MB Lal Book 3
29.
Matthew M. Mench – Letter
Mexico
Silent Valley
U.S.
Saturday, 25 April, 2009 1:33 AM
To: "Saroj Lal" <saroj_lal@yahoo.com>
Dear Mr. Lal,
I am writing to thank you for your detailed
information on the snowbreeze you sent to Prof. Sinha, and to tell you I have
used it in my undergraduate Thermodynamics class of 85 students. Professor
Sinha has an office down the hall from me and shared with me the snowbreeze
details. I presented to the class the design, the video, and explained about
the background to why the device is especially useful in India . As the students were
taking a thermodynamics class, it was a perfect example of an engineering
system that used our textbook material in an applied application.
Actually, I also used it to demonstrate a basic principle I try to teach my students
that often, if they are creative, a simple solution can emerge that is better
than conventional approaches. I have recently found out that I will teach
this class again next Spring, and I hope that you do not mind if I continue to
use this in my classes in the future.
Thanks again and congratulations on such an
interesting design.
Matthew
Matthew M. Mench, Ph.D.
Matthew M. Mench, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Mechanical
Engineering
Director, Fuel Cell Dynamics and
Diagnostics Laboratory
Vice President of Development,
International Association for
Hydrogen Energy,
Associate Editor, International
Journal of Hydrogen Energy.
Re: Snowbreeze Automated Model – 3.pdf
Wednesday, 28 October, 2009 8:45 AM
From: "Matthew
Mench" <mmm124@psu.edu>
To: "Saroj Lal" saroj_lal@yahoo.com
Dear Mr. Lal,
Thanks so much for the update, I am very glad you sent it. I will be teaching a class of over 130 engineers in the Spring, I will plan to add this into their lessons. It is a really good lesson, actually. There is some great engineering with basic principles, and it shows them that a solution need not be complex, only to work. In the
With
best reagrds,
Matthew
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Reading the future in Mexico’s malls
India may soon go the way of the North American country where small stores have vanished from the city, agriculture has declined and unemployment is huge
The driver of the taxi that took me from the airport to the hotel in Mexico city was a computer systems analyst. He was a cheerful English speaking man who talked about himself and his family’s woes in the hour it took to cover the 30 km. He wanted to know about the global economic crisis so that he could figure out why things were bad in Mexico for people like him. He complained about unemployment and his inability to get the right job without connections — a fate his children also face. He blamed the U.S. and its policies and corruption in society. This was a recurrent theme during my week-long stay in Mexico recently.
Big malls
The taxi passed through many commercial and residential areas but I saw no small shops. There were big malls, automobile dealers, petrol stations, restaurants, pharmacy stores and car repair shops. I wondered if the small stores were in the residential colonies. A friend who had been posted in the Indian Embassy in the mid-1980s had mentioned that there were fruit stores everywhere and one could make a meal of fruits in the evening but such shops were nowhere to be seen. I wondered if this was the future that awaited the Indian metropolises.
The absence of small stores was perplexing but more intriguing was the serious unemployment, given that Mexico has been a part of NAFTA since 1994 and which brought in much foreign investment. Many factories have relocated from the U.S. to Northern Mexico to supply the U.S. and Canadian markets and so on. The city was bustling with cars. It is prosperous compared to India with a per capita income 10 times ours. There are layers of flyovers — one on top of the other — but there are traffic jams. During day time, it takes two to three hours to cover a distance that takes 25 minutes early in the morning. The public transport system consists of rail, buses and trams but people are stuck in traffic for a good part of their day. The city has to spread horizontally since it is built on landfill and there is a lot of water below the surface, and multi-storeyed buildings require expensive deep foundations. So, most buildings are one or two stories high, forcing the city of 25 million to spread out.
Old timers remember that Mexico city had small stores until the mid-1980s. Only the organised sector stores survive now, like the Sanborn chain belonging to Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world. Sanborn has a unique model of a restaurant on the first floor and a gift shop, pharmacy and other such conveniences on the ground floor. The young I talked to did not remember seeing corner stores in residential colonies.
From my hotel window, perched eight floors up, I could see malls but no small stores. Sears, Walmart, McDonalds — they were there like anywhere in the U.S. In residential colonies, I did see a few small stores but most of them were American Seven Elevens. And there are pavement stalls and markets where the poor purchase their necessities. It was ironical to see workers in ties from malls cross the street to eat at pavement stalls — perhaps they could not afford to eat in the mall.
On a visit to the charming town centre, it was refreshing to see streets lined with small stores. My escort told me that many people came here to shop because it was cheaper. I went outside Mexico City to Teotihuacan to see the Pyramids. The huge pyramid of the Sun god is apparently a few times larger than the biggest Egyptian pyramids. It was part of an ancient city 2,000 years ago, which was over three miles long and had more than 1.5 lakh people. All this was awe-inspiring but it was tiring because it involved hours of walking and climbing up and down. At the end of it, we went to the neighbouring town to eat. At its entrance was a beautiful arch which said Teotihuacan Pueblo con Encanto. The streets were lined with small stores.
Village republic
The next day, I visited the village Tlalnepantla in Morelos. I counted dozens of small shops for a population of a few thousand. This is a revolutionary village. Alvaro, our host, is an economics graduate who settled down here 40 years ago. He cultivates Nopal, or cactus, with the rest of the villagers. His small garden has trees bearing guava, avacados, lime and lukat. He has successfully experimented with creating a village republic. It was amazing to see the hilly village surrounded by 4,000 hectares of Nopal cultivation. Even more breathtaking was the clear view of the distant volcano from which a plume of smoke emanated.
The village had rejected the corrupt political parties. Villagers selected their own leader and did not recognise the president of the municipality, a party man. The government sent in troops declaring Alvaro and others terrorists and they had to go underground. There were protests all over Mexico, especially in the universities. The government was forced to drop the charges and come to an agreement. The land here belongs to the community and cannot be sold to outsiders. Hearing that an Indian professor was visiting the village, its leaders came with lunch and cactus products — cooked as vegetable, turned into pickle and marmalade, very delicious. Alvero asked me about Gandhiji, his philosophy of non-violence and how it could be applied to a modern society. Gandhiji seems to have a special place in Mexico. A chain of book stores is called ‘Gandhi.’ There are parks and roads named after Gandhiji.
The farmers are upset with the U.S. and NAFTA. They complained that the free market had enabled subsidised food to come from the U.S. and destroyed their agriculture which now contributes only four per cent of GDP. Thus, the two big employers, agriculture and retail trade, have suffered in the last two decades, which is why unemployment is high (5.2 per cent), and underemployment is at 25 per cent. I met a professor who said his son got a job only because of his connections and another said his son doing a Ph.D. was worried about the future. Why is this happening with so much foreign investment? Unemployment has driven down wages. An Assistant Professor at the university complained that he could barely make ends meet with his salary, which is determined by the number of lectures he gives in a month. He thought the taxi-driver was better off than him.
Mafia rule
In Northern Mexico where investments from the U.S. have poured in, the mafia has taken over and there is lawlessness. The state there seems to be withering away. Unemployed youth join the mafia. There is drug trafficking and illegal migration of youth into the U.S. It is this migration that has kept unemployment from getting worse. The migrants send money back home. Remittances along with income from petroleum exports and tourism keep the Mexican economy afloat and prevent the crisis from deepening.
Instead of solving Mexico’s problems, its proximity to the U.S., free trade with it and investments from there have led to deepening unemployment, the decline of traditional agriculture and the end of small retailers in metro cities. I wondered whether what I was seeing in Mexico was India fast forwarded 20 years, when there will be lots of cars and traffic jams in the metros, lots of malls too, but few small retail shops, high unemployment and a crisis in agriculture. Small stores are likely to survive only in small towns and villages.
Our crisis is likely to be worse than Mexico’s since we do not border the largest economy in the world where our youth could illegally migrate. Nor are we likely to get investment in per capita terms matching Mexico. We do not have petroleum or tourism income to prop us either. So, does Mexico mirror a part of our future, if we continue with our current policies?
(Arun Kumar is Chairperson and Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair Professor, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University.)
arunkumar1000@hotmail.com
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Reviving dead rivers
The Supreme Court’s decision to get an independent technical
assessment on how the Yamuna can be revived from its deathly state is a
deserved rebuke to the Delhi administration and equally, the Ministry of
Environment and Forests for the manner in which they have been handling
the issue of pollution control.
