📰 Profiles of new Governors of T.N., Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh
President Ram Nath Kovind appoints new Governors to Tamil Nadu, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam and Meghalaya.
•President appointed appointed Banwarilal Purohit as the Governor of Tamil Nadu, Brig. (Dr.) B.D. Mishra (Retd.) as the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, Satya Pal Malik as the Governor of Bihar, Jagdish Mukhi as the Governor of Assam and Ganga Prasad as the Governor of Meghalaya.
•Here are the profiles of the new Governors:
Banwarilal Purohit
•A public personality involved in social, political, educational and industrial fields of Vidarbha in Maharashtra, Purohit plunged into active politics in 1977.
•He entered the Maharashtra Assembly for the first time in 1978 from the Nagpur east seat. He was re-elected in 1980 from Nagpur south and became a minister in 1982.
•In 1984 and 1989, Purohit was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Nagpur-Kamptee seat and was a member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of Defence Ministry.
•He was re-elected from the Lok Sabha seat in 1996 and served as a member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Home Affairs, a member of the Standing Committee on Defence, and a member of the Public Sector Undertaking Committee.
•Mr. Purohit is also credited with the revival of ‘The Hitavada’, an English daily founded by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a mentor to Mahatma Gandhi.
•Under him, ‘The Hitavada’ became a leading newspaper of central India and apart from its headquarters edition at Nagpur, the daily also launched editions from Jabalpur, Raipur, and Bhopal.
•Mr. Purohit was appointed as Governor of Assam State by the President of India on August 17, 2016. He has been thrice elected as a member of Parliament from Nagpur, twice on the Indian National Congress's ticket and once as a BJP member.
Ganga Prasad
•Mr. Ganga Prasad was elected for the first time as a Member of the Legislative Council in Bihar in 1994. He has been an MLC for 18 years, and has also served as the leader of the BJP (as also the leader of the Opposition) in the Legislative Council.
•During the earlier NDA regime, he served as the leader of the Bihar Legislative Council for the ruling party.
Admiral DK Joshi
•Sixty-three-year-old Admiral (Retd.) Devendra Kumar Joshi was the Chief of Naval Staff between August 2012 and February 2014.
•An alumnus of the National Defence Academy, he joined the executive branch of the Indian Navy in 1974. He is a graduate of the US Naval War College, and an alumnus of Mumbai's College of Naval Warfare.
•He has been awarded the Param Vishist Seva Medal, the Ati Vishist Seva medal, Yudh Seva Medal, Nau Sena Medal and the Vishist Seva Medal.
•Admiral Joshi has also served as Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, Commander-in-Chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Island Command, and Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.
•He was a Defence Adviser in the Indian High Commission in Singapore from 1996 to 1999. He also commanded the Vizag-based Eastern Fleet of the Navy.
Jagdish Mukhi
•Mr. Jagdish Mukhi was born on December 1, 1942 at Dajal, Dera Ghazi Khan of Punjab, now in Pakistan.
•Mr. Mukhi took to active politics on June 25, 1975 when the Emergency was clamped. He has been representing the Janak Puri constituency continuously from 1980, winning seven times in the process.
Mr. Mukhi had earlier held the portfolios of Finance, Planning, Excise & Taxation and Higher Education in the Delhi Government. He was also the leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly between 1998 and 2008.
•Mr. Mukhi has been serving as the Lieutenant Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
•He graduated in commerce from Raj Rishi College, Alwar (Rajasthan).
•In 1967, he did his M.Com from Shri Ram College of Commerce of Delhi University.
Brigadier (Dr.) B.D. Mishra (Retired)
•Dr. B. D. Mishra retired from the Indian Army on July 31, 1995 as Brigadier, after a 34-year career.
•Dr. Mishra was the Commander of NSG (Black Cat Commandos) Counter Hijack Task Force that successfully rescued all 124 passengers and crew members of a hijacked Indian Airlines flight that was forced to land at the Raja Sansi Airfield in Amritsar in 1993.
•Dr. Mishra also fought in the 1962 war against China and the 1971 war against Pakistan.
•He holds an MA from Allahabad University, an M.Sc from Madras University and a Ph.D from Jiwaji University, Gwalior.
Satya Pal Malik
•Mr. Satya Pal Malik, 71, was the Union Minister of State, Parliamentary Affairs and Tourism between April 1990 and November 1990.
•After being a Rajya Sabha MP for two terms between 1980 and 1989, he was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1989. Much earlier, he was a member of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
•Mr. Malik, an agriculturist and social worker, completed his B.Sc and LL.B from Meerut University and holds a Diploma in Parliamentary Affairs from Institute of Constitutional & Parliamentary Studies run by the Parliament of India.
📰 New U.S. policy can boost Indo-Afghan security ties: Abdullah Abdullah
We respect India’s position and the cooperation will continue in all walks of life
•The new U.S. policy in Afghanistan is an “opportunity” for India-U.S.-Afghanistan cooperation on security as well as development issues, says Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, speaking to Diplomatic Editor Suhasini Haidar .
How important is the MoU on technical and training cooperation signed during your visit, and what does it mean for bilateral ties?
