📰 Xi to visit India in 2019 for Wuhan-style informal meet
Modi extends invitation to Chinese President at talks during SCO summit
•India and China have expanded on the “spirit” of the Wuhan informal summit, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday agreeing on a string of official engagements ranging from a fresh round of boundary talks to a new mechanism to step up exchange of films.
•Briefing the media after the two leaders held talks for nearly an hour on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said the meeting was “positive and forward looking and underpinned the spirit of the Wuhan summit”.
•Mr. Xi also accepted Mr. Modi’s invitation for another “informal summit”, in India, next year and described the Wuhan summit as a “new starting point” in India-China relations.
•In tune with the on-going “strategic communication” between the two leaders, China’s defence minister, Wei Fenghe and the Minister of Public Security, Zhai Kezhi, will meet their Indian counterparts — Nirmala Sitharaman and Home Minister Rajnath Singh —during the course of the year.
•Following the meeting with Mr. Xi, Mr. Modi said he had detailed discussions with the Chinese President on bilateral and global issues, which would add further vigour to the India-China friendship after their “milestone” informal summit in Wuhan.
•An MoU on sharing hydrological information on the Brahmaputra river by China and another pact on amendment of the protocol on phytosanitary requirements for exporting non-Basmati rice from India to China were signed after the talks.
📰 River and rice deals put India-China ties on an upswing
Beijing agrees to provide India hydrological data of the Brahmaputra in flood season, months after it stopped the practice following the Doklam standoff
•In a significant move, China on Saturday agreed to provide India hydrological data of the Brahmaputra river in flood season, months after Beijing stopped the practice, crucial to predict floods.
•The two countries also signed an agreement under which China has agreed to import non-Basmati rice from India which is likely to bridge the ballooning trade deficit to a certain extent.
•The two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) were signed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held detailed discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping on bilateral and global issues, which will add vigour to the India-China friendship after their informal summit in Wuhan.
•Mr. Modi arrived in the picturesque coastal city of China’s Shandong province on a two-day visit to attend the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
•Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said India had allowed China’s state-owned Bank of China to open its branch in Mumbai.
•“There were some discussion on trade and investment related issues. And in that context Xi told Modi that China is looking at enhancing agricultural exports from India including non-Basmati rice and sugar,” Gokhale said.
73-day standoff
•Last year, China stopped sharing data soon after the 73-day standoff between the Indian and Chinese troops at Doklam over Chinese military’s plans to build a road close to India’s Chicken Neck corridor connecting the north-eastern States.
•The first MoU was inked between China’s Ministry of Water Resources and India’s Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation upon provision of hydrological information of the Brahmaputra river in flood season.
•The agreement enables China to provide hydrological data in flood season from May 15 to October 15 every year. It also enables the Chinese side to provide hydrological data if water level exceeds the mutually agreed level during non-flood season. China, an upstream country, shares the scientific study of the movement, distribution and quality of water data for the river.
•Originating from Tibet, the Brahmaputra is one of the major rivers in China. From Tibet, it flows down to India and later enters Bangladesh where it joins the Ganga.
•The second MoU was signed between China’s General Administration of Customs and India’s Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare on Phytosanitary requirements for exporting rice from India to China, one of the world’s biggest rice markets.
•The 2006 Protocol on Phytosanitary Requirements for Exporting Rice from India to China has been amended to include the export of non-Basmati varieties of rice from India. At present, India can only export Basmati rice to China.
•Sources said the pact on non-Basmati rice may help in addressing India’s concerns over widening trade deficit which has been in China’s favour.
•China has been promising to address the issue of trade deficit with India which has been seeking a greater market access for its goods and services in China.
•Trade deficit with China stood at $ 36.73 billion during April-October this fiscal. India’s trade deficit with China has marginally dipped to $51 billion in 2016-17 from $52.69 billion in the previous fiscal.
📰 ‘India backed Maldives in UN’
Envoy says New Delhi assured support thrice; Indonesia got Asia-Pacific seat
•India had assured the Maldives of its support for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council on at least three occasions, including one day before Friday’s vote, its envoy said.
•The Maldives lost the vote for the Asia-Pacific seat to Indonesia by a large margin, winning only 46 of the 190 votes cast at the UN General Assembly for the two-year stint. Given a downslide in India-Maldives ties over the past year, however, India’s vote is particularly significant.
•“India reassured us in writing as recently as June 7 of its support at the UNSC election, which it had reiterated twice in the past, and we highly appreciate India’s stand,” Maldives Ambassador to India Ahmed Mohamed told The Hindu .
Secret ballot
•Though the External Affairs Ministry refused to comment on India’s stand at the vote, which is conducted by a secret ballot, it is understood that its recent assurance of support was received by the Maldivian mission at the United Nations from India’s Permanent Mission in New York.
•In January 2014, the India-Maldives joint statement issued after a meeting between President Abdulla Yameen and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, both countries had committed to supporting each other’s candidature for the UNSC non-permanent seats.
•While the Maldives stood for the 2019-20 term, India has announced it will stand for the Security Council seat in 2021-22.
•According to officials, the Ministry had in mid-2017 repeated its support in reply to a query from the Maldivian Foreign Ministry.
•Since then, however, relations between New Delhi and Male went into a tailspin over President Yameen’s decision to rush through a Free Trade Agreement with China, and imposing an Emergency in the country in February that lasted several weeks and saw a crackdown on the Opposition parties. India objected strenuously, and even refused to entertain a special envoy sent by President Yameen to explain his decision. Meanwhile, the Maldives invited Pakistan’s Army Chief to Male and discussed joint patrols in the Indian ocean, once an exclusive domain of the Indian Navy.
•Adding to the uncertainty over which way India would vote was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Indonesia last week, where the two sides upgraded their defence and strategic ties. Given the government’s emphasis on its “Act East” policy as well as strengthening ties with ASEAN, while not so much importance was given to SAARC (the Maldives is not part of the other sub-regional groups BIMSTEC and BBIN that India is promoting), it was widely believed that India would cast its lot with Indonesia over the Maldives.
