FEATURE
Why Mumbai cannot be Shanghai
It is aptly said that “Stretch your legs according to the length of blanket” and “Cut your coat according to your cloth”. May it be home or vehicle or other possessions, proper and decent maintenance is as important as possessing them. For some people, pets are considered to be their proud possessions. Unless these possessions are decently maintained, they become public nuisance.
Pollutions Galore: Mumbai is a city, drowned under load of dust pollution, air pollution, noise pollution or any damn pollution you name. Several open drains, human defecations in the open and poorly maintained public urinals and toilets are common sights in many areas in this Financial Capital of India. Common areas in the compound of a building are grabbed by the commercial interests. Footpaths are encroached by hawkers forcing the pedestrians to use roads. Bans on spitting and littering in public places, declaration of non-hawking zones, silence zones and other prohibitive measures are nothing but mockery of law enforcing authorities.
To overcome various pollutions, people who could afford have adopted themselves to bottled water, air-conditioned vehicle / office, use facemask and even earplugs. But the common man is left with no alternative but to get himself immunized to the ever-growing pollutions, thanks to the insensitive law enforcing authorities and the irresponsible citizens who lack civic sense. If the government and the civic body are failing in their duties to make Mumbai a clean city, we Mumbaikars are also equally responsible in adding more and more garbage.
Polluter Pays & Pet Love: For some, Pets are their companions. For some, it is their life. For some, it is fashion. And for some, it is status. Whatever it may be, nothing comes free. One has to pay the price according to his standard. Nobody can make merry at the expense or cost of others’ comfort. Otherwise, the pets, especially the dogs will become owner’s pride but neighbor’s nightmare. Some owners of dogs spend thousands of rupees to take good care of their dogs at home. But they are totally insensitive to their surroundings and care a damn to the civic sense. The dogs are well fed at home. Looked after very well like the owner’s own child with all the comforts viz. warm clothes in winter and air-conditioned atmosphere in the summer. But in the morning, the dogs are promptly taken down on the society compound or road or morning walk strips and are brazenly allowed to pee (urinate) on anything and everything that comes on their way as also to ease itself of droppings on the open public space, totally unmindful of civic cleanliness. Yes, the dogs do need space to walk to keep them fit. But then, Who will Scoop the Poop? Certainly the pet owner.
Civic and Moral Policing: The lack of civic facilities such as public urinals and latrines with inadequate water supply has made public defecation a common scene in some areas. This is the irony that we are still hoping against hopes to see Mumbai as Shanghai. In West Kissing in Public is not an offence but Pissing in Public is serious offence whereas in India, it is other way round. Kissing in Public is serious offence but Pissing in Public is not. This is Yeh Mera India.
Islamic Banking:
An anathema to our civil society
The debate on the practical application of Islamic teachings in a modern world is a vexed one for Muslims. Islamic banking or Islamic finance is central to the enterprise of those who wish to rule the world in the name of Islam. They desire to consolidate the Muslim World around the issue of Muslim bashing. The debate on Islamic Banking is thus one which brings the tension between Islamists and others nakedly to the fore. In this tension, the everyday humiliations that ordinary Muslims face in the modern world help Islamists consolidate their arguments and forces.
This essay deals with the issue of Islamic banking with special reference to the Indian banking system and contemporary social realities. I have used the secular spirit and goals of the Constitution of India as reference points for the discussion. The secular state has always been anathema to religious forces, particularly Islamic ones – that is, those in politics in the name of Islam. Islamic political parties, for decades, have stridently opposed the word “secular”, interpreting it as atheism. This raucous hatred of the word and its proponents was, however, toned down as a strategy in the 1980s when Hindutva forces gained decisive strength and these Islamic forces needed the support of secular voices. The extent to which this marriage of convenience between Islamist and secular forces, particularly the left parties of late, have damaged the cause and fibre of secularism and formation of civil society is a different debate altogether. By forging an alliance with Islamic forces, the secular enterprise has been unable to widen its appeal.
To return to the central theme, levying interest is prohibited by the Qur’an. However, it must be stressed that this applies to the practice of usury and not bank interest, as modern banking did not exist when Islam came into being. The rapacity of usurers and moneylenders in their dealings with borrowers has been recorded throughout history and in all cultures of the world – this was one of the reasons behind the anti-Semitism that was until recently prevalent in the west. Hence the Qur’an’s abhorrence of usury and of any business dealing solely in money.
