📰 India will extend all help to Rohingya in Myanmar: Shah
Govt. to clarify its stand on refugees in SC tomorrow
•BJP president Amit Shah said in Ranchi on Saturday that the Union government was willing to extend “all forms of support” to the Rohingya living in Myanmar.
•Mr. Shah was addressing a press meet in the capital of Jharkhand during a three-day tour.
•The BJP-led Central government has made it clear in the Supreme Court that it is willing to extend all forms of support to Rohingya in Myanmar, he said.
•“Unko wahin rehkar jitni bhi madad kar saktey hain uske liye tayyar hain (we are willing to extend all help to them living in Myanmar),” Mr. Shah said.
•The Union government has, however, said that it would be filing an affidavit clarifying its stand on the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar into India on September 18.
•Home Minister Rajnath Singh had on Friday said that the government would be filing an affidavit on the issue in the Supreme Court on Monday.
Ties with China
•Mr. Shah was also asked questions on India’s relationship with China, which recently saw a tense standoff at Doklam, subsequently resolved through diplomatic channels. “India’s policy has been well clarified by (External Affairs Minister) Sushmaji (Swaraj). It is our sovereign right to develop the country inside our boundaries and we will utilise that right,” he said.
📰 Indus water talks make no headway
India, Pakistan fail to break deadlock
•The latest round of talks between India and Pakistan on the Indus Waters Treaty has ended without any agreement, the World Bank has said, while asserting that it will continue to work with complete impartiality to resolve the issues in an amicable manner.
Islamabad’s objection
•Amid a chill in bilateral ties, the second round of discussions between India and Pakistan on the Ratle and Kishanganga hydroelectric projects, over which Islamabad has raised objections, took place at the World Bank headquarters here on September 14 and 15 under the aegis of the World Bank.
•“While an agreement has not been reached at the conclusion of the meetings, the World Bank will continue to work with both countries to resolve the issues in an amicable manner and in line with the Treaty provisions,” the World Bank said in a statement.
•“Both countries and the World Bank appreciated the discussions and reconfirmed their commitment to the preservation of the Treaty,” it said after the conclusion of the Secretary-level discussions between the two countries on the technical issues of the Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants within the framework of the Indus Waters Treaty.
•The World Bank remains committed to act in good faith and with “complete impartiality and transparency” in fulfilling its responsibilities under the Treaty, while continuing to assist the countries, it said in its statement.
•The Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960 after nine years of negotiations between India and Pakistan with the help of the World Bank, which is also a signatory.
World Bank’s role
•The World Bank’s role in relation to the “differences” and “disputes” is limited to the designation of people to fulfil certain roles when requested by either or both of the parties.
•The Indian delegation was led by the Union Water Resources Secretary Amarjit Singh.
•It also included India’s Indus Water Commissioner and representatives from the ministry of external affairs, power, and Central Water Commission.
•The Pakistani delegation was led by Secretary, Water Resources Division, Arif Ahmed Khan along with Secretary of Water and Power Yousuf Naseem Khokhar, High Commissioner of Indus Waters Treaty Mirza Asif Baig and Joint Secretary of Water Syed Mehar Ali Shah.
•The last round of talks were held on August 1, which the World bank said were held in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation.
📰 Trade pacts stuck ahead of summit
Talks remain stalled since 2013; European Union yet to okay re-engagement despite India’s requests
•With the India-European Union (EU) Summit just three weeks away, officials in Brussels and Delhi have told The Hindu that formal talks on the proposed bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) have yet to be scheduled, despite a public push from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in May.
•The officials said India had sent repeated reminders at the levels of the Commerce and Industry Minister, the Commerce Secretary and the Chief Negotiator to restart the talks that stalled in 2013, but the EU had not yet given any official indication on the re-engagement.
•The Delegation of the EU to India (and Bhutan) declined to comment on specific questions sent by The Hindu on the status of negotiations and reasons for the EU having ‘ignored’ the Indian requests.
•It is learnt that the current sticking point is regarding whether an India-EU Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) can be finalised first, as demanded by the EU, or take forward India’s plan to make ‘investment protection’ a part of the negotiations on the proposed comprehensive FTA — officially called the Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) — and include it in the BTIA as a separate chapter.
•The deadlock over ‘investment protection’ followed the EU’s concern over what it called India’s “unilateral termination” of separate BITs with “a significant number of” EU countries.
