O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Threats to security
PM hints at nuanced strategy
Dr Manmohan Singh has been candid while acknowledging that the naxalite threat continues to be perhaps “the gravest internal security threat” for the country.

Melbourne’s shame
Racist attack sets the clock back
MUCH though the Australian government has been trying to repair the damage caused to Indo-Australian relations in the wake of incidents of attacks on Indians in that country, the latest incident of four Indians from Punjab being brutally assaulted in the parking lot of a bar in Melbourne is appalling.

Why the debt relief ?
Akalis can’t have easy way out
FOR years Punjab politicians have been pressing the Centre to waive the state’s militancy-related debt. The Akali leadership has also been demanding a higher share from the Central tax collections.

• Thought for the Day

ARTICLE

Why border intrusions?
China wants to keep its options open
by G. Parthasarathy
ONE abiding feature of our relations with China is our propensity to swing from elation and ecstasy to despondency and despair. Shortly after the visit of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to India in April 2005, our media, China scholars and sections of our Mandarin-speaking mandarins proclaimed that the festering “boundary question” with China was all but resolved.

MIDDLE

A Frontier Jeeves
by Raj Chatterjee
Mahmud was an excellent bachelor’s servant. His cooking was superb. He looked after my clothes with the fastidious care that they have missed since we parted company, sorrowfully, in 1947, and he was discreet.

OPED

Growth with equity
Time to tap technical professionals
by Chandra Mohan
THE global meltdown has brought out many glaring weaknesses in the thrust of our accelerated economic growth during last decade. The biggest casualty has been the mass hope placed on the export of IT and BPO services.

Tracking water consumption
by Kari Lydersen
WATER management is serious business in areas, where precipitation is scarce, irrigated agriculture is a major industry and new housing subdivisions spread across arid landscapes.

Health
Don’t hold your breath
by Vicky Hallett
MY favorite thing about yoga classes — other than the part at the end when you get to lie down and act like a corpse — is that the instructors always remind me to breathe. Pretty much without fail, whenever I get the cue "Don't hold your breath," I am.

EDITORIALS

Threats to security
PM hints at nuanced strategy

Dr Manmohan Singh has been candid while acknowledging that the naxalite threat continues to be perhaps “the gravest internal security threat” for the country. Addressing a gathering of chiefs of central and state police forces on Tuesday, he lamented that “despite our best efforts, the level of violence in the affected states continues to rise”. Indeed, the Maoist violence has increased to such a degree that they are responsible for 90 per cent of the violence in the country, with as many as 220 districts afflicted with Left extremism. Things have come to such a pass mainly because adequate attention had not been attached to the growing threat in the past, with former Home Minister Shivraj Patil even saying once that the situation was not all that serious. Maoists meanwhile made quiet inroads into newer areas and are now well entrenched in a large part of the country. They have sleeper cells in an even wider area, where more trouble could be breeding.

The key to tackling them lies in the Prime Minister’s assertion that it is not just a law and order problem. That is why it is necessary to adopt a nuanced approach. While on the one hand, there should be coordinated armed offensive against them, on the other there is need to improve the lot of the poor people who are so distressed that they willy-nilly come under the influence of the Maoists. A holistic approach can defeat the nefarious designs.

The Prime Minister has laid equal stress on tackling the external threat. Infiltration of terrorists into the country has been growing through the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, Nepal, Bangladesh and 7,500 km of coastline. Militant groups in Jammu and Kashmir are once again trying to make common cause with outside elements. That is why the Prime Minister underlined the need for rigorous police training which is on a par with the best practices being followed in the world. While the PM’s address clearly brings out the nature of the threat to security from elements inside the country and outside, the states have also to contribute to the fight against it. Unfortunately, they are lagging behind in this respect.