Never any doubt
•“This was just media speculation, I think,” said Mr. Mohamed, who said that there had never been any doubt in Male about India’s support.
•“The vote shows a continuity of good relations between our two countries, and as a small island state we particularly appreciate this,” he added, referring to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s recent statement at a press conference, that India’s relations with the Maldives “are not broken and cannot be broken” as it is a neighbouring country.
📰 India, Uzbekistan review bilateral ties
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday met Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev on the sidelines of the SCO Summit here and the two leaders reviewed the full range of bilateral ties, especially ways to boost economic and cultural links.
•“Wonderful to meet Mr Shavkat Mirziyoyev, President of Uzbekistan. Ties between our nations have their roots in history,” Mr. Modi said in a tweet. “We reviewed the full range of the India-Uzbekistan friendship, especially ways to boost economic and cultural cooperation,” he said.
•It is for the first time that an Indian Prime Minister is attending the summit after India along with Pakistan became a full-fledged member of the group jointly dominated by China and Russia, which has been increasingly seen as a counter to NATO.
📰 New India aims at 18 % growth
•New India Assurance is targeting an 18% growth in premium income this financial year, according to Chairman and Managing Director G. Srinivasan.
•The company registered premium income of Rs. 26,500 crore last financial year, as against the target of Rs. 26,000 crore. The growth last year was 19%. During the last two years, crop insurance was a driver of growth. If Ayushman Bharat, which is expected to be rolled out this year materialises, the growth rate will be higher. “We have not factored it in the target. It is going to be run by the State Governments. We will be there,” he said.
•Health, motor and other retail products would be the growth drivers.
📰 Overcoming the blues
Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. Tips on how to help someone in distress
•Reports of designer and businesswoman Kate Spade’s suicide and struggle with depression have transformed her from a symbol of polished prep to a blunt reminder that suffering affects all types. A few days later we woke up to the news that another beloved figure, Anthony Bourdain, had taken his life.
•These two tragedies have inspired hundreds to tweet some version of the same message: Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of.
Extending a hand
•But deep in the comment threads, some have also been debating a more uncomfortable question: What do you do when a friend is depressed for such a long time that you’ve started to feel that that nothing you can do will make a difference, and your empathy reserves are tapped out? There are no easy answers. But here are some tips from experts.
•Don’t underestimate the power of showing up: You may not feel that your presence is wanted. But just being by the side of someone who is depressed, and reminding her that she is special to you, is important to ensuring that she does not feel alone, says Dr. Norman Rosenthal, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, U.S.
•If she acknowledges she’s depressed, that’s a good sign, says Dr. Rosenthal. He recalled the story of a patient who stopped feeling suicidal after telling people he was close to how he was feeling.
•“When you shine the light on the shame, it gets better,” Dr. Rosenthal says.
•Don’t try to cheer him up or offer advice: Your brother has an enviable job and two lovely children. He’s still ridiculously handsome even though he hasn’t gone to the gym for six months. It’s tempting to want to remind him of all these good things.
•Not only is that unlikely to boost his mood, it could backfire by reinforcing his sense that you just don’t get it, says Megan Devine, a psychotherapist and the author of It’s O.K. That You’re Not O.K.
•“Your job as a support person is not to cheer people up. It’s to acknowledge that it sucks right now, and their pain exists,” she says.
•Instead of upbeat rebuttals about why it’s not so bad, she recommends trying something like, “It sounds like life is really overwhelming for you right now.”
•If you want to say something positive, focus on highlighting what he means to you, Dr. Rosenthal advises. And though offering suggestions for how to improve his life will be tempting, simply listening is better.
•It’s O.K. to ask if she is having suicidal thoughts: Lots of people struggle with depression without ever considering suicide. But depression is often a factor.
•Although you may worry that asking, “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” will insult someone you’re trying to help — or worse, encourage her to go in that direction — experts say the opposite is true.
•“It’s important to know you can’t trigger suicidal thinking just by asking about it,” says Allen Doederlein, the executive vice president of external affairs at the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. If the answer is yes, it’s crucial that you calmly ask when and how; it’s much easier to help prevent a friend from hurting herself if you know the specifics.
•Take any mention of death seriously: Even when a person with depression casually mentions death or suicide, it’s important to ask follow-up questions. If the answers don’t leave you feeling confident that a depressed person is safe, experts advise involving a professional as soon as possible. If this person is seeing a psychiatrist or therapist, get him or her on the phone.
•If that’s not an option, have the person you’re worried about call a suicide prevention line or take her to the hospital emergency room; say aloud that this is what one does when a loved one’s life is in danger.
•Make getting to that first appointment as easy as possible: You alone cannot fix this problem, no matter how patient and loving you are. A severely depressed friend needs professional assistance from a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker or another medical professional.
•Take care of yourself and set boundaries: When the thoughtful and kind people we’ve loved for years are depressed, they may also become uncharacteristically mean and self-centred. It’s exhausting, painful and hard to know how to respond when they pick fights or send nasty texts.
•“You don’t have to attend every argument you are invited to,” Ms. Devine says.
•Still, just because someone is depressed is not a reason to let their abusive behaviour slide. Set clear boundaries with straightforward language such as, “It sounds like you’re in a lot of pain right now. But you can’t call me names.”
•Similarly you may find that your friend’s demands on your time are starting to sabotage other relationships or your job. You’re not going to be able to help if you’re not in a good place yourself.
•It’s O.K. not to be available 24x7, but try to be explicit about when you can and cannot help.
•Come up with a contingency plan and kindly push her to stick with it. Coming up with a consistent schedule for when you’ll see each other every week can be helpful to you both.