Idle Dream
In the modern economy, however, financiers and the circulation of money play a very important role. If any Muslim government were to successfully introduce an interest-free economy today, it would certainly lead to a new economic order. As of now, this is an idyllic dream. However, given the Islamist propaganda against modern banking, a majority of Muslims who want to avail themselves of modern banking facilities but do not want to appear to be doing so, deposit their savings in a bank but do not accept interest in the belief that by so doing they are conforming to the dictates of Islam. With changes in Muslim politics, the idea of promoting Islamic banking as a parallel to so-called non-Islamic banking has emerged in recent years and further complicated the issue in the Indian economic system, which is in any case full of contradictions.
Broadly speaking, in the modern Indian banking system, banks are financial institutions that charge and pay interest for business dealings. Besides, modern Indian banking is not just about interest; it is a tool for organising life in many ways and there is no escape from it. In the common civic space, all citizens, including Muslims, are directly or indirectly involved in modern banking.
Interestingly, in Saudi Arabia, banks, as a part of the international economic system, charge and pay interest. Saudi banks, however employ semantics and use the terms “profit sharing” and “loss sharing” instead of “interest”. Since banks in Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich economy, do not usually suffer losses, the depositors share the profits as matter of course, and this is not considered riba (usury). A few years ago, Islamists in Pakistan demanded an end to the interest-paying system of banks. They got the federal Sharia court to pronounce a judgment in their favour but the government did not pass it in the legislature. Later, the judgment was set aside by an appellate bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the matter is still sub judice.
Profit from Backwardness
In Muslim India, conventional and reformist approaches to Islam exist side by side. The reformist approach is, of course, based on the compulsions of modern life. According to Maulana Shibli Nomani, Allama Iqbal and some other eminent Muslim thinkers of the 20th century, bank interest is a profit on investment or a charge on capital when it is not exploitative, it is not riba. But classical Qur’anic commentaries support the conventional approach and their interpretations by those who are opposed to modern banking use the word riba as synonymous with interest. While in the oil-rich economy of Saudi Arabia and even in the ultimate analysis, in Pakistan, a practical approach to the issue of bank interest is the majoritarian one, in India, probably because Muslims are educationally backward, it has become a much-debated and polemical one.
Thus unscrupulous Muslim shylocks, supported by the Mulsim clergy, operate in the country, hoodwinking Muslims in the name of Islamic or non-interest banking. They are supported by those whose only agenda is to oppose everything non-Islamic, even if by doing so they prop up archaic ideas that have no place in the modern world and are contrary to the interests of Muslims. The modus operandi of these Islamic banking organisations is very simple and one can find them in almost every locality where a substantive Muslim population exists. They open accounts in nationalised banks and make huge deposits in them of money collected from poor Muslims in their so-called Islamic banks. They use their knowledge and skills of the banking system vary shrewdly to profit from the interest earned on deposits of the collected money-depositing 80% of it in different fixed deposits, leaving hardly 20% in circulation.
The common investor, who has entrusted his principal amount to the Muslim usurer, gets back his or her original amount when needed, little knowing that the interest from the money has been used for the moneylender’s other businesses. If these poor Muslims need loans, the Islamic bank gives it to them, with their gold ornaments or land held as security or collateral, and charge interest, calling it “service tax”. Thus this system not only makes money for its unscrupulous operators in the name of Islamic banking, but also prevents the Muslim community from becoming a part of the modern economy and availing itself of the benefits of uniform economic programmes. Many Muslims do not take bank loans, believing that giving or taking interest is un-Islamic. So their business do not flourish and they do not progress while others benefit from their money.
Scamming the Poor
Sometimes it gets murkier. Around 15 years ago, a Muslim, who happened to be a lecturer at Jamia Millia Islamia, a central university in New Delhi, began a big scam, calling it a model for Islamic banking. Al Falah, as it was known, had the backing of prominent Muslims (political and religious) and offered returns three to four times higher than other investments. It proclaimed that investors would be partners in the venture, thus avoiding using the word “interest” for whatever they earned on their principal investment. Millions of Muslims deposited money without realising that in a partnership venture they were also liable for loss if the bank did not intelligently invest their money.
Although the venture declared that the depositors were partners in the venture, their opinion was not sought when their money was invested in the share market, a high-risk venture. Being shrewd, the owner of Al-Falah also invested some part of the money in an engineering college and certain other projects run by separate charitable organisations. In two to three years, the scheme collapsed. The mullahs and politicians got their money back, but the common Muslim depositors were left without redress. The “cheat” went to jail and came out after some time on bail. Lengthy legal proceedings are now on and are likely to carry on for the next 50 years or more, given the way the Indian judicial system operates and that money had been collected from all over the country.