Melbourne’s shame
Racist attack sets the clock back

MUCH though the Australian government has been trying to repair the damage caused to Indo-Australian relations in the wake of incidents of attacks on Indians in that country, the latest incident of four Indians from Punjab being brutally assaulted in the parking lot of a bar in Melbourne is appalling. That this attack was witnessed by 40 to 50 people and the attackers shouted “You Indians, go back to your country” while some others joined in making racist comments strengthens the surmise that racism is rampant at least in some pockets in Australia. That the attack occurred as Victoria’s Premier John Brumby was preparing to go on a mission to India to help repair Australia’s reputation shows that the Aussies have work to do to control this menace before they can claim to the Indian government that they have a grip over the situation.

Significantly, two of the victims were Australian citizens while another was a permanent resident. The fourth had recently gone to Melbourne on a spouse visa since his wife was a student there. The victims were engaged in a typically Australian form of entertainment — playing pool in a bar. Evidently, these were people who were emotionally at peace with the Australian milieu. Yet, they were assaulted and abused.

Clearly, while the Australian government has been professing to do everything to stop racial attacks, the authorities in general are not meting out deterrent punishment to the perpetrators of such crimes. In Saturday’s incident, the four attackers were arrested but later released pending further investigation. The police has denied that it is being soft on the offenders but such a conclusion is inescapable. It is now incumbent on the Indian government to take this matter up strongly with its Australian counterparts. Indo-Australian trade is on the upswing and Indian students are increasingly going to Australia but if this is the level of security they would get, there can hardly be any long-term hope on building on the edifice.

Why the debt relief ?
Akalis can’t have easy way out

FOR years Punjab politicians have been pressing the Centre to waive the state’s militancy-related debt. The Akali leadership has also been demanding a higher share from the Central tax collections. In the latest round of talks with the 13th Finance Commission Chairman, Mr Vijay Kelkar, on Tuesday, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal reportedly pointed out that between 1987 and 1992 the state was under Central rule and instead of raising taxes, the then Central leadership had saddled the state with special-term loans amounting to Rs 5,800 crore. How ironical!

The Akali Dal government, which has often shied away from imposing or raising taxes to meet its financial commitments, is complaining why the Centre had not levied new taxes then. The present Akali government is set to borrow Rs 5,000 crore in a single year, but it deplores the Central leadership’s resort to a debt of Rs 5,800 crore during the five years of President’s rule, that too with the additional engagement of fighting militancy. The successive governments in Punjab have preferred taking loans to raising taxes or cutting expenditure. That despite crass populism the ruling parties had lost elections is another matter. Years of bad governance and profligacy will push the state’s debt to Rs 63,216 crore this fiscal. The future generations of Punjabis will pay for the follies of present-day leaders.

Reports suggest the 13th Finance Commission may set pre-conditions if it agrees to give the state debt relief. These may include the introduction of user-charges on power and water for the farm sector and the imposition of house tax and property tax. These make eminent sense, given the state’s precarious financial condition. But these may not find favour with the ruling Akali Dal. Only recently at Shimla the party had decided to continue to tread the road to ruin despite the alarm raised by the state Finance Minister.

Thought for the Day

Every Communist must grab the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”.

— Mao Zedong

ARTICLE

Why border intrusions?
China wants to keep its options open
by G. Parthasarathy

ONE abiding feature of our relations with China is our propensity to swing from elation and ecstasy to despondency and despair. Shortly after the visit of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to India in April 2005, our media, China scholars and sections of our Mandarin-speaking mandarins proclaimed that the festering “boundary question” with China was all but resolved. The Manmohan Singh-Wen Jiabao Declaration asserted that India-China relations had acquired “global and strategic significance” and that the two countries would establish a “strategic and cooperative partnership for peace and prosperity”.

An agreement laying down “Political Parameters and Guiding Principles” for resolving the border issue said that while respecting the “Line of Actual Control”, India and China would reach a boundary settlement which shall “safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas”, while using “modern cartographic and surveying practices and joint surveys”. Our “scholars” and media ecstatically proclaimed that the reference to “settled populations” in border areas meant that China had given up its claims to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. They were in for a rude shock. Within a year China started publicly and aggressively asserting that the whole of Arunachal was a part of “South Tibet”.

