not to lodge an FIR. Even if it is not conclusively proved that there was a mass rape, there is enough evidence to prove that the women were disrobed, beaten up and paraded naked. That is “beizzati” enough to attract the toughest possible action, but things move at a different pace in Uttar Pradesh. One just hopes that the wide condemnation the incident has received from all over will ensure that the culprits do not go scot-free. Mayawati should remember that she came to power mainly because of her claim to end goonda raj. Such incidents remind one of the Mulayam Singh Yadav days. |
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Smoke-free city ON Sunday, Chandigarh became the country’s first smoke-free city. The administration’s creditable initiative deserves a big “thank you” from all health-conscious citizens. They will, hopefully, extend their support to the move as enthusiastically as Britons have done following a similar anti-cigarette ban imposed throughout the country on July 1. Even regular pub-goers - 73 per cent of them - have supported it. The penalties there are stiff: a smoker can be fined up to 200 pounds and the owner of a public place can attract a penalty of 2,500 pounds for every cigarette smoked. Six months ago, Ireland banned smoking at public places and the outcome has been equally encouraging. The world over awareness is growing about health hazards of tobacco. According to the World Health Organisation, the use of tobacco kills 5.4 million people every year and half of these deaths are in developing countries like India. Indian Health Minister Anubmani Ramadoss admits that about one million cancer cases are detected in the country every year and half of these in men are tobacco-related. One estimate points out that the treatment of tobacco-related diseases and the resultant loss of productivity costs the country Rs 13,500 crore, which is more than the revenue generated from the tobacco industry. No matter how desirable the ban is, its implementation is a monumental task. The focus seems more on challans, than creating public awareness about dangers of smoking. On the very first day the cops collected Rs 60,000 through challans. Educational institutions, parents and the general public should cooperate with the administration in ensuring that the ban does not go up in smoke. There are other evils, ignored or even encouraged by the administration. Drinking at public places is fast spreading with liquor vends and “taverns” coming up in every nook and crany of the city. Smoke-belching old vehicles that ought to be off the road continue to pollute the air with impunity.
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I am content, I donot care,/ Wag as it will the world for me. — John Byrom
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Fighting a losing battle Quite
apart from the deplorable level to which the two main political formations have descended to contest the country’s presidency, the unedifying spectacle tells us something about the state of our political parties. While the Congress is suffering from nerves and built-in tensions in the dual power arrangement as the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party appears in a sorry light. What purpose does the BJP think it is serving by offering the Vice-President, Mr Bhairon Singh
Shekhawat, as an ‘Independent’ candidate for the presidency in a ruse that fools no one. Plainly, the party and its allies do not have the votes, and to encourage mass defections at the urging of the former Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, passes comprehension. History, they say, repeats itself as a farce, and the BJP’s allusion to Indira Gandhi seeking a conscious vote for V.V. Giri against the official party candidate was part of the intra-party struggle for supremacy — a battle she won. What is the BJP seeking to achieve by fielding a party stalwart, admittedly keen to enjoy the salubrious perks of Rashtrapati
Bhawan, staring defeat in the face? Even one of the BJP’s old allies, the Shiv
Sena, has chosen to support the opposing candidature of Ms Pratibha