Remember, people do recover from depression
•It can be hard when you’re in the middle of the storm with a depressed friend to remember that there was a time before, and hopefully an after, this miserable state. But it’s essential to remind yourself — and the person you’re trying to help — that people do emerge from depression. Because they do.
•I have seen it. Every single one of the experts quoted here has seen it, too. But it will take patience and time.
📰 Why institutions matter
They matter because they sustain social practices without which human life is neither worthwhile nor indeed possible
•There is much talk these days about the decline in our institutions. Aren’t they failing to perform, being systematically undermined, even destroyed? On the one hand, people are heard lamenting that our courts are compromised, that our Parliament is dysfunctional, or that our higher education is in a mess. On the other hand, it is also heard that as long as a powerful individual is getting things done, why care about institutions? The rules and procedures of institutions are cumbersome and time-consuming. If the same result is obtained with bypassing them, why bother? So, do institutions matter? If they do, why? What are institutions meant to do? What are they, anyway?
•I propose that an institution be seen as closely related to a social practice but not identified with it. How can we make sense of this rather opaque claim? Let’s go step by step. What is a social practice? First, unlike an individual act, a practice necessarily involves several people. No single individual has the power to sustain it. Second, unlike a one-off act, a practice is recurrent. Third, people jostling in a crowd have no collective purpose, indeed they may be purposeless altogether. A social practice, on the other hand, exists for the realisation of a common need or purpose, and therefore requires coordination and cooperation among individuals. A practice is necessarily sustained by a group. Fourth, a practice is skill-based and therefore must be learnt. And being collective, it involves a pooling together of skills. An individual throwing a ball against a wall is not engaging in a social practice but a fielder throwing it to a wicket-keeper in a match is.
•To sum up, a social practice is an enduring, purposive and valuable activity of a group sustained by the pooling together of multiple skills. Without social practices, human life is neither possible nor worthwhile.
•Enough on social practice. But where does an institution figure in this? Like other human artefacts, practices are fragile and have a propensity to disintegrate without collective effort. They need to be collectively established by continual reiteration and renewal. But meaningful replication by groups requires mutual trust and expectations, best achieved by fixing roles and formulating rules enforced by someone in a position of authority. So, when a social practice embeds roles and is governed by rules/norms that tightly bind together a group, organise it into a stable collective, we have an institution. Thus, cricket, education, medicine and governance are practices; but cricket associations, universities, hospitals and government departments are institutions. We frequently use the term institution both for valued social practices and for rule-governed, organised groups, but perhaps it is best to reserve the term ‘institution’ for rule-governed organisations, rather than for valued social practices.
A pointer
•And this gives a clue to why institutions matter — they help sustain valuable social practices. Besides, they unburden individuals by economising on time and effort. Since they evolve by collective effort over time, they embody social wisdom not immediately available to individual consciousness. Imagine if each individual was to take part in a practice as if it was starting from scratch, needing just his critical moral reflection to kick in! We would be left thinking endlessly with no time to act. This is why we minimise our thinking and outsource it to social rules and norms. And also why we need rule-bound institutions.
•It follows that institutions give birth to a new, emergent morality — roles must be performed well, rules must be followed, and those given the task of enforcing them must do so responsibly, fairly, impartially. Institutions give rise to a set of role-specific rights and duties. Only a surgeon has the right to use a knife on a patient’s body; only professional judges can give binding judgments in court; only those with the required qualification have a right to teach in universities. No matter how great an individual captain, cricket teams win only when each player performs as his assigned role requires and when rules are properly enforced by the umpire. Each social practice is sustained largely by its own specific institutional morality.
•When an institution breaks down or is deliberately attacked, at stake is the valuable social practice related to it. The practice of education suffers when universities are run by people with little understanding of academic norms and values. If the Election Commission turns partisan, the democratic practice of free and fair elections is severely jeopardised. Active citizenship is endangered when institutions of media abandon fair and objective reporting of processes and events or when political decision-making is done behind closed doors by people who misuse power. When a powerful individual bypasses institutions, the damage he causes to social practices is incalculable.
•Institutions are corrupted when they begin to thwart rather than facilitate practices. And hollow, if disconnected entirely from practices which give them their point, when they begin to serve only themselves and their officialdom. For example, when a university administration consumes more funds for its salary and perks and spends less on the academic life of students and teachers. Or when politicians and bureaucrats forget why they occupy the political and administrative position they do: to serve the people.
•Of course, like individuals who constitute them, institutions also go to sleep! They suffer from lethargy and inertia. When that happens, they need to be reawakened and renewed, something impossible without collective self-reflection. If so, both for their own sake and for the sake of the practices they serve, institutions must not throttle this activity of self-reflection. From time to time there should be collective deliberation about the purpose and importance of social practices and institutions, on why they matter.
📰 The Age of Perversion
We exist in a world where capital has become an obsession. And we are the perverts of free-floating ‘god-like’ capital
•The period we are living through has been dubbed an Age of Fundamentalism, of Extremism, of Intolerance, etc. These are all appropriate descriptions. But if I had to choose a tag, I would call it the Age of Perversion.
An overbearing perversion
•I do not use ‘perversion’ in its ordinary sense of ‘deviation from normal or accepted behaviour’. Simple deviation is not sufficient (and not necessarily bad) if it is not of an obsessive nature. What characterises a pervert is not the choice of a different option, but an obsession with only that option. The hallmark of an overbearing perversion is that no matter what one says, the pervert sees it only in terms of his/her obsession. Examples? Here you go.
•A Muslim girl is raped in a Hindu temple, which causes justified outrage in many Hindu circles, but seems to leave some circles untouched. These miraculously untouched people not only make excuses but even point a finger (without any evidence) at Muslims, or, what they associate with Muslims, Pakistan. A post on Facebook states that Muslim clerics rape with impunity in their institutions. Apart from the wide sweep of its xenophobic purview — and I say so without denying that there can be serious problems in all male-controlled institutions, whether Hindu, Muslim or non-religious — I am shaken by the obsession of the person. No matter what the evidence, such a person can only blame ‘Muslims’. This is a perversion.