The engineering college established with the ill-gotten money gives Al-Falah’s founder returns because it is run under the aegis of a so-called charitable trust set up by exploiting legal loopholes that exist in this country. Not only that, he has opened a college and is planning to apply for it to become a deemed university with minority status. The campus is spread over 56 acres in the national capital region and is worth thousands of crores of rupees. If the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) do not take stern action against this kind of banking, which exists in almost every locality where a considerable Muslim population resides, the shylocks in the community will not allow Muslims to even join the debate on the issue of modern banking, far less avail themselves of its benefits and join the mainstream economy. And the Al-Falah kind of scam will happen again.
A main focus of the tussle between the Muslim world and others are the financial avenues available to the former, particularly oil-rich countries. The debate in India is as vigorous as in any other Muslim country. For recent trends one need only look at reports and other discussions in Muslim newspapers the world over, India being no exception. Arab Times, a leading daily in Saudi Arabia, devoted a page on 27 April 2011 to news related to Islamic finance, with a lead story titled “UK Promotes City as Centre for Global Islamic Finance” by Mushtak Parker. Terry Lacey’s report on the Fifth World Islamic Economic Forum in Jakarta, Indonesia, titled “Islamic Finance in a Changing World”, which was published in the Milli Gazette, New Delhi (16-31 March 2009: 16), was an example of the debate on the subject in an Indian Muslim newspaper. For the campaign against mainstream banking among the masses, a good amount of material is distributed. The propagators turn a blind eye to the so-called Islamic banking prevailing in almost every locality with a substantive Muslim population simply because these banks help Islamists consolidate their constituencies by polarising them in the name of Islamic banking.
Finance institutions in India are commonly categorised as banks and non-banking financial institutions. The definition of banking, according to the Banking Regulation Act of 1949, is “accepting, for the purpose of landing or investment, of deposits of money from the public, repayable on demand or otherwise, and withdrawable by cheque, draft, order or otherwise”. Banks in India are governed by the Banking Regulation Act 1949, the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, the Negotiable Instruments Act 1881 and the Cooperative Societies Act 1961. The existence of so-called Islamic Banks is not covered under these Acts.
In 2005, the government of India asked the RBI to examine Islamic banking instruments and the RBI constituted a working group in June that year that comprised five members representing the Department of Banking Operations and Development, Foreign Exchange Department, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Oman international Bank. This was an informal group and no formal terms of reference were drawn up. In its five meetings, the group concluded that in the current statutory and regulatory framework, it would not be feasible for banks in India to undertake Islamic banking though it made no specific recommendation warranting any action by the RBI. A copy of the report was forwarded to the ministry of finance in July 2007 and no action has been taken so far to the best of public knowledge.
Beyond Fukushima & Jaitapur is the Catastrophe Awaiting Planet Earth
Prof. Bengre Narayana Karkera
Certain death of the planet earth is waiting beyond the nuclear tragedy at Fukushima in Japan and the public opposition at the proposed Jaitapur nuclear facility in Maharashtra, India. The planet earth is the only known ‘Living-Planet’, existing for the last 4.5 billion years in the 100 billion year old universe. This lonely ‘Living-Planet’ is the home of 5,000 year recent human civilization; which is just 0.1 second in 24 hour cosmic clock, representing 4.5 billion years of earth’s existence. In this extremely small fraction of cosmic time frame, we humans have punctured its extremely thin protective atmospheric cover resulting in its drift towards certain death by becoming a lifeless red-planet. We humans have ill-managed the exponentially growing power needs of modernizing civilization by spewing trillions of tones of ozone depletion gases to upper atmosphere.
Catastrophe:
* Curdling of the milk cannot be interrupted, once the curdling is initiated.
* Destruction by a mountain boulder rolling down a hill, cannot be interrupted, once initiated.
* Wiping out of a village en-route an avalanche cannot be avoided, once initiated.
* Similarly, wiping-out of the protective ozone layer cannot be interrupted, once it is initiated. A punctured hole is seen in the year 2005 satellite image of Antarctic. Hole allows the cosmic ray to burn all the planet life forms. We have to keep our fingers crossed and hope to reverse this puncturing before it initiates the wiping-out of the protective ozone layer.