Patil, and the newly-formed Third Front has ostentatiously distanced itself from the National Democratic Alliance by reiterating its decision to abstain from the vote, despite implied threats by the BJP about the legality of its stand. And the reported canvassing of votes by the Vice-President himself tells a sorry tale. Strange as it may sound, the BJP has still not reconciled itself to having lost the general election three years ago. It is, therefore, clutching at straws to make the point that it is alive and kicking. The crisis in the BJP is manifesting itself at several levels — in the central leadership, in the regional equations and in the new tensions that have arisen between the party and its mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh. The last was demonstrated only recently by the RSS critique of fielding Mr Shekhawat as an Independent. Tensions in the central leadership were to be expected, given how Mr
L.K. Advani was deprived of the party presidency after his controversial remarks on Jinnah during his Pakistan visit. The party’s poor showing in the UP assembly elections gave Mr Advani an opportunity to call the party president, Mr Rajnath Singh, hailing from UP as he does, to account. The latter has not particularly distinguished himself thus far but retains his office for the present to avoid an open fight between second rung leaders; in the latter category, Ms Sushma Swaraj has appropriated the post of spokeswoman for Mr
Shekhawat. Regionally, the Gujarat BJP is in turmoil again, with new pressures building up against the Chief Minister, Mr Narendra
Modi, a former RSS functionary who has his parent organisation’s trust and support. Indeed, the number of RSS men in charge of the BJP at the state level is impressive. In a sense, Mr Advani counts himself as an RSS man, but he has blotted his copybook by praising
Jinnah. Ironically, Jinnah’s ghost has again been revived by the official Gujarat publication of the BJP government carrying an article describing Jinnah as secular. The decision to field Mr Shekhawat as a candidate of the NDA under the guise of his being Independent — provoking the ire of the RSS — is the result of muddled thinking. Instead of graciously accepting the choice of the ruling party and the majority, the BJP has chosen to fight an indefensible battle, whatever the outcome. And to take shelter behind a former Congress prime minister to seek defections is the height of absurdity. The BJP has travelled a long road since the days of the Jan Sangh and its three seats in the Lok
Sabha, thanks in part to Ayodhya and the demolition of the Babri Masjid and in part to the tired look and divisions in the long ruling Congress party. It is difficult to believe that the party once prided itself on possessing two virtues: integrity and discipline. Six years of power at the Centre have successfully demolished these virtues, insofar as they existed. Quarrels are as endemic in the BJP as in the Congress and BJP party men and women are exemplary imitators of the Congress in seeking power and pelf. Only after the presidential and vice-presidential elections are over will the BJP be in a mood for introspection, assuming that Mr Vajpayee will have the time and inclination to call his party members to order and do some spring cleaning. In view of Mr Vajpayee’s health and Mr Advani ruling himself out because of his perceived self-interest, the RSS will perhaps play a central role in bringing some peace and order to the
BJP. The basic problem is that the relationship between the BJP and the RSS has never been clearly defined. Everyone in the BJP accepts the RSS as its mentor, but there are varying views on how far it should micromanage the party and reprimand or praise members. Indeed, its writ is as broad as it wants to make it because, apart from ideology, it provides the workers who win elections for the
BJP. For instance, Mr Vajpayee had once confessed his unhappiness with Mr Modi after the Gujarat pogrom but any thought of dismissing him as chief minister evaporated at the first signs of an RSS frown. Over the decades, the Congress has had problems with different persons occupying the offices of prime minister and party president until it was found expedient to have the same person belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty occupying the two posts. The present division of labour between Dr Manmohan Singh and Ms Sonia Gandhi is unique for other reasons. In parallel, the BJP now finds itself in a traditional Congress predicament, with Mr Advani forced to give up the party presidency while retaining his position as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok
Sabha. And the arrangement is not working satisfactorily. How long the BJP will take to set its house in order remains to be seen, but it will need to scrap the Internet site to throw mud at Ms Patil in favour of a web site promoting the party’s interests and
programmes.
