O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

G20 is here to stay
Emerging economies leave an impact
A broadening of the global governance structure is manifest in the manner in which G20 has emerged as the premier forum for discussing international economic issues, eclipsing G8.

US aid to Pakistan
One small step towards accountability
India’s concerns expressed at the misuse of US financial assistance to Pakistan have ultimately resulted in the legislation tripling US aid for Islamabad getting the rider that it will have to ensure that the funds are used for the intended purpose only —fighting terrorism. This is the result of a concerted drive against the Kerry-Lugar Bill, promising $1.5 billion US aid to Pakistan annually for five years.

Near-anarchy in Bengal
CPM and Mamata must fight Maoists jointly
Political violence in West Bengal is acquiring bizarre dimensions. Maoist leaders have been calling up newspaper offices to warn that the CPM office in Enayetpur, 10 kilometres from Midnapore town, would be blown up if the armed CPM activists holed up in the office do not surrender.

• Thought for the Day

ARTICLE

Cutting AfPak Gordian knot
How the US has become a problem
by B.G. Verghese
EVEN as the United States last week piloted a unanimous resolution through the UN Security Council calling for universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and stricter controls over potential proliferation, London’s Sunday Times reproduced the letter A.Q Khan sent his Dutch wife for publication in 2005 as insurance against his being harmed by the Pakistani authorities whilst under interrogation in Islamabad.

MIDDLE

Where have all the dhobis gone?
by Sudhamahi Regunathan
Ram ram ji, “he would call…and we knew the dhobi had come. When the dhobi announced himself, there would be a desperate desire to escape or else you would be landed the job of counting the clothes he brought back and writing the list of the new clothes he would be taking to wash. Now that may sound simple, but do you remember where the diary in which the list last noted down was?

OPED

Power play in Punjab
Shimla conclave clears way for junior Badal
by Gobind Thukral
The Akali conclave in Shimla may have disappointed those who thought that the ruling party in Punjab would devise a policy framework to take Punjab out of the present fiscal mess, pitiable state of governance and stinking sleaze.

AIDS vaccine heralds new dawn
by Jeremy Laurance
The scientific naysayers who claimed a vaccine against HIV would never be possible have received their comeuppance. After years of setbacks and growing doubts, a jab to prevent the worst disease of modern times, which currently affects 33 million people worldwide, may be in prospect after all.

Chatterati
Many aspirants for CM’s post
by Devi Cherian
The Maharashtra state Congress panel was formed by the AICC to frame a poll strategy and hold alliance talks with the NCP. We have veterans Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde, CM Ashok Chavan, state minister Narayan Rane and PCC chief Manikrao Thackeray acting together to make sure they come back.

EDITORIALS

G20 is here to stay
Emerging economies leave an impact

A broadening of the global governance structure is manifest in the manner in which G20 has emerged as the premier forum for discussing international economic issues, eclipsing G8. If there was any ambiguity on this count it was removed by the statement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the end of the Pittsburgh summit that “with the rise of Asia, with growth of India, China and Brazil, the economic decision-making has to take into account the views of these countries if it is to have an optimum impact.” That this summit bore the unmistakable stamp of Dr Singh was clear from the manner in which he managed to convince the developed world that the time was not ripe to withdraw the stimulus packages aimed at helping countries — especially the developing and poor economies — overcome the worst economic crisis in eight decades. Before leaving for Pittsburgh, Dr Manmohan Singh had called for reform in global financial institutions. His suggestion has not gone unheard. Besides, the IMF has been empowered to monitor G20 economic policies so that the members stick to the agreed goals.

Banks and bankers’ pay came under sharp focus. It was quite a climbdown for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had threatened a walkout on the issue of capping pay packages of bankers. Germany too pushed the issue of limiting bankers’ remuneration, but the US and Britain stressed that imposing a ceiling was not practical. The tendency of large banks to gamble, putting to risk depositors’ money, was hotly debated, but there was no agreement on separating banks’ retail and investment operations. The summit was worried about financial institutions repeating mistakes of the past, falling in the “too-big-to-fail, too big-to-save” trap.