•Versions of this exist elsewhere too. Go online and look at what many Islamists — who form only a small percentage of Muslims, just as Bhakts form only a small percentage of Hindus — have to say about the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency, or Israel. No matter what happens, they point a finger at one or all of these three usual suspects. As their easy accusation is far in excess of any evidence, what this indicates is a perversion. Or look at hardcore Republicans: they are capable of blaming even the sinking of the Titanic on either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or both! This too is a perversion.
•What has happened to so many people in our age? Why has there been a decided increase in what can only be seen as obsessive perversions?
•One can point to the nature of the Internet — the easy circulation of ‘alternative facts’, unmediated by any real expertise and effective counterchecking. But this is more symptom than explanation. Surely, there is something in us as an age that predisposes us towards such obsessive perversions, so that we seek on the Internet (and elsewhere) only ‘facts’ that suit our singular version of the complex reality out there? What is this ‘something’? Why has it become so extensive that it is changing the political character of entire countries?
The nature of capital
•The main explanation is the nature of capital, especially now, when capital is no longer embedded, as it was under classical capitalism, in production and labour. The ‘freer’ capital gets from human labour, the more of an obsession it becomes. If 19th century critics (and even some conservative defenders) of capitalism had warned against the tendency of capital to impoverish other human values and relations, then, today, we have crossed that threshold. Everything has been ‘capitalised’, and capital, unlike money, is no longer just a medium of exchange or a social relation. It seems to be all there is under neo-liberalism. It seems to exist on its own. It is everywhere and nowhere. It reproduces itself. It dominates everything else. It obsesses.
•This fact lurks under the surface of governmental actions in all countries, ranging from the U.S. and India to China. Governments defend, primarily, the interests of capital, even by cutting services and causing problems to citizens. Donald Trump’s government is currently being accused of running up trillions in deficit by providing huge tax cuts to the top 5%, and then trying to balance that deficit by cutting necessary services available to the other 95%. But versions of this ‘balancing’ act exist in almost every country in the world: as long as free-floating ‘capital’ is happy, governments can live with their (dirty) consciences, and probably win the next election!
•We exist in a world where capital — diminishingly connected to labour and production and no longer primarily a medium of exchange — has become an obsession. It has reduced everything else, usurped the world. We are the perverts of free-floating ‘god-like’ capital. And this is our ‘natural’ state; we cannot really question it. We internalise its structures — and transpose them. Is it a surprise, then, that so many of us succumb to placebo perversions?
•The other, smaller explanation is the nature of politics today. Given the kind of world we live in, politicians, operating on quasi-democratic platforms, prefer to cater to the perversions of their voters, which are easier to use as enticement: offer the pervert a titillating picture of his perversion, and you can lead him by the nose. Hence, we have politicians who put all the blame on one obsession – the CIA, Israel, Iran, Russia, Nehru, the Pope, immigrants, Muslims.
📰 The legend of Sheikh Chehli
Who is the saint whose tomb is in Thanesar?
•As a child, my favourite bedtime story used to be about a simpleton called Sheikh Chilli, whose life was a never-ending saga of goof-ups. I knew that these stories were fictitious and that no such character existed, but I loved them. Imagine my surprise when I found that there was actually someone with the same name — a Sufi saint whose tomb is in Thanesar and who was supposedly Dara Shukoh’s spiritual master! Dara Shukoh, the mystic prince and eldest son of emperor Shah Jahan, was a gifted scholar, so no master of his could have been foolish. He may have been simple, for all Sufis lived ascetic lives and were renowned for their humility, but it is certain that he would have been very wise. With this discovery I began my quest to find out about a childhood character and his connection to an ill-fated prince. The result was a pleasant surprise.
•The first sign that Sheikh Chilli was not the beloved character from my childhood came from the signposts in Thanesar. The word ‘chehli’ means 40 in Persian. Sheikh Chilli could have been a saint who had done a chilla, or a 40-day solitary, spiritual retreat, and ‘chilli’ could be a corruption of that.
Museums and a madarsa
•The signboards leading to the tomb were helpful. As I approached my destination, I was taken aback by the sheer size of the complex, with its huge enclosing wall, cupolas, and pavilions surrounding it. Through a tall gateway in the eastern wall, I entered the complex and went into to a courtyard, in the middle of which there was a shallow tank. Around the tank was a well-manicured garden. Surrounding the garden were galleries with rooms on all sides. The Archaeological Survey of India has turned two of these galleries into museums. The grounds and the museum are obviously very popular with the locals as the place was packed despite the blistering heat.
•I went up the staircase in the northern galleries to the tomb, built on a high, majestic platform. But what were the galleries for? Research led me to Subhash Parihar’s 1999 book, Some Aspects of Indo-Islamic Architecture . He describes it as a madarsa — one of three built by the Mughals. A madarsa means a place for study, and according to Parihar, the three madarsas were probably meant for educating the ulema (clergy) for civil and judicial service in the empire. Two of them are in Delhi — the Khairul Manazil, opposite Purana Qila, and Ghaziuddin Khan Ka Madarsa, which is now the Anglo Arabic College, near Ajmeri Gate. The third was built in Thanesar, Haryana, as this city was on the Grand Trunk Road.
•I walked up the stairs and reached a large platform with a very low octagonal marble base around which ran a marble rail. On the base stood the splendid octagonal marble tomb. There were exquisite jaalis on all sides. The tomb door was closed, so I could only peep in to see two cenotaphs inside. As there is very obvious Persian influence on the architecture, and also marble, some compare the tomb to the Taj Mahal, but to my eye there seemed no resemblance. Another tomb with a vaulted roof on the western wall was open, so I went inside. This is said to be the tomb of the saint’s wife.