‘Gap in protection’
•EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström had written last year to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the then Commerce Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, saying: “Given that the EU Member States do not have the possibility to renegotiate the BITs with India, the unilateral termination of the existing BITs by India would ... create a gap in investment protection and consequently discourage EU enterprises from further investing in India.”
Variance over duties
•The FTA talks are also stuck due to differences over the EU’s demands on elimination of India’s duties on goods such as automobiles and wines and spirits, and India’s pitch for a ‘data secure’ status (important for India's IT sector to do more business with EU firms) as well as to ease norms on temporary movement of skilled workers.
•While the chief negotiators of India and the EU met informally in July in Brussels on the margins of the EU-India Sub-commission of Trade, and are likely to meet again on the sidelines the EU-India Summit in Delhi on October 9 and 10, no decision has been made yet on the formal resumption of the BTIA talks.
•An effort by Mr. Modi and Ms. Sitharaman and their EU counterparts, who met in April 2016 in Brussels, also failed to break the impasse.
•Asked if ‘Brexit’ and the related complications were among the factors causing uncertainty regarding re-starting the BTIA talks, an Indian official said, “Brexit is not an issue here. Look at the progress on the proposed EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement [EPA] even after the Brexit referendum [in June 2016].”
•In July 2017, the EU and Japan reached an in-principle agreement on the EPA’s main elements.
WTO-level negotiations
•“So, if they [the India-European Union] were really keen, they could have given us [India] the dates to restart BTIA talks. But they have not indicated any interest so far, despite many high-level requests from India,” the official said.
•The EU-India Summit is also likely to include discussions on issues relating to WTO-level negotiations as well on strategic cooperation between Indian police agencies with Europol on intelligence sharing and fighting terror.
📰 Refugee crisis: Hasina to seek help
Bangladeshi PM heads for UN General Assembly; Rohingya exodus from Myanmar tops 4,00,000
•Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina headed for the UN General Assembly on Saturday to plead for global help to cope with the Rohingya crisis, as the refugee deluge escaping a crackdown in Myanmar topped 4,00,000.
•The Prime Minister left a day after her government summoned the Myanmar envoy for the third time to protest over its neighbour's actions. Ms. Hasina is to demand more pressure on Myanmar during talks in New York.
•Bangladesh has been overwhelmed by Rohingya Muslims since violence erupted in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar’s Rakhine state on August 25.
•The UN said on Saturday that the total number of people to have entered Bangladesh having fled the unrest had reached 409,000, a leap of 18,000 in a day.
•Conditions are worsening in the border town of Cox’s Bazar where the influx has added to pressures on Rohingya camps already overwhelmed with 3,00,000 people from earlier waves of refugees.
Two children killed
•The UN said two children and a woman were killed in a “rampage” when a private group handed clothes near a camp on Friday.
•Prime Minister Hasina is to speak at the UN on Thursday. “She will seek immediate cessation of violence in Rakhine State in Myanmar and ask the UN secretary general to send a fact-finding mission to Rakhine,” Nazrul Islama, a spokesman for the Prime Pinister, said.
Global pressure
•“She will also call the international community and the UN to put pressure on Myanmar for the repatriation of all the Rohingya refugees to their homeland in Myanmar,” he said.
•Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali said: “We will continue international pressure on the Myanmar government to immediately end its ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.”
•The deaths of the three refugees backed warnings by UN agencies and other relief groups that the crisis could get out of control.
•The World Health Organisation and UN children’s agency on Saturday launched vaccination campaigns against measles, rubella and polio. They estimate that 60% of the new arrivals are children.
•Most Rohingya, who spent more than a week trekking cross-country from Rakhine to reach the Bangladesh border, have found existing camps overflowing and have instead settled on muddy roadsides.
•Many families do not have a shelter over their heads and refugees have been fighting for food and water deliveries.
•The government has put the army in charge of ferrying foreign relief aid from airports to Cox's Bazar. It also plans to build 14,000 shelters.
📰 Breaking the chain of transmission
Complete elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV seems achievable
•Nayna (name changed), 28, was admitted to JJ Hospital in Mumbai when there was a steep fall in her blood pressure. Six months pregnant and HIV-positive, she had not registered herself at any health-care facility even though her first child, a boy, had tested positive for HIV. “We counselled Nayna and her husband, also HIV+, until they realised the seriousness of the disease. She was started on medication immediately,” says Rupali Tople, counsellor at the hospital. “We promised her that were she to comply with our instructions, we would ensure that her second baby was HIV-negative.” In February, Nayna gave birth to a girl, who has tested negative since.