Chinese President Hu Jintao focussed on the “yawning development gap” between the developed and the developing countries. US President Barack Obama summed up the spirit of the summit when, calling for a “new era of engagement”, he said: “We cannot tolerate the same old boom and bust economies of the past. We can’t grow complacent. We can’t wait for a crisis, to cooperate.” One could not help feeling at the summit’s end that the emerging economies were now making an impact and that the world order was on the mend.

US aid to Pakistan
One small step towards accountability

India’s concerns expressed at the misuse of US financial assistance to Pakistan have ultimately resulted in the legislation tripling US aid for Islamabad getting the rider that it will have to ensure that the funds are used for the intended purpose only —fighting terrorism. This is the result of a concerted drive against the Kerry-Lugar Bill, promising $1.5 billion US aid to Pakistan annually for five years. The inclusion of the accountability clause in the legislation was a must for allaying India’s fears owing to the conduct of Pakistan in the past. Recently a noted US security expert pointed out that “most of the aid we have sent them over the past five years has been diverted into their nuclear programme”.

Former Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf himself admitted some time ago that much of the aid his country got from the US during his tenure went into strengthening Pakistan’s defence forces vis-à-vis India. This should have been enough for the Obama administration to stop all kinds of financial assistance to Pakistan in the interest of peace in South Asia. But the US has gone ahead with what it had promised to Pakistan. The pretext to help Pakistan financially is the unending threat from Al-Qaida, the Taliban and other terrorist organisations. However, the way Pakistan has been fighting terrorist forces shows that it has developed a vested interest in not eliminating these elementing root and branch. The terrorist factor has been helping Islamabad in getting an uninterrupted flow of funds from donor countries.

But this has been adding to the problems of India, as all such aid, given in the name of combating terrorism, has been promoting arms race in the subcontinent. This can be prevented if there is a strict aid monitoring arrangement. The accountability clause in the Kerry-Lugar legislation must lead to the creation of an aid monitoring mechanism to ensure that Pakistan is unable to misuse the funds it will get from the US for battling the forces of terrorism.

Near-anarchy in Bengal
CPM and Mamata must fight Maoists jointly

Political violence in West Bengal is acquiring bizarre dimensions. Maoist leaders have been calling up newspaper offices to warn that the CPM office in Enayetpur, 10 kilometres from Midnapore town, would be blown up if the armed CPM activists holed up in the office do not surrender. CPM leaders have gone on record to say that the party would take up arms and retaliate in kind. While this latest “encounter” continued earlier in the week, security forces were nowhere to be seen. Indeed, they were not expected to reach Enayetpur before Tuesday morning. The tandava of political violence, so evocatively described by West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, continues unabated and West Bengal, or at least a part of it, appears to be spinning completely out of control.

With the state police unable to curb lawlessness, disarming political activists in the state was never going to be easy. In West Bengal, all political parties are guilty of encouraging the gun-culture but it is the CPM, being the ruling party, which has repeatedly been caught on the wrong foot. The party’s misadventure in Nandigram is still fresh in public memory. But it is the CPM which is now targeted by Maoists. Scores of local CPM leaders in Midnapore have been killed by Maoists in recent months, but the state police has not been able to stop the killings or catch the culprits. Under the circumstances, the Left Front government will find it difficult to persuade the cadre to give up arms. But if law and order is to be restored and Maoists are to be isolated, that is precisely the “poison” that the CPM must swallow and set an example for others to follow.

The last decade has been marked by growing political violence in the state. Political rivals have been burnt to death, rival villages have been attacked with bombs and people have been killed on the flimsiest of provocations. But even the presence of 6,000 central paramilitary forces in the Lalgarh area does not seem to have brought the situation in Midnapore under control. Maoists have continued their killing spree, striking terror and ambushing policemen. They have become a threat to all political parties and Ms Mamata Banerjee will be well advised to make common cause with the CPM on the issue of law and order.