While talks on resolving the border issue have continued regularly after the visit of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to China in December 1988, the problem of Chinese intrusions into our territory arises from the fact that while the Line of Control is defined and demarcated by mutual agreement between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir, the “Line of Actual Control” (LOAC), which both sides have pledged to determine and respect, along the China-India border, has never been demarcated. It was decided that the issue of demarcation would be addressed by India and China exchanging maps about the precise location of the LOAC and reconciling differences through negotiations. While maps were exchanged on the Central Sector (adjoining Uttarakhand) and India provided its maps on the LOAC in the western sector (Ladakh) to China in 2002, China refused to provide maps outlining its version of where the LOAC lies, either on the western sector (Ladakh) or the eastern sector (Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh). In the face of this impasse, it was decided in 2003 that the two countries would seek a “political solution” to the border issue.

It is evident that despite having agreed in principle that there could not be any change in the status of populated areas in 2005, China is now insistent that it would expect territorial concessions in the populated eastern sector, if it is to accommodate Indian claims in Ladakh. Because of the importance of Tawang as a Buddhist Monastery town, where the sixth Dalai Lama was born, China seeks control of Tawang to secure a fig leaf of legitimacy for its rule in Tibet. India has flatly rejected Chinese claims to Tawang, with Mr Pranab Mukherjee asserting: “Any elected Government in India is not permitted by our Constitution to part with any part of our land that sends representatives to the Indian Parliament”.

Thus, as long as China remains insistent on its claims in Arunachal Pradesh, there can be no settlement of the border issue. India has also indicated that it intends to improve communications near and along its land borders with China, boost its military presence in Arunachal Pradesh and also strengthen its eastern air defences. The entire problem of border intrusions today arises from the fact that China wishes to keep its options open by not spelling out where, in its view, the LOAC lies, so that it can continue to intrude, at a time and place of its choosing, into populated areas in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh and undermine public confidence in our border areas, in New Delhi’s will and ability to defend our territorial integrity.

Apart from border issues, China has made every effort to undermine Indian security interests in recent years. Pakistan is being assisted by China in boosting its nuclear weapons capabilities by supply of plutonium reactors and reprocessing facilities. Chinese supplies of ballistic and cruise missiles to Pakistan continue, as does the supply of fighter aircraft and frigates. China assists Pakistan-sponsored terrorism by blocking moves in the UN Security Council for action against the Jamat-ud-Dawa and the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hafiz Mohammed Sayed.

While pledging aid for hydro-electric projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, China seeks to block assistance for economic development in Arunachal Pradesh in the Asian Development Bank, on the ground that its status is “disputed”. More ominously, there is now evidence that China is using areas controlled by its protégés in the Kachin State of Myanmar to arm and train our north-eastern insurgent groups in Manipur and elsewhere, in its Yunnan province. One sees similar actions by China to undermine India’s relations with Nepal. Despite this, our mandarins glibly talk of a “strategic and cooperative partnership” with China.

There are areas like climate change, the WTO talks and the development of a multi-polar world order, where India and China have shared interests. China’s actions along India’s land and maritime frontiers and its efforts to undermine India’s regional influence by its policies in countries like Pakistan and Nepal will, however, remain sources of differences. We landed ourselves in disaster in 1962 because we glossed over the realities and misled public opinion domestically and globally. Our mandarins in South Block will do well to remember this when misrepresenting and avoiding a focus on the realities of our relations with China. We should, however, avoid resorting to rhetoric that escalates tensions.

Our Ministry of Defence unfortunately delays action on the acquisition of crucial equipment like fighter aircraft and artillery. Actions speak louder than words. Rather that talking about how we propose to increase troop levels, or modernise our air defences along our borders with China, we should act to expeditiously strengthen defences and road communication networks along our borders. In the meantime, there should be a continuing dialogue and exchanges with China aimed at ensuring that incidents which escalate tensions do not occur along our borders.