•The MoU is an important step in the security sector. India’s support has been comprehensive here and has always looked at the priorities and the wishes of the Afghan government and people. My visit here had two parts: one were the bilateral meetings, the call on President [Kovind] and my meeting with Prime Minister Modi. We discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations and areas of cooperation from security to trade and investment.
•The other part was the trade and investment show which was cooperation between the U.S., Afghanistan and India. Lots of businessmen and women had travelled here, had the opportunity to interact and bond.
These are the specifics, but do they represent a bigger picture, in which India takes a larger security role, and the India-Afghanistan-U.S. trilateral emerges as an axis?
•India has been helping Afghanistan for the past 16 years in many ways. The United States has been helping Afghanistan for the past 16 years. Our cooperation had a security element throughout, like the helicopters India transferred, or training Afghan troops. What was added to that was the announcement of the U.S. policy, which is an opportunity to take this relationship to the trilateral level as well. So yes, I do see this opportunity.
•Your visit comes a few days after the Defence Minister said, in the first such statement, that there will be no Indian boots on the ground in Afghanistan. So does this opportunity still exist?
•I would say the India has always behaved as a friend to Afghanistan, and wished for us a stable and democratic country, and an Afghanistan at peace, within and without, contributing to the prosperity of the region. Based on this shared vision, India has been ready to provide assistance based on our priorities, as presented by our people and our government.
•It is not that if we raise demands, India would say this is [impossible]. But no issue has been raised as such by us so far. We respect India’s position and the cooperation will continue in all walks of life.
You say Afghanistan has not asked, but if the U.S. were to ask?
•Every country will decide on its own outlook, and the cooperation between India and Afghanistan is such, we discuss everything.
•The Pakistan government on the other hand has accused India of being a spoiler in Afghanistan, even as Afghan senior officials were part of a trilateral in Islamabad with China and Pakistan.
•I can’t be held accountable for every comment made in any corner of the world, so I will not enter into that debate. India’s role in Afghanistan has been important, contributing to the stabilisation of Afghanistan, contributing to our wellbeing and is appreciated by our people, whom I represent here as Chief Executive.
Your visit this week coincides with visits from U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis, who spoke about cooperating in Afghanistan and the Russian President’s envoy on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov. Do you worry that Afghanistan could become the ground for yet another ‘Great Game’, given that there are now two distinct camps with U.S. and Europe on one side and Russia China, even Iran and Pakistan on the other?
•My visit to India was scheduled some time ago, and much preparation had gone into the trade fair, so we shouldn’t read too much into the timing. That said, there is a need for interactions with all countries. We have seen a slightly different outlook between them, and all our partners may not agree on how to approach a solution to the problems of Afghanistan. I feel that we need to bring back the [global] consensus that existed in 2001 [post fall of Taliban], that was a very broad one with very few exceptions.
Is there still a chance of reconciliation with the Taliban then? How true are reports that your government speaks on a “daily basis” to Taliban leaders and there has been some understanding as well?
•The policy has been constant in the past 16 years. The door for talks and negotiations is always open and we have not closed it down at any stage. Periodically there have been contacts, messages communicated to the government. People of Afghanistan are supportive of the talks, but at the same time, won’t give up their achievements, including the Constitution. When there will be breakthroughs people will be told of it, but at this stage there is no breakthrough I can report.
There was one breakthrough, in the deal with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hizb-e-Islami party. As someone who fought the war on the other side, do you think bringing him into the mainstream has been successful?
•Well certainly as someone, who was outside the system and in the war-camp, has come into the system and the people of Afghanistan have welcomed it. Then, of course, it will take time for them to adapt, as much has changed in the years Mr. Hekmatyar was away from the country. There is a new youth, a new system, a new energy and dynamism that will take time to absorb. But it was the right move from our side and right for him to embrace it.
And it is possible to forget all that his group was responsible for in the 1990s and after? Is it possible to reconcile ?
•The story of reconciliation in Afghanistan is much deeper than this. Remember we were fighting against the Soviets, as a result of which millions of people were refugees, hundreds of thousands were killed or maimed or disabled. But when we came together again, we didn’t go to take revenge from members of that regime. In national interest, a unified Afghanistan is important. We shouldn’t get stuck in the past, even if we can’t forgive or forget. There were some incidents of revenge that did happen. I witnessed the hanging of 14,000 people executed behind the Ministry of Interior, during the early days of the Communist regime. The people who were responsible were still around, but the spirit of reconciliation is still important. If we could forget that, we can still reconcile.
In the absence of a breakthrough, what makes you confident of the security situation in Afghanistan. The new U.S. policy has seen a mere 3,000 plus troops from the U.S.. When a force strength of 100,000 didn’t finish the Taliban, how do you think this will?
•I think the important thing from the U.S., apart from troops and military hardware, is the clarity of the message. The clarity that this policy is not time-bound, but condition-based, with a regional component. The bulk of the responsibility is on the shoulders of our soldiers and of the people they support; we shouldn’t forget. That is the hope, not just for individuals but it is the support for a free, unified, democratic Afghanistan with equal rights for men and women. That cannot be reversed.
You spoke also of the hope of the Indian commitment to Chabahar port allowing much more trade. Is there any commitment from the U.S. that they will not object to this trade, as currently most commerce out of Iran is heavily sanctioned?