Thought for the Day

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do. — W.H. Auden

ARTICLE

Cutting AfPak Gordian knot
How the US has become a problem
by B.G. Verghese

EVEN as the United States last week piloted a unanimous resolution through the UN Security Council calling for universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and stricter controls over potential proliferation, London’s Sunday Times reproduced the letter A.Q Khan sent his Dutch wife for publication in 2005 as insurance against his being harmed by the Pakistani authorities whilst under interrogation in Islamabad. He disclosed that he had on instructions from above both supplied and received nuclear-related material and technology from China and North Korea and supplied nuclear technology to Iran and Libya.

Further, an ISI functionary, Mr Khalid Khwaja, told Islamabad’s ARY TV on September 9 that he had arranged at least five meetings for Osama bin Laden with Mr Nawaz Sharif, a former Prime Minister, and had himself held over a hundred meetings with the Al-Qaeda chief before 9/11. All these “revelations” have been well documented and known for years.

In a season of confessions, President Zardari told retired Pakistani officials on July 7 that “militants and extremists were … deliberately created and nurtured (by the Pakistan State) as a policy to achieve some short-term tactical objectives” (obviously against India and within Afghanistan). These “strategic assets” and “heroes of yesteryear until 9/11 … began to haunt us as well”. General Musharraf, currently a fugitive from a treason charge at home, next stated that US military aid given it for the war on terror was diverted by Pakistan to bolster its defences against India, a fact well established but persistently denied.

In recent years, Pakistan had emerged as the epicentre of both terror and nuclear proliferation. Most terror trails around the world lead back to Pakistan. But the country remains in denial and pleads that it is possibly a greater victim of terror than anybody else. But pleading innocence and blaming non-state actors will not wash as they are still protected and patronised by Pakistan. This is evident in the manner in which the Jamat-ud-Dawa chief and former head of the now-”banned” LeT has been treated as a state guest even as India has provided evidence of his leading role in the planning and execution of the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. That the mastermind was not caught on the spot with a smoking gun has been used by Islamabad to argue that there is not a scrap of evidence against Hafez Saeed. If so, Osama bin Laden is as blameless.

Despite the most damning evidence of complicity and guilt, Pakistan remains Washington’s favourite frontline protégé that can do no wrong. Now General McChrystal, the US Commander in Afghanistan, has reported that “while India activities” ($1.2 bn investment in the country’s reconstruction and development) largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian (economic and political) influence is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan and India”. This is not the first time that the US has advised the world to do more but India to do less in Afghanistan lest this upset Pakistan. The bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul by suspected ISI agents was one reminder of Islamabad’s strange nervous disorder. It believes that Afghanistan is a privileged backyard that it needs for “strategic depth” against imagined Indian machinations.

This totally sick mindset has seen Pakistan symptomatically tilting at Indian windmills since its very inception to prop up a missing self-identity, a pastime regrettably encouraged by the US and Britain. Thus Pakistan’s established invasion of J&K in 1947 and violation of its related UN commitments thereafter has been converted into a “dispute” with India. This has enabled it to practice blackmail through blatant nuclear proliferation and state-sponsored jihadi terror, with the knowledge and financial assistance of the US despite spawning the Taliban and its offspring and the spread of lethal arms and drug trafficking in its wake. When the US mistakenly uses 9/11 as the reference point for global terror, it ignores the preceding decades of vicious and bloody terror unleashed by its protégé on India which has suffered enormous collateral damage that is scarcely ever acknowledged.

This charade cannot go on. Ms Hillary Clinton, in a moment of candour while testifying before the Senate at her confirmation hearings, described US policies towards Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past couple of decades as “incoherent”. The nature of the “incoherence” was not spelt out but can be listed as permitting the most flagrant and dangerous nuclear proliferation that has gone unpunished, the siphoning away of US arms and finances to build the Taliban to fight the US and India, using drugs as a currency of control and subversion, and providing an inspirational home for exporting radical Islam and related terror.