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Is this pandering? The Union Finance Ministry has reacted angrily to the criticism in Parliament and elsewhere that it is pursuing an “amoral” policy in pandering to that rather “noisome tribe” called the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) at the cost of resident Indians. A senior ministry official has dismissed the criticism as “baseless,” “motivated” and “ill-founded.” Talking to newsmen in New Delhi, he said: “In fact, the exact opposite is true for we’re going out of the way and bending all the rules and regulations in extending concessions and preferential treatment to resident Indians and let me cite a few instances.” “A new public sector enterprise has just been registered and it’ll buy up junked and second-hand bicycles from all the country and it will then recondition them by giving them a lick of paint and these souped up bicycles without handlebars and tyres, will then be sold to resident Indians after they have opened a post office savings account with a minimum deposit of Rs 75,000. The NRIs, on the other hand, will be permitted to buy ex-stock latest model Maruti luxury cars and vans and without even booking and initial deposit. The Resident Indians are being permitted to buy second-hand bicycles, but the NRIs are being fleeced by being fobbed off with luxury cars? Does this amount to pandering or pampering?” The Finance ministry official continued: “The government is acutely concerned about the grave housing crisis in the country where millions of average Indians are being deprived of a roof over their heads in their lifetime and it proposes to construct one-room tenement shanties with thatched roof and no windows and doors in all the metropolitan cities. These shanties will then be sold to Resident Indians after they have waited for a minimum of 18 years and they have paid a non-refundable ‘pugree’ of Rs 10 lakhs, but the NRIs, on the other hand, are being treated extremely harshly. We propose to sell them at throwaway prices luxury apartments built for the Asiad and the National Games and they’ll be further exempted from paying stamp duties. Again, I ask you, does this amount to pandering the NRIs? The government only wants its critics to be objective and fair-minded.” “In a further move to help the Resident Indians, the Reserve Bank has recently permitted them to buy a maximum of five equity shares in listed companies on the stock exchanges, and they have to pay for their stock purchases in cash and also provide a bank guarantee for Rs 50,000 but the NRIs are allowed investment waivers and they can raid the stock markets with impunity and buy controlling interest in front-line Indian companies without investing a single paisa of their own. Does this amount to pampering? I tell you, the government is taking the NRIs for a ride and extending all possible privileges and concessions to the RIs.” “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” said a newsman attending the briefing, “but I do suppose that RI in your jargon stands for Resident Indians?” “No,” it doesn’t,” said the Finance Ministry official, “it stands for Resident
Idiots.” |
In Baghdad’s rival, a Bohemian melody DAMASCUS, Syria — The city is undergoing a boisterous transformation. Despite American sanctions imposed four years ago, the Syrian economy is booming. Even alcohol is easy to find. A restaurant overlooking the Great Mosque, among the holiest places in Islam, just started serving drinks. This is no Iran or Iraq. According to US President Bush’s original plan, Baghdad was to be the next Prague. Once Saddam Hussein was deposed, free enterprise and Bohemianism would sweep away the ghosts of the past. Four years after the arrival of U.S. troops, neither enterprise nor Bohemianism is much in evidence in the Iraqi capital. But next door in Damascus, newfound hedonism is facing Arab hopelessness head-on. The Syrian capital is enjoying something of a return to historical rank. In the 7th century A.D., it was the capital of the Muslim world, the seat of the first caliphate. Then, in A.D. 750, the capital moved to Baghdad and a rivalry was born, continuing into the 20th century and the establishment of rival Baath parties. With the seat of the second caliphate now brought low, the first is resurgent. Unemployment is still high and oil is in short supply, but Syria is calm. In the Middle East, that counts as good news. The Syrian government is still following the authoritarian Baathist ideology. And it has built an alliance with Iran that’s straining relations with the United States. But Syria’s shackled stability is a sign of hope to some in a time of vastly downsised expectations. Syria’s neighbors are paying attention. They see that President Bashar al-Assad is the only leader in the region who’s feeling more secure about his position now than he did a few years back, when analysts predicted his downfall after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Then, Syria was next on the neocon hit list. How different things look now. Regime change is less likely than at any time since President Bill Clinton left the White House. Assad began his second seven-year term on June 17. Television images of Iraq’s mayhem have made many Syrians cautious about swift political change. Rather than feeling emboldened by Saddam’s fall, they’re frightened. Stick with what works, even poorly, seems to be the popular sentiment. Assad has shrewdly capitalised on this by paying more attention to popular aspirations. He has eased restrictions on free enterprise and on international trade. One of the most isolated places in the