•Look, this is a trilateral arrangement, between Afghanistan, India and Iran. Anything which facilitates legitimate economic activities and contributes to our prosperity, will have the support of our allies. We will find ways and opportunities which are win-wins for all. This trade and investment show in Delhi was a win-win, and we hope Chabahar will help many people.
How do you think the message on terror that you spoke of has been received by Pakistan? How far do you think the U.S. should go in putting pressure on Pakistan and is there a difference in the mood in Pakistan?
•Do you think this is the best place to speak of such things? Whatever is in the interest of peace and stability, we will do, but I will not get into specifics as I am here to discuss another important part of our policy, that is the India-Afghanistan relationship.
Do you see a change in Pakistan?
•We hope there will be positive changes. I will leave it there.
📰 India, China should open a new chapter: Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui
Luo Zhaohui calls for greater ‘cooperation’
•Chinese envoy to India Luo Zhaohui has said it was time for India and China to turn the old page and start a new chapter, stressing that the countries have made a lot of progress at bilateral level.
•Chinese President Xi Jinping met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in Xiamen earlier this month, and the two leaders sent a clear message of “reconciliation” and “cooperation”, he said.
•“We should turn the old page and start a new chapter with the same pace and direction. We should dance together. We should make one plus one eleven. China is the largest trading partner of India. We have made a lot of progress at the bilateral level, as well as in international and regional affairs,” Mr. Luo said.
•The Chinese envoy was speaking on the 68th anniversary of founding of the People’s Republic of China.
•“In our bilateral engagement, there have been thousands of prominent persons like Prof Xu Fancheng, (Buddhist monk) Bodhidharma, Faxian (a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled to India in the 3rd century) and Rabindranath Tagore.
‘Don’t forget legacy’
•“We should never forget their contribution and legacies. The history could do a lot of things. Standing on their shoulders, we should do more today,” Mr. Luo said.
•The Chinese envoy added that the speed of Chinese high-speed trains from Beijing to Shanghai was increased from 300 kmph to 350 kmph two weeks ago.
•“We have started the feasibility study of hyperloop trains at the speed of 1,000 to 4,000 kmph,” he said.
•He added that the high-speed trains were one of the four latest inventions of China.
📰 Europe should defy U.S. on sanctions, says Zarif
‘Trump may not certify Iran’s compliance with N-deal’
•Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned that the only way to stop its nuclear deal from collapsing is for Europe to defy any U.S. re-imposition of sanctions.
•In an interview published on Saturday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Mr. Zarif said Iran would develop much more advanced nuclear technology — though not for weapons purposes — if Europe followed the United States in returning to a sanctions regime.
•“Europe should lead,” he said during an interview in New York.
•U.S. President Donald Trump has attacked the deal on numerous occasions, vowing to tear it up.
•On October 15, Mr. Trump is due to testify to Congress whether Tehran is complying with the deal and whether it remains in the United States’ interests to stick by it.
Fresh sanctions
•If he decides it is not, it could open the way for U.S. lawmakers to re-impose sanctions, leading to the potential collapse of the agreement.
•“My assumption and guess is that he will not certify and then will allow Congress to take the decision,” said Mr. Zarif.
•He said that if the United States scuppers the deal, the decision would prove counter-productive.
•Mr. Zarif said “walking away” was one of the options being considered by Tehran. “If Europe and Japan and Russia and China decided to go along with the United States, then I think that will be the end of the deal,” he said.
•Washington on Thursday pressed for the IAEA to carry out more nuclear inspections in Iran, warning that failure to do so would make the nuclear deal with Tehran “an empty promise”
📰 Palestine PM to make key Gaza visit on Monday
Aims to cement the new truce between Fatah and Hamas
•West Bank-based Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah is to make his first visit to Gaza since 2015 on Monday, in a fresh attempt to reconcile with the Islamist movement Hamas which rules the Israel-blockaded coastal enclave.
•The trip by Mr. Hamdallah and several of his Ministers aims to crown a rapprochement between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party after a decade of animosity and spurts of violence.
Transfer of power
•The talks are intended to prepare for a transfer of power in the Gaza Strip from Hamas to Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.
•Hamas and its rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, have both expressed confidence that the latest unity initiative will fare better than the failures of the past.
•But among many questions to be answered is the central issue of whether Hamas is really prepared to give up its Gaza security apparatus and share power with the PA. Senior Hamas official Mussa Abu Marzuq has said there is “great hope” for the success of the reconciliation efforts but that disarming Hamas personnel is not on the agenda.
•Azzam al-Ahmad, a leading Fatah member, said he was now “more optimistic of ending Palestinian division in Gaza than at any previous opportunity”.
•Mr. Abbas has this year turned the screw on his rival, halting payments to Israel for electricity it supplies to Gaza, cutting the salaries of officials in the territory and limiting the number of Gazans given approval to receive medical treatment elsewhere.
📰 The many shades of darkness and light
If we do not recognise the multiplicity of our past, we cannot accept the multiplicity of our present
•For most Europeans and Europeanised peoples, Western modernity starts assuming shape with something called the Enlightenment, which, riding the steed of Pure Reason, sweeps away the preceding ‘Dark Ages’ of Europe. Similarly, for religious Muslims, the revelations of Islam mark a decisive break in Arabia from an earlier age of ignorance and superstition, often referred to as ‘Jahillia’.
