The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Hooda’s challenge
Will have to take party along

In the volatile politics of Haryana where chief ministers have traditionally had short tenures, Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda can draw some comfort from the fact that he is the first chief minister to have entered a second consecutive term. But with the Congress having failed to get a majority, Mr Hooda is up against a formidable challenge in holding on to his “gaddi”. For now, Mr Hooda has skilfully managed the support of seven Independents while the Haryana Janhit Congress of Mr Kuldeep Bishnoi with its six members is also gravitating towards the Congress. However, Mr Hooda’s challenge has not ended with his swearing-in. The Independents will all demand their pound of flesh and Mr Bishnoi is already believed to be sending feelers offering support with strings attached, spoken or otherwise.

Mr Hooda’s trump card is that his arch-rival, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, will find it extremely difficult to cobble together a majority. Mr Chautala’s INLD, which has won an impressive 31 seats as against a mere nine in the earlier House, has a post-poll arrangement with the BJP which has four members. But Mr Bishnoi and Mr Chautala are at dagger’s drawn and the former knows only too well that even if he were to make common cause with the INLD, his flock could desert him in favour of the Congress. Weaning the Independents away from the Congress would also be no mean task considering that the Congress has the advantage of being in power.

Yet, Mr Hooda can indeed ill afford to be complacent. He will have to learn to take his partymen along and knit the Congress together. It is common knowledge that the Congress could have done much better than it did in the assembly elections if the infighting had not played its role. At present, the main grouse that his detractors hold against him is that he is overly indulgent towards his own district, Rohtak, and tends to neglect other regions in the state. If he is to win back the support of all sections of his partymen he will have to work towards more balanced growth in the state. Indeed, for Mr Hooda the coming months will see the test of his skills and capacity to take his party along.

If not men, the machines
In defeat, the accusing finger moves fast

There is always something wrong when a cartoon turns into a caricature. When Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, therefore, whimpers and wallows in self-pity, people sit up and take notice. His public persona, after all, is that of a roaring tiger. But apparently stunned by the Sena’s worst electoral performance in Maharashtra in the last two decades, Mr Thackeray has accused the Marathi Manoos of letting him down. In an editorial in the party mouthpiece, Saamna, the 84-year old lamented that he has been stabbed in the back.

The despairing Thackeray laments that he no longer has any faith left in either people, the Marathi Manoos or even in God. He evidently finds it difficult to swallow that while Mr Narendra Modi’s appeal to Gujarati pride fetches him rich electoral dividends and while the aggressively pro-Tamil parties like the DMK and the AIADMK share the spoils in Tamil Nadu, his belligerence in favour of the Marathi Manoos should fail to work and deprive the Shiv Sena another opportunity to rule over Maharashtra.

Equally interesting is the reaction of Mr Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the BJP spokesman, who professes to be as baffled as Mr Thackeray about the saffron party’s dismal performance in the elections. Mr Naqvi followed the line adopted by Mr Lal Krishna Advani while blaming the voting machines for the party’s debacle. Describing the EVMs as acting as the Electronic “Victory” Machines for the Congress, Mr Naqvi sought to cast aspersion on the electoral process itself.

Neither Mr Thackeray nor Mr Naqvi seem willing to concede that the electoral reverses could have anything to do with the kind of politics that had been resorted to. While Mr Thackeray is at least realistic enough to admit that his nephew Mr Raj Thackeray did him in, Mr Naqvi cannot obviously see beyond the fault-finding EVMs.

Politicians can and do produce many scapegoats for their political blunders — men or machines. They often remind people of the playwright who boasts the play to be a stupendous success but accuses the audience to have failed the play.

Thought for the Day

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. — Charles Lamb

ARTICLE

Killer called breast cancer
Early detection can help save a victim’s life
by Usha Rai

Renuka Prasad, an attractive 61-year old, has become an icon for cancer survival. Wife of a retired General and currently Joint Secretary of the Indian Cancer Society, she understands the trauma of losing a breast to cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. Counselling and hand holding, she comes on public platforms in India and abroad to raise funds and create awareness about the large number of young people suffering from breast cancer and losing their lives because they did not reach the doctor on time.