Dara Shukoh’s spiritual adviser
•The signs give the name of the saint as Abd-ur-Rahim Abdul-Karim Abd-ur-Razak. I went back to Parihar. The tomb of the only important saint of Thanesar from Akbar’s era, Sheikh Jalaluddin Thanesari, is built nearby, so this was not his tomb. Parihar writes that none of the leading saints of Thanesar fit the bill either. Dara Shukoh’s spiritual master was a Sufi saint of the Qadriya order, Mullah Shah Badakhshi of Kashmir and not Sheikh Chehli. The legend of Chehli can be attributed to a report by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1862-65 where he identifies the tomb as belonging to the spiritual adviser of Dara Shukoh. Cunningham writes that his real name is in dispute and he is known in the area as Sheikh Chilli or Sheikh Tilli.
•The madarsa dates back to the mid-17th century when Dara Shukoh was powerful in the Mughal court. Fittingly, one of the rooms in the complex is a Dara Shukoh library. Thanesar was a well known centre of the Sufi Chishti silsila and, according to Parihar, it is possible that Dara Shukoh built the madarsa to promote the Qadriya order. The saint buried there must have been a teacher at the madarsa from the Qadriya silsila and definitely wise to have headed it.
📰 Four years of Achhe Din
Our Prime Minister had only one request for us. We have let him down miserably
•My dear friends and loyal readers, please join me in congratulating ourselves on four fantastic years of Achhe Din. I hope that is the correct spelling of ‘achhe’ and it’s not ‘achhoo’ as my autocorrect is suggesting. My father says the right spelling is ‘chee’ but I think he is editorialising.
•So wherever you are, whoever you are, extend both your arms — don’t feel shy, this is a time to celebrate — and pat yourselves on the back. If you can’t reach your own back because you are too fat, do it using your social media handle, or the handle of your trishul. But do it for sure — because you deserve it.
A ridiculous notion
•You silly goose! Deserve it my foot! I was just joking, to see how seriously you take me. And you all are really patting yourselves on the back?! This has to be the height of self-delusion. Do you people really believe the credit for all that India has achieved in the last four years goes to each one of you? I am asking a genuine question here and I want a genuine answer: are all of you megalomaniacs? Did you really think each of you is collectively responsible for the progress of this great nation? I am shocked to hear that you would entertain even for one second such a ridiculous, blasphemous notion. Never forget that all the good things happening in our country right now is because of one man — and we all know who that is.
•What makes me really sad is that all of you got four years — four entire years — to fulfil every one of our beloved Prime Minister’s dreams. And yet, you have let him down so badly. Each one of you. True, the Indian economy is still growing at 12.7% per annum, we are still creating 4.2 crore jobs every year, and farmers are so happy that they are giving away milk and tomatoes for free. It is also true that we have eliminated corruption through demonetisation, achieved 200% tax compliance through GST, and deposited Rs. 15 lakh in the bank account of every Indian who worked in the IT Cell for a minimum of 56 days.
•Nor can anyone deny that today, white people in different parts of the world look at brown Indians with more respect than ever before. Foreigners are so much in awe of our Prime Minister that when they translate his speeches they add five extra paragraphs free of charge. After 60 years of Dark Ages under the Congress, today every Indian village has woken up to light and Paytm.
Four great feats
•In fact, Modiji routinely achieves in any given week 100 times more than what Nehru accomplished from 1947 to 2014. But the pseudo-sickular Indian media that has sold out to the hate-Modi industry simply won’t show them to the Indian public. If you think I am being too harsh, I’ll give you just four examples of Modiji’s historic achievements, all from the last one week, which have been completely blacked out by the paid-cum-stung media.
•I’m betting you didn’t know, for instance, that for the first time in India’s 30,000-year-history, an orchid was named after an Indian Prime Minister when the Singapore government decided to name a beautiful Indic orchid that produces upright inflorescences up to 56 inches long, ‘Dendrobrium Narendra Modi’. Or that Modiji became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit a Mariamman temple in Singapore. Were you aware that the IAEA has hailed the achievement of electrifying all Indian villages as the greatest event in the history of every energy, including physical, kinetic, potential, sexual, and weed energy? Or that for the first time in India’s history, an Indian Prime Minister purchased a Madhubani painting in Singapore using a RuPay card? Do you know how many Madhubani paintings Nehru bought using a RuPay card, either in India or in Singapore? Zero. That’s right. If Modiji and Nehru were to settle things between them through a tennis match, Modiji would win by an innings and 545 runs.
The one thing we couldn’t do
•That’s the kind of Prime Minister we’ve been blessed with the last four years — someone who not only works 23 hours a day but never boasts about it in his own words. In return, he had only one small request for all of us: a Congress-mukt Bharat. And I’m sorry to say, as a nation, we have failed miserably in this.
•As the Karnataka elections and the recent bypoll results showed, not only is India far from being Congress-mukt, the entire Opposition is ganging up against one man. And you all are sitting quietly and watching like Gandhiji’s monkeys? After all that he has done for you, if you can’t even ensure another five years of Achhe Din in 2019, I must say you are not fit to remain in this country. I suggest you pack off to Pakistan and while you are there, don’t forget to watch ‘Veeradi Veera Wedding’ with your jihadi grandmother.
📰 A new ally in the cancer fight
Merger between two sciences will enhance treatment options in India
•In a first, researchers from India will study the proteins and genes of cancer tumours simultaneously. The aim of the merger between the two promising sciences (proteomics and genomics) is to derive new medications as well as offer personalised cancer therapies.
•Last month, India became the 12th country to join the International Cancer Proteogenome Consortium (ICPC) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), U.S. It is a forum for collaboration among the world’s leading cancer and proteogenomic research centres. In the Indian team, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) is to study proteomics and the Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), Mumbai, India’s premier cancer institute, is to study the genomics of three cancers, breast, head and neck, and cervix. As a pilot project, the researchers will be studying 100 samples from each of these cancers.