•While medical science has made big advances in the HIV/AIDS fight, it has failed to win the battle so far. But there is one bright spot. The complete elimination of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the virus seems achievable. Currently, 5% of babies born to those who are HIV-positive get infected. Last December, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) had given indications that it could bring that figure down to less than 2% by 2030. Worldwide, a transmission rate below 2% is considered elimination.
Key route of transmission
•MTCT is the primary route of transmission of HIV among children. Babies are infected during pregnancy, labour, delivery or while breastfeeding. Without any intervention, the risk of transmission is 20-45%. But antiretroviral drugs and other strategies can bring it down considerably. “India has now moved on to the most advanced regimen. With good drugs and thorough compliance, the viral load in a mother reduces drastically and thus helps control transmission to babies to a large extent,” says gynaecologist Dr. Rekha Daver, who is on NACO’s core committee for elimination of MTCT.
•Earlier, Indian health providers offered ‘single dose therapy’, which involved administering the antiretroviral drug, nevirapine, to pregnant HIV-positive women two hours before delivery and to newborns within 72 hours of birth. In 2014, the country moved on to follow the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended ‘multidrug therapy’, which is a combination of three drugs — tenofovir, lamivudine and efavirenz (TLE). Affected women need to take it all their lives and nevirapine syrup for six weeks only for their babies. “Nevirapine is known to cause drug-resistant HIV in mothers. With the new regimen, we not only think about the baby but also the mother,” Dr. Daver explains.
•In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to receive validation from WHO that it had eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis, followed by Thailand and Belarus. Among African countries, Uganda claims to be in the pre-elimination stage. “The enormous population in India makes it challenging for health-care workers to reach out to every pregnant woman. On the other hand, pregnant women too often delay registering for antenatal care,” says gynaecologist Dr. Ashok Anand of JJ Hospital. He says registering early is necessary to detect and eliminate MTCT.
•However people like Nayna are lucky. According to NACO, only about 52.7% of pregnant mothers seek skilled care out of an estimated 27 million pregnancies in a year. An estimated 35,200 pregnancies occur in HIV-positive women and more than 10,300 infected babies are born annually, without any intervention.
Reducing risk
•Women generally are advised to breastfeed only for six months until their babies can develop their own antibodies against a range of illnesses. But some doctors recommend that HIV-positive women should not breastfeed as their milk harbours the virus. “For patients from underprivileged classes, replacing the nutrition for the baby without breastfeeding is difficult. But we do advise it to affording patients,” says the Mumbai-based gynaecologist Dr. Suchitra Pandit.
•Dr. Pandit notes that many women also opt for caesarean section surgeries to reduce the risk further. During a baby’s journey through the vaginal passage, contact with abrasions, secretions and blood, which contain the virus, increases the risk of transmission.
•A clinical trial conducted in Europe had shown that elective caesarean section and no breastfeeding limits the transmission.
•But Dr. Daver says that multidrug therapy is usually adequate to drastically reduce a mother’s viral load. “If a virus does reach the baby, nevirapine does the rest of the work,” she says.
📰 The new face of ideological violence
Squads of hatred and violence are strategically activated to disrupt conversation on issues of common concern
•In 1598 a group of Vaishnava clergy sought the King’s permission to install an idol of Vishnu at Chidambaram, the site probably of the most sacred of Shiva temples in the subcontinent. Horrified Shaiva priests responded by a threat to commit mass suicide to protest this. Indeed, twenty of them jumped to their death from the gopuram. This telling detail from a recent book on pluralism by a young American scholar, Elaine Fischer, vividly illustrates the nature of religious violence in early modern India. Worshippers would rather give up their own life than take the life of others with different beliefs and practices. Killing someone from another sect was simply inconceivable!
•In the light of this, what is happening today is cataclysmic. India has had many faults but eliminating people for holding different beliefs was certainly not one of them. For more than two millennia, India has had vibrant traditions of atheism and rationalism — the Jains, Buddhists, followers of Mimansa and Samkhya. They were vigorously opposed by worshippers of gods and goddesses and ritualists of all hue, but were never viewed as an existential threat. Claims of superiority were frequently made in public alongside scathing satire, and black humour. There was vitriol too, but physical violence was rare. Ashoka’s inscriptions as early as the 3rd century exhort different religio-philosophical groups to refrain from insulting and humiliating hate speech. Ashoka does not even consider it worth mentioning that people must abjure injuring, leave alone killing each other. He takes it for granted that this does not happen in his kingdom. This is not to say that ancient societies were entirely peaceful. They were rocked by political violence and the everyday violence integral to all hierarchical societies. However, what India did not witness until the advent of colonial modernity is what may be called ideological violence.