In fact, breast cancer has been identified as the biggest killer of urban women in the country, says Renuka. Some 40,000 women die of breast cancer ever year in India. While in the US and the UK women get breast cancer in their fifties and sixties, and that too is on the decline because of awareness and regular screening after a woman turns 40, in urban India it is on the increase and a lot of young people are getting it.

Yet a 100 per cent cure is possible if it is detected at an early stage, says Dr Ramesh Sarin, Chairperson of the Forum for Breast Cancer Protection and an oncologist at the Apollo Hospital, Delhi. Every year 100,000 women get breast cancer in India and 40 per cent of them die because it is detected too late or they are too shy to get themselves seen by a doctor. Eighty per cent of them reach the doctor after the second stage. Though mammography is a surer way of detecting breast cancer and is advised once a year, the number of women undergoing mammography on a regular basis is minuscule in India.

On October 2 this year, distressed by the large number of young people getting breast cancer, the Forum for Breast Cancer Protection, a group of doctors from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, Apollo Hospital, Gangaram Hospital and the Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute in Delhi and radiologists of the city organised a car rally from Delhi to Agra to create awareness about breast cancer. In the city of the Taj Mahal, they sought the assistance of doctors, nursing homes, the district administration and NGOs in containing it. Many of those in the rally were cancer survivors, their parents, siblings and friends. A hundred nursing homes and hospitals of Agra offered a free check-up for breast cancer a day after the rally.

Renuka was a part of the team organising the rally. Leading the pack of cars was Sita Paintal, 79, who has chronic myloid lukemia (a cancer of the elderly) for four years now. A frail looking woman with immense spirit, this 79-year-old drove all the 300 km to Agra. Though her two daughters had come to join her on the rally, she would not let them take the wheel. The motivation to join the rally was strong. Her sister had suffered from breast cancer and died of it a year and a half ago. A former lecturer in Delhi’s IP College, Sita Sibal, has been working for the disabled. She has worked for the National Association for the Blind and is now associated with Cancer Sahyog. She drove an Indica Vista and drew a lot of attention because of her commitment and energy despite four years with cancer.

The large number of young getting breast cancer and the hereditary nature of the mutating genes has been a major cause for concern. Dr P K Julka, professor of clinical oncology at AIIMS, said quite recently he had seen five young women of 21 to 25 years with breast cancer. Though there is evidence of an 18-year-old getting cancer, it is said to be very rare. When Shweta (name changed), who had just celebrated her 18th birthday with her school buddies, reported at the Tata Cancer Research Institute in Mumbai with a lump in her breast little did she realise that it would change her life. It was sheer luck that her mother insisted that she must visit the hospital for there was a history of cancer in the family and Shweta’s aunt had died of cancer at the age of 45 just two years earlier. The lump deep in the tissues of the breast was already over 2 centimetres and Shweta had to undergo a masectomy and the trauma of getting disfigured in the bloom of youth. But she survived after the surgery and several rounds of chemotherapy.

The young woman, in her early thirties today, never got married. Her family and friends rallied around her and ensured that she pursued her studies and got into a career that has to some extent erased the painful memories of cancer at 18! But she continues to have her annual check-ups to ensure that she remains cancer-free.

Here again was evidence of the hereditary factor. But it was the alertness of her mother that saved Shweta’s life. Dr Julka says the factors that can increase the likelihood of hereditary breast cancer include breast cancer before the age of 45, cancer in both breasts, male breast cancer and several cases of breast and/or ovarian cancer on the same side of a family. In fact the mutations that cause cancer have been identified as BRCA-1 and BRCA-2. The BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 gene mutations are linked primarily to breast and ovarian cancer, bur BRCA 2 mutations carry a somewhat higher risk for other cancers. But even without a family history there are chances of getting breast cancer.

In urban areas changing lifestyle has increased the risk factor for cancer. Breast cancer has overtaken cervical cancer in urban areas, but in rural areas because of poor hygiene there are more cases of cervical cancer. Obesity, consumption of fatty foods, delay in the age of marriage as well as in having children, not breast-feeding babies long enough and too much of estrogen in the system increases the chances of breast cancer.