The Americans now realise they simply cannot win the botched-up war in Afghanistan. What is planned is another “surge”, which could well be followed by a declaration of “victory” and withdrawal while Afghanistan burns and is left under Pakistan-Taliban hegemony. The latter scenario flows from the unrequited $ 7.5bn dollar military assistance promised to Pakistan over the next five years over and above economic aid. This will further entrench the Pakistan military and ISI in what has become a garrison state at the cost of civil-democratic ascendancy. The critic will denounce this thesis as anti-Pakistani. On the contrary, it is the current US-NATO policy that can be so labelled whereas the “demilitarisation” of Pakistan would be a truly pro-Pakistan posture.

The basic fact to understand is that the US is not part of the solution in the AfPak theatre: it is the problem. This does not mean that it should cut and run. On the contrary, it must stay and fund and provide logistical support for a turn-around of the mess it has created, and the reconstruction of Afghanistan to follow. A US-NATO military withdrawal will by itself reduce the military heat while a UN-led regional peace-keeping and enforcement force takes over. The $ 7.5bn military assistance to Pakistan could be drastically cut and civil aid to that country made strictly contingent on a genuine withdrawal of the Pakistan Army to the barracks in its own country except for any legitimate aid-to-civil power role, verifiable disbandment of all jihadi formations and nodal institutions, and an end to state-sponsored cross-border terror.

The military and the ISI must be brought under civilian control and the powers of the National Security Council, that vests the military with civil power, redefined. Equally, a programme for disinvestment or civilianisation of the Fauji Foundation and the other military foundations that dominate economic life must be rolled out. Finally, A.Q Khan must be properly investigated and China’s nefarious role fully exposed. Aid could be leveraged to achieve these ends

A regional conference on Afghanistan under UN auspices, that includes Pakistan, Iran, India, Russia, China and Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors, along with the US-NATO combine, must create a new framework and timetable for peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan with all forces being placed under a UN, not US, command. Both Pakistan and India could play a military role in this peace-enforcement exercise. The entire arrangement should have the backing of Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga or supreme tribal assembly. This is the way forward. Otherwise, the latest UN resolution will remain another dead letter.

MIDDLE

Where have all the dhobis gone?
by Sudhamahi Regunathan

Ram ram ji, “he would call…and we knew the dhobi had come. When the dhobi announced himself, there would be a desperate desire to escape or else you would be landed the job of counting the clothes he brought back and writing the list of the new clothes he would be taking to wash. Now that may sound simple, but do you remember where the diary in which the list last noted down was?

A search will begin. Enquiries will begin with, “Who wrote the list the last time?” “How many times do I tell you to put things where they belong?” And so on. Finally beneath the three-day-old newspapers, or above the almirah or even amongst our schoolbooks it would be found, but rarely on the dhobi box where it was meant to be.

The dhobi was an institution who would collect all the dirty clothes, wash, iron and even starch them. There are places dedicated to the dhobi in almost all towns of India. There is the Washerman’s Peth in Chennai, called so even today and there are dhobi ghats in every city or town. Even in Malaysia and Pennag there are streets still known as Dhoby ghaut.

By now the old man (generally dhobis were old, I don’t know why) would have spread out the clothes item wise on a clean white sheet. You had tick mark against the clothes that had come and if anything had been left behind then you had to note it down and tell him…one pant remains, two shirts have not come…and so on.

Generally the dhobi could recognise garments as belonging to a certain household but nevertheless he had a mark made in indelible black ink on one corner of the garment, which was generally like two lines and a dot or three lines and so on.

The dhobi was very much a part of the family. He would advise the brothers not to dirty their shorts and study more or he would share problems of inflation with the grandmother or mother and take instructions on starching their saris real crisp. He would wash the dhotis of men with extra care and flourish.

Periodically there would be questions on where he washes and if the water was clean and the dhobi always presented the picture of a very clean dhobi ghat. When my father wanted to irk my mother he would point out to the sewage waters falling into the Yamuna and say the dhobi actually washed there. I do not know which is right, but we still gave him clothes when he came the next time.