The Supreme Court’s decision to get an independent technical assessment
on how the Yamuna can be revived from its deathly state is a deserved
rebuke to the Delhi administration and equally, the Ministry of
Environment and Forests for the manner in which they have been handling
the issue of pollution control. For many years now, the Ministry has
been aware of the torrents of untreated sewage that choke both the
Yamuna and Ganga. The Central Pollution Control Board has produced
detailed reports on the problem and attributed the Yamuna’s slow death
between Hathnikund and Agra to the unmitigated discharge of effluents.
Regrettably, in spite of constant monitoring by the CPCB and the
worsening state of the river, the MoEF has pursued little more than
incremental steps. Delhi’s civic agencies have also not delivered on the
sewage treatment plants that are so vital for restoration. Clearly,
mitigating river pollution enjoys low priority. Parliament was informed
recently that the Ganga is so polluted with faecal coliform matter that
it does not meet water quality norms all the way from Kanpur to Diamond
Harbour in Kolkata. It will take another eight years under the Mission
Clean Ganga for the flow of untreated sewage (exceeding 1,600 million
litres a day) and industrial effluents into the river to stop. All this
reflects an indolent approach to urban pollution control, which stands
in contrast to hectic speculation in real estate.
A clean-up programme for India’s rivers requires vigorous application of
the ‘polluter pays’ principle. Since much of India is inexorably moving
towards urbanisation, the focus of policy must be on planned housing,
water supply and sanitation. For New Delhi, the Supreme Court had
ordered even in 1999 that a specific quantum of water flow be ensured in
the Yamuna for its revival. That no salvage operation has proved
successful is a telling commentary on the efficacy of the expensive
Yamuna Action Plan, which is now into its third phase. It would be
appropriate, therefore, for the court to put in place a review mechanism
for the cleansing operation to follow, with clear reporting
requirements. Accountability norms for official agencies are necessary
for the restoration of many more rivers that have been killed off by
pollution. Although the Environment (Protection) Act and the Water
(Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act are intended to protect
India’s waterways, the CPCB and the State Pollution Control Boards are
unwilling to use them effectively. Also, a more ecologically sound
approach towards environmental flows in rivers is necessary. That would
mean building fewer big dams, and making more life-giving water
available to rivers.
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Gandhi and Ecological Marxists: A Study of Silent Valley Movement
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By Sasikala A.S.
Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, Chennai-36
E-mail: sasikala.iitm@yahoo.com
Abstract
The environmental concern was minimal at the time of Gandhi, but his ideas on Village Swaraj, decentralization, Swadeshi, Sarvodyaetc made him an advocate of environmentalism. He is often considered as a man with deep ecological view. The ideas of Gandhi have been widely used by different streams of environmental philosophy like green, deep ecology, etc and different environmental movements across the globe. An eminent environmental thinker Ramachandra Guha identified three distinct strands in Indian Environmentalism, the Crusading Gandhians, Appropriate Technologists and Ecological Marxists. He observed that, unlike the third one, the first two strands rely heavily on Gandhi. The purpose of this paper is to identify the Gandhian elements used by the Ecological Marxists in India. The Silent Valley Movement from Kerala is taken as a case study to analyze how ecological Marxists resort to Gandhian techniques to fight against environmental injustice. The role of Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), a People’s Science Movement (PSM) from Kerala with a Marxist background is studied to understand different strategies they used in the movement. It is observed that the methodologies adopted throughout the movement are inspired by Gandhian methods as previously used by other environmental movements like Chipko. The paper concludes that, like the Crusading Gandhians and Alternate Technologists, the Ecological Marxists also adopted the Gandhian strategies to work for ecological stability.
Introduction
Environmental Movements in India is a response to the environmental challenges faced by the country from the time of colonialism to the present in the name of development and modernity. These movements are often direct manifestations of Gandhian non-violence and peace making. Gandhian non-violence had been accepted by the environmental movements as their prime objective. Green movements in India and outside have claimed an affinity with Gandhi. Petra Kelly, founder of German green party, wrote in 1990 that the green party had been directly influenced by Gandhi in thinking that “a lifestyle and a method of production which rely on an endless supply of raw materials and a lavish use of these raw materials generate the motive for the violent appropriation of raw materials from other countries.”[i] Arne Naess, father of deep ecology also admits that his work on the philosophy of ecology or ecosophy, was developed out of his work on Spinoza and Gandhi. He explains that Gandhi manifested the internal relation between self-realization, non-violence and has been called bio-spherical egalitarianism, and points out that he was inevitably influenced by mahatma’s metaphysics which contributed to keeping him (the mahatma) going until his death[ii]. It was the contribution of Gandhi to the philosophy of Deep Ecology that made him a champion of environmentalism. Both Gandhi and Naess believed that ‘self-realization’ is essential to understand any kind of problems or conflicts.
Environmentalism as a movement started in India in 1970’s and flourished with the Chipko movement. Unlike the western environmental movements which represented the upper and middle class, Indian environmental movements signified the “environmentalism of the poor”[iii]. These movements are often led by the peasants and indigenous people, especially the women folk. It “links issues of ecology with question of human rights, ethnicity and distributive justice”[iv]. Often it begins with efforts promoting community development, literacy and political empowerment and sometimes, moves to a battle to determine who own/controls the use of land. Most of these movements relied on the Gandhian values of ecological prudence and frugality and followed the Gandhian model of decentralized democracy and village Swaraj. At the same time, some movements like Silent Valley movement from Kerala exemplify the synthesis of both Gandhian and Marxian ideologies. This paper is an attempt to understand the Gandhian linkage to the Silent Valley movement which was initiated and inspired by the Marxist group.
A Short History of Silent Valley Movement
Silent Valley Movement is the tale of a battle against the state to protect a pristine evergreen rainforest of Kerala. Silent Valley is situated in Palghat district and contains India’s last substantial stretch of tropical evergreen forest. It is the only vestige of near virgin forest in the whole of Western Ghats. It is estimated to have a continuous record of not less than 50 million years of evolution.[v] The name Silent Valley gained an epic dimension, when the Save Silent Valley Movement stirred by the missionary zeal and fervour of NGO’s, the scientific community and conservation activists with social awareness resulted in the decision to abandon a hydroelectric project which would have otherwise submerged 830 hectares of rich tropical rainforests in Silent valley.[vi] It was the decision of the British government to build a dam across Kunti River, which originates from the Silent Valley forest. Somehow, the project was not implemented at that time. In 1951, the first survey for hydroelectric project was done by the state government and in 1973; Planning Commission of India approved the project plan. That was the beginning of a historical debate on whether to opt for the conservation of nature or to promote development.
The uniqueness of Silent Valley is that it harbours at least 108 varieties Orchids. The forest is a repository of medicinal plants, with 80 per cent of the drug listed in standard Pharmacopoeias and 66 per cent of the species and aromatic plants used world over. It is a valuable source of some genetic variants. At least 21 flowering plants discovered in the valley are new to Science[vii]. The presence of 23 mammalian species, including three endangered species like Tiger, Lion-tailed Macaque, and Nilgiri Langur has been recorded. The teachers and scientists who realized the importance of Silent valley came forward to protest against the project. Later in 1976 National Committee on Planning and Coordination (NCEPC) recommended a stay on the project in order to study its environmental impact. Kerala Natural History Society and Bombay Natural History Society demanded the cessation of the project in 1978. Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), a renowned People’s Science Movement (PSM) from Kerala published their report on the ecological, economic, and social impacts of the hydro-electric project. Several Committees had been appointed by the Central and State Governments, among which Dr. M S Swaminathan Committee and Dr. MGK Menon Committee strongly opposed the project citing the environmental impact. In between, several campaigns were led by KSSP, teacher-student organizations and so on. It might be the first time in the Indian history, that eminent creative writers joined together to fight for such a cause. Through poems and drama, stories and articles, speeches and kavi sammelan (Poet’s meet) they conveyed the message to the Kerala’s literate public. The supporters of the project argued that the people who oppose the power project were against the nation’s interests and prefer monkeys rather than the human beings. The KSEB pointed the low unit cost of power offered by the high watershed of Silent Valley which covered four districts of Malabar. The debate went on for a long time and at last in 1983, the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi advised the state to abandon the project and she announced Silent Valley as a National Park. In 1985 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi gifted the national park to the nation.