Middle East until recently, Syria is importing consumer goods, exporting workers and hosting any cash-laden foreigner who wants in. There are Saudis – hedonists in the extreme under their white robes. Less welcome in the West after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they come to the Four Seasons Hotel to find female company. There are also Iraqis, more than 1 million of whom have taken refuge in Damascus, a city of 3 million. Many are poor and uprooted by war, but others have brought in vast amounts of oil money. And then there are Westerners – language students, escape artists, volcano dancers, “Lawrence of Arabia” dreamers. Outside my front door in the Old City, where humans have lived continuously for the past 5,000 years, the giddiness is palpable. A couple of months ago, I went to a concert in the new Damascus opera house. It’s named after Assad, though he didn’t show up to see the Algerian singer and her Gypsy King ensemble. But in front of me, a Syrian woman in short sleeves jumped up and started dancing in the aisle. The Chinese ambassador to Syria cheered her on as most of the 1,200 people in the audience followed suit. Pleasure-seeking is not only surviving the mayhem in the region, it’s thriving. At Beit Jabri, a large courtyard restaurant, Saudis, Iraqis, Syrians and Americans are escaping the already oppressive summer heat. Beit Jabri was one of the first private manors to be turned into a business. Now a new boutique hotel, novelty restaurant or Internet cafe is opening every week. Syrians are rediscovering the Old City, and it’s giving them what they have long lacked: a genuine spiritual but secular centre. After decades of neglecting it, they are returning in droves. Here among square miles of bustling souks and car-free colonnades, it’s easy to feel proud, and perhaps to forget impending doom. On evenings and weekends, the narrow alleys are choked with girls in skirts and men carrying cellphones with the latest ringtones. At Mar Mar, a new nightspot near the chapel where Saint Paul was baptised, the proprietor leaves the keys behind for die-hard revelers when he goes to bed at 5 a.m. “Lock up when you leave,” he says and disappears. The rekindled interest in the Old City has doubled housing prices in the past year. Wealthy Syrians are restoring ancient houses to rent them to nostalgic aesthetes, many of them foreigners. The first moved in around the fall of Baghdad. Today, staff from most Western embassies live in Ottoman splendor, surrounded by stainless steel kitchens and 500-year-old vines.
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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“Poison paint” to improve cancer therapy A substance derived from scorpion venom could be the key to more effective treatment for a wide range of cancers, researchers say. Turned into a “paint” which can distinguish even a small number of cancerous cells from healthy tissue, the venom would vastly improve surgeons’ accuracy when removing tumours. Scientists found that chlorotoxin, a chemical found in scorpion stings, would attach itself to cancer cells. Joined to a fluorescent marker, Cy5.5, it becomes a molecular beacon which emits light near the infra-red spectrum, illuminating whole tumours or even clusters of only a few hundred cancerous cells. When injected, it sticks to cancer cells within two minutes. Precision is paramount in operations to remove tumours, when cancerous cells can be missed and left behind. It is especially important when dealing with the brain, where some 80 per cent of malignant cancers return at the edge of surgical sites and where surrounding neurons must not be damaged. At the moment, surgeons use colour, texture and blood supply to tell cancerous from healthy tissue. The paint marks tumours with at least 500 times more sensitivity than a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, which will only work if more than a million cancer cells are present. Lasting for two weeks, it also massively out-performs contrast agents currently used to show up cancers, which last only a few minutes. The research team, from Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Washington, found in tests on mice that they could illuminate brain tumours as small as one millimetre in diameter. In another case they detected 200 prostate cancer cells travelling through a mouse’s lymph system. Dr James Olson, who led the team, said: “My greatest hope is that tumour paint will fundamentally improve cancer therapy. By allowing to see cancer that would be undetectable by other means, we can give our patients better outcomes.” Dr Richard Ellenbogen, a paediatric neurosurgeon at Seattle Children’s Hospital co-wrote the study, which was published in the journal Cancer Research. He said: “This development has the potential to save lives and make brain tumour resection safer.” The researchers are due to start clinical trials in humans and say the paint could be used in surgery in as little as 18 months. Professor John Griffiths, head of molecular imaging at Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute, said: “The big problem with surgery for brain cancer is that tumours can infiltrate normal brain tissue, making it very hard to tell where the tumour ends and the normal tissue begins. “If you could light up the tumour cells by shining an infrared beam on them, it might be very helpful.” Chlorotoxin:Cy5.5 could be used as a non-invasive screening tool for the early detection of skin, cervical, oesophageal, colon and lung cancers, and may help identify positive lymph nodes in patients with breast, prostate and testicular cancers.