•Both the ideas are based on a perception of historical changes, but they also tinker with historical facts. In that sense, they are ideological: not ‘fake’, but a particular reading of the material realities that they set out to chronicle. Their light is real, but it blinds us to many things too.
•For instance, it has been increasingly contested whether the European Dark Ages were as dark as the rhetoric of the Enlightenment assumes. It has also been doubted whether the Enlightenment shed as much light on the world as its champions claim. For instance, some of the darkest deeds to be perpetuated against non-Europeans were justified in the light of the notion of ‘historical progress’ demanded by the Enlightenment. Finally, even the movement away from religion to reason was not as clear-cut as it is assumed: well into the 19th century, Christianity (particularly Protestantism) was justified in terms of divinely illuminated reason as against the dark heathen superstitions of other faiths, and this logic has survived in subtler forms even today.
•In a similar way, the Islamic notion of a prior age of Jahillia is partly a construct. While it might have applied to some Arab tribes most directly influenced by the coming of Islam, it was not as if pre-Islamic Arabia was simply a den of darkness and ignorance. There were developed forms of culture, poetry, worship and social organisation in so-called Jahillia too, all of which many religious Arab Muslims are not willing to consider as part of their own inheritance today. Once again, this notion of a past Jahillia has enabled extremists in Muslim societies to treat other people in brutal ways: a recent consequence was the 2001 destruction of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan, not to mention the persecution of some supposed ‘idolators’ in Islamic State-occupied territories.
Achievements and an error
•Both the notions — the Dark Ages followed by the Enlightenment and Jahillia followed by the illumination of Islam — are based on some real developments and achievements. Europe did move, slowly and often contradictorily, from religious and feudal authority to a greater tendency to reason and hence, finally, to allotting all individuals a theoretically equivalent (democratic) space as a human right rather than as a divine boon. Similarly, many parts of pre-Islamic Arabia (‘Jahillia’) did move from incessant social strife and a certain lack of cohesion to the far more organised, and hence hugely successful, politico-religious systems enabled by Islam. It might also be, as many religious Muslims claim, that early Islam marked some distinctively progressive and egalitarian values compared to the predominant tribalism of so-called Jahillia.
•In both cases, however, the error has been to posit a complete break: a before-after scenario. This is not sustained by all the historical evidence. Why do I need to point this out? Because there are two great problems with positing such decisive before-after scenarios, apart from that of historical error.
Two problems of a complete break
•First, it reduces one’s own complex relationship to one’s past to sheer negation. The past — as the Dark Ages or Jahillia — simply becomes a black hole into which we dump everything that we feel does not belong to our present. This reduces not only the past but also our present.
•Second, the past — once reduced to a negative, obscure, dark caricature of our present — can then be used to persecute peoples who do not share our present. In that sense, the before-after scenario is aimed at the future. When Europeans set out to bring ‘Enlightenment’ values to non-European people, they also justified many atrocities by reasoning that these people were stuck in the dark ages of a past that should have vanished, and hence such people needed to be forcibly civilised for their own good. History could be recruited to explain away — no, even call for — the persecution that was necessary to ‘improve’ and ‘enlighten’ such people. I need not point out that some very religious Muslims thought in ways that were similar, and some fanatics still do.
•I have often wondered whether the European Enlightenment did not adopt just Arab discoveries in philosophy or science, ranging from algebra to the theory of the camera. Perhaps their binary division of their own past is also an unconscious imitation of the Arab bifurcation of its past into dark ‘Jahillia’ and the light of Islam. Or maybe it is a sad ‘civilisational’ trend — for some caste Hindus tend to make a similar cut between ‘Arya’ and ‘pre-Arya’ pasts, with similar consequences: a dismissal of aboriginal cultures, practices and rights today as “lapsed” forms, or the whitewashing of Dravidian history by the fantasy of a permanent ‘Aryan’ presence in what is India.
•All such attempts — Muslim, Arya-Hindu, or European — bear the germs of potential violence. After all, if we cannot accept our own evolving identities in the past, how can we accept our differences with others today? And if we cannot accept the diversity and richness of our multiple pasts, how can we accept the multiplicity of our present?
📰 Keep calm and clean India
What were you doing when the economy was going to the cows?
•I know all of you are freaked out by the state of the economy. To be honest, I am less freaked out by the economy than by everyone freaking out about the economy.
•Besides, I have my suspicions. It’s quite possible that everyone is stressed out only because they’ve been brainwashed by the fake news being disseminated by platforms such as al-Qaeda’s ISI-backed propaganda wing, Al News, which recently changed its name to Alt News. If that is the case, then the best remedy is what our Prime Minister has been advocating from Day 1: immerse yourself in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
•I can tell you from personal experience that it works brilliantly. Whenever my anxiety levels shoot up, I start cleaning my room. In 20 minutes, I’m as calm as James Bond in a burning helicopter.
Contributing to the economy
•Mental health benefits apart, there really is only one solution to our economic woes: Clean India. If every Indian goes out — or rather, doesn’t go out — and works hard to make the country Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2019, the economy will automatically get back on track.