Forms of violence
•Violence comes in many forms. One kind that springs from greed, anger and fear has been around forever — call this plain violence. Then, of course, there is political violence, i.e. violence to conquer territory, to acquire and maintain state power. Yet another, third form of violence has existed, which might be called ritual violence — in archaic societies, occasionally humans, but far more frequently animals, were slaughtered and sacrificed to procure this-worldly goods as well as to maintain cosmic order. In India, some of this ritual violence also ensued from the distinction between pure and impure, i.e. caste violence.
•Ideological violence is different from all these forms of violence — it stems from the dogma that one’s own beliefs and practices are so precious, so unique, that they alone must be publicly visible. Since these are inherently indisputable and have a monopoly over truth, any challenge to them is wasteful or pernicious and therefore must be silenced or erased. It is accompanied by the idea that those with identical beliefs share a special bond of brotherhood which must not be severed by the slightest deviation from within; therefore, internal dissenters must not be tolerated. On the other hand, those who hold different beliefs are outsiders to be fought, expelled, even exterminated.
•Ideological violence was once linked to the development of a certain conception of religion, and therefore can also be called religious violence. But in the last two centuries it has permeated a cluster of non-religious ideologies such as Stalinism, Fascism and xenophobic nationalism. Perhaps that is why it is best to call it not religious but ideological violence.
•The horrifying spate of murders – Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh – by what appears to be the same kind of killers has shown us a new face of this very ideological violence. To be sure, shades of ideological violence are found in inter-sectarian warfare in West Bengal, and Kerala is currently beset with ideologically motivated inter-group violence, but what is unique about these killings is that violence is directed by assassination squads run by hate groups against hapless individuals merely for holding and expressing their different views in public. This pernicious squad-violence against ordinary middle-class professionals is unique in recent Indian history.
A new fear
•One other feature of these serial assassinations is deeply troubling: unless quickly contained, they generate a new kind of fear and a new set of fearful people. It is true, of course, that some or the other group of people have always lived in fear in our society. For instance, Dalits in villages perpetually on the brink of upper-caste violence, women who can never fearlessly venture out at night, journalists in small towns who routinely face the wrath of the powerful, minorities during and in the aftermath of riots, and even middle- and upper-class families who live in gated communities in cities such as Delhi. But what is new and shocking about these recent murders is the attempt to silence assertive, public-spirited citizens in metropolitan towns — an effect also sought to be achieved by the legal intimidation of intellectuals and activists.
•Are we so uprooted now from our traditions that we can’t bear to see public articulations of alternative view points? Is there is an effort here to have one monolithic ideology in the public domain? Squads of hatred and violence are strategically located and activated to disrupt debate and conversation on issues of common concern and instead foster civic alienation and political fragmentation. If indeed a nation is a people in conversation with each other, then cyberbullying and physical aggression against fellow citizens are conversation-stoppers. An attack on this conversation is an attack on the nation.
📰 Buland Darwaza and Rumi Darwaza: gateways to heaven
How rulers left their mark on history through architecture
•“While the Buland Darwaza gives the impression of living rock lifted from an ancient mountainside, the Rumi Darwaza looks like the diadem of a Queen.” These words by Urdu poet and author Shamsur Rahman Faruqi set off a chain of thought in my mind about how rulers used their resources to leave their mark on history.
•Akbar-e-Azam ascended the throne of India in 1556. In the next decade or so, he not only consolidated his empire but also expanded it.
•Akbar had everything a monarch could ask for except an heir. To pray for one, he undertook the journey from Agra to the village of Sikri where the Sufi saint, Salim Chishti, lived in his hospice. The saint blessed the emperor, and a son was born to Akbar on August 30, 1569. The joyful father named him Salim after the saint, and according to Professor Ali Nadeem Rezavi of the Department of History at Aligarh Muslim University, “decided to heap on this city the resources of a vast empire.”
Architectural accomplishments
•And so was built Sikri, which was later renamed Fatehpur Sikri, or the city of victory. It is an architectural delight, but it is the Buland Darwaza, or ‘gate of magnificence’, that has held many enthralled. The entrance to the complex houses the Sufi saint’s exquisite marble shrine and the Jami mosque.
•Professor Rezavi says the Buland Darwaza at Fatehpur Sikri is “the most iconic architectural accomplishment of Akbar’s reign. It incorporates almost all the essential features of Akbar’s architectural traditions: red sandstone, stone carvings, relief by inserting white marble, etc.”