— By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar The decision of the nine-party United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) to abstain in the upcoming Presidential polls can lead to a realignment of forces ahead of the 2009 general elections. Though the UNPA wants to keep itself equidistant from both the Congress and the BJP, most of the constituents of this so-called Third Front have the Congress as their principal adversary, in the states where they wield influence. The UNPA therefore clearly wants the Left on its side. The Congress has more reasons to worry than the BJP in the medium to long-term. Worker-friendly leadership It is rare to come across bureaucrats helping deserving workers go abroad for training. Sujatha Rao, Additional Secretary, Health, and Director General of the National AIDS Control Organisation, takes keen interest in tapping talent and encouraging promising individuals to attend programmes abroad. While shuffling files last week in her office, this scribe noticed Ms Rao call up senior officers in Nirman Bhawan to seek their approval for a fortnight long meeting on data analysis being organised in Thailand. The individuals selected for the programme were contractual employees from the State AIDS Control Societies in Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. In the absence of a necessary follow-up, the file could not be put before the Health Minister, Ambumani Ramdoss. By the time the matter was brought to her notice, the minister's signatures could not be obtained as he was travelling. Realising that the programme would have begun by the time the minister returned, Rao went all out to overcome hurdles to get a green signal for the chosen participants for the trip.
Now a nod is awaited from Ramdoss.
Interpreters for foreign patients in hospitals The growing number of foreign nationals opting for treatment in Indraprastha Apollo hopsital in the capital has prompted the management to hire the services of interpretors in various languages, including French, German, Spanish and Arabic, to overcome linguistic barriers. The hospital's experience with medical tourism has enabled it to experiment with innovative ways to keep the patients happy, with food cooked according to their preferred home cuisines and television channels of their choice. The idea is to make the patients feel totally at ease. The hospital claims that at any given time, ten per cent of its in-patient beds are occupied by patients from overseas. Interpretors play a very crucial role in helping doctors communicate with patients effectively. Other medical centres in South Asia that offer the services of interpretors are in Bangkok and Singapore.
Making up in the BJP? BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley, who was initially upset with party president Rajnath Singh for making him in-charge of Uttar Pradesh after the party's dismal performance in that state in the recent assembly elections, has patched up with the party chief. Rajnath Singh went over to Jaitley's house to attend a meeting to review the current situation of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and heaped praise on his General Secretary, who is known to have a midas touch. The electoral victories for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections have been credited to his strategy. Considering this track record, Rajnath Singh hoped that the party would do well in the Lok Sabha poll in 2009 under the guidance of Jaitley. A little bird tells us that this patch-up came at the intervention of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Jaitley had paid a hurried visit to the RSS headquarters in
Nagpur.
ICS veterans galore Delhi Durbar last week had an item about a 90-year-old ICS officer, J.B. Bowman, who lives in Mumbai. The item, sourced from a website, referred to him as the sole surviving ICS officer, which is factually incorrect. There are many ICS veterans living in India. The error is regretted.
***** Contributed by Prashant Sood, Tripti Nath, Satish Misra and R. Suryamurthy |
The study of the Vedas, linguistics, rituals, astronomy, and all the arts can be called lower knowledge. The higher is that which leads to self-realisation. —The Mundaka
Upanishad It is the intensity of love we put into our gestures that makes them into something beautiful for God. — Mother Teresa God is true and true is his court. — Guru Nanak
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