If the first child is born after the woman turns 30, she is more prone to breast cancer. In fact, breast feeding provides protection against cancer. The scientific reason for this has yet to be established but it could have something to do with levels of estrogen remaining low in a lactating mother. Dr Shekhar Pant, the Vice-Chairman of the Forum for Protection Against Breast Cancer and a radiologist, says if a girl starts menstruating at 10 and has her first child at 45 years, there would be high levels of estrogen in her system. These days many working women tend to breast-feed their babies for just six weeks to two months and this means less immunity to breast cancer. Hormone therapy after menopause increases estrogen levels, so women should have regular check-ups after the therapy, says Dr Pant.

He also questions the myth that the radiation from mammography could lead to cancer. A federal drug administration risk/benefit analysis in the US where 10,000 persons who had undergone mammography were followed up for 29 years has conclusively proved that mammography does not cause cancer.

Self-examination regularly is one of the ways of detecting breast cancer though not the best. A 13-minute educational film on breast self-examination has been prepared by the Forum with the support of well-known television actresses like Sakshi Tanwar, Shweta Keswani and Apara Mehta who have lent voice to the film, and cancer survivors and their children have come forward to demonstrate how self-examination should be done. Not only is the film being screened widely but hundreds of CDs on self-examination are also being distributed.

So, mammography every year is advised by the Forum after the woman crosses 40 and even earlier if there is a history of cancer in the family. If the person comes to a doctor at the first stage, when the lump in the breast is just one centimetre, survival chances are high. When the lump is 2 centimetres it is the second stage of cancer and the treatment is prolonged. At the third stage when the lump is 4 to 5 centimetres, there is a 40 per cent chance of survival after aggressive treatment.

Counselling and family support are vital for all those going through cancer. In the case of breast cancer, men and women face several psychological and social problems. Men whose wives have breast cancer reject them as “katti, phatti women”.

Though most people think of breast cancer as an ailment of women, men too get breast cancer but it is quite rare. Since male breasts have less tissue, their lump would be in the periphery. A senior army officer was diagnosed with a lump in his breast and had to get it out surgically. It was a traumatic experience and it took him years before he could talk about it.

MIDDLE

Cellphone, the unsuspected ‘swine’ flu
by S S Bhatti

SWINE flu has made its advent in the country when the cell-phone has already become inextricably grounded in the Indian soil. Or, it may be more appropriate to say that the device has been so ingrained in the national psyche that it is impossible to sever the electronic device from the ear even surgically.

Ever wondered why we have become so incurably addicted to this upbeat disease so easily, so fast. This is because we Indians are the most talkative people in the world. Before the arrival of the cell-phone we sought the lusty satisfaction of our native loquacity on the stage. Once the mike fell in our possession no Hercules could separate us from the volume-augmenting gadget. Now that privilege solely belongs to the politicians and the TV gurus.

At home, on the street, in the park, and the market, even in the public toilet, cell-phone is an un-divorceable life-mate of India’s “generation x” and “generation y”. It may be hard to decipher what turns the 24x7 use of cell-phone into a national epidemic, but one thing is certain that it is the closest instrument as an effective replacement of inmates of the house to satisfy one’s lust for genetic talkativeness.

I see young boys and girls during walks holding the phone, as if riveted to the ear, engaged in endless harangues—even in early morning. It is not walk while you talk. It is talk while you walk. In our days, if anyone was seen sticking his hand to the temple, the sympathy-dripping query would be: Have you hurt your ear?

The genre of the Homo sapiens called the “politician” suffers from chronic vocal diarrhoea for which modern medical science has no cure. And if our own much-hyped Ayurveda had it, the disease wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

A mantri once asked his private secretary to reduce his public speech from one hour to half an hour, which he conscientiously did so that his boss could impress the mongrel assortment of audience as a man of few words. But the honourable people’s elected representative spent an hour delivering the public address. The restive audience conveyed that the impact was far from impressive. When he accosted his PS, the poor fellow told the minister that although the speech was timed exactly at 30 minutes, the respected “Sir”, in his undiminished enthusiasm, had read out the carbon copy too!