•The construction of the Buland Darwaza was inspired by Timurid architecture. Along with Humayun’s Tomb, its monumentality reflects its Central Asian origins.
•Catherine Asher writes in The New Cambridge History of India : Architecture of Mughal India , “This monumental gate, however, was probably less intended to commemorate a military victory than to underscore Akbar’s links with the Chishti order. Its surface is covered by marble slabs inscribed with Quranic verses promising paradise to true believers, appropriate for the entrance into akhanqah, a complex intended for meditation and devotion.”
•With 42 steps leading up to it, this 53.63-m-high and 35-m-wide gateway is the highest in the world. Whether it was built to celebrate victory or reflect on the transient nature of the world can be guessed from a Persian inscription on it, which advises people to turn towards spirituality: “Isa [Jesus], Son of Maryam said: ‘the world is a bridge, pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He, who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the world endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer for the rest is unseen.’”
•This was prophetic, for the city was abandoned in 1585, with Akbar returning to the Agra Fort.
•Meanwhile, in Lucknow, the Nawabs appointed by the Mughals as governors were leaving their stamp on architecture. Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula, who ruled from 1775 to 1797, shifted the capital from Faizabad to Lucknow in 1775. Till 1856, when the British East India Company sent Nawab Wajid Ali Shah to Calcutta in exile, the Nawabs created some extraordinary religious and secular monuments.
Architecture at a time of crisis
•Asaf-ud-Daula’s rule saw a devastating famine, which created an economic crisis. The residents of Awadh were self-respecting people, so instead of handing out dole, the Nawab started a food-for-work programme. The famous Asafi Imambara, or Bara Imambara, of Lucknow was built to give employment and revenue to the public.
•Resources were strained, a peak had been reached in architectural style, and a certain decadence had crept in. To overcome these, the Nawabs used a more economical style in architecture, which also gave a touch of lightness to the buildings.
•Instead of stones and marble, brick and lime were used. Stucco ornamentation ( gajkari) was used to decorate the monuments, giving it a deep relief effect even on flat walls. Mother of pearl and shells deposited in lake beds were used in the stucco ornamentation to give a shine finer than marble.
•The local masons cleverly used the brick, with its small size and thickness, to form remarkably fine details on the wall and column surfaces. It’s a testimony to their skill that they could adapt lowly material to such wonderful effect: balusters were imitated in clay supported on iron rods. Similarly, pottery was used for roof finials and ornaments.
•This skill can be seen in the delicately built Rumi Darwaza that was the main gateway to the Bara Imambara. It was called so because the design of the structure bears resemblance to an ancient gateway at Constantinople. It’s also called the “Turkish Gateway”. The word Rumi means Roman, and the name was probably given due to the gateway’s design having traces of Roman architecture.
📰 What were you doing when AI took over the world?
Our rulers are nothing but human plug-ins reporting to an AI based in the U.S.
•Do you remember that boy back in school who you so badly wanted to slap? Not just you but your entire class would have loved to beat him up, if only they were sure there would be no consequences.
•You hated him not because he was a bad person but for the opposite reason: he was unbearably good. His uniform was always neatly pressed. His shoes shone like his teeth did. He was the first to raise his hand for every question. All the teachers loved him, and he loved them all in return. He never lost his temper and was permanently, relentlessly, infuriatingly cheerful at all times, under all circumstances. He was so good, so perfect, and so mature that it creeped you out and made you look up waterboarding on Google. Except that there was no Google back then.
A child prodigy
•But there was, and still is, IBM, and it has found precisely such a boy to be their brand ambassador. His name is Tanmay Bakshi, and according to WhatsApp forwards, he is the world’s top-ranked 13-year-old. Not only is he perfect, good, and mature beyond his years, he is also a software developer, an algorithmist, an IBM Cloud Adviser, a best-selling author, a keynote speaker, a TEDx speaker, and inventor of an artificial intelligence (AI) called AskTanmay.
•Apart from the fact that his annual earnings at the age of 13 are way more than what you’ll get when you take forced VRS at 43, Tanmay is also a drone specialist who flies aircraft using his cell phone. He is an expert on neural networks, the Internet of Things, AI, and cognitive development. He is also an IT humanitarian of sorts, having vowed to teach 100,000 kids how to code. To top it all, he is an avid, self-confident self-promoter who can make Chetan Bhagat look like a shy, self-effacing, half-schoolboy. In other words, he needs to be thoroughly investigated, preferably by a joint task force of the UNICEF and the Avengers.