Sizeable chunk of the civilization is in India, emitting 638,000,000 tonnes of CO2 yearly with NTPC in Centre for Global Development’s (CGD’s) “red alert” category for spewing out the deadly gases. We have a huge projected power demand of 1,200 GWe till the year 2050. Civilization should not be power-starved; but should be prevented from annihilation by reversing the impending catastrophe. Renewable energy cannot meet this need. A 1 GWe coal-burning power plant could release as much as 5.2 tons/year of uranium (containing 34 kg of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons/year of thorium in addition to 530 pounds of mercury. Being ‘intelligent’ humans, we Indians have learnt from our past mistakes and are leading the march-forward to reverse this catastrophic drift towards certain death by opting for economical green-nuclear-power. To meet the above power need, we have opted for 650 GWe green-nuclear-power till 2050. At present, India is operating & building 12.28 GWe nuclear power reactors in 7 nuclear power stations. The proposed eighth nuclear facility at Jaitapur is being opposed in the light of the nuclear tragedy at Fukushima in Japan.
We have addressed simultaneously the issues of survival of very life on the planet earth and concerns of common man as: [1] The consequences of thermal power generation; [2] The drawbacks of renewable energy sources and resulting option for nuclear energy; [3] How we could in parallel, reduce thermal power generation & increase nuclear power generation; [4] To clear the public’s worst nightmares on nuclear energy, Nuclear waste and radiation-exposure minimization.
We have defined the source of ultimate clean energy as nuclear to arrest the catastrophic drift. Further, we should reverse the catastrophic drift by steadily phasing out coal & gas based thermal power stations by upgrading them as green-nuclear-power stations. Engineers are the destroyers of planet earth through coal & gas based power generation. Also, they will be the saviors of planet earth by arresting and reversing the above catastrophic drift through nuclear power generation. We Indians should recommend the following 4 actions to prevent this global catastrophe: (i) We should changeover to nuclear power in totality through the next 3 steps; (ii) We should slow down thermal power plants’ proliferation by heavy carbon-credit taxation; (iii) As the next step, we should stop thermal power plants’, proliferation by heavy carbon-credit penalty and political isolation; (iv) Eventually we should modify & upgrade the existing thermal power stations for nuclear power generation.
The most debated safety issues raised by environmental groups and answered well by BARC are:
a. Radiation effects on people due to reactor accidents caused by unintentional or intentional (terrorist inflicted) malfunctions
b. Intentional diversions and modifications of nuclear fuel to make nuclear weapons
c. The disposal of radioactive waste can be carried out safely
d. All nuclear sectors in India are permitted under the strict regulation of AERB
e. Spent-fuel transported in a collision roof casket
f. The heavy steel caskets are designed to tolerate external bomb blasts. It would take a casket piercing missile with high explosives to vaporize a fuel element into radio-active aerosols
g. Overall probability of a harmful radiation exposure due to the movement of radioactive materials is less than 10-9 per transport
h. Overall risk that a person may get cancer from drinking contaminated water near a nuclear storage site is on the order of 10-7 in 100 years or 10-9 per year
i. This compares with a chance of 10-4 per day for an automobilist to have a collision and a probability of 10-7 per flight to be in a plane-crash for air travelers
j. The only public deaths due to a nuclear power plant accident occurred in1986 at Chernobyl in the Ukraine and now at Fukushima.
k. After 107 MWe-years of worldwide nuclear power that was generated over the past thirty years, the observed risk of causing a human fatality in the public due to a reactor meltdown is 5 × 10-6 per MWe per year
l. For a typical 1000 MW reactor the worldwide risk of causing a human death would then be 5 × 10-3 fatalities per year (one death in 200 years)
m. The worldwide risk for underground mining is more than one fatality per year per mine
n. After the Chernobyl accident, many new sophisticated accident prevention techniques and public safety measures were introduced at all nuclear power plants in the world. Now, the Fukushima-disaster related design issues are being studied. At Fukushima, the nuclear fatality is less than 1 % of the net fatality.
o. For a modern water-moderated 1000 MW(e) power reactor with a properly designed containment vessel (absent at Chernobyl), the probability of public exposure to particulate fall-out radiation after a reactor core meltdown or destruction (by earthquakes, plane crash strike, or a suicide terrorist), is estimated to be less than 10-6 per year
p. The probability for a terrorist group to make a nuclear weapon is extremely remote unless they are aided by a sovereign nation
q. The theft of a completely functional nuclear weapon from a heavily guarded military facility is also very unlikely
r. Only an independent country could design, build, and test a nuclear weapon at great expense (over $ 1 billion) if its government wants to do so
s. Avoidance of building future nuclear power plants will not prevent any determined nation from developing nuclear weapons
t. Weapons proliferation is a separate issue
u. It would be as senseless to halt nuclear power plant development as it is to stop making jet aircraft or bulldozers or kitchen knife because the latter could be converted into military fighter planes and tanks, or because their materials of construction can be diverted to making bombs, or can be used for stabbing someone to death.