•Renowned economists have repeatedly pointed out that the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan could add one percentage point to GDP growth every year. Starting from 2014, if each one of us had done our bit for Clean India, by 2017, the growth rate would have risen by 3% — from 8.7% to 11.7%. That it has instead shrunk to 5.7% is a sad commentary on our collective failure as citizens and patriots.
•Therefore, in this difficult time, I call upon my fellow Indians to rededicate themselves to Swachh Bharat. If you were wondering whether I walk the talk, let me assure you that I’ve been working very hard to declare my home ODF.
•As per government criteria, you can declare an area as ODF provided all bowel movements in the specified location occur inside a toilet. In my home, everyone does his or her bit for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan first thing in the morning. The only exception, of course, is my 15-month-old son, Kattabomman.
•Kattabomman, as you all know, is a child prodigy in multiple domains, including literature, philosophy, Sanskrit, Python, and particle physics. But when it comes to doing potty, he behaves like any other baby of his age, which is to say, he doesn’t adhere to government guidelines against open defecation.
•I got around this logjam by ensuring that he was always diapered around potty time. But recently he developed a bad case of diaper rash, to which my wife responded by unilaterally imposing a ‘diaper-free time’ every day from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. During this period, no one in the house is allowed to wear diapers. I personally had no objection to this policy, as I had graduated out of diapers at a very young age.
•But over the past week, Kattabomman’s potty schedule has turned erratic, making it impossible to anticipate when or where he will go next. This unpredictability, combined with the draconian ‘diaper-free’ rule, has turned my home into the existential antithesis of an ODF zone.
•The shit hit the fan, idiomatically speaking, last Friday, when I got back from work to discover that Kattabomman had committed a rather extreme form of literary criticism.
•“Dei,” I asked him, “Why did you do potty on the cover of Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, The Golden House? Don’t you know he has won the Booker of Bookers and is a supporter of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?”
•My son turned around and gave me a look that basically said, “Dei, what about the 13 other writers on whose covers I have done potty over the last five days? Did you ever ask me why I did it? Or did you keep quiet because all those novels were translations from vernacular languages whereas Rushdie writes in English? Despite such brazen hypocrisy, you call yourself a journalist?”
An answer to whataboutery
•Needless to say, my son’s reaction forced me to introspect. Instead of dismissing it as facile whataboutery, as any liberal would have done, I asked myself some hard questions. What was I doing, for instance, when Kashmiri Pandits were being brutally evicted from Kashmir? Where was I in 1984? Did I condemn the Mughal conquest of India? Or the abduction of Sita by Ravana? Why did I keep quiet when Gandhi bumped into a bunch of peaceful bullets? What about Malda? Not to mention, vanaspati and Dalda?
•And then it came to me in a blinding flash: if you truly love your country, you must act now, so that you have an answer ready when some day you are asked, what were you doing when the economy was going to the cows? I can proudly say: I was busy trying to grow the GDP by helping to make my country Open Defecation Free, starting with my own home. What about you?
📰 Religion and the Indian Constitution
Our founding document goes beyond the common objectives of all liberal-democratic constitutions to also be an instrument for social revolution
•Checking political tyranny, protecting the basic interests of dissenting minorities, and saving all citizens from taking decisions now that they might regret later are important objectives of all liberal-democratic constitutions. But the Indian Constitution goes further — it attempts a comprehensive social transformation, to effect a social revolution.
•Religion appears to be the main target of this attempted transformation. If so, how does this transformative potential of the Constitution impact a society saturated by religion?
•To answer this question, I begin with a distinction between individual ethics of self-fulfilment and social norms of everyday conduct. By the first, I mean a framework for meaningful living and dying, say, a full life in this world, swarga(heaven) in another world, or freedom from recurrent births and deaths (moksha or nirvana), or obeying the commands of God.
•By social norms of everyday conduct, I mean rituals and ceremonies of social interaction, but primarily norms governing interpersonal relations — with whom one should or should not interact, who one should or should not marry, with whom one should or should not dine, who is to perform which job in society, etc. Ethics of self-fulfilment and norms of social conduct may be so tightly connected that they form one single system. Or the connection between them may be so loose that they are seen to constitute two separate systems.
Ethics and social norms
•In the Abrahamic traditions, the connection between ethics and social norms was forged so tightly that they became part of a single deeply connected system. And the term ‘Religion’ was invented to refer to this whole. Thus, if a person chose to be, say, a Latin Christian, he instantly became part of this entire system. Adopting a particular set of Christian beliefs on salvation went hand in hand with taking part in specific Christian rituals and ceremonies, and entering a web of unequal social relations with non-Christians. It would be wrong and impermissible for a person with Christian beliefs to participate in non-Christian social rituals or tolerate pagans.
•For this reason, a religion-centred social revolution in Europe meant (a) breaking the monopoly of Christianity, presenting options other than dominant Christian ideas of self-fulfilment — pluralisation of ethics; (b) loosening the connection between ethics and social norms, freeing social norms from Christian ethics, building norms of social equality that transcended religious identities — secularisation; and (c) fighting a church that blocked secularisation and pluralisation.