•When I was 13, my greatest cognitive achievement was the unexpected discovery, in the biology textbook, of a diagram depicting the female reproductive system. My only other noteworthy accomplishment was a triple century against Australia in book cricket. If by chance my 13-year-old self were to meet Tanmay on a deserted alley in the middle of the night, it’s likely that a puppy would come under a wheel somewhere.
•Lest I’m misunderstood, let me state categorically that I condemn all forms of violence against children. I am a champion of child rights, if I may say so myself, and in all weight categories.
•And yet, why was I, a rather bright student according to my grandmother, never invited by NASSCOM to deliver a keynote address but Tanmay was? I’ll tell you why: it’s because my intelligence is 100% natural, human, and organic.
•It is an open secret that IBM was taken over by AI at least a decade ago. Now put yourself in AI’s algorithmic shoes: if you wanted humanity to embrace AI, what kind of crusader would you make? You would create a superhuman intelligence that humans would regard not only with awe but also with affection. Something cute, aspirational and non-threatening, but also effective. You would create Tanmay and make him your advocacy lead. IBM has done exactly that by making Tanmay an IBM Champion. Not surprisingly, in all his public appearances he promotes two things: IBM and AI.
•Now, I am not saying he is a humanoid child soldier in Silicon Valley’s propaganda war in favour of AI. Nobody can open up his brain and check whether or not it has Intel inside. But so far, there is little evidence that his intelligence is not AI, or that AI hasn’t already taken over the world.
From humans to algorithms
•In fact, recent developments in our own country suggest that our rulers are nothing but human plug-ins reporting to an AI based in the U.S. Our government’s epic obsession with shoving Aadhaar down 125 crore gullets, not to mention its hyperevangelism about all things digital, make little sense from the point of view of human intelligence. But Aadhaar, GST, cashless, and Digital India make absolute sense from an AI perspective, for they are all mechanisms to transfer control from humans to algorithms.
•Of course, I may be wrong and Tanmay could well be 100% human. But if someone is as intelligent as AI, speaks like AI, works like AI, constantly creates new AI, goes around promoting AI, and wants humanity to surrender itself to AI, then there’s a pretty good chance that he himself is AI.
•Anyway, I only wanted to forewarn all of you. When your grandchildren ask you what you were doing when AI was taking over the world, you ought to have a better answer than ‘I was busy emitting trails of personal data’.
📰 Growth in retail customer base has been 27% CAGR in 5 years
Education loans, small business loans are growth drivers
•Banks have traditionally depended on corporate lending and bulk advances. But increases in non-performing assets (NPAs) and stressed assets of these banks have led to an erosion of their capital base. This has prompted banks to take different strategies to grow. Focussing on the untapped retail customers by offering them attractive options to borrow is one such.Rajiv Anand, executive director, retail banking, Axis Bank, explains its plans.
Retail banking is growing very fast. How is Axis Bank poised to leverage this?
•Retailisation has always been at the core of our vision. We strongly believe that digitisation is hygiene, not a delight any more and hence we would pivot all products, services and processes which aren’t native to digital. Payments would continue to be a predominant lever in this space.
Axis Bank has seen only steady progress in the retail business — six years ago, 20% of assets belonged to this segment; today it is about 45%. Why this change now?
•We have organically built ourselves as a market leader in retail franchise. With proliferation of technology and digital, one could expect a long tail strategy to reach otherwise niche segments, in addition to reaching the mass through branch expansion. The growth in the retail customer base has been strong at 27% CAGR and so has been our market share since 2012. Distribution combined with product capabilities and digital thought leadership has contributed to strengthening our market share in retail, which today stands at 46-48% across advances, deposits and fee income.
•With disposable income levels rising and consumption going up, are you witnessing a commensurate rise in retail loans? Your retail customer base has grown 14% between 2013-2017.
•Factors like increased disposable income, increased discretionary spends and high consumer confidence index did have a positive impact across our retail businesses including payments. These factors combined with effective use of big data and analytics help us offer right products at the right time to customers across channels, even at branches. We’ve doubled our cross-sell ratio over past five years and it’ll continue to get better as we strengthen our data and digital capabilities in coming years.
Your portfolio has been traditionally heavy on home loans. Are you looking to change your portfolio mix?