Both the deadly afflictions, the cell-phone and swine flu, have come from the world’s singular superpower. But the problem is that, although the cell-phone epidemic is much more dangerous than swine flu, those suffering from it don’t rush to the hospitals for treatment. They run to the market for a recharge! If these unsuspecting teeming millions have survived the aural virus, God alone can save the country. Until then, Vande Mataram!

OPED

Climate change creates a new kind of refugee
by Edmund Sanders

For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim's ancestors herded cattle and goats across an unforgiving landscape in southern Somalia where few others were hearty enough to survive. This year, Ibrahim became the first in his clan to throw in the towel, abandoning his land and walking for a week to bring his family to this overcrowded refugee camp in Kenya.

He's not fleeing warlords, Islamist insurgents or Somalia's 18-year civil war. He's fleeing the weather.

"I give up," said the father of five as he stood in line recently to register at the camp. After enduring four years of drought and the death of his last 20 animals, Ibrahim, 28, said he has no plans to return.

Asked how he planned to live, Ibrahim shrugged: "I want to be a refugee."

Africa is already home to one-third of the 42 million people worldwide uprooted by ethnic slaughter, despots and war. But experts say climate change is quietly driving Africa's displacement crisis to new heights. Ibrahim is one of an estimated 10 million people worldwide who have been driven out of their homes by rising seas, failing rain, desertification or other climate-driven factors.

Norman Myers, an Oxford University professor and one of the first scholars to draw attention to the unfolding problem, estimated there will be more than 25 million climate refugees by 2050, replacing war and persecution as the leading cause of global displacement.

Africa will be heaviest hit because so many people's livelihoods are dependent upon farming and livestock. Many Africans use less water in a day than the average American uses to flush the toilet, so any further declines that might occur because of climate change could be life-threatening.

"Climate change is going to set back development and food production in sub-Saharan Africa at least a decade and perhaps two or three," he said.

It's a reminder that behind the science, statistics and debate over global warming, climate change is already having a deep impact on Africa's poverty, security and culture. And a serious global discussion about climate refugees has barely begun, in part over concerns about who will pick up the tab, some experts say.

So far there's no comprehensive strategy for coping with climate refugees, who are not yet legally recognized and receive no direct funding. As a result, those fleeing drought, flood and other weather changes usually end up in slums or refugee camps that were set up and funded for other purposes.

"If we were a corporation, climate change is what you might call a `growth area,' " said Andy Needham, spokesman the Dadaab office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The crisis is apparent at this refugee camp, which was built for 90,000 people and now houses three times as many, near the Kenya-Somalia border. In some cramped corners of the camp, 20 people live in an area not much bigger than a U.S. living room. With no room to expand, graves and human bones are being dug up to make space for new huts and much-needed latrines.

Most here are Somalis who have been fleeing insecurity since the 1991 collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship. But U.N. officials estimate as many as 10 percent of Dadaab's residents are climate refugees. For newcomers, the percentage may be even higher.

"Lately the majority we see coming here are because of the drought," said Bile Mohamed Ahmed, a refugee who serves as an elected camp leader.

Rukiya Ali Abdirahman, 35, and her husband lived in a southern Somalia region that was largely untouched by clan warfare and fighting. The couple tended a small farm, growing food for themselves and selling the excess. But three years ago, the rainfall began to lessen. Crops failed. So they abandoned their home and came to Dadaab, where he works on odd construction jobs and she makes mud bricks.

"I would have been happy to stay on the farm and die there," she said. "We could have coped with the insecurity. But we couldn't cope with not having anything to eat. That's when we left."

Even some Kenyan farmers and herders have been driven into the camp by drought, though technically Kenyans are not supposed to register because they are not Somalis and not fleeing violence.

The Kenyan government estimates about 4,600 of its citizens are living in Dadaab. Officials are forcing them to either renounce their citizenship or leave the camp.

Kenyans in the camp say it's unfair to make them choose, because they are just as needy as those fleeing violence.

"The border has never meant anything to us," said one Kenyan herdsman, whose name was withheld for his protection. He lost 250 animals over the past three years. "There was no place else for me to go," he said.

Other climate refugees are flooding into Kenya's larger cities. Herders from tribes such as Maasai and Borano are now a common sight in Nairobi's slums, where many are forced to beg for money or take jobs as hairdressers and security guards -- something hard to swallow for a people who take pride in being their own bosses.