•By contrast, the connection between ethics and social norms remained very loose in the Indian tradition. Because social norms and power hardly ever dictated the choice of ethics, there was greater innovation, and so ethical frameworks proliferated. There were always many ethical frameworks to choose from. People could move freely from one framework to another and sometimes, without any discomfort, participate in several. And yet, precisely because social norms existed independently of ethics, this very ethical flexibility went hand in hand with great rigidity within social norms. This is so because hierarchical and fixed caste relations lay at the core of these norms. Ironically, they even complemented each other; as long as one remained within the caste system, one could choose any ethical framework, any path to self-fulfilment. A person could find fulfilment in a loving relationship with Krishna, in achieving swarga, or in liberation from the cycle of rebirth and at the same time follow common norms governing unequal social relations. A person may quit a this-worldly Vedic ethic in order to lead an ascetic Jain life but all the while continue to belong to the Vaishya caste, and therefore remain enmeshed in hierarchical caste relations. This was true even for those who became Christians or Muslims; they chose a modified Abrahamic ethic but remained entrenched in the caste system.
‘Religion’ in India
•Given that the term ‘religion’ was invented to refer to a single system, it was not easily applicable in the subcontinent where ethics and social norms do not cohere into one single whole. Yet, such is the force and sway of the term ‘religion’ that it has been simultaneously used to refer to two relatively distinct and independent systems of ethics and social norms. This has generated many problems and much confusion.
•Consider the following simple example from the natural sciences to grasp the absurdity of this profound misnaming. The term ‘water’ refers to a single entity composed of two distinct elements, oxygen and hydrogen. Where the two gases are deeply connected to form a single compound, the term ‘water’ is appropriate but we rightly use two distinct terms ‘hydrogen’ and ‘oxygen’ for each when the two remain disconnected from each other. How utterly erroneous to call them ‘water” when they exist separately! Calling distinct systems of ethics and social norms in India by the common term ‘religion’ is equally insane. But then once a term grips the popular imagination, it is difficult to dislodge.
•Some scholars have tried to get out of this hole by using ‘religion’ in two different senses — ethical religion and social religion. Though not entirely satisfactory, we might accept this and say that in India, a profound pluralism of ethical religions exists. Yet, followers of different ethical religions participate in much the same caste-ridden social religion.
•How does all this help us understand the relationship of our Constitution to Indian religions? Unlike Europe, where people have to fight for pluralisation of ethics, here: (a) We strive to conserve our immense pluralism of ethical religions, to act against any attempt at religious homogenisation or exclusion. This conservative function the Indian Constitution performs. (b) By preventing a tight connection between social norms and ethical religion, the Indian Constitution also ensures that we do not have ‘Religion’ as originally conceived, something as totalising as Latin Christianity had been or Saudi Islam now is. (c) Finally, its main objective is to destroy what is at the core of India’s dominant social religion — its deeply hierarchical caste system. This last feature alone marks it as an instrument for social revolution.
📰 Beyond the scientific-medical realm
How a doctor put his emotions aside and acted as a professional to save the life of his wife
•As a cardiologist for over three decades, I have lived with patients for a significant part of my life. Sometimes you see patients recover miraculously, beyond our scientific knowledge. One such case began in December 2014.
•That evening I spent some time with my wife and daughter, who was at home after delivering twins. We went to bed around 11. Around 3 a.m. my daughter called me to say my wife had a severe headache. I rushed to her. She suddenly become unconscious, went into deep coma and was unresponsive, rolling her hands outwards. It was what we call a deceleration sign. I thought she was bleeding into the brain.
Ambulance, quick
•I was in a fairly senior position in a multispecialty hospital and had more than two decades of association with everyone there. I thought if I rang for a hospital emergency ambulance, it would take 30 minutes to come and another 30 minutes to reach the hospital. So I rang my sambandhi, relative by marriage, who had a hospital nearby. He came within minutes with his ambulance.
•By now she was in deep coma, her body flaccid. We carried her to the ambulance. Our target was to reach the Emergency Room before she threw fits due to the bleeding in the brain.
•At the emergency entrance of the hospital, having been alerted, my colleagues were waiting, and within minutes an MRI of the brain was done. There was massive intra-ventricular bleeding into the brain. She was shifted to the neuro catheter lab to check blood supply to the brain and to localise the bleeding into the brain.
•In ten minutes the cath lab team said there was no more bleeding. I knew what lay ahead. She needed surgery to let out the accumulated blood compressing the vital structures of mid-brain.
•My son, a cardiologist based in Bengaluru, was yet to arrive, my daughter was with her recently delivered twins, and my mother is 85 years. I had to take the call myself, to go ahead with emergency neurosurgery. I missed the counsel of my father, a doctor too. I signed the consent form. She was wheeled into the theatre.
The odds stacked up
•I came to the waiting area where I found my son and wife waiting. My daughter was sobbing at one end of the room. I consoled them saying we had come on time. But my son and I knew the odds were high on her making it. There were prayers for her on virtually every lip.