v. Comparing safety in mining of coal versus uranium shows that many more accidents with loss of life occur in coal mines
w. Daily railroad transportation of kilotons of coal is more accident-prone than monthly uranium transports of kilograms of uranium yellow-cake with a few trucks
x. Radioactive waste cannot explode and is absolutely non-fissionable
y. Annual Individual Radiation Exposure, as percentage of total :
i. From Nature : Radom Radiation: - 48.4 %
ii. From Nature : Earth Crest : - 17.1 %
iii. From Nature : Cosmic Radiation : -- 14.5 %
iv. From Nature : Internal from own body : - 8.6 %
v. Human Made : Medical : - - 11.2 %
vi. Others, including Nuclear : - 0.2 %
z. Radiation - a fact of life :
i. Chest X-Ray (one film) : - - 20 to 25 mR
ii. Dental X-Ray (whole mouth) - 200 mR
iii. Breast Mammography (one film) - 1,500 mR
iv. Heart Catheterization before bypass surgery : 45,000mR, which is the 9 year allowance for a radiation worker
Author is a Ex. Head MDPDS, BARC & IAEA Fellow, currently attached to NITK, Surathkal as Adjunct Faculty, can be contacted on email: karkerabn@gmail.com
Born again medicine
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
When a patient comes to consult a doctor s/he has two important questions in mind. What is the problem? And when will s/he be fit again? Modern medicine, sold to the gullible public as very scientific and evidence based has major problems in answering both those basic questions honestly! Science of modern medicine is faulty in that it uses the age old linear mathematical base in a dynamic fully non-linear system but survives by using the most imprecise statistical prop to stand up. Evidence base of modern medicine, where all interventions have to go through the “rigors” of the randomized controlled studies before being let loose on the public, is so porous that most of what doctors do today is based on a foundation of wet sand. Almost all randomized controlled studies (RCTs), which have spent millions of tax payers’ dollars in many advanced countries, have been shown to be fatally flawed in their very structure.
Answering the two vital questions in the patient’s mind, therefore, depends on the doctors’ confidence in his clinical judgment and past experience just as the astrologer predicts the future of his client. Both doctors and astrologers have been predicting the unpredictable future of man! Hard sciences like physics, biology and chemistry do not score over medical science either in this field although physics, after the advent of quantum mechanics, has made a quantum leap in its understanding of the world. Physics now accepts consciousness as a scientific reality while medicine still lives in its hoary past glory of reductionism. In fact, medicine that deals with human beings should have taken consciousness into its fold much before physics did as the latter only deals with inanimate matter. That was not to be as a huge money spinner industry had developed around this statistical science of medicine for interventional quick-fixes both in pills and surgical operations. Now for medical science to take another route of correct science of non-linearity and chaos will be very difficult.
“That may be fine when we’re talking widgets, but when it means more heart surgeries, less time with patients, more collusion with drug companies, and higher prices for less care—well, even Adam Smith would feel a little ill. But believe me, he’d think twice before summoning the ambulance,” writes Maggie Mahar in her excellent book Money Driven Medicine. Medicalisation of life means that more and more of our day today problems in life are added to the list of medical problems needing intervention. There would be no one who could call himself healthy and well after the routine screening of the apparently healthy. Screening is being sold as the panacea for all human ills. The fact, however, is that no illness could benefit from our detecting it in the pre-symptomatic stage to intervene before symptoms develop. Change it must for the good of mankind.
For the sake of this discussion let me label the future new medical science as born again medicine. Every disease gets born in the mind (consciousness) of the individual to grow in the body aided and assisted by the environment in which one lives but is influenced by the genetic constitution. We need a new holistic approach to health and ill health. Health is not then just the absence of physical disease. None of the negative definitions of health take into consideration this new science of holism except the one that we could propose as that state of being where the individual has the enthusiasm to “work and love”. The word love here does not connote lust but the capacity to love humanity at large which is the basic need of this world. Hating others is a kind of disease, in fact.