We should remember that China still has festering disputes on its maritime boundaries with Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia and that China settles its border disputes only when a weakened neighbour succumbs to its pressures. In the meantime, China does not hesitate to assert its presence across disputed boundaries with militarily weaker neighbours the like Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. The Chinese respect national power and will respect India only if our economic and military strength warrants respect for us as a people and as a country.

MIDDLE

A Frontier Jeeves
by Raj Chatterjee

Mahmud was an excellent bachelor’s servant. His cooking was superb. He looked after my clothes with the fastidious care that they have missed since we parted company, sorrowfully, in 1947, and he was discreet.

I has engaged him on the strength of a recommendation from a former civil surgeon, also a bachelor. It was one of those chits that you see by the score, except for one rather odd remark in it.

The Civil Surgeon has said that the bearer of the note has helped him, on several occasions to, “uphold the dignity of the Service”. I was puzzled and amused. Later, I was to discover the significance of the remark.

Mahmud was a particular about his own appearance as he was in regard to mine. He insisted on being supplied with the four sets of uniforms — two khaki, that he wore while travelling and the other two white that he changed into when we halted and he had had a bath.

In the car as we jogged along with dusty roads, he always tied a large, gaudy handkerchief on his head. With his “dress” uniform he would don a white muslin pugree, wound on a gold-threaded cone with a heavily starched and pleated and sticking out at least six inches, like an ostrich feather. His thick, black moustache stood up at both ends, helped, no doubt, by a liberal application of beeswax.

Soon after Mahmud entered my employ, I was transferred to Lahore and assigned the north-western part of the branch for my touring. That was in June, 1938, not the most salubrious time of the year! Those were the hectic days before the War when a little skirmishing on the Frontier was looked upon as good, clean fun.

That summer the Mohmands were a bit annoyed with the Yusufzais over the disappearance of a few head of cattle. Non-alignment was all right as long as you stayed within the barbed wire security of a cantonment, but my work involved a great deal of touring. I was in Peshawar one day, Bannu the next and Razmak the day after. It was a great relief when the Company, realising the danger to its staff, stopped all touring on the Frontier.

The highways were patrolled from 5 a.m. to noon each day by the tribal militia but frequently, I had to go off the beaten track and visit places like Miranshah, Ghaznikhel, Thal, Mardan and Mianwali. On such occasions, one could only hope that the rifles with which the tribesmen fired were locally made and not purloined Martinis and Lee-Enfields. Fortunately, the Company’s driver in this area was a Pathan who knew the roads and could speak the lingo.

One morning in July 1 left Thal at dawn to get to Parachinar before noon. The place is at a slight elevation, and I was looking forward to a night’s relief from the scorching heat of the plains. We had hardly gone 10 miles when the driver swerved to avoid a stray dog and hit a tree before he was able to pull up.

We got out to examine the damage. The front nearside tender was buckled rather badly. As we tugged at it with our combined strength, we heard the crack of a rifle followed by the whine of a bullet that made a clean hole in the safety glass windshield and went out through the rear window.

Our reactions to the interruption were not at all alike. The driver swore violently in Pashtu calling down divine wrath on the hidden marksman and his progeny for several generations to come. I made a dash for the back of the car and lay flat on the ground. Mahmud stood rooted to the spot, a look of utter disbelief on his face. Later, I heard him open the door of the car and get inside.

Nothing happened for half-an-hour, so we drove on. That evening, as I came out on the verandah I was surprised to see Mahmud impeccably dressed, moustache ends freshly waxed, waiting to give me a drink. As he was pouring it out, I asked him why he had not taken cover immediately when he heard the shot that morning.

He coughed deferentially and said: “Knowing that the Protector of the Poor was taking shelter from the heat of the sun, I considered it my duty to stay with the driver. You see, Huzoor, our izzat was at stake.”