•By 8 a.m. the surgery was over and the neurosurgeon, very tense, told me they had done ‘burr holes’ in the skull and let out blood. Some of it had clotted and they had started thrombolysis medicine to dissolve the clots slowly through an external ventricular drain. This left the brain exposed where the drainage tubes were. The clots cannot be cleared in one cycle. Exposing the brain to the outside is dangerous because of chances of infection. She was rolled into the ICU with barrier nursing. In the ICU she was in intensive care on ventilator support, with continuous monitoring of vital parameters, especially to see that the cerebro-spinal fluid, initially dark red, was getting irrigated with medicines to quickly dissolve the clots.
•After three days the neuro team wanted to check the MRI to see the effect of surgical drainage and the state of the clots. The MRI report showed much residual blood and clots compressing the brain. It was marginally better, but the clots had only been partially dissolved. The neurosurgery team decided to repeat thrombolysis.
•Eventually they did five cycles in a span of two weeks and slowly the clots were dissolved. But my wife was still in deep coma.
•After eight days of ventilator support, a good friend came and asked me if we could do a tracheostomy for ventilation and toileting the lungs. It was an elaborate procedure: took 45 minutes.
•My son and daughter-in-law, who were like a medical audit team reviewing the charts and asking questions about the modalities of treatment, were worried about the time it was taking. It was 15 days since the surgery, but there was no sign of any improvement and I worried.
Putting on a bold face
•Day 20, and still no improvement. The family was scared, so was I, but I did not entertain negative thoughts. I counseled my children and put on a bold face. Physiotherapy and Ryles Tube feeding continued. She would have lost at least 15 kg. The major treatment was physiotherapy and nursing and ensuring she did not develop any bed sores. It was all hard labour on the part of the nursing sisters.
She’s back
•On Day 22, she winced when pinched. It suddenly raised hopes and spirits. Slowly, with great difficulty, she opened her eyes and recognised her children. It was my day; I had got her back.
•On Day 27, she was shifted to a private room. She was physically weak and had no control on bladder and digestive functions. She used to feel helpless and at times ashamed. We needed everyone’s help, particularly the family’s, to infuse confidence in her. A vital part was played by a young physiotherapist, who took it as a personal challenge to rehabilitate her. It took two years to get her back. I don’t think it would have been possible anywhere outside India.
•During the hospital stay I suddenly realised I had little medical insurance cover. The family pitched in as best it could. Then the management waived the rest.
•When she got discharged, a classmate from Singapore called me and said the theoretical possibility of survival had become a reality only by God’s grace. And it was indeed an act of God.
📰 SEBI defers debt default guidelines for listed firms
Norms to come into effect from today, have been deferred till further notice
•Just a day before the new guidelines related to disclosure of debt default by listed companies was to come into effect, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has deferred the implementation of the norms.
•“It has been decided to defer implementation... until further notice,” said a one-line circular issued by the capital market regulator.
‘Disclosure within a day’
•In August, SEBI had made it mandatory for companies to disclose any instance of a default on the payment of interest or repayment of principal to banks or financial institutions within a day of the default.
•The capital market regulator had said that while current regulations required listed companies to disclose delay or default in payment of interest/principal on debt securities, there was no such requirement when loans were taken from banks or financial institutions.
•“Corporates in India are even today primarily reliant on loans from the banking sector. Many banks are presently under considerable stress on account of large loans to the corporate sector turning into stressed assets/non performing assets. Some companies have also been taken up for initiation of insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings,” the SEBI circular had stated while adding that the new norms would come into effect from October 1.
•The disclosures were to be made to the stock exchanges when the entity defaulted in payment of interest or instalment obligations on debt securities (including commercial paper), medium-term notes (MTNs), foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs), loans from banks and financial institutions and external commercial borrowings (ECBs), among others.
•Companies were also directed to provide information pertaining to defaults to the credit rating agencies concerned in a timely manner.
📰 IIT Roorkee repurposes a drug for chikungunya
In in vitro studies, the piperazine drug shows very good antiviral activity
•A drug to treat chikungunya virus infection is in the offing, and in vitro studies carried out by a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee show promise. Currently, there is no cure for the disease and treatment is focused more on relieving the symptoms.
•Since the team led by Prof. Shailly Tomar from the Department of Biotechnology at IIT Roorkee used an existing drug piperazine, safety of the drug is already known and hence the trials on animals and humans will be more to understand the efficacy of the drug in treating chikungunya infection.
•Piperazine is used for the treatment of worm infections. The antiviral drug indinavir used for treating HIV positive people is a piperazine-based molecule. The derivatives of piperazine are used as anti-histamines and anti-depressants drugs too.
•Based on crystal structure, the researchers ascertained that the drug molecule binds to the hydrophobic pocket of capsid protein of Aura virus. Drug binding studies were also carried out using chikungunya virus and it was found that the binding of the drug at the caspid protein was better in the case of chikungunya virus. The function of capsid protein is essential for the virus budding and replication of virus.
•On studying the antiviral activity of piperazine molecule against chikungunya, it was found that the molecule inhibits virus replication. “In the presence of this drug, the amount of virus released by infected cells is less. The drug showed very good antiviral activity,” says Prof. Tomar. The results were published in the journal Antiviral Research.
•Chikungunya viral load reduces significantly when treated with 3 millimolar (mM) of piperazine and has “barely detectable cell teoxicity” when the dosage is doubled to 6mM. “Compared with controls, the inhibition of the virus replication was nearly 98% when 6mM of the drug was used,” Prof. Tomar says.