What would be the science of the born again medicine, other wise called meta-medicine, as it follows after the modern medical science of reductionism? The new science will take into account the total organism in its surrounding into consideration before intervening. David Eddy has come up with an elegant computer model of this new mathematical model of human physiology of holism in his soft ware www.archimedesmodel.com which incorporates more than ten thousand differential equations, the hall mark of non-linear mathematics. In the ancient science of Ayurveda human beings were classified into separate genetico-constitutional groups with major three groups-vaata, pitta ands kapha- and many sub-groups. Patwardhan and his colleagues have come up with studies in these groups to show that they belong to distinct genetic groups using HLA markers. Combined together this would be the ideal set up to study human beings for health and ill health.
When it comes to interventions, except in cases of emergency care for all medical and surgical emergencies and corrections of congenital defects which need modern medical quick-fixes for sure, for the rest, which forms about 90% of the sick population on a given day, one could use the best practices in many other complementary systems in existence for “times out of mind” in this world. The fact that mankind did not become extinct for thousands of years existence without the help of the faulty modern medical science that came into being in the past half a century should make us sit up and take note of the wheat leaving the chaff behind in all those systems of yore in existence for managing the non-emergency situations and chronic degenerative and malignant diseases. The complementary systems need to be rigorously scientifically authenticated before being amalgamated in the born again medical system. The latter effort is going in some centres and a glimpse of that is given hereunder. Prof. Rustum Roy, a great scientist of repute at the Penn State University, has been working in this area for the past several decades and has achieved commendable success in making the world take note through his organisation, the friends of health.
We have been working in this area of authenticating the effect of breathing techniques in the great science of yoga for nearly three decades now. The use of breathing rhythms was known to Indian saints of yore who used Yogic breathing, praanaayaama, for keeping themselves healthy and fit. They even used it to get energy! Our group has been working at it to see if those methods had any scientific basis. In a sophisticated computerized model to test the Heart Rate Variability with praanaayaama, we have come up with exciting data. In addition, we have also used this to manage patients with coronary artery disease as an adjunct to conventional treatment with very good results.
We are now working on a new theory-sono-luminescence-a scientific method to create energy by coalescing and bursting bubbles in liquids to release energy. Using yogic breathing, added to chanting of a mantra, OM, we are trying to see if human vocal cords could convert sound of the mantra into ultra sound to energize the bubbles in the alveoli, (where bubbles remain for a long time without bursting, thanks to a special chemical, surfactant, that gets secreted in the alveolar walls from the 7th month of gestation in the baby), to release energy and convert ADP to ATP. It is premature to discuss the results but the prospects look good. This may also explain how ancient Indian rishis (re-see in contrast to re-search) used to meditate for months together without food.
Many of the methods of managing the sick used in various systems like Siddha, Unani, Arabic and Tibetan medicines, herbal medicines used by aboriginal races, acupuncture, Chinese medicines, chi-gong, praanic healing, energy medicine, nano-particles used in the ancient ayurvedic bhasmas, or in the most recent nano-solutions of silver etc, as also the most potent immune boosters used in the ancient systems need to be urgently authenticated. All these need money and the usual funding agencies are allergic to fund these activities. When the drug industry wakes up to realize the potentials of these complementary systems money will start pouring into this areas as well. As of now, even without proper scientific authentication, the budget of complementary medicines runs into billions of dollars and a few companies have tasted got involved with this area. To keep the science of holism unadulterated by business interests’, money with strings attached should not be accepted for future research. Pharma companies are the most powerful people to fund this area but then the integrity of the researchers must be strictly monitored lest the new system also falls into the same trap of modern medical research.
In conclusion, in all our studies in modern medical sciences today “passion makes some of the best observations but, draws, many times, most wretched conclusions” as noted by John von Neumann years ago. Our research has made some wonderful observations but we have drawn wrong conclusions from those studies. Let us change the science of medicine from the reductionist science of linearity that we discussed above to that of the future science of chaos and holism as was elegantly shown by Professor David Eddy, a former professor of cardiovascular surgery at Stanford converted to a mathematician, to get at the right holistic science for medicine in his ground breaking research work. While patients could survive without doctors, doctors will not be able to survive without patients. Let us change before all patients leave us and go elsewhere for help. Long live medicine for the good of humankind.
(Author is former Vice Chancellor of Manipal University)
It is aptly said that “Stretch your legs according to the length of blanket” and “Cut your coat according to your cloth”. May it be home or vehicle or other possessions, proper and decent maintenance is as important as possessing them. For some people, pets are considered to be their proud possessions. Unless these possessions are decently maintained, they become public nuisance.