Relevance of the movement
Silent Valley movement was the continuation of the development debate which had already started in India with the Chipko movement. The success of the movement opened a new paradigm of development which ensures environmental sustainability and rights of the non-human world. Especially in Kerala, the movement created public awareness that the development which harms the environment is short-term, and hence it will adversely affect the social and economic life of the future generations. The development vs. monkey debate and the victory of the cause of endangered species proved the fact that the non-human world has the same right to live on earth. The inclination of the movement towards the left rewrote the Marxist notion of nature as a resource base to nature as a treasure which has to be protected. The ideological split within the Marxist party regarding the Silent valley issue was the reflection of the alteration in the idea of development. It was a hefty task imposed on KSSP to educate the local people, who were fascinated by the industrial benefits of the power project and its employment opportunities, about the significance of the rainforest which would be submerged. The incessant struggle fought by KSSP and various groups taught them the first lesson of environmentalism that without protecting the nature we cannot protect ourselves. The environmental history of the nation, as well as the state shows that the success of Silent Valley movement influenced the people to protest against the environmental injustices in their vicinity. The movement also contributed to the activities of ecological Marxists in India which follows the Gandhian non-violent strategy.
The Silent Valley movement became a meeting place for different ideas regarding the development and the management of natural resources. KSSP itself published and distributed several pamphlets and study reports on the issue. One of the important pamphlets,The Silent valley Project: Parishad’s Stand and Explanation[viii] argue that “the Silent Valley issue raised some serious concerns like people’s attitude towards development, the conflict between various interest groups, the development of Palghat- Malappuram districts, providing adequate amount of energy to the Malabar zone, the electricity generating policies of Kerala government etc.” KSSP faced many challenges from the Marxist party itself; one of its foremost leaders E Balanandan wrote in favor of the project ignoring the idea of Silent Valley as an ecological paradise. The people who preferred the project conversed that the project wouldn’t do any harm to the rain forest; the project area covers only 830 hectares of land among the total area of 8952 hectare. Against this argument KSSP argued that “this attitude is like saying the size of human heart is insignificant comparing the size of the whole body, and therefore the ruin of the heart will not affect the body.[ix]” All these debates on the Silent Valley project keep the movement active throughout the period and forced people to think in favor of the environment.
Gandhi and Ecological Marxism
The independent India witnessed several developmental policies which both protects and destructs the natural environment. Gadgil and Guha observed that the development policies of India created three kinds of people, the omnivores, ecosystem people and the ecological refugees. Omnivores comprise the elite group who are the real beneficiaries of the economic development. The ecological refugees encompass the displaced and environmentally exploited tribal and downtrodden while the ecosystem people depend the natural environment for their material needs. The independent India became “a cauldron of conflicts” between these groups, “triggered by the abuse of natural resources to benefit the narrow elite of the omnivores[x]”. The environmental movements mushroomed in India as a response against this abuse. Guha identified three ideological trends in Indian environmental activism; crusading Gandhians, ecological Marxists and appropriate technologists[xi]. He argues that the crusading Gandhians upholds the pre-capitalist and pre-colonial village community as the exemplar of ecological and social harmony. The methods of action favoured by this group are squarely in the Gandhian tradition-or at least of one interpretation of that tradition-fasts, padayatras, and poojas, in which a traditional cultural idiom is used to further the strictly modern cause of environmentalism. The appropriate technologists strive for a working synthesis of agriculture and industry, big and small units, and western and eastern technological traditions. The ecological Marxists are hostile to traditions and rely heavily on the scientific facts. Guha mentions the works of KSSP as an instance of ecological Marxism.
While closely analyzing the movement one can see the elements of these three strands in Silent Valley movement. Like the crusading Gandhians, the movement adopted the Gandhian methodologies to protest against the environmental injustice. The activists of the movement include people from different strata of society, like students, teachers, intellectuals, journalists, social workers etc. They organized padayatras, prayer meetings etc to educate the public. KSSP (Ecological Marxists as explained by Guha) used science as a medium to analyze the facts that the present project is not enough to satisfy the existing power needs. They taught the people of how the Silent Valley forest contributed to the southern monsoon and blissful climate. The grass root acceptability of KSSP and its wide audience helped the movement to achieve its objectives.
The ideological difference between the Gandhian and Marxian system of environmentalism is that Gandhi believed modern industrialization as the root cause of environmental degradation while Marxists think capitalism as the major element which deteriorates the environment. Marx suggests the development of science and technology as a tool for mastering nature while Gandhi considers science and technology as a hindrance to nature conservation. Gandhi advocates the limitation of human wants for the sake of nature while Marx stood for “each man according to his needs, and each man according to his ability”. Among these differences, there are a number of similarities between these two groups. Both Gandhian and Marxian system seeks justice to the poor people who are living in tune with nature. They promoted the idea of self-sufficiency and sustainable economy and work for an egalitarian society.
The Silent Valley movement comprises both Gandhian and Marxian elements in methodologies and practices. The success of the movement reminds us the relevance of a “fourth world”, a concept put forward by Dr. M P Parameswaran, an active participant of KSSP[xii]. He proposed of a fourth world, his vision about a future world, which is a synthesis of Marxian, Gandhian, Environmentalists, Eco-feminists, Human right activists etc. It is an alternative world order which is based on the participative democracy, views on progress and approach towards the progress of productive forces and technology. M P argues that, today we are facing a challenge from the capitalist world. Certain capitalist’s countries disseminate the message that there is no alternative to capitalism. The socialist countries like China accept the fact that they too cannot escape from the capitalism in certain contextual basis. The remaining solution is the fourth world which comprises the ideologies of Marxism, Gandhism, Peace Studies, Environmentalism, eco feminism and human rights.
Conclusion
From the time of colonialism itself, India has witnessed different environmental calamities in the form of forest depletion, resource exploitation, high dam controversies etc. The emergence of environmental movements from different parts of the country paved way for a new paradigm in development which is called the sustainable development. The Fourth World which is the combination of Marxian, Gandhian, and Environmental ideas opens a new horizon for a sustainable economy and development. After the introduction of the concept Dr. M P Parameswaran, was expelled from the Marxist Party for spreading the “anti Marxian” ideology. At present, the relevance of the concept is infinite and a platform is necessary to discuss the merits and drawbacks of the fourth world. The scholars from these disciplines have to come forward to think about these ideologies.
Endnotes
[i] Petra Kelly quoted in Claude Markovitz, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of Mahatma (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 72
[ii] Thomas Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 196
[iii] Ramachandra Guha, Juan Martinez Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4
[iv] Amita Baviskar, “Red in Tooth and Claw: Looking for Class struggles over Nature” in Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power and Politics, ed. Raka Ray et al.(USA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 161-178
[v] M P Parameswaran, “Significance of Silent Valley”, Economic and Political Weekly, 14 (27), (1979), 1117-1119
[vi] M S Swaminathan, “Silent Valley National Park - A Biological Paradise” in Silent valley: Whispers of Reason, ed. T M Manoharan et al. (Trivandrum: Kerala Forest Department & Kerala Forest Research Institute, 1999).
[vii] Agarwal, S K & P S Dubey, Environmental Controversies (New Delhi : A P H Publishing Corporation, 2002), 151
[viii] Silent valley Padhathi: Parishathinte Nilapadum Vishadeekaranavum (The Silent Valley Project: Parishad’s stand and explanation), a pamphlet published by KSSP (March 1980) in Malayalam dealt with the position of KSSP regarding the project and explains how it rejects the power project.
[ix] Silent Valley Charcha (The discussion on Silent Valley), a pamphlet published by KSSP in Malayalam (Year not mentioned) was a detailed analysis of Silent valley Power Project and the clarification on the stand of parishad.
[x] Gadgil and Guha, Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in the Millennium (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1995), 60
[xi] Ramachandra Guha, “Ideological Trends in Indian Environmentalism”, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 (49), (1988): 2578-2581
[xii] Dr M P Parameswaran, Nalam lokam; Swapnavum Yatharthyavum (The Fourth World: Myth and Reality), (Kottayam: DC Books, 2003).
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Money is Mammon in pharmaceutical world
The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. — Jesus
Wall Street has three major players — pharmaceuticals, oil and banking. The first is the only one that has been growing at 20% a year in the last one decade or so. The pharmaceuticals lobby is thrice as big and powerful as that of oil, although oil is much bigger than drugs in total turnover! To understand how the industry works one must read the new book by two French medical specialists appointed by the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to study the working of the drugs lobby in the country. Although the book is in French, Kim Wilsher of the The Guardian has written about this book and the interview with the authors on September 14, 2012.