•The researchers were not able to directly observe a reduction in the budding process. “We observed a reduction in the virus release from infected cells and we hypothesise that the drug inhibits the budding of the virus as well,” she says. Once the drug binds to the target, the capsid protein’s interaction with the enveloped protein of virus is inhibited and hence the virus release from infected cells is affected.
•Virus replication and budding are correlated. The monkey cell lines were infected with very low virus concentration and then allowed to grow. After 24 hours, the number of virus being released by the infected cells was studied. If the virus is able to replicate then should find more virus, which was not the case.
•The chikungunya viral load had reduced by 98% at the end of 24 hours but increases at 48 hours indicating that inhibition of virus replication becomes less at the end of 48 hours compared with 24 hours. “This could be because the drug does not kill all the virus at the end of 24 hours and the drug supplied initially is already bound to the capsid protein target in the virus. So when the virus reinfects nearby cells and replicates, there is not enough drug to bind to the new capsid protein molecules being produced,” Prof. Tomar explains.
•“The drug molecule is not toxic to normal cells even when 6mM was used,” says Ramanjit Kaur from the Department of Biotechnology at IIT Roorkee and one of the first authors of the paper.
•“We are in the process of developing new piperazine-based drug molecules,” says Megha Aggarwal from the Department of Biotechnology at IIT Roorkee and the other first author of the paper.
•The researchers are planning to carry out trials on animals. Since the drug is already approved for use in humans, toxicity studies in animals will not be needed. But studies on animals to evaluate the antiviral activity and, hence, the efficacy has to be carried out. “If results from animal trials are encouraging then we might start human clinical trial,” Prof. Tomar says.
📰 Good food or bad drugs?
Guidelines to regulate the ‘nutraceutical’ industry have led to mixed reactions
•A doctor at a public hospital in Hyderabad became concerned when a middle-aged man being treated for jaundice reported puffiness of the face during treatment.
•The doctor noticed that the patient had been taking a branded herbal preparation for months, given to him under the guise of it being a food supplement for general well-being. Suspicious, the hospital’s clinician sent a sample of the supplement for testing at the National Institute for Nutrition (NIN), Hyderabad. Scientists at the premier facility’s drug toxicology labs were not surprised to find lead in the formulation. The patient was then treated for heavy metal poisoning.
Varied claims
•Reports of patients experiencing adverse events during the course of medical treatment, accompanied by samples for testing, often land at the NIN’s doorstep. Obesity pills, diet regimens and shakes sold with exaggerated benefits, as well as preparations — often adulterated with corticosteroids —that promise anything ranging from enabling pain relief to easing chronic conditions such as arthritis — are frequent suspects. Supplements sold to improve sexual potency are another group of products frequently assessed by scientists when an adverse reaction is reported.
New directions
•Until recently, a system to verify and notify adverse reactions from products other than those recognised as ‘drugs’, under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, did not exist. With the framing last year, of guidelines by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to regulate products recognised as ‘nutraceuticals’ — or supplements and foods that aren’t drugs but purported to contain ingredients essential to well-being, the need to report adverse reactions was felt and the Hyderabad-based NIN was selected to run the centre.
•“It was set up earlier this month. We plan to start functioning by carrying out [a] sensitisation campaign for doctors practising all systems of medicine, to report adverse events in a prescribed format,” says B. Dinesh Kumar, who heads the Drug Toxicology Division at NIN and is a coordinator for the recently-inaugurated facility. Called the ‘National Coordination Centre – Pharmacovigilance Programme of India, the body’s mandate also involves monitoring advertised and marketed claims of products classified as ‘foods’, adds Dr. Kumar.
Reporting mechanism
•On receiving reports of adverse reactions, the NIN centre will discuss with reporting clinicians the specific case to make an assessment. The adverse event is then tagged to the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) for notification to the product manufacturer.
•The centre has been envisaged as a part of India’s larger efforts to regulate ‘nutraceuticals,’ a category that didn’t exist until recently. In a 2017 report, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India estimated the global nutraceutical industry to be growing by about $15 billion annually. In India alone, it says the industry is worth more than $2 billion.
•The new rules formulated by FSSAI are set to become effective in January next year. Though exhaustive, there is scepticism — mostly legal — in the food and drug industry over whether the new set of rules can effectively regulate nutraceuticals.
•The Indian Council of Medical Research has recommended that dietary supplements such as multivitamins can remain out of the ambit of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act if they are within the recommended dietary allowance in a product. Recently, the government’s reported attempts to amend the Drugs and Cosmetics Act to make a distinction between drugs and dietary supplements has seen the industry aver that vitamins should have the benefit of being defined as both a drug and food.
Reactions
•Scientists at the IPC caution that the NIN’s role should not be interpreted as an assault on an industry. On the contrary, they suggest that adverse reactions, as in the case of drugs, can often result unexpectedly and be specific to a small group of individuals, without necessarily being a result of nutraceutical intake.
•“A person’s genetic make-up or the conditions under which a substance is taken can lead an individual to experience an adverse reaction while another may not. Additionally if a person takes two substances together despite being explicitly told not to, an adverse reaction can occur,” a senior scientist at IPC said, asking not to be named.