Pollutions Galore: Mumbai is a city, drowned under load of dust pollution, air pollution, noise pollution or any damn pollution you name. Several open drains, human defecations in the open and poorly maintained public urinals and toilets are common sights in many areas in this Financial Capital of India. Common areas in the compound of a building are grabbed by the commercial interests. Footpaths are encroached by hawkers forcing the pedestrians to use roads. Bans on spitting and littering in public places, declaration of non-hawking zones, silence zones and other prohibitive measures are nothing but mockery of law enforcing authorities.
To overcome various pollutions, people who could afford have adopted themselves to bottled water, air-conditioned vehicle / office, use facemask and even earplugs. But the common man is left with no alternative but to get himself immunized to the ever-growing pollutions, thanks to the insensitive law enforcing authorities and the irresponsible citizens who lack civic sense. If the government and the civic body are failing in their duties to make Mumbai a clean city, we Mumbaikars are also equally responsible in adding more and more garbage.
Polluter Pays & Pet Love: For some, Pets are their companions. For some, it is their life. For some, it is fashion. And for some, it is status. Whatever it may be, nothing comes free. One has to pay the price according to his standard. Nobody can make merry at the expense or cost of others’ comfort. Otherwise, the pets, especially the dogs will become owner’s pride but neighbor’s nightmare. Some owners of dogs spend thousands of rupees to take good care of their dogs at home. But they are totally insensitive to their surroundings and care a damn to the civic sense. The dogs are well fed at home. Looked after very well like the owner’s own child with all the comforts viz. warm clothes in winter and air-conditioned atmosphere in the summer. But in the morning, the dogs are promptly taken down on the society compound or road or morning walk strips and are brazenly allowed to pee (urinate) on anything and everything that comes on their way as also to ease itself of droppings on the open public space, totally unmindful of civic cleanliness. Yes, the dogs do need space to walk to keep them fit. But then, Who will Scoop the Poop? Certainly the pet owner.
Civic and Moral Policing: The lack of civic facilities such as public urinals and latrines with inadequate water supply has made public defecation a common scene in some areas. This is the irony that we are still hoping against hopes to see Mumbai as Shanghai. In West Kissing in Public is not an offence but Pissing in Public is serious offence whereas in India, it is other way round. Kissing in Public is serious offence but Pissing in Public is not. This is Yeh Mera India.
Islamic Banking:
An anathema to our civil society
The debate on the practical application of Islamic teachings in a modern world is a vexed one for Muslims. Islamic banking or Islamic finance is central to the enterprise of those who wish to rule the world in the name of Islam. They desire to consolidate the Muslim World around the issue of Muslim bashing. The debate on Islamic Banking is thus one which brings the tension between Islamists and others nakedly to the fore. In this tension, the everyday humiliations that ordinary Muslims face in the modern world help Islamists consolidate their arguments and forces.
This essay deals with the issue of Islamic banking with special reference to the Indian banking system and contemporary social realities. I have used the secular spirit and goals of the Constitution of India as reference points for the discussion. The secular state has always been anathema to religious forces, particularly Islamic ones – that is, those in politics in the name of Islam. Islamic political parties, for decades, have stridently opposed the word “secular”, interpreting it as atheism. This raucous hatred of the word and its proponents was, however, toned down as a strategy in the 1980s when Hindutva forces gained decisive strength and these Islamic forces needed the support of secular voices. The extent to which this marriage of convenience between Islamist and secular forces, particularly the left parties of late, have damaged the cause and fibre of secularism and formation of civil society is a different debate altogether. By forging an alliance with Islamic forces, the secular enterprise has been unable to widen its appeal.
To return to the central theme, levying interest is prohibited by the Qur’an. However, it must be stressed that this applies to the practice of usury and not bank interest, as modern banking did not exist when Islam came into being. The rapacity of usurers and moneylenders in their dealings with borrowers has been recorded throughout history and in all cultures of the world – this was one of the reasons behind the anti-Semitism that was until recently prevalent in the west. Hence the Qur’an’s abhorrence of usury and of any business dealing solely in money.
Idle Dream
In the modern economy, however, financiers and the circulation of money play a very important role. If any Muslim government were to successfully introduce an interest-free economy today, it would certainly lead to a new economic order. As of now, this is an idyllic dream. However, given the Islamist propaganda against modern banking, a majority of Muslims who want to avail themselves of modern banking facilities but do not want to appear to be doing so, deposit their savings in a bank but do not accept interest in the belief that by so doing they are conforming to the dictates of Islam. With changes in Muslim politics, the idea of promoting Islamic banking as a parallel to so-called non-Islamic banking has emerged in recent years and further complicated the issue in the Indian economic system, which is in any case full of contradictions.