The best part of the interview was the answer given by the first author: “There is nothing revolutionary in this book. This has all been known for some time.” I was happy as I was writing about this in India, the U.K. and the U.S. for at least four decades but to no avail. The powers that be do not seem to take notice, at least in India. The two authors, Professor Philippe Even, director of the prestigious Necker Institute, and Bernard Debré, a doctor and member of Parliament, feel that removing what they describe as superfluous and hazardous drugs from the list of those paid for by the French health service would save up to €10bn (£8bn) a year. It would also prevent up to 20,000 deaths linked to the medication and reduce hospital admissions by up to 1,00,000, they claim.
The book, Guide to 4000 Useful, Useless or Dangerous Medicines, in all its 900 pages, looked at the effectiveness, risk, and the prohibitively high cost of the drugs. Among those which were completely useless the first rank was taken by STATINS, the most fashionable and doctor-friendly anti-cholesterol drug. The authors blacklisted a total of 58 drugs which included anti-inflammatory drugs, painkillers; cardiovascular drugs many of which are useless, anti-diabetics — many of them are dangerous to say the least — and the useless drugs for osteoporosis, contraception, muscular cramps and tobacco addiction! According to these specialists, roughly one half of the drugs prescribed by doctors in France are useless and many of them downright dangerous. The authors feel that the powerful companies keep these drugs moving for their own benefit.
Most of these drugs are produced in France. Professor Evans felt that the companies push these drugs on doctors who then push them on to patients. “The pharmaceutical industry is the most lucrative, the most cynical and the least ethical of all the industries,” he said. “It is like an octopus with tentacles that has infiltrated all the decision-making bodies, world health organisations, governments, parliaments, high administrations in health and hospitals and the medical profession,” he felt. “For the last 40 years, patients have been told that medicines are necessary for them, so they ask for them. Today, we have doctors who want to give people medicines and sick people asking for medicines. There’s nothing objective or realistic about this.”
The story is the same in India. The only difference is that the number of useless drugs sold here will run into hundreds, if not thousands. The Indian public have shown lukewarm response to my writings on the subject in the last four decades. Now that the information comes from the West, people might sit up and take note. That would be good for mankind as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it succinctly thus: “If the whole pharmacopeia were to be sunk to the bottom of the seas, that will be that much good for people and that much worse for the fishes.” How true indeed? There is no pill for every ill but there is definitely an ill following every pill!
How can we change all these? One would shudder to see this report in a recent issue of the prestigious The New England Journal of Medicine: “The global pharmaceutical industry has racked up fines of more than $11billion in the past three years for criminal wrongdoing, including withholding safety data and promoting drugs for use beyond their licensed conditions.
In all, 26 companies, including eight of the 10 top players in the global industry, have been found to be acting dishonestly. The scale of the wrongdoing, revealed for the first time, has undermined public and professional trust in the industry and is holding back clinical progress.”
A fine of $3 billion, imposed on the U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline in July after it admitted to three counts of criminal behaviour in U.S. courts, was probably the highest paid so far in the history of pharmaceuticals. Nine other companies have had fines imposed, ranging from $420m on Novartis to $2.3bn on Pfizer since 2009, totalling over $11bn.
The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world. — B.C. Forbes
(The writer is a former Professor of Cardiology, Middlesex Medical School, London, and former Vice-Chancellor, Manipal University. Email: hegdebm@gmail.com)
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Published: December 10, 2012 14:15 IST | Updated: December 10, 2012 14:15 IST
Fight against corruption now at your fingertips
The project will soon be upgraded to "VigEye Shree", "VigEye Vibhushan" and "VigEye Ratna" to encourage people to fight corruption.
The Central Vigilance Commission with the help of the Indira Gandhi National Open University and the Union Human Resource Ministry will soon launch “VigEye”, short for vigilance eye. The eye will be a platform for submitting complaint against corruption through mobile phones and Internet. This project is set to reach the rural population through the university’s regional centres.
The “VigEye” was announced on the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day here on Sunday in which IGNOU hosted a teleconference session with the CVC in which vigilance commissioner R. Sri Kumar said: “People can lodge their complaint with the help of photographs, audio and video.”
He also announced that the project will soon be upgraded to “VigEye Shree”, “VigEye Vibhushan” and “VigEye Ratna” to encourage people to fight corruption. “There has to be a change in the strategy. It is a long process today; by the time we take action the time elapses. Now, through “VigEye”, we shall reach out to the common people and tell them, what should be done and what should be avoided,” he added.
He explained that participative vigilance can be incorporated among the masses through mobile phones. “You can send a blank SMS or “VIGEYE” to 09223174440 to get an SMS containing the registration link in your mobile. You have to register first, before filing a complaint,” he said. The project will have volunteers at the village level to help spread awareness.
He added that they wanted to take this project further to the public domain for students and make it simpler to use so that the complaints can be lodged easily in audio, video and photography mode.
IGNOU Vice-Chancellor Prof. Gopinath Pradhan announced a new curriculum in the university that would include moral ethics and vigilance.
CVC director Keshav Rao said the transparency in public vigilance, particularly in procurement and defined corruption as monopoly plus discretion minus accountability. “Transparency, fairness, quality, time and value for money are various factors propagated by CVC for addressing different departments.”
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Published: December 10, 2012 14:57 IST | Updated: December 10, 2012 14:57 IST
Tapping the rural news space
Rural newspaper Gaon Connection, recently launched in Uttar Pradesh, seeks to project the hinterland as it really is
For long the national media has been accused of shutting its door on rural news. And by now, the largely city-centric media has won the argument too that news about villages and small towns just do not bring them the advertisers. So we are in an age when the ‘business of media’ is that of big bucks and urban news, and pretty much goes by key words like ‘profit projection’ and ‘return on investments’.
Into this simmer enters a seasoned journalist along with an IT professional hoping to hold in their hands a glimmer of hope for rural news. Journalist and now a Bollywood scriptwriter, Neelesh Misra, and Karan Dalal have just started rolling out Gaon Connection, presented as ‘India’s only and biggest rural newspaper’. The 14-pager daily in Hindi is being brought out by “a core group of 15 people” from its headquarters stationed in Kunaura, a village 160 kms from Uttar Pradesh Capital, Lucknow.
Misra zeroed in on Kunaura because his father belongs to this village and “this is where he returned from America to start a school for the village kids 40 years ago.” On phone from Kunaura, Misra, the co-founder-editor, gives the genesis of the two-years-old idea for Gaon Connection. “The key to engagement with India is rural India because 70 per cent people still live in villages. But we Indians have never taken our rural heartland seriously. While the media is busy covering urban news, a fascinating change is taking place in our villages. Though we are not an activist voice, but this is what we want to document.” As a journalist, he says, “I have travelled extensively through villages and small towns” and felt the “need for better chronicling of rural India.”
“The highly urban mainstream media still looks at rural news stereotypically. They typically report ghastly things, crime, floods….” But the aspiration level in small town India is growing as much as in urban India and going pretty much unreported. “Lovers in villages are texting each other like in urban areas, are eating chowmein and momos, the youth are buying motorcycles, …the rural income level is rising too. But they hardly shape public opinion. I would say, we should not undermine this change. There are now village youths who are graduates but are misfits in the cities. They can’t take up jobs given by NREGA and don’t quite want to do the job of office boys in city offices. So our villages have a large number of white collar unemployed,” says Misra quoting the observation as a part of a survey Gaon Connectiondid in Uttar Pradesh villages recently.
Misra says, through the platform of Gaon Connection, they want to “channelise the aspirations of the village youth. The paper has columns which teach readers how to speak English, how to write a job application, etc.”
The team of reporters include youth from both rural and urban India, mostly trainees. Besides training them in journalism, it is also “giving youths an opportunity to get into distribution.”
“Ours is a two-pronged approach. While we are using the existing distribution network to reach all the 75 districts of UP, we are also creating connection centres in villages where educated youth can become citizen journalists and also distribute the paper. So far, we have tapped local talent in 40 districts,” he says.
About attracting advertisements, he is optimistic, “Gaon Connection was launched in the village by UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. On the occasion, two top names came from the village from the ad world, from ONM and Ogilvy. They were there to gauge the possibilities.”
Though only a few days old, Gaon Connection already plans to enter villages in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, etc.
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Published: December 11, 2012 00:49 IST | Updated: December 11, 2012 00:49 IST
Youths send legal notice to Katju over remark
The PCI chairperson however clarifies that he did not intend to humiliate or harm anyone
Two youths here have sent a legal notice to Press Council of India (PCI) chairperson Justice Markandey Katju for remarking that 90 per cent of Indians are idiots. Tanya Thakur, a first year law student, and her brother Aditya Thakur in their notice have asked Justice Katju to issue a public apology and said they would move court if he did not do so within 30 days.