OPED

Growth with equity
Time to tap technical professionals
by Chandra Mohan

THE global meltdown has brought out many glaring weaknesses in the thrust of our accelerated economic growth during last decade. The biggest casualty has been the mass hope placed on the export of IT and BPO services. Plush air-conditioned offices, fancy pay packages, rapid career-jumps and opportunities for foreign travel had raised IT & ITES into the national be-all of the new generation; computers & IT becoming the sole mission of every child.

Fuel to that fire had been added by the government calling it a knowledge industry. It must be remembered that computers are only a tool. Their advantage is that they can store and process massive amounts of data at the click of a button for the analysis and use of managers. Benefit comes only out of the end-use in practice and that alone is knowledge. All that massive data and miles of computer reports are otherwise pure garbage-in and garbage-out.

That infinite mass dream-run is over. Because of turbulence, the global market has now moved to teams of domain specialists and specific tasks. Assignments are for limited terms.

An outcome of the exponential growth of the globally mobile, computer-savvy affluent middle-class was a market for world-class products. Since quality and R&D capability of protected Indian industry lagged far behind, this market was gladly lapped by MNCs saddled with massive over-capacities in the stagnating markets of the developed world.

Our liberal policies on capital investment and permitting high import content facilitated their entry. The success of Honda, Hyundai, LG, Samsung and Nokia illustrates this. The burgeoning service industry to reach and service these new generation products followed as a corollary.

Gross under-investment in infrastructure like power, roads; ports, rail-roads and urban services is hurting every facet of the economy-manufacturing industry in particular. Power is the worst criminal. Private investment in standby gen-sets runs into astronomical figures. The daily penalty on running them and the atmospheric fouling they create via emissions and noise adds to the woes.

The benefits of the economic boom remained confined to 30 per cent English-speaking urbanites at the top of the pyramid in cities. They completely bypassed the bottom third of the pyramid in villages and slums. Direct social programmes like NREGA and JNURM alone made an impact on their uplift. And, that is the reason why clamour for such programmes has increased.

It is thus amply clear that the post-1991 measures for facilitating foreign investment and monetary policy have not been able to address our societal concerns effectively and a fresh look is essential for achieving non-bumpy growth at high rates in the coming years.

Everyone knows that investment in social programmes and infrastructure entails extended gestation and returns are slow. Therefore, unless these investments are made out of revenue surpluses and savings, they lead to inflation which hurts everyone the poor the most.

On the economic front, liberalisation over the last two decades has primarily focused on trade and foreign investment coupled with periodic adjustment of monetary policies like CRR, PLR etc. The reesult has been periodic cycles of boom and burst markets. The biggest sufferer of that pendulum swing is the domestic manufacturing industry. It shakes its faith in investment for growth, and continuous investment is critical for survival in today’s global competition.

Fears of inflation and tightening of interest rates in the coming months have already begun to stalk the aam admi thrust of the recent budget, which could raise the deficit to beyond 6 per cent of the GDP.

Another harsh truth which we seem to forget is that investment, whether global or domestic, flows to most attractive returns involving minimum risk. An investor’s interest clock also begins to tick from the word GO; every second counts. Delays and long gestations are negatives. Global investors continue to prefer China; democracy, the rule of law etc. are hogwash for sloganeering.

In this gloomy scenario, the question is: How do we achieve accelerated growth which is also equitable?

Global experience firmly establishes that productivity, quality, technology and entrepreneurship alone ensure sustained growth. In our case, it is equally important that the initiative reaches deep into rural India. New doors are always opened by entrepreneurs and they are also the instrument for long-term progress.

The railways with their well-oiled managerial network serving 11,000 railway stations emerges as one such organisation. Like Kennedy’s Mission to the Moon which transformed the USA in the sixties, goals which raise railway operational efficiency by leaps and fire public imagination simultaneously could be:

Raise train punctuality to better than 1 minute. The 1-second goal for punctuality was achieved by Japanese National Railways half a century ago when there were no computers and electronic automation. Make all railway land within station limits litter-free and clean. Dispose of all junk and surplus.