"It's painful to watch," said John Letai, a coordinator for Oxfam, the British aid agency. He said climate change is threatening the viability of the herdsmen's lifestyle, which is already struggling to find its place in the modern world. "Climate change is just adding problems to a way of life that is already injured," he said.

By one estimate, a quarter of Kenya's herdsmen have abandoned their livelihoods over the past century.

The migration of climate refugees to the cities is accelerating Kenya's urbanization, according to Oxfam, which estimates one-quarter of the growth in Nairobi's slums now comes from families fleeing rural areas. That influx is taking a toll on the city's health and education infrastructure. In a reversal of past trends, children in Nairobi's slums are now less likely to be immunized and less likely to attend high school than their rural counterparts, an Oxfam study found.

Still, the international community has been slow to react, or in some cases even acknowledge the existence of climate refugees. That's partly because countries suffering from climate change today are usually poor, underdeveloped and politically marginalized. There is also a debate in the West about how to distinguish climate refugees from those feeling disasters or poverty.

Bangladesh, which stands to lose up to one-fifth of its land to rising seas, has been at the forefront of pressing industrial nations to update their immigration policies and accept climate refugees.

But the UNHCR doesn't see climate refugees as part of its responsibility. Under the 1951 Geneva Convention, refugees are defined as people fleeing their country because of violence or persecution.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

China’s pillars or eyesores?
by Vijay Sanghvi

A controversy is raging over the existence of 56 pillars that are standing in full glory and are covering the world-famous Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Red regime has merely postponed its decision on the growing demand that they must be relocated to restore the two great monuments of China to their original glory.

There columns were raised in 1958 that made a permanent change to the world’s largest open square covering nearly 4,40,000 square metre area with the entrance to the Forbidden City on one side, the great Hall of nation symbolised by the Chinese Parliament to the other side.

The square had been the venue for all national celebrations for the past sixty years as it was also a venue that reflected the first restiveness two decades earlier which was brutally crushed by the regime.

But the restiveness has returned. The ethnic clashes in the western parts of the country, especially in Xinjiang province, reflect that restiveness. The worst-ever ethnic clashes in the decade were seen in July this year.

Now twelve persons have been given the death sentence by the court in Urumqi, which is the capital of the province, for their role in violent clashes between Uygurs and the dominant ethnic group, the Hans, that had left more than 200 persons dead.

The controversy also reflects the growing political unrest with professionals displaying courage to demand from the government that it must remove their pillars and relocate them elsewhere.

Many had doubted the political correctness of raising these pillars to symbolise the ethnic unity of China in 1958 because their raising had turned the square into a prison-like place even though it attracts thousands of tourists each year. But the pillars underwent three changes since the raising of the monument to the People’s Heroes and also the mausoleum of Mao Zedong in 1977.

But the tall columns, each weighing nearly 26 tonnes of cement and steel, have become eyesores as most people see them as redundant intruders in the landscape, particularly because of their decorations. The pillars are decorated with golden-coloured designs and painted red. There are insignias of different ethnic groups to represent their unity. But there was also an explanation in selecting these two colours, red representing the power of state and golden colour signifying the prosperity of the nation.

The government was to take a decision on their existence but has preferred to defer it. A staff member of the Beijing Beiao Grand Cultural and Sports Event Company, that has helped in designing and maintaining of these columns for over five decades, said, “They would remain where they are till the government takes a final decision on them.”

Beijing-based architect Gu Mengchao says that the giant pillars are distracting and has ruined the landscape of Tiananmen Square. These columns have reduced the role of two monuments, including the Gate of Heavenly Peace. He wants that permanent structures on the square, including the reviewing stands on each side of the Gate of Heavenly Peace and the marble columns must be able to stand the test of time.

Another senior architect who is working with the Beijing civic authorities, Luo Zhongzhao, feels even more strongly the redundancy of these pillars because they have reduced to nothingness the two other monuments of greater historical importance the Great Hall of the People and the National Museum.