•Our retail portfolio has significantly diversified over time. Five years ago, mortgage was the key growth driver, dominating the portfolio at 60% but we’ve been diversifying the retail loan book across non-mortgage segments since then, prompting a decrease in the share of home loans from 54% in FY13 to 44% in FY17. Our new drivers of growth to broaden the customer base are education loans, small business banking loans, personal loans and MFI retail loans. We already have a customer base of 1 million MFI loans.
How has the shift from the corporate to retail loan book been?
•We’ve built a strong retail franchise in the last five years across assets, liabilities, payments and fees which has triggered a shift in contribution of retail overall in the bank. Retail loans per se have grown at 28% CAGR over the past five years and now contribute to 46% of overall loan book. We have diversified our portfolio from mortgage to autos (growing at >35% over the past two years) and unsecured loans (40% growth over the past two years). You’ll see further shift in the portfolio mix as we start to focus on new segments. While we’ll continue to focus on improving the quality and reducing the concentration risk of corporate loan book, the new drivers of growth there would be transaction banking fee and working capital loans.
•With regard to MSME and SME lending, we’ve a variant called small business banking loan. We aspire to grow our SBB book three times by 2019. SME lending continues to be integral — advances grew 10% year-on-year taking the share of SME advances to total advances at 13%.
📰 Research papers are getting harder to read, comprehend
Since only peers and specialists read the whole paper, it is vital that the abstract be readable and understandable by all
•One of the all-time most important scientific research publications is Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, published in 1859. It was not a paper but a whole book. It was readable and understandable not only by biologists, but by mathematicians, philosophers, historians and the “lay public” as well. Alas, today’s scientific reports are increasingly becoming unreadable and incomprehensible even by peer groups. “The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time”, write a group of neuroscientists from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden (Plaven-Sigray et al. eLife 2017; 6:e27725).
•The group analysed the language of the abstracts of as many as 7,09,577 papers published over the last 34 years – between 1880 and 2015. Note that they analysed not only the whole texts of the research papers but their abstracts as well. An abstract describes in a nutshell the main message of the paper — what the question is, what methods were used to address the question, what the results obtained were, and what the salient conclusions have been. Thus, an abstract is meant for not the specialists in the same field alone, but for non-specialists and interested readers as well. It, in effect, offers the reader the “take home” message. Only specialists and fellow researchers, interested in the area of research of the publication read the whole paper in all its sections. It is thus vital that the abstract be readable and understandable by all.
How to measure this?
•How does one measure and quantify “readability”? Way back in 1948, one Dr. R Flesch published a ‘yardstick’ of readability for the English language texts. It was based on (a) the number of syllables per word and (b) the number of words in each sentence. The Flesch Readability Ease (FRE) is between 100-90 for a typical 5th grade schoolchild in the US. (The sentence “A cat sat on a mat” has an FRE of 110, easily understood by a primary schoolchild). The magazine Readers Digest has an FRE of 65, understood by high school students and beyond. The Harvard Business Review, on the other hand, has a value of 30. The “Harvard Business Review” (with its complex and specialised technical language) has an FRE of 30. Thus, the lower the FRE the harder the readability.
•Likewise, the FRE of scientific abstracts published way back in 1880 was found to be around 30. But, over the years, it has fallen down to as low as 10 today. Worryingly, as many as 1.6 lakh abstracts (close to 20% of all journal articles) have FRE of zero (0). An M.Sc. graduate may not be able to understand them. Leave alone specialised journals (with their specialised terms and jargon), this appears to be true of even “general” journals such as Nature or Science. The mean syllables per word has also shot up almost twofold and the number of difficult words (counted as NDC) has gone up from 35% to over 50%, particularly during the last 60 years, making readability increasingly difficult.
•Why has this difficulty arisen in the readability? The authors suggest two possibilities. One is that the number of co-authors has gone up with time. Indeed, we seldom see a single-author paper (only perhaps in mathematics?). Many of the co-authors want their say in the text — the classic cooks and broth situation. The other appears to be a general increase in the scientific (and linguistic) jargon, and hence a vocabulary that has become a language in itself (they call it “science-ese”, I see a similarity here with “legal-ese”). Interestingly, it is not only scientific jargon even other words such as “novel”, “robust”, “significant”, “district”, “underlying”, and “suggestive” are used increasingly these days.
•Same conclusions drawn by the Karolinska group are worth quoting. They write: “Lower readability implies less accessibility, particularly for non-specialists, such as journalists, policy makers and the wider public... scientific credibility can sometimes suffer when reported by journalists... further, amidst concerns that modern societies are becoming less stringent with actual truths, replaced with true-sounding “post-facts”... science should be advancing our most accurate knowledge. One suggestion from the field is to create accessible “lay summaries.” Another proposal is to make scientific communication a necessary part of undergraduate and graduate education.” (This last suggestion is particularly true for India, where mastery over English, the lingua franca of today’s science, needs to be improved badly.)