A first for India
•“This is for the first time that proteomics and genomics of the cancer tumours will be looked at by taking the same samples. There are a few such projects in the world but none in India so far,” says Dr. Sanjeeva Shrivastava, Associate Professor, and group leader of the proteomics laboratory, IITB. “The data analysis and interpretation are going to be challenging but worth the effort,” he says.
•The field of genomics involves studying all the possible genes in the system or the organism and also analysing their mutations. Through an intricate process, DNA, which is the storehouse of genetic instructions, makes proteins. Tweaking this manufacture can mean influencing the kind of protein products, and consequently, vital molecules for life.
•“This is the reason why drug makers target proteins to look at inhibitors or therapeutics. Studying proteins is extremely challenging and any findings therefore become extremely relevant in terms of novel and better treatments,” says Dr. Shrivastava. While there are an estimated 20,000 genes, there are many more proteins. “Proteins are in the millions and thus complicated to study. We don’t have any accurate estimates as they further get modified,” he explains.
•According to the NCI, previous studies have shown that genomic changes are not always present at the protein level. This suggests that the additional level of proteomic analysis can lead to an enhanced understanding of tumour resistance and/or toxicity to therapy and can one day offer the ability to predict treatment response by examining drug response or toxicity. The website says: “As a result, the ICPC teams believe that integrating genomic and proteomic data together can provide more information and insight into cancer’s development and growth.”
•According to Dr. Shrivastava, given the small sample size in the pilot phase, they will look for answers for extremely focussed questions. “For example, breast cancers have many subtypes. So we may consider looking at one particular subtype like ‘triple negative’. Within them, we will look at the response to a particular therapy,” he says.
Peek at the future
•The five-year project will attempt to carry out the pilot phase with funds from the institutes. Eventually, it will look at funds from government and philanthropic organisations. While it will take years for results, Dr. Shrivastava is optimistic and ambitious. “Can we have a robust technology that can help us get protein reports in 24 hours, just like blood reports? Can we offer quick treatment protocols that are unique and personalised instead of simply offering standard chemotherapy for all? This is what we are looking at eventually.”
•A study published this month in T he New England Journal of Medicine says that 70% of early-stage breast cancer patients who would normally be candidates for chemotherapy based on their clinical features actually do not need the treatment. The study claims that women could skip toxic chemotherapy cycles and only take a drug that blocks the hormone oestrogen. The findings, based on gene tests carried out on tumour samples, are most likely to cause an overhaul of cancer treatment worldwide.
•Dr. Sudeep Gupta, medical oncologist, TMH, says that essentially there are two methods of inquiring into tumours — genomics and proteomics. “Till now, there has been no handshake between the two. This new project is looking at an integrated approach by getting researchers in both fields together. This will definitely open new targets in terms of cancer treatment,” he says.
📰 Fair and healthy
•Enhancing access to health care is becoming a central component of India’s welfare policy. Central and State governments have now developed a variety of schemes such as better primary health care, health insurance, free or subsidised drugs and mass screening for chronic diseases. However, out-of-pocket health expenditures still remain high. Reasons for this are a widespread preference for ‘quality’ health care provided by the private sector, and the perception that they treat patients with respect in a ‘respectable’ manner. In government settings, either one — or sometimes both — is/are missing. Health care is usually seen as a market failure, and in India, it has, first and foremost, been a government failure. The government has neither provided sufficient care nor the resources to meet the public requirement for health care.
•Our life expectancy in 2016 (59 years) was still one year behind what China’s was in 1990. India continues to be a world leader in all levels of premature mortality, with one of the highest levels of out-of-pocket health expenditure and performs poorly on a variety of other health indices.
•To counter their failures and be seen as siding with the public, the Central and certain State governments have been expanding the scope of private health-care pricing. It is not as if the private sector is a knight in shining armour. Some argue that the private health sector has connived to keep the public health sector in bad shape so that its own market flourishes. However, given the scale of the government’s failure in health care, either from the perspective of provisioning or financing it, this argument can hardly be true.
Situating the private sector
•The private sector emerged and flourished in the first place due to government failure in provisioning health care. As the government has been unable to tackle the issue of financing care, it has tried to shift the blame for high out-of-pocket health expenditures on the private sector. It was able to do so because various segments of the private health sector (doctors, hospitals, pharma and medical equipment companies and diagnostic centres) have colluded in propagating unethical practices to take undue advantage of people in some of their most personal and difficult times, providing an opportunity to the political class to politicise the issue and emerge as guardians in their own right.
•However, politicisation is not the solution and will only worsen the already precarious state of health care. Whatever be the evils of the private sector, it has enhanced access to quality care, and by virtue of that, contributed to enhanced productivity and quality of life. Using the instrument of pricing alone to solve the issue of access to quality health care will not work. Government allocation to health care has to increase substantially along with public provisioning of care where the private sector is, and will continue to be, missing. The private sector, on its part, needs to operate rationally and ethically, vis-à-vis pricing as well as in the provisioning of care in neglected areas.
Where the onus lies
•The need for regulation of health-care pricing will remain even if the government enhances its allocations. Given the level of demand, no amount of allocation will be sufficient for health care and resources will always be limited. One sustainable way out is for the private sector to self-introspect vis-à-vispricing and discuss the determinants and challenges of pricing with the government. The government should have a visionary approach. For example, it could revise tariffs and taxes levied on various arms of the private health sector provided it is willing to engage in rational and ethical pricing at its own end. At the end of the day, both sides should think about how best they can improve the health of the citizens.
📰 Even small dams have severe impact on river ecology
Research shows that they alter rivers and their fish communities drastically
•It seems to stand to reason that small dams cause less environmental problems than large ones. But the first study on small hydropower projects in India proves that they cause as severe ecological impacts as big dams, including altering fish communities and changing river flows.