Today as my washing machine hurtles in a spin, I miss my leisurely dhobi time, when the world seemed one large family, all working for you!

OPED

Power play in Punjab
Shimla conclave clears way for junior Badal
by Gobind Thukral

The Akali conclave in Shimla may have disappointed those who thought that the ruling party in Punjab would devise a policy framework to take Punjab out of the present fiscal mess, pitiable state of governance and stinking sleaze.

Those who know the Akali supreme leader, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, now into his fourth term as Chief Minister, understand the limited capabilities of the leader, though he commands wide acceptance. They ought to have little doubt as to how much he and the Akalis can deliver.

The much-publicised “vichar baithak” had one-point agenda: put a strong stamp on the leadership of the younger Badal, Sukhbir Singh. Gradually and definitely the way to the top slot for this ambitious young man is being cleared from any potential hurdles.

Mr Badal, an old war horse, has no rivals among the Akalis today. His status demands unflinching loyalty. He has placed his immediate family and close relations in positions of power and has drawn his line of succession whether one appreciates it or not.

To recount, his son Sukhbir Singh Badal is the party president and Deputy Chief Minister and he rules the party and directs the state apparatus.

His nephew, Manpreet Singh Badal, though embittered, is the Finance Minister; his son-in-law, Adesh Partap Singh Kairon looks after the all important food and supply and excise portfolios.

There are other not-so-distant relatives. His daughter-in-law is a member of the Lok Sabha and her brother, a minister till yesterday, is a powerful MLA, calling shots in Punjab’s Majha region.

There are no rivals to the house of Badals. Once an arch rival, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who headed the SGPC for over 25 long years and deprived Mr Badal a few chances to lead the state, is no more.

Mr Jagdev Singh Talwandi, the Dal president who commanded a good following, is a spent force. Capt Kanwajit Singh, the late Cooperation Minister, was a formidable challenger as an ideologue and strategist. Mr Badal never had such a free hand to run the affairs of the party and the state.

It is important to note the hidden purpose of the conclave rather than what was dished out to the waiting media. It is all right for the Akalis to drum up issues like federalism, autonomy, riparian laws for river waters and transfer of Chandigarh.

But the Dal has to be consistent. These issues are basic to Punjab: to be forgotten when sharing power at the national level and brought back when the Congress is in power. People who filled jails, faced bullets and died observing a fast-unto-death do understand the game now.

It is indeed laughable when a senior leader like Mr Badal says that he does not want a Chief Commissioner for Chandigarh and the Administrator, the Punjab Governor, should head the administration as this would dilute Punjab’s claim to Chandigarh. He accepts a badly administered city which is the Capital of both Punjab and Haryana.

No experts are needed to declare that Punjab’s economic and fiscal matters are in the doldrums. Short of cash and faced with a huge subsidy bill, the cash-strapped government has virtually been selling over Rs 400 crore worth of government securities each month this year, in order to pay salaries and meet other dire expenses.

Since January 2009, it has raised Rs 3,458 crore by getting its state development loans auctioned through the Reserve Bank. It has to raise Rs 5,000 crore this way during this financial year. Its annual plan is in a limbo.

Punjab has a huge annual subsidy bill of Rs 4,500 crore. The power subsidy bill has gone up to an astonishing Rs 3,142 crore – up from Rs 2,602 crore last year – and there are no signs of an increase in its revenue.

Manpreet admits this dire situation and was looking forward to clear policy lines at Shimla. In an interview, two days before the conclave, he tried to set the agenda for a debate on the current fiscal situation, lack of schools, health facilities and acute power shortage, but failed miserably.

Many centrally sponsored schemes offer huge funds for development. Since the government has no money to contribute its matching share, many such schemes are falling by the way side.

Punjab’s cities and towns are the filthiest and slums dot all around. This often leads to sickness and a huge expenditure on medicines and wastage of manpower due to illness. But look at the lackadaisical attitude of the government. Punjab’s response to the Centre’s flagship programme, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, tells a sad story. The total Central allocation for Punjab was Rs 617 crore. However, during the past four years, the state managed to use only Rs 69 crore.