Paint and maintain all locomotive exteriors in sparkling shape maintain all passenger train exteriors in sparkling shape.

Success with such goals will set an example for everyone to emulate and set India on a new trajectory. It will certainly demand new thinking; new processes. But given the will, these goals can be achieved and quickly. Other candidates with similar potential, though diffuse in management and more difficult to handle, are state transport undertakings and electricity boards.

Today, 800,000 technical graduates in diverse disciplines are being turned out annually by 20,000 professional institutions spread across the country. There could be no better candidates for entrepreneurship than fresh technical graduates. It should not be difficult to select prospective entrepreneurs and re-orient education and training.

Young graduates are straining to get off the mark. The present job scenario is hurting their pride. They have basic technical knowledge. Interest of some is also deep and practical. They have no liabilities. They can take risk, can easily forge cross-functional teams from their circle of friends and can easily find mentors within faculty, industry or professionals.

Voluntary organisations like The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) with its 4,000 plus entrepreneur members in over 20 chapters with its global associates is another excellent voluntary resource. Mentoring by experienced entrepreneurs is TiE’s sole objective and charter.

A close link of their technical institution to their bankers is another advantage for financial assistance to the new ventures. Basic guidelines for projects which could help are market for the initial phase should preferably lie within 100 km. Teams of two friends with complementary capabilities are ideal. More is a crowd. One of them must be an extrovert and a net-worker.

It is high time that we as a nation realised that wishful thinking and lofty enactments alone will not usher that change. Isn’t time lost in endless debate and file-notes an antithesis of modern management whose essence is speed and first tenet; delegation coupled with accountability?

Similarly, the appointment of a Secretary, Performance Appraisal, in the PMO for monitoring projects seems totally incongruous to today’s lean structures. It is time we recognised that molly-coddling has to stop. Without determined and sustained thrust on quality, productivity, efficiency and time, global eminence that we seek will remain elusive.

Tracking water consumption
by Kari Lydersen

WATER management is serious business in areas, where precipitation is scarce, irrigated agriculture is a major industry and new housing subdivisions spread across arid landscapes.

"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it," water officials are fond of saying. But measurement — trying to determine how much water is diverted from rivers and how much is pumped from hundreds of thousands of wells — has been an inexact and expensive science.

Now a tool developed by the Idaho Department of Water Resources and the University of Idaho is changing the face of water management and conservation by efficiently offering specific measurements of the water consumed across a large region or single field.

Using surface temperature readings from government satellites, air temperature and a system of algorithms, the new method lets officials measure how much water is "consumed" on a certain piece of land through evapotranspiration.

Evapotranspiration is a combination of the evaporation of water into the atmosphere and the water vapor released by plants through respiration — basically, a measurement of the water that leaves the land for the atmosphere, not water that is diverted or pumped onto land but then returned quickly to the water table or river for other users.

Water resource management agencies in Idaho and other states see this as the best way to measure water consumption, since it is a more exact definition of how much water is being removed from the system by a given individual or entity.

The program, called METRIC for Mapping EvapoTranspiration with High Resolution and Internalized Calibration, was launched in 2000 with a NASA/Raytheon Synergy Project grant and is used by 11 states. (Though researchers do measure the evapotranspiration rates of residential developments, the method is mainly relevant to the management of agriculture, fish farms and forest or wetland conservation.)

"There's not enough water for all uses, so you use METRIC to see exactly where water is being consumed," said Tony Morse, manager of geospatial technology at the Idaho Department of Water Resources. "How much for agriculture, how much on the Indian reservation, how much by native cottonwoods, how much by saltcedars."