Ms. Tanya and Mr. Aditya said they were deeply hurt and humiliated by Justice Katju’s remark. The statement would bring down the reputation of the country and its citizens, and a person of his stature should have deliberated on its implications, they said.
However, in a mail sent to the duo on Monday, Justice Katju clarified that the remark was meant to awaken people to the realities of social evils.
“I have been misquoted in the press reports, but it is true that I have said that 90 per cent Indians [not all] are fools. My intention in saying so was not to hurt anyone but to awaken people to the realities, that is, the widespread casteism, communalism, superstitions, and other backward traits in the mindset of a large section of our people which is blocking our progress,” he wrote.
“The figure 90 per cent is not a mathematical figure, it simply means that in my opinion a large proportion of Indians [and again I repeat, not all] are fools,” the PCI chairperson said. “I never named you, any community, caste, or sect, and I never said that you are in the category of 90 per cent. Hence I do not see how you are defamed,” Justice Katju added.
Justice Katju said he did not intend to humiliate or harm anyone, but said whatever he had said because he loved Indians and wished them to prosper for which they have to develop a scientific outlook...”
At a seminar organised by the South Asia Media Commission in Delhi on December 8, Justice Katju said 90 per cent of Indians were “idiots” who can easily be misled by mischievous elements in the name of religion.
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Psychosomatic medicine
Think yourself well
You can. But it helps to think well of yourself in the first place
Dec 8th 2012 | from the print edition
THE link between mind and body is terrain into which many medical researchers, fearing ridicule, dare not tread. But perhaps more should do so. For centuries, doctors have recognised the placebo effect, in which the illusion of treatment, such as pills without an active ingredient, produces real medical benefits. More recently, respectable research has demonstrated that those who frequently experience positive emotions live longer and healthier lives. They have fewer heart attacks, for example, and fewer colds too.
Why this happens, though, is only slowly becoming understood. What is needed is an experiment that points out specific and measurable ways in which such emotions alter an individual’s biology. And a study published in Psychological Science, by Barbara Fredrickson and Bethany Kok at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, does precisely that.
Dr Fredrickson and Dr Kok concentrated their attentions on the vagus nerve. This nerve (illustrated right, in an early anatomical drawing) starts in the brain and runs, via numerous branches, to several thoracic and abdominal organs including the heart. Among its jobs is to send signals telling that organ to slow down during moments of calm and safety.
How effectively the vagus nerve is working can be tracked by monitoring someone’s heart rate as he breathes in and out. Healthy vagal function is reflected in a subtle increase in heart rate while breathing in and a subtle decrease while breathing out. The difference yields an index of vagal tone, and the value of this index is known to be connected with health. Low values are, for example, linked to inflammation and heart attacks.
What particularly interested Dr Fredrickson and Dr Kok was recent work that showed something else about the vagal-tone index: people with high tone are better than those with low at stopping bad feelings getting overblown. They also show more positive emotions in general. This may provide the missing link between emotional well-being and physical health. In particular, the two researchers found, during a preliminary study they carried out in 2010, that the vagal-tone values of those who experience positive emotions over a period of time go up. This left them wondering whether positive emotions and vagal tone drive one another in a virtuous spiral. They therefore conducted an experiment on 65 of the university’s staff, to try to find out.
They measured all of their volunteers’ vagal tones at the beginning of the experiment and at its conclusion nine weeks later. In between, the volunteers were asked to go each evening to a website especially designed for the purpose, and rate their most powerful emotional experiences that day. Dr Fredrickson and Dr Kok asked their volunteers to consider nine positive emotions, such as hope, joy and love, and 11 negative ones, including anger, boredom and disgust. They were asked to rate, on a five-point scale, whether—and how strongly—they had felt each emotion. One point meant “not at all”; five meant “extremely”. In addition, half the participants, chosen at random, were invited to a series of workshops run by a licensed therapist, to learn a meditation technique intended to engender in the meditator a feeling of goodwill towards both himself and others. This group was encouraged to meditate daily, and to report the time they spent doing so.
Dr Fredrickson and Dr Kok discovered that vagal tone increased significantly in people who meditated, and hardly at all in those who did not. Among meditators, those who started the experiment with the highest vagal-tone scores reported the biggest increases in positive emotions. Meditators who started with particularly low scores showed virtually no such boost.
Taken as a whole, these findings suggest high vagal tone makes it easier to generate positive emotions and that this, in turn, drives vagal tone still higher. That is both literally and metaphorically a positive feedback loop. Which is good news for the emotionally positive, but bad for the emotionally negative, for it implies that those who most need a psychosomatic boost are incapable of generating one. A further (as yet unpublished) experiment by Dr Kok suggests, however, that the grumpy need not give up all hope. A simpler procedure than meditation, namely reflecting at night on the day’s social connections, did seem to cause some improvement to their vagal tone. This might allow even those with a negative outlook on life to “bootstrap” their way to a mental state from which they could then advance to the more powerful technique of meditation.
Whether, besides improving general health, the mechanism Dr Fredrickson and Dr Kok have discovered helps explain the placebo effect remains to be investigated. But it might, because part of that effect seems to be the good feeling engendered by the fact of being treated. More generally, doctors in the ancient world had a saying: “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. This sort of work suggests that though this proverb is true, a better one might be, “a healthy mind for a healthy body”.
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THE USES OF DIFFICULTY
By Ian Leslie
Created 29/10/2012 - 06:07
The brain likes a challenge—and putting a few obstacles in its way may well boost its creativity. Ian Leslie [1] takes a hard line...
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, November/December 2012
Jack White, the former frontman of the White Stripes and an influential figure among fellow musicians, likes to make things difficult for himself. He uses cheap guitars that won’t stay in shape or in tune. When performing, he positions his instruments in a way that is deliberately inconvenient, so that switching from guitar to organ mid-song involves a mad dash across the stage. Why? Because he’s on the run from what he describes as a disease that preys on every artist: "ease of use". When making music gets too easy, says White, it becomes harder to make it sing.
It’s an odd thought. Why would anyone make their work more difficult than it already is? Yet we know that difficulty can pay unexpected dividends. In 1966, soon after the Beatles had finished work on "Rubber Soul", Paul McCartney looked into the possibility of going to America to record their next album. The equipment in American studios was more advanced than anything in Britain, which had led the Beatles’ great rivals, the Rolling Stones, to make their latest album, "Aftermath", in Los Angeles. McCartney found that EMI’s contractual clauses made it prohibitively expensive to follow suit, and the Beatles had to make do with the primitive technology of Abbey Road.
Lucky for us. Over the next two years they made their most groundbreaking work, turning the recording studio into a magical instrument of its own. Precisely because they were working with old-fashioned machines, George Martin and his team of engineers were forced to apply every ounce of their ingenuity to solve the problems posed to them by Lennon and McCartney. Songs like "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "A Day in the Life" featured revolutionary aural effects that dazzled and mystified Martin’s American counterparts.
Sometimes it’s only when a difficulty is removed that we realise what it was doing for us. For more than two decades, starting in the 1960s, the poet Ted Hughes sat on the judging panel of an annual poetry competition for British schoolchildren. During the 1980s he noticed an increasing number of long poems among the submissions, with some running to 70 or 80 pages. These poems were verbally inventive and fluent, but also "strangely boring". After making inquiries Hughes discovered that they were being composed on computers, then just finding their way into British homes.
You might have thought any tool which enables a writer to get words on to the page would be an advantage. But there may be a cost to such facility. In an interview with the Paris Review Hughes speculated that when a person puts pen to paper, "you meet the terrible resistance of what happened your first year at it, when you couldn’t write at all". As the brain attempts to force the unsteady hand to do its bidding, the tension between the two results in a more compressed, psychologically denser expression. Remove that resistance and you are more likely to produce a 70-page ramble. There is even some support for Hughes’s hypothesis from modern neuroscience: a study carried out by Professor Virginia Berninger at the University of Washington found that handwriting activated more of the brain than keyboard writing, including areas responsible for thinking and memory.
Our brains respond better to difficulty than we imagine. In schools, teachers and pupils alike often assume that if a concept has been easy to learn, then the lesson has been successful. But numerous studies have now found that when classroom material is made harder to absorb, pupils retain more of it over the long term, and understand it on a deeper level. Robert Bjork, of the University of California, coined the phrase “desirable difficulties” to describe the counter-intuitive notion that learning should be made harder by, for instance, spacing sessions further apart so that students have to make more effort to recall what they learnt last time. Psychologists at Princeton found that students remembered reading material better when it was printed in an ugly font.