The pillars were raised to symbolise the ethnic unity, which stands shattered by the recent ethnic clashes in Tibet and recently in Xinjiang province. In any case, other buildings were already symbolising the national ethnic unity.

“We have no ideas when they were erected in the first place but the people must have a say since the square is recognised as a symbol of Chinese unity”, says Luo. He finds many echoing his strong sentiments because the columns standing only 5.9 metres away from each other are conveying the message contrary to the original intensions as they reduced to the square to look smaller though it attracts every day thousands of visitors.

However, a cultural art critic, Zhu Dake, says that walking on the square covered from all four sides by these columns and with sentries guarding them to keep visitors away from these columns give an eerie feeling to every one as if they were walking in the courtyard of a prison and not in the great square of China.

Other critics add that these columns are said to represent 56 ethnic groups of China but many more ethnic groups are banging at the doors of the government to demand their inclusion in the list. Hence, the 56 pillars cannot symbolise the ethnic unity of China.

Delhi Durbar
The changing image of judiciary

The judiciary’s image has undergone a sea change in the past one year. This is reflected not only by the public perception but also by statements of the successive Law Ministers.

Addressing the Law Day function last year, the then Minister HR Bhardwaj said judges were discharging “divine functions.”

A few months later, he changed his opinion, stating that in Britain judges were considered “angels,” but it was not so in India.

On assuming office, M Veerappa Moily also held the judiciary in high esteem, stating that it was on a par with the best systems in developed countries.

The shocker of a statement came last week with Moily calling for “resurrection of the judiciary’s credibility.” This is viewed as a clear acknowledgement that not much is left of its image any longer.

Suspension of an MP

Last week the JD-U announced the suspension of three of its MPs, including the lone Muslim member in the Rajya Sabha, Ejaz Ali. Two Lok Sabha members – Puranmasi Ram and Jagdish Sharma – were sacked by the party for setting up their kith and kin in the recent assembly elections, spoiling the chances of the party candidates.

But Ali was penalised for repeatedly attempting to create a rift between the JD-U and its senior NDA partner the BJP.

True, throughout the general election Ali was campaigning against L.K. Advani and embarrassing his JD-U.

But his ouster could have far-reaching repercussions on the party. Naturally, rival Lalu Yadav may go to town questioning the secular credentials of the JD-U shouting over the rooftops that Nitish Kumar prefers Advani/Sushil Modi to a Muslim leader.

But more importantly, Ejaz Ali was the JD-U’s mascot leader of Pasmanda (backward) Muslims. Nitish Kumar and some of his supporters in the media had assiduously created and built up Ali as the symbol of injustice to the lower-caste Muslims.

Bhajan Lal turns saviour

For long Bhajan Lal was known in Congress circles as the man who helped the party tide over many a crisis. The hung assembly situation in Haryana has forced the Congress bosses to turn towards Bhajan Lal again.

This old-warhorse had once famously “ensured” that the minority Narasimha Rao government (1991-96) at the Centre survived its term.

For the uninitiated, Bhajan Lal was the man who saved the government and ensured that the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) led by Shibu Soren voted in favour of the Congress and saved the Rao government.

The Congress suddenly remembered the long-forgotten Bhajan Lal yet again because his Haryana Janhit Congress has won six seats – crucial to form a government.

Old Congress loyalists have been deputed to contact Bhajan Lal.

A joke doing the rounds in political circles is that it is now Bhajan Lal’s turn to receive from the Congress what he gave to Soren once to save the same Congress.

Contributed by R Sedhuraman, Ajay Banerjee and Faraz Ahmad

Corrections and clarifications

n The headline “CII survey predicts growth between 6 – 7 pc” (Page 15, Oct 6) is flawed. It should have been … growth between 6 and 7 pc or growth of 6 – 7 pc.

n In the report “Manmohan, Wen stress on harmony, trust” (Page 1, Oct 25) in the fifth para, Asian century has gone as Asian sanctuary.

n The headline “No condition on Pak for US aid: Holbrooke” (Page 19, Oct 24) should instead have been “No condition on US aid to Pak: Holbrooke”.

n The headline “No paying guests without antecedents” (Page 3, Oct 22) is incorrect. It should have been “No paying guests without checks”.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua,
Editor-in-Chief