•Such hydroprojects, which usually generate less than 25 megawatts of power and consist of a wall that obstructs a river's flow, a large pipe that diverts the collected water to a turbine-driven powerhouse to generate electricity and a canal that releases the water back into the river, are touted to be better than large dams because they submerge fewer regions and barely impact river flow. Such projects receive financial subsidies — even carbon credits — for being ‘greener’.
•To see how green such small dams really are, scientists from organisations including Bengaluru’s Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy and Learning (FERAL) compared almost 50 kilometres of three river tributaries — over one undammed and two dammed stretches — of the Netravathi river in the Western Ghats of Karnataka.
•They studied three zones in detail: above the dam (upstream), in the area between the dam’s wall and the powerhouse, sometimes completely devoid of water (‘de-watered’) and below the powerhouse (downstream). Here, they studied differences in water depth and width, which signify how much habitat is available to the river's denizens, and habitat quality through factors including dissolved oxygen content and water temperatures.
•Their results show that changes in water flow in the dammed sections reduced the stream’s depth and width; water in these stretches was also warmer and had lower dissolved oxygen levels. These changes were most evident in the ‘de-watered’ zones and worsened in the dry seasons.
Habitat quality
•This decrease in habitat quantity and quality showed in fish diversity too. The team found that un-dammed stretches recorded a higher diversity of fish species, including endemics (species seen only in the Western Ghats).
•“The upstream and downstream stretches get disconnected and this impedes the river,” says Suman Jumani, lead author of the study and researcher at FERAL.
•Such small hydro-projects cropping up on rivers in the Ghats is a serious worry, she adds, especially because they do not require environmental impact assessments.
•“It is not a question of small versus big dams,” says Jumani. “Small dams are not necessarily bad if there are proper regulations in place.”
•Regulations could include limiting the number of dams in a river basin or maintaining a minimum distance between dams on the same river stretch.
📰 Now, polyethylene plastic with antibacterial properties
IIT Delhi team used silver nanoparticles to achieve this
•Silver nanoparticles embedded on clay have now been successfully dispersed inside plastic to create new antimicrobial films, filaments and can also be moulded into other plastic items. Silver nanoparticle-embedded plastics were found to have greater than 99% antibacterial activity against common bacterial pathogens like Escherchia coli and Staphylococcus aureus.
•Silver nanoparticles of about 10 nanometre size were deposited on clay particles of about 200-300 nanometre length. “We used an inorganic clay found in volcanic sites called Montmorillonite. Silver nanoparticles have a tendency of agglomeration or clumping due to high surface area, so we provided clay as a platform for the silver to sit on,” explains Anasuya Roy, PhD scholar at IIT, Delhi and first author of the paper published in Polymer Composites.
Clay-silver compound
•The clay–silver compound, containg 10% silver, was then loaded into the high density polyethylene plastic using a melt compounding method. “The clay is inorganic and highly hydrophilic, whereas our plastic is organic, hydrophobic and nonpolar. They are highly incompatible. So we use a compatibilizer, which gives the required adhesion between the two phases. Also, inside the twin screw extruder machine, the necessary speed, temperature and time gives uniform mixing and the silver-clay is well embedded inside the plastic,” explains Prof. Mangala Joshi, from Department of Textile Technology at IIT Delhi and corresponding author of the paper.
Films and filaments
•They then converted the newly formed silver–clay–plastic nanocomposite into films, filaments and also moulded these into specimens and checked the antibacterial property. The films and filaments showed higher activity than the moulded ones. “In the moulded ones, we found that the antimicrobial silver was not available on the surface leading to the reduction in activity. But when the concentration of silver–clay complex was increased from 3% to 5%, the moulded ones also showed excellent activity against the two pathogens,” adds Joshi. The research team has got a U.S. patent.
•The team also tried other metal ions like zinc and copper in the place of silver. “Silver has a high reduction potential, meaning it can quickly go from silver ions to silver nanoparticles without the need of any external reducing agent. These silver nanoparticles interact with the bacterial cell wall and also generate oxidative stress inside the cell, thus killing it,” explains Roy. “The content of silver is very low in these nanocomposite plastic so no toxicity to human cells. Further, we checked the biocompatibility of the plastic with human skin and blood in vitro. In vivo tests are in progress and we hope that the new plastic can find a wide range of applications in the biomedical field and also in commodity items where this antimicrobial property can be an added advantage.”
📰 What caused the Dec. 1, 2015 Chennai downpour?
IISc researcher answers this by linking the Eastern Ghats and rain-bearing clouds
•On December 1, 2015 Chennai and its surrounding regions experienced an unprecedented, heavy rainfall. In a region where the average rainfall during the season is expected to be 8-10 mm per day, one of the rain gauges in the city recorded an abnormally high, 494 mm, rainfall over 24 hours that day. This led to death of nearly 250 people, and Chennai was declared a ‘disaster zone’. There have been attempts to explain this phenomenon of how clouds remained stationary over this region, continuously giving rain over 24 hours. In a first, Jayesh Phadtare of Centre for Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, links the presence of the Eastern Ghats to this phenomenon, in a paper published in Monthly Weather Review.
Cold pool
•When clouds give out water droplets, the droplets evaporate mid-air, as they fall down. This cools the surrounding air, forming a cold pool of air which sinks down and flows horizontally. “The gusty cold wind that heralds an approaching thunderstorm is nothing but a cold pool, which plays a pivotal role in cloud dynamics.” says Jayesh.
•Unlike the Western Ghats, which run close to the west coast of India, the Eastern Ghats are nearly 200 km away from the coast. Therefore, the link between the mountains’ orography and the rainfall over the region is not obvious, and this is the first study to link the two. Jayesh, who is studying cloud propagation over the Indian region, could see the connection by observing satellite images: “In Kalpana-I satellite images, I saw that the clouds that gave so much rain over Chennai on 1 December 2015 moved from Bay of Bengal to the coast and became stationary there,” he says. Realising that the Eastern Ghats must be having a role in this, he went on to study a model of the system. “The interaction between mountains, clouds and cold pools became clear after performing the model experiments,” he adds, in an email to The Hindu.