METRIC uses images from the two Landsat satellites, which orbit Earth every 16 days, meaning an image of a given field is available every eight days unless cloud cover interferes. Until this year users had to pay the U.S. Geological Survey $600 for each 185-by-180-kilometer "scene." Starting in 2009 the government satellite images, which are also used for Google Earth, are free to the public. METRIC developers have published their algorithms for anyone to use, though agencies must write their own computer codes.

The data have already been used to help settle a century-long fight between Colorado and Kansas over water in the Arkansas River and a dispute between Idaho irrigation districts. Previously, officials had to look at well-pumping records and electricity use to estimate each irrigation district's usage. Water managers say the data help to settle and avoid litigation.

In Oregon, METRIC data helped conserve water in Klamath Basin salmon habitats by helping scientists work with ranchers to withhold irrigation from certain cattle pastures. In California, the program eased fears that water transfers to Los Angeles and San Diego would increase the salinity of Imperial Valley farmland. In Texas, METRIC revealed that invasive saltcedar trees were using less water than expected, indicating an expensive eradication of the trees was likely not necessary.

The system can allow irrigation districts or other entities to conserve water and save the surplus for drier times. The same principle applies to farmers who can "bank" their rights to consumer water and lease or sell those rights to other users. The data are also crucial to government programs that buy back water rights — essentially paying farmers to let their land dry — so the water can flow into streams where steelhead trout and salmon spawn.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Health
Don’t hold your breath
by Vicky Hallett

MY favorite thing about yoga classes — other than the part at the end when you get to lie down and act like a corpse — is that the instructors always remind me to breathe. Pretty much without fail, whenever I get the cue "Don't hold your breath," I am. And as soon as I go for a deep, belly-expanding inhale, I feel amazingly able and at ease.

It's no mystery why this happens. Stress causes us to tense up, while breathing brings oxygen to the muscles and allows us to relax. "It helps with concentration. It increases endurance. It slows your heart rate," rattles off Alvaro Maldonado, co-owner of a FIT personal training gym in D.C. In short, full lungs do a heck of a lot more than just keep you alive, especially during strenuous physical activity.

Any personal trainer worth his spandex knows the basic rules: You want to exhale on the exertion part of a movement, and inhale on the recovery. During cardiovascular exercise, short breaths are a clue that you're overdoing it. And if you can develop a pattern for your breathing, you're likely to last longer.

But much of the time in gym settings, the breath takes a back seat to other concerns: what we're lifting, how we're squatting, when we're leaving. That may be why when Karen Sherman, a senior investigator at Seattle's Group Health Center for Health Studies, looked into treatments for chronic low-back pain in 2005, weekly yoga classes plus home practice appeared to be slightly more effective than weekly sessions of aerobic, strengthening and stretching exercises plus home practice.

"What's the active ingredient?" asks Sherman, whose results were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. No one knows why yoga was more effective than the other exercises, but Sherman believes part of the answer is attention to breathing.

"It's not that people don't think about breathing, but they don't give you the same language and imagery that creates more awareness," she says. "For someone with back pain, one of the possibilities is they haven't been paying attention to their bodies." If you're doing more-vigilant surveillance, there's a better chance you'll notice that you should stand straighter or move differently, and those tweaks could provide the treatment you really need.

That bodes well for the future of the Mindfulness Center, a studio opening in Bethesda, Md., next week. The concept is to blend meditation and fitness to create classes that focus on "mind, body and spirit, not just body," explains the center's founder, Deborah Norris, who is American University's psychologist-in-residence and a specialist in behavioral medicine. "You need to put it all together and pay attention to the fact that they're all connected."

Scheduled classes include such offerings as "Mind Body Sculpt." Instead of merely telling students to lift a weight, Norris will tell them to also lift their hearts. Then she'll prod them: "Notice how it feels? How are your energy levels shifting?" "It's the workout of a traditional class, but mentally it's clarifying and puts you at ease," she says.

And part of that is done with — you guessed it — breathing. "When you focus on the breath, the brain focuses inward, and that seems to be good for us," Norris says.

So, let this be a reminder to you — and me: Don't hold your breath.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post