Scientists from the University of Amsterdam recently carried out a series of experiments to investigate how obstacles affect our thought processes. In one experiment, people were set anagram puzzles to solve, while, as an obstacle to concentration, a series of random numbers were read out. Compared with those in a control group who performed the same task without this distraction, these subjects displayed greater cognitive agility: they were more likely to take leaps of association and make unusual connections. The researchers also found that when people are forced to cope with unexpected obstacles they react by increasing their "perceptual scope"—taking a mental step back to see the bigger picture. When you find your journey to work blocked by a construction site, you have to map the city in your mind.
As a poet, Ted Hughes had an acute sensitivity to the way in which constraints on self-expression, like the disciplines of metre and rhyme, spur creative thought. What applies to poets and musicians also applies to our daily lives. We tend to equate happiness with freedom, but, as the psychotherapist and writer Adam Phillips has observed, without obstacles to our desires it’s harder to know what we want, or where we’re heading. He tells the story of a patient, a first-time mother who complained that her young son was always clinging to her, wrapping himself around her legs wherever she went. She never had a moment to herself, she said, because her son was "always in the way". When Phillips asked her where she would go if he wasn’t in the way, she replied cheerfully, "Oh, I wouldn’t know where I was!"
Take another common obstacle: lack of money. People often assume that more money will make them happier. But economists who study the relationship between money and happiness have consistently found that, above a certain income, the two do not reliably correlate. Despite the ease with which the rich can acquire almost anything they desire, they are just as likely to be unhappy as the middle classes. In this regard at least, F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong.
Indeed, ease of acquisition is the problem. The novelist Edward St Aubyn has a narrator remark of the very rich that, "without the editorial influence of the word ‘afford’, their desires rambled on like unstoppable bores, relentless and whimsical at the same time." When Boston College, a private research university, wanted a better feel for its potential donors, it asked the psychologist Robert Kenny to investigate the mindset of the super-rich. He surveyed 165 households, most of which had a net worth of $25m or more. He found that many of his subjects were befuddled by the infinite options their money presented them with. They found it hard to know what to want, creating a kind of existential bafflement. One of them put it like this: "You know, Bob, you can just buy so much stuff, and when you get to the point where you can just buy so much stuff, now what are you going to do?"
The internet makes information billionaires out of all of us, and the architects of our online experiences are catching on to the need to make things creatively difficult. Twitter’s prodigious success is rooted in the simple but profound insight that in a medium with infinite space for self-expression, the most interesting thing we can do is restrict ourselves to 140 characters. The music service This Is My Jam helps people navigate the tens of millions of tracks now available instantly via Spotify and iTunes. Users pick their favourite song of the week to share with others. They only get to choose one. The service was only launched this year, but by the end of September 650,000 jams had been chosen. Its co-founder Matt Ogle explains its raison d’être like this: "In an age of endless choice, we were missing a way to say: ‘This. This is the one you should listen to’."
Today’s world offers more opportunity than ever to follow the advice of the Walker Brothers and make it easy on ourselves. Compared with a hundred years ago, our lives are less tightly bound by social mores and physical constraints. Technology has cut out much of life’s drudgery, and we have more freedoms than ever: we can wear what we like, sleep with whom we want (if they’ll sleep with us), and communicate with hundreds of friends at once at the click of a mouse. Obstacles are everywhere disappearing. Few of us wish to turn the clock back, but perhaps we need to remind ourselves how useful the right obstacles can be. Sometimes, the best route to fulfilment is the path of more resistance.
Ian Leslie [1] works in advertising, is the author of "Born Liars", and tweets as @mrianleslie
Illustration Brett Ryder
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Blacklisting, not visa violations, led to my deportation: U.S. geophysicist
PTIIn January 2012, Dr. Roger Bilham addressed a press conference by Greenpeace on the potential seismic risk to the proposed 9900 MWe nuclear power plant complex at Jaitapur, Maharashtra. File Photo
Dr. Roger Bilham, a US geophysicist who has warned against underestimating seismic hazards at the Jaitapur nuclear plant site, now says he was deported from India earlier this year not because of visa violations, as claimed by Home Ministry officials at the time, but because he figures in a list of foreigners not allowed to visit India. Dr. Bilham was deported back to the U.S. from the New Delhi airport soon after landing on May 19 around midnight when he was on transit to Bhutan.
At that time, Dr. Bilham was apparently told by the customs authorities that his name was on a certain list of persons denied entry into India and was given no other reason. “The State Department,” Dr. Bilham has claimed, “has twice been informed that I am on a list of foreigners not allowed to visit India. The list includes terrorists and journalists and one other scientist. This one other scientist wrote about voting machine insecurity in India.” The State Department has, however, not been told why his name is on the list.
Dr. Bilham is well-known for his extensive work on Himalayan seismicity, much of it carried out with a reputed Indian geophysicist, Dr. Vinod Gaur, the former director of the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), Hyderabad. In January of this year, he addressed a press conference by Greenpeace on the potential seismic risk to the proposed 9900 MWe nuclear power plant complex at Jaitapur, Maharashtra.
Challenging the version given by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) at the time of his deportation, Dr. Bilham has revealed new information through email exchanges after the story of his deportation, which was hitherto not widely known (see, however, The Hindu, August 12 and Sunday Guardian, May 27), hit the international headlines through a December 6 report in the journal Science.
The Science story, quoting the MHA, said that Dr. Bilham was denied entry because, while travelling on tourist visa, his “activity” was “not commensurate with the type of visa granted”. Dr. Bilham, who has a multiple-entry ten-year tourist visa and has made several visits to India since the 1960s, has, however, stated that the barring of his entry had nothing to do with any visa problem. “My visa has not been revoked. It has not been cancelled. No mention of a visa problem has ever been made,” Dr. Bilham stated in his email. “My flight to Bhutan was the next day. I planned to stay overnight in Delhi.”
Dr. Bilham last visited India to attend the ‘Indo-US Workshop on ‘Intraplate Seismicity’ held during January 16-18 at the Institute for Seismological Research (ISR), an institute under the department of science and technology (DST) in Gandhinagar, on an invitation extended to him. Even though he was on a tourist visa, he had been given explicit authorisation to not only attend the meeting but also to travel in the Kutch region by Dr. B. K. Rastogi, director, ISR. He returned on January 18.
The report in Science followed the issue having been raised at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) during December 3-7 in San Francisco. Dr. Max Wyss, director of the World Agency of Planetary Monitoring and Earthquake Risk Reduction, Geneva, in his presentation had likened his deportation to the arrests of seismoligists in Italy, who have been painted as criminals following the L’Aquila earthquake for having not provided the correct advice on the impending earthquake.
According to Dr. Wyss, Dr. Bilham was deported for having co-authored with Dr. Gaur an article critical of the seismic hazard analysis for the Jaitapur nuclear power plant (Current Science, November 25, 2011), and having rendered the opinion that the nuclear plant should be designed to withstand higher accelerations than planned, as well as for his view that the seismic hazard in Kashmir is underestimated. A signature protest campaign in support of Dr. Bilham has already been launched following Dr. Wyss’s presentation.
The MHA officials, however, are not willing to say for what kind of visa violation Dr. Bilham was put on a flight back to the USA shortly on arrival. Repeated efforts were of no avail. It stands to reason that he could not have committed any during his May visit because he was still in the airport. And his last visit was on an official invitation. Both the DST and the Ministry of Earth Sciences are not aware of this incident.
But in an allegation that is hard to verify, Dr. Bilham has further claimed that a senior highly influential Indian seismologist has conspired to have his name included in the MHA list. This he has even officially communicated to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) while declining the institute’s request to be the external examiner for adjudicating a Ph. D. student’s thesis.
In his October 17 letter, Dr. Bilham wrote to the IISc Registrar: “I regret to inform you that the Government of India has decided that I am no longer allowed to visit India. This is not a visa issue but a blacklisting issue. The governmental decision was presumably based on recommendations made by one or more influential seismologists in India. The decision is based on a recent article on Indian seismicity similar to that discussed in the thesis that you mention…I am concerned that my presence on the thesis committee…will be detrimental to the future of this talented young scientist.”
His name, Dr. Bilham said in his email, continued to be on the prohibited list until last week when he wanted to make a trip to India to visit the Delhi Archives.