•According to the model, the cold pool was obstructed by the Eastern Ghats from flowing downward. Hence it piled up and remained stationary over the Chennai region. “The reason for the clouds remaining stationary was that there was a balance between the piling of cold pool along the mountain and the winds from the bay. This does not happen in all heavy rainfall incidences over Chennai,” says Jayesh.
•Sensitivity experiments were done to check this model. In the experimental model in which the orography was absent, the winds just swept downstream and the clouds moved inland. In the model where the evaporative cooling was removed, the cold pool did not form at all and the clouds moved over the Ghats.
Dust storms
•Cold pools are known to play an important role in the dust storms (Aandhi) that form in northern India. They form by the evaporation of raindrops. This process is more efficient in the drier and warmer environment as there is lot of scope of evaporation. So, the cold pools that form in these conditions, are deeper and more vigorous. “As pre-monsoon conditions in north India are very dry and warm, cold pools that accompany the pre-monsoon thunderstorms there are far more destructive, causing widespread damages,” says Jayesh. For the first time, this study links cold pools and the mountain structure to explain rainfall over south India.
•Though the primary aim of the study is to explain the anomalous rainfall over Chennai on December 1, 2015, "the understanding gained from this analysis can be useful for improving the general weather forecast over this region,” the author writes in the paper.
📰 Conquering the emperor of maladies
Cancer occurs when an otherwise healthy cell is damaged, leading to uncontrolled growth, affecting health
•The title that the cancer specialist, Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee chose for his Pulitzer-prize winner book on cancer was “The Emperor of All Maladies.” It signifies both the awe and a sportsman-like admiration of the challenge posed by the opponent, cancer. Earlier in 1971, President Richard Nixon of the US, on a similar vein, declared a “war on cancer,” with a federal funding of $1.4 billion. And over these 47 years, the US National Cancer Institute alone has spent $90 billion on the war on cancer. We are yet to win.
•Each year, 1.73 million new cancer cases are reported in the US, with apparently one cancer death every 20 minutes. In India, it is 2.5 million people, with one death every 8 minutes. It is thus urgent and vital that solutions be found for this deadly disease, which has been with us since the dawn of civilisation.
•Cancer occurs when an otherwise healthy cell is damaged, leading to uncontrolled growth, affecting the health of the body. Damage can occur either because of inborn or inherited errors in one or more genes affecting the cell, or due to lifestyle and environmental factors. While normal cells are programmed to multiply and grow to a certain size and stay so, cancer cells, whose DNA is mutated by such damage, go on rampant growth leading to tumours. The cancer specialist removes these errant cancer cells and tumour by medication or surgery. But the big challenge is not the first treatment alone, but that it should not recur and/or metastasise (move to and affect other parts of the body). The fight against cancer is thus to uproot the cause of the damage once and for all.
Immunity
•It is here that we turn to the in-built defense mechanisms in the body. These are through the immune system, which is a complex network of cells, tissues and the molecules they make to help in fighting infections and other diseases, including cancer. White blood cells play the main role here. In particular, there is the group of cells called B-lymphocytes which recognise the shape of the molecules in the invader, and make proteins called antibodies which lock on to the invader and removes it. (Importantly, this shape is ‘remembered’ so that when a fresh attack by this same invader occurs, B cells are prepared!) Another set called T cells release chemicals that push the invading cells to commit suicide. In this process, these T-killer cells are aided by a group called T-helper cells. In addition, there is another group called dendritic cells which help activate both the B- cells and T-killer cells, enabling them to respond to specific threats.
•Each cell has on its surface a little marker, a small molecular ID- card or a biometric, called an antigen. These are small molecular fragments found on the cell surface. Antigens in the normal cells of the body are recognized as “self” by the immune system of the body and left alone. But when “foreign” cells such as those of an invading microbe or virus enter the system, their ‘non-self’ antigens are detected, attacked and thrown out of the body by the B and T lymphocytes.
•This is also the basis of vaccines. In a vaccine, we introduce the disease- causing germs (either in the dead from or highly- disabled “live” form) into the body. This causes the immune system to recognise the “non-self” foreign antigen, grab it (using the antibody proteins) and throw it out of the body. Plus, the immune system ‘remembers’ this non-self antigen and when the invader comes again, has the B cells make antibodies against it and remove it from the system, thus offering protection for a long time. This is the basis behind vaccination against many diseases, including cancer-causing viruses such as human papilloma virus (HPV) and the hepatitis B and C viruses.
Once bitten, twice prepared
•How is this relevant to other forms of cancer? Cancer cells too have antigens on their surface. These form the cancer-associated antigens, including some that have not been seen previously by the body’s immune system. These are called neo-antigens. They are foreign to the body, and come from the invader.
•In the current excitement on the cure of the cancer, this idea of using our immune system and make an anti-cancer vaccine is on the high table. This is not a preventive vaccine (as the HPV or hepatitis vaccines are) but a therapeutic (or treatment) vaccine. Here, the doctor first treats the cancer by existing methods. In order that it does not recur, nor metastasise, he/she then takes a piece of the cancer tissue from the patient, and has the neo-antigens identified. Next, he/she works with a group of scientists who use computer methods to check which fragment will trigger the patient’s immune system best to fight the cancer cells. The so-chosen neo-antigen is used to make the vaccine, and once the vaccine is made, use it on the patients to protect them from further recurrence of the illness and thus get rid of the cancer, hopefully forever.
•Some cancer vaccines are already in the market; for example, HER2 against breast cancer, Provenge against prostate cancer, and T-VEC against melanoma. Increasingly though, some researchers want to read the patient’s genome, sequence the DNA or RNA of the tumor there, identify the mutations therein and make a specially constructed ‘personalised’ vaccine for the individual. The emperor may hit and maul. But now that we are adopting the Boys Scouts slogan, “Be Prepared”, will his days be numbered?