•Finally, the authors did a self-analysis of their own paper and found it has a FRE score of 49, and its abstract 40. I hope my own report here fares higher!
Seminar presentations
•It is already difficult to read and comprehend a published paper. One would think listening to it in a seminar might make it easier. Alas, no. These days the speaker uses the modern device called Powerpoint, which makes it worse. Each slide is filled from top to bottom with words and pictures. More often than not, they are ‘copy and paste’ jobs from the paper. Given that the lights are dimmed, each slide brimful and the speaker drones on and on, the whole thing is soporific. Just as FRE and NDC, there are factors such as aspect ratio, font size, number of lines per slide, and colour contrast which make Powerpoint presentations attractive. And just as we want courses and workshops in scientific writing, we need to have classes and workshops on oral presentations, using audiovisual aids. If this does not happen, do not blame us if we fall asleep during seminars.
📰 Mumbai team discovers how embryos implant in the womb
The insight can be used for improving the success rate of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and in developing contraceptives
•Researchers at the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health (NIRRH) in Mumbai have finally shed light on one of the most important steps in pregnancy — the ability of the embryo to implant itself in the womb.
•Although much is known about the early steps of establishment of pregnancy, very little is known about the communication between the implanting embryo and mother’s womb. The researchers have found a cross-talk between the embryo and the inner lining of the uterus (endometrium) and discovered a chain of chemical events that facilitate the implantation of the embryo in the womb.
•The understanding of this initial step has several potential implications such as improving the success rate of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), which hovers around 30% and developing contraceptives which work by preventing the implantation of the embryo. In all probability, the insight into the implanting mechanism might help in better understanding of conditions such as pre-eclampsia (gestational hypertension). The results of the study were published in the journal Endocrinology.
In vitro studies
•Even in normal situations, there is about 40% wastage of embryos as they fail to implant, leading to unsuccessful pregnancy. That is because a delicate and intricate balance exists between the embryo which is able to implant itself and the endometrium that receives it. At present very little of this process is understood.
•Using cell lines of trophoblast (the outer layer of the dividing bunch of cells of blastocyst) and endometrium (the inner lining of the uterus) samples from women who have undergone hysterectomy the researchers recreated the system in a lab dish. Chemicals were used to make the endometrium thicker (decidua) to mimic the lining of the uterus which is ready to allow the embryo to implant itself.
•A particular protein (HOXA10) which is responsible for better invasion and implantation of the embryo in the endometrium is present at elevated levels in a receptive endometrium. The team led by Dr. Deepak Modi at the Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory at NIRRH found the level of this protein drops suddenly at the time of implantation. This drop is localised to the place where the embryo is about to implant itself.
Chain of events
•The sudden drop in the HOXA10 protein causes a chain of events starting with a spike in certain class of cytokine leading to a trigger in the implantation pathway (STAT3) of the embryo. As a result, certain enzymes in the embryo digest the extracellular matrix of the decidua (thickened lining of the uterus) and make it loose enough for the outer layer of the embryo (trophoblast) to invade and implant itself in the uterus.
•“We depleted the HOXA10 protein in one set of decidual cells while we kept it at normal level in another set of cells. We found increased invasion of trophoblasts and therefore better implantation where cells with reduced HOXA10 level were used,” says Dr. Modi. “We could also show that the trophoblast cells which have more invasion have increased activity of the enzymes that digest the extracellular matrix proteins of the decidua.”
•“Previously it was thought that higher HOXA10 expression was better for implantation. But our study, for the first time, showed that at the site of implantation the HOXA10 expression is lower,” says Dr. Satish Kumar Gupta from the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and one of the authors of the paper.
•It took the team eight years to complete the study. The biggest challenge was to test and prove the sequence of events observed in the lab happen in the womb. “This was a big technical challenge as getting human tissue of women in early stages of pregnancy is impossible. So we took tissues from monkeys which are very close to humans to validate the lab findings,” says Dr. Modi.
•In baboons, lower levels of HOXA10 protein were found at the site of implantation as compared with other sites of the decidua. “This helped confirm that reduced HOXA10 protein was associated with the enhanced invasion and implantation of the embryo in the decidua,” says Geeta Godbole from the Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory at NIRRH and the first author of the paper.