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NEW DELHI, December 12, 2012
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TODAY'S PAPER » NATIONAL » NEW DELHI
NEW DELHI, December 12, 2012Jal Board escalated project cost to benefit private company, alleges NGO
The Delhi Jal Board escalated the cost of the public private partnership project being carried out in Nangloi to extend benefit to the private company that has been awarded the work, a non-government organisation opposing the PPP model has claimed.
The NGO, Citizen Front for Water Democracy, has alleged that the cost estimated for the work is higher than the prevailing market price and that the DJB has fabricated the data and actual figures of treatment of water at the Nangloi Water Treatment Plant.
The DJB has awarded work to a private company under PPP to ensure round-the-clock supply of water in Nangloi and also plug its revenue leaks.
“The DJB and its project consultant, while designing the Nangloi PPP project estimated the capital cost as Rs. 652.32 crore. Of this, around Rs. 458.54 crore was for rehabilitation of WTP, booster pumping station, underground reservoir and laying of pipeline, installation of meters etc., and Rs.193.78 crore was estimated for road restoration. At some installations the rehabilitation work was added and enhanced to extend benefit to the private company. The cost is estimated at exorbitantly high and escalated prices. To reach to this cost, the consultant and DJB officers in connivance enhanced the scope of project and related data and figures were also fabricated to extend the benefit to the proposed company,” alleged S. A. Naqvi of the CFWD.
He also alleged that at the Nangloi WTP the total production was shown as 38 MGD and it was proposed to enhance the capacity of treatment to 40 MGD. “Water production at the plant is higher than its capacity; the plant is producing more than 40.5 MGD on an average. The plant is in perfect condition and does not require any rehabilitation,” he said.
The consultants and DJB officers estimated Rs. 33.26 crore for rehabilitation, repairing and construction work at Nangloi WTP.
To buttress their claims of financial mismanagement, the NGO claims that the plant was rehabilitated in 2002 and huge sums of money were spent by the Board then. “When the plant is producing more than its capacity, what is the point in spending Rs. 33 crore on rehabilitation,” the NGO questioned.
For the rehabilitation of the existing underground reservoirs and booster pumping stations, the consultant and DJB proposed an estimate expenditure of Rs.12.88 crore.
“Nangloi UGR and BPS has a capacity of 9.2 MGD, Najafgarh 2.2 MGD and Mohan Garden of 1MGD. Nangloi and Mohan Garden were constructed in 2008-09 by private companies and are under operation and maintenance by the same private companies. The one in Najafgarh is also a decade old. The expenditure estimated raises many questions: how can a project commissioned in 2008-09 require such a huge rehabilitation? What maintenance was done by private company running these pump houses?” questioned Sanjay Sharma, also of the NGO.
The NGO has questioned the basis on which the estimates have been raised for the construction of new underground reservoir and booster pumping station at the cost of Rs. 53.31 crore.
“The construction cost of a 68 Million Gallon (MG) pump house in Patna comes to Rs. 45.68 crore, which means Rs. 67.19 lakh per MG but in Delhi 14.5 MG pump house will be constructed at the price of Rs. 53.31 crore, which means Rs. 3.67 crore per MG. The DJB contracted the work of construction of pump house 5.47 times higher,” Mr. Naqvi said.
The NGO has alleged that cost of several works including laying of pipelines and the automation cost is also escalated compared with other recent DJB projects.
“The automation at Nangloi project is estimated at Rs.14 crore against the total cost of automation/ SCADA at 100 MGD Bhagirathi Water Treatment Plant with its vast distribution network including UGRs and BPSs estimated cost of Rs. 4.5 crore. The automation/ SCADA already exist at Nagloi UGR/ BPS and Mohan Garden UGR/ BPS in the Nagloi project,” he said.
Demanding an investigation into the award of the project and cost estimates, the NGO claims: “The actual cost of the Nangloi PPP project is not higher than Rs. 200 crore.”
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A lesser known, but one of the worthy descendants of Gandhi; Shantilal Gandhi
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 One's lineage is an important asset for aspiring politicians to succeed in the political arena in India.
Most people in politics who have worthy lineage never hesitate to boast about it. The descendants of Mahatma Gandhi have by and large lived life at their own terms. Only when the news spread that Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson has won an election in US did people realise that a descendant of Mahatma Gandhi lived in US. It is noteworthy that he never used this fact in seeking attention or approval of voters.
At the Union Square Park, in New York in US, a life size statue of Mahatma Gandhi is unveiled. On October 2, 2012, Mahatma Gandhi's 143rd birth anniversary was celebrated. Indian consulate and Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan had organised the function. Many Indians established in US had gathered there, but hardly anyone knew that one of the descendants of Mahatma Gandhi lived in US. But they were not at fault, the self effacing Shantilal Gandhi had never revealed that he was the great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.
Dr Shantilal Gandhi, is the son of kantilal Gandhi, whose father Harilal, is Gandhiji's son. The message of peace and nonviolence is synonymous with Mahatma Gandhi, perhaps that is why Kantilal must have named his son as "Shanti". It is a well known fact that Gandhiji's son Harilal did not quite get along well with his father. However, Harilal's son Kantilal and Mahatma Gandhi shared a very warm relationship, this is evident from the letters written by Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma had a lot of affection for his grandson.
Kantilal's son Shantilal won an assembly seat in Kensas state at the age of 72. The trend in the last US election, which returned President Barrack Obama to power for the second term, clearly indicates that the people of US voted generously for the Democratic Party. It is noteworthy that inspite of a wave of support for the democratic party, Shantilal got elected as a Republican candidate. Credit must go to his impeccable record. What is noteworthy is that no one even knew that a descendant of world famous Mahatma Gandhi was contesting the election. One can say that even the Indian media was caught napping. The fact is that the low profile Shantilal never cashed in on the image of his great grandfather. When one compares this with the Indian political scene, one realises the great moral stature of Shantilal.
The issue of unaccounted money stocked in the Swiss bank is hotly debated in India. In this context, it is noteworthy that Shantilal Gandhi, who studied at Grant Medical College, in Bombay, had no resources to fund his education in US. Based on his merit, a hospital at youngstown in Ohio offered him internship. shantilal's family could not afford the travel expenditure. Eventually, the hospital offered to give money on loan. Even after going to US, he had to struggle a lot. He met his wife Susan over there. They have three daughters.
Dr Shantilal Gandhi and Susan are active in the political arena since 1980, When Ronald Reagan was the US president. But since he worked for the hospital, he could not devote enough time for politics. In December 2011, he took retirement and became active in social work. He said, ''my only intention to participate in active politics is to help people resolve their day to day problems." Compare this with the attitude of our politicians who are ever eager to en-cash the name of Gandhi, even while dumping his principles. Alas, our politicians also had the mindset of Shantilal.
Translated by Dr Alaka Sarma, the original article appeared in the Gujarati newspaper Sandesh on 13.11.2012,
in the column, extra comment. The name of the writer is Krishnakant Unadkat |
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The politics of corruption
Squeezing the sleazy
Global anti-corruption efforts are growing in scope and clout. This year is set to be the best yet
Dec 15th 2012 | PRAGUE | from the print edition
The big international bodies dealing with corruption are making progress. A working group set up in 2010 by the G20 (the world’s largest economies) has done more than many observers expected, particularly in drawing up rules on seizure of corrupt assets and denial of visas to corrupt officials. Unlike the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the G20 is not so far split between keen sleazebusters and countries like Russia and China. Another body, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, will start a fourth round of monitoring member states next year, chiefly for effectiveness in implementing anti-money-laundering laws.
Such efforts are “steady, slow boring stuff”, but still important, says Robert Palmer of Global Witness, a campaigning group. He notes that international discussions no longer tiptoe round the word “corruption”. A culture of denial has given way to at least lip-service to the cause.
The anti-graft laws of national governments are making progress too. America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Britain’s Bribery Act impose potentially savage penalties on firms that do business by sleazy means. That includes having weak in-house anti-corruption policies. The results are mixed. At a conference earlier this month in Prague organised by the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank, Thomas Firestone of the Moscow office of Baker & McKenzie, a law firm, said foreign managers trying to penalise bribery with dismissal face tough Russian laws that hamper such firings. Perversely, the most corrupt employees can thus gain hefty severance payments. Such clashes between local and international laws abound.
Market pressure is growing too. The International Corporate Governance Network brings together institutional investors with $18 trillion under management. It scrutinises companies for compliance with anti-corruption principles. So far 70 firms have signed up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which aims to make natural-resource companies publish what they pay to governments. America’s Securities and Exchange Commission has backed similar rules. Campaigners say murk around such payments costs poor countries billions of dollars.