Punjab has to come up with projects worth about Rs 1,100 crore to avail the remaining Rs 535 crore. Despite efforts by the Union ministers and officials, there has been little progress. Meanwhile slum dwellers are condemned to live sub-human lives.

The Badals do not have to dish out demands each passing day and blame the Congress for Punjab’s ills. Who, by the way, has pushed Punjab’s current debt to Rs 62,000 crore?

Manpreet was prevented from raising any serious issue. Three senior leaders told him not to spoil the bright and breezy mood as the party report card was full of achievements.

It is good to demand special agricultural zone status for Punjab, with all incentives, facilities and fiscal subsidies on the lines of those extended to SEZs for industry. And ask for a 50 per cent share in the state’s contribution to the Central taxes.

It is also good to document the history of the Akalis since 1920, put up a museum of history at the party office in Amritsar, though the Akalis are not yet an object of a museum. A documentary and a book on its history are also in order. But do the leaders have to travel all the way to Shimla and spend huge money to announce these programmes?

Sometime back the Chief Minister had publicly censured his young Finance Minister and asked him to refrain from earning “brownie points by betraying people”. But Manpreet is in no mood to leave the arena without a good fight. He wants the “leadership to catch the imagination of people, convince them hard decisions are good in the long run. My treasury is not for buying votes, but for the welfare of Punjab. I am willing to take the risk of opting out of elections or even politics... My own honour is not bigger than Punjab’s. Competitive populism has consumed the state – it has downgraded our human resource element.”

All he hears from his colleagues is “let’s take loans”. Nobody is bothered as to how these will be returned. He wants a referendum on free power. He says he is more than sure the farmers will overwhelmingly reject free power.

Strangely, he too does not talk of good governance and corruption. Is anyone a game for a debate on Punjab?

AIDS vaccine heralds new dawn
by Jeremy Laurance

The scientific naysayers who claimed a vaccine against HIV would never be possible have received their comeuppance. After years of setbacks and growing doubts, a jab to prevent the worst disease of modern times, which currently affects 33 million people worldwide, may be in prospect after all.

The world's largest HIV prevention trial, involving 16,000 people in Thailand, reported yesterday that giving a combination of two vaccines lowered the risk of contracting the virus by 31.2 per cent. That is not enough for a viable vaccine that could be used globally against HIV but it is the first indication that an effective jab – one that provides at least a 50 per cent reduction in risk – might be possible.

The World Health Organisation and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids hailed the result as a "significant scientific breakthrough". Seth Berkley, president of the International Aids Vaccine Initiative, said it was "very exciting news".

The advance comes after more than 20 years of research, the expenditure of billions of pounds and four previous vaccine trials with single agents which failed to demonstrate any protective effect. It is a victory for the US and Thai researchers who pushed through the $120m trial in the face of heavyweight scientific opposition. One of the chief critics was Robert Gallo, a discoverer of HIV, who had scoffed: "We'd learn more if we had extract of maple leaf in the vaccine."

Another blow came when a group of two dozen scientists wrote to the journal Science in 2004 that the inclusion of one of the candidate vaccines, made by Vaxgen – which had failed a previous trial – was "completely incapable of preventing or ameliorating" HIV infection. The group questioned "the wisdom of the US government's sponsoring" the Thailand trial.

A poll of 35 international Aids researchers published by The Independent in April 2008 revealed a mood of "deep pessimism" within the scientific community, with a substantial minority admitting an HIV vaccine might never be developed. Aids organisations had called for the funds spent on the search for a vaccine to be diverted to other prevention efforts. Now the results of the Thai trial are in, its critics may have to eat their words.

The first vaccine used in the trial, called ALVAC, is based on a canarypox virus that has been disabled which is used as a "Trojan horse" to smuggle three genetic fragments of HIV into the body, priming the immune system to recognise and kill HIV-infected cells. The second vaccine, AidsVAX, contains a protein designed to encourage the body to produce neutralising antibodies to destroy HIV before it infects healthy cells. The researchers warned that the two vaccine components might not work in other parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, where different strains of HIV are circulating and the population has a different genetic make-up.