Businesses say they like the way clean government creates a level playing-field. In a corrupt country, “you are only as good as your last bribe”, said one executive at the Prague conference. For years, data were scanty: campaigners relied heavily on the corruption-perceptions index published by Transparency International, an anti-sleaze group. But the 58 countries that support the American-backed Open Government Partnership are committed to providing data about the way public money is spent. That helps to highlight wasteful (and corrupt) government procurement.
Specific campaigns have worked too. Congress has just passed a law blocking the visas and freezing the assets of 60 Russian officials implicated in the death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who had uncovered a $230m fraud. His client, Bill Browder, a financier who is campaigning to avenge him, wants Europe to follow America’s lead.
Lower-profile efforts are spreading too. Not In My Country, a web-based campaign in Uganda, encourages students to report instances of corruption—such as teachers demanding sex for higher grades. Next year it will launch a mobile app for people wanting to upload audio recordings of extortion attempts. Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based group, runs ipaidabribe.com, which has recorded thousands of bribes paid or sought; “heat maps” plot instances of corruption. Similar websites operate in Pakistan, Kenya, Liberia and Indonesia. They help even the humble to fight back.
Tricks of the trade
Given the scale of the problem, nobody is claiming victory. Laws are one thing, enforcement quite another. Public pressure may not create political will among decision-makers. Anti-corruption laws can be politicised and used for partisan purposes. Some countries think that the whole cause is a disguise for Western meddling and hypocrisy. But on December 9th campaigners celebrated International Anti-Corruption Day with a spring in their step.
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Civilizational Gandhi
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Introduction
From the central hall of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi to a statue at Union Square Park in New York, and across far flung corners of the world, M. K. Gandhi is loved and celebrated as an apostle of non-violence. Yet it is Gandhi’s little-known work on what it means to be truly civilized that might be far more crucial to the future of our species.
The multiple global crises – social inequity, financial turmoil and ecological imbalance – have made it imperative to revisit and pay close attention to Gandhi’s radical but more sustainable civilizational vision. Within India, both the economy and polity are in a state of distress. More than six decades after independence, India remains at the bottom of the United Nations’ Human Development Index. Twenty years of economic liberalisation have expanded the size of India’s middle class, but not raised the standard of living for the overwhelming majority of Indians. Globally, people are slowly acknowledging that the global financial system is fundamentally flawed and not just going through a cyclical low. We are also more sceptical now about the ability of the prevailing market culture to ensure even basic well-being for the seven billion people who inhabit the earth. At the same time, the human economy and nature’s eco-systems appear to be critically out of sync. Despite an increasing urgency for trans-national cooperation, there are persistent fears about a clash of civilizations – primarily between the West and the Islamic world, but also within multi-ethnic societies in large parts of the contemporary world.
This paper explores how the Mahatma’s civilizational vision can serve as a new lens to understand contemporary global crises – identity-based conflicts, the failed promise of universal prosperity and the threat of ecological collapse. What we have here are not ready solutions but a framework which might help us to forge solutions.
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Gandhi - the conscience keeper
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 Gandhi awakened the inner conscience of contemporary and future generations, because he practised his values sincerely and conscientiously. Conscience of a Rational Self is evolved with a great consideration of whole mankind and particularly the poorest of all. Gandhi gave a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. : Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.21 This will lead to the balanced use of natural resources.
We cannot and we need not stop progress of Science. But if we want Science to progress further, it must have a guide. Science is amoral, neither moral nor immoral, so it requires values. Russel admits, “Science by itself cannot supply us with an ethic. It can show us how to achieve a given end, and it may show us that some ends cannot be achieved. But among ends that can be achieved, our choice must be decided by other than purely scientific considerations.”22. Progress without purpose makes demon out of man. The direction should be clear and it should be the welfare of humanity. Therefore, Science must be wedded to non-violence if it is to lead to the welfare of all and Science wedded to violence shall result in the annihilation of mankind.
Gandhi tried to develop all-inclusive and universal culture through Truth and Non-violence. His idea of culture was based on tolerance and activism. Therefore, he said, “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
Abid Hussain remarks, “He lived his ideas and chose to become his truth. It was also a part journey of self discovery and also unending experiments with truth. Even in his failures Gandhi remained great and grew in stature. He further writes, “Gandhi will always be remembered as one who made his life a lesson for all ages to come.”
Hermann Kallenbach describes:
Johannesburg
May 1908
“On the morning on which he had to go to meet General Smuts at Pretoria for a very important interview I found him (be) rating me generally for something that/had omitted to do... That was the tyranny of his affection but that affection is my proudest possession.”26 When Gandhi was alive, the leaders influenced by the teachings of “Gandhi” used to think in the other corner of the country as what that old man will think about their actions. RamManohar Lohiya writes that when he used to smoke, he was conscious of Gandhi’s attitude about smoking.
The true Gandhians think in the same manner even today. Shri. Vipin Parikh writes in his letter to Gandhi published in ‘Shashvat Gandhi’ that I see you everywhere even when a woman walks on the road with pride, Harijans sitting in the bus or train with us in clean clothes, in simplicity, integrity etc. Even a piece of pencil is lost, I cannot sit silently and try to search it because of Gandhi’s influence.
In this connection, the film ‘Maine Gandhi ko nahi mara’ where the guest keeps a cup of tea on the news paper where Gandhi is pictured, disturbs the Gandhian professor. Even the film’‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ influences the spectators and people tried to develop ‘Gandhigiri’ in their life i.e stick to the truth at any cost.
The religious Guru Shri. Dalai Lama observes the influence of Gandhi till now, “To my mind two further things standout. One is the impression everybody received on absolute and rigorous integrity. His honesty, truth and lack of selfish personal ambition struck everyone he met, and many like me who simply heard about him. It is fact that whenever a popular personality himself shares in the suffering of others, he creates a strong impact on many people.”
During his visit to India in October 2010, President Barack Obama observes that he has always found inspiration in the life of Gandhiji and in his lesson to be the change we seek in the world. He reiterates that his message of peace, tolerance and love continue to inspire the world. More than sixty years of his passing his light continues to inspire the world.
If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore him at our own risk.
Gandhi himself is not keeping silence. He has said, “I am not going to keep quiet even after I die”. Gandhi influences people and will influence in future.
- Dr. Geeta Mehta
Article originally published on www.gandhitopia.org
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December 21, 2012 11:53 IST
Workers demand minimum wages, implementation of labour laws
The HinduWorkers protesting in New Delhi on Thursday against the Government’s “anti-labour policies”. Photo: S. Subramanium
A large number of workers from across the country marched to Parliament on Thursday in a protest rally demanding minimum wages and universal social security cover for organised and unorganised workers. One of the main aims of the protest, which saw participation of employees of the Central and State governments and banking, insurance, defence and telecom sectors, was to pressurise the Government for strict implementation of labour laws in the country.
The protest was part of a nationwide campaign to chalk out a unified strategy against “anti-workers policies of the Government” by the Central trade unions, a confederation of all the prominent trade unions and workers groups. In the next stage of its struggle, all the employee and trade unions will organise a two-day general strike on 20-21 February 2013.
Amid slogans against the labour policies of the Government, A. K. Padmanabhan, president of the Centre of Indian trade Unions (CITU), said the working class in the country was working under the worst circumstances and, in some cases, “bereft of any dignity”.
“The contract system of hiring workers on permanent/temporary basis is an exploitative mechanism though which the workers of this country are being denied payment of wages and benefits to them,” Mr. Padmanabhan said, demanding amendment in the Minimum Wages Act to ensure universal coverage irrespective of the schedules and fixation of statutory minimum wage with wages not less than Rs. 10,000.
He specifically mentioned the case of workers of the Maruti Suzuki plant in Manesar where the company terminated the services of 546 “permanent” and 1,800 “temporary” workers on the pretext of the July 18 violence in which one senior executive was killed. The police arrested 149 of them for alleged involvement in the violence.
He demanded compulsory and time-bound registration of trade unions within 45 days of application.
The speakers at the rally who included All-India Trade Union Congress leader Gurudas Dasgupta demanded that the Government stop disinvestment in Central and State public sector undertakings and establish a National Social Security Fund for workers. He underscored that the life of ordinary workers cannot improve without taking concrete measures to contain price rise and employment generation.
The workers demanded assured pension for all and removal of all ceilings on payment and eligibility of bonus, provident fund and increase in the quantum of gratuity.
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