Thailand was chosen 18 years ago by the WHO for HIV vaccine trials that were then thought to be imminent. Scientists predicted that a vaccine to prevent the infection would be ready long before a treatment for the symptoms could be developed but the opposite turned out to be true.

Millions of people are keeping the virus under control with drugs. But these are not a cure. In contrast to virtually every other microbe known, there is no documented case of anyone who has ultimately cleared the virus from their body completely. That is why developing a vaccine to prevent the infection has been a priority.

The trial, funded by the US Army and the US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was run in Thailand because it is a country with a high rate of HIV, with a good health infrastructure and the Thai government was willing to host it.

Sheena McCormack, senior clinical scientist at the UK Medical Research Council, and the African-European HIV Vaccine Development Network, said the results of the Thai trial were statistically significant. "This is encouraging. It is proof of concept and strongly suggests we may be able to achieve a vaccine. It will help us select and design vaccine candidates for the future," she said.

The next stage would be to examine the immune response generated by the vaccine in the Thai trial. Each volunteer received four doses of one vaccine and two of the other – six jabs in all. Some got strong immune responses which failed to protect them from HIV infection while others with weaker immune responses were protected.

"Obviously, if the immune response is very strong but it is not protective that is no good. The next task is to analyse the immune responses. But with 16,000 participants in the trial that is a challenge," she added. — By arrangement with The Independent

Chatterati
Many aspirants for CM’s post
by Devi Cherian

The Maharashtra state Congress panel was formed by the AICC to frame a poll strategy and hold alliance talks with the NCP. We have veterans Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde, CM Ashok Chavan, state minister Narayan Rane and PCC chief Manikrao Thackeray acting together to make sure they come back.

But party men often wondered how this panel worked because the end goal of all its members is the same. All of them want to be the CM. While Deshmukh thinks he is born for a record-stint at the CMO, Shinde prays Sonia Gandhi will reward him with the office that was snatched away from him in 2004.

Ashok Chavan, who rocked Prithviraj Chavan's mid-day dream, hopes Rahul will continue to bless him. And despite the odds, Rane hopes to finally make it. Thackeray expects he'll emerge as the dark horse.

While all this is odd, the weirdest is that we have the screening committee headed by a Haryana minister. He has never been in the organisation or really has any knowledge of Maharashtra.

Congressmen wonder if this was a ploy to get him out of Hooda's way during the candidate selection in the state too or was this a promotion of sorts? Hooda and he really don't have any love lost.

Rajiv Foundation

Priyanka Gandhi's entry into public life is eagerly awaited. She has taken over the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, established in 1991, exactly a month after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. The foundation works in areas where Rajiv's interest lay: national development.

This foundation has always kept a low profile, but has been doing some excellent work. The trustees of the foundation include, besides her mother and brother, Dr Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram, Suman Dubey,

M.S. Swaminathan, Y.K. Alagh, R.P. Goenka, V. Krishnamuruthy and former Commonwealth Secretary General S. Ramphal. Their efforts will soon begin to show results.

Ramlilas go high tech

Ramlila celebrations are no more as simple as they used to be. This year they have gone high tech and innovative and can give serious competition to any Star Wars movie.

To ensure that swine flu does not dampen the spirit of Delhi-ites, Ramlila committees also have the facility of watching the show live on the web.

High-tech innovations are also being used to attract people. Showing Hanuman flying across the stage to get "Sanjivini booti" and special light and sound effects to create the thunder, clouds and war scenes have become common across Delhi.

This year some of the Ramlilas will also have sparks coming out of the swords of Rama and Ravana when they clash. The swords will be connected to welding machines to give this effect. A high-quality sound and lighting system and a flying Hanuman have become really common in all Ramlilas.

Because of special effects, Kumbhkaran, when woken up from his sleep, will be seen spitting fire. CCTV cameras have also been installed in some areas for security reasons. Ravan effigies may go as high as 110 feet.