Broadly speaking, in the modern Indian banking system, banks are financial institutions that charge and pay interest for business dealings. Besides, modern Indian banking is not just about interest; it is a tool for organising life in many ways and there is no escape from it. In the common civic space, all citizens, including Muslims, are directly or indirectly involved in modern banking.
Interestingly, in Saudi Arabia, banks, as a part of the international economic system, charge and pay interest. Saudi banks, however employ semantics and use the terms “profit sharing” and “loss sharing” instead of “interest”. Since banks in Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich economy, do not usually suffer losses, the depositors share the profits as matter of course, and this is not considered riba (usury). A few years ago, Islamists in Pakistan demanded an end to the interest-paying system of banks. They got the federal Sharia court to pronounce a judgment in their favour but the government did not pass it in the legislature. Later, the judgment was set aside by an appellate bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the matter is still sub judice.
Profit from Backwardness
In Muslim India, conventional and reformist approaches to Islam exist side by side. The reformist approach is, of course, based on the compulsions of modern life. According to Maulana Shibli Nomani, Allama Iqbal and some other eminent Muslim thinkers of the 20th century, bank interest is a profit on investment or a charge on capital when it is not exploitative, it is not riba. But classical Qur’anic commentaries support the conventional approach and their interpretations by those who are opposed to modern banking use the word riba as synonymous with interest. While in the oil-rich economy of Saudi Arabia and even in the ultimate analysis, in Pakistan, a practical approach to the issue of bank interest is the majoritarian one, in India, probably because Muslims are educationally backward, it has become a much-debated and polemical one.
Thus unscrupulous Muslim shylocks, supported by the Mulsim clergy, operate in the country, hoodwinking Muslims in the name of Islamic or non-interest banking. They are supported by those whose only agenda is to oppose everything non-Islamic, even if by doing so they prop up archaic ideas that have no place in the modern world and are contrary to the interests of Muslims. The modus operandi of these Islamic banking organisations is very simple and one can find them in almost every locality where a substantive Muslim population exists. They open accounts in nationalised banks and make huge deposits in them of money collected from poor Muslims in their so-called Islamic banks. They use their knowledge and skills of the banking system vary shrewdly to profit from the interest earned on deposits of the collected money-depositing 80% of it in different fixed deposits, leaving hardly 20% in circulation.
The common investor, who has entrusted his principal amount to the Muslim usurer, gets back his or her original amount when needed, little knowing that the interest from the money has been used for the moneylender’s other businesses. If these poor Muslims need loans, the Islamic bank gives it to them, with their gold ornaments or land held as security or collateral, and charge interest, calling it “service tax”. Thus this system not only makes money for its unscrupulous operators in the name of Islamic banking, but also prevents the Muslim community from becoming a part of the modern economy and availing itself of the benefits of uniform economic programmes. Many Muslims do not take bank loans, believing that giving or taking interest is un-Islamic. So their business do not flourish and they do not progress while others benefit from their money.
Scamming the Poor
Sometimes it gets murkier. Around 15 years ago, a Muslim, who happened to be a lecturer at Jamia Millia Islamia, a central university in New Delhi, began a big scam, calling it a model for Islamic banking. Al Falah, as it was known, had the backing of prominent Muslims (political and religious) and offered returns three to four times higher than other investments. It proclaimed that investors would be partners in the venture, thus avoiding using the word “interest” for whatever they earned on their principal investment. Millions of Muslims deposited money without realising that in a partnership venture they were also liable for loss if the bank did not intelligently invest their money.
Although the venture declared that the depositors were partners in the venture, their opinion was not sought when their money was invested in the share market, a high-risk venture. Being shrewd, the owner of Al-Falah also invested some part of the money in an engineering college and certain other projects run by separate charitable organisations. In two to three years, the scheme collapsed. The mullahs and politicians got their money back, but the common Muslim depositors were left without redress. The “cheat” went to jail and came out after some time on bail. Lengthy legal proceedings are now on and are likely to carry on for the next 50 years or more, given the way the Indian judicial system operates and that money had been collected from all over the country.
The engineering college established with the ill-gotten money gives Al-Falah’s founder returns because it is run under the aegis of a so-called charitable trust set up by exploiting legal loopholes that exist in this country. Not only that, he has opened a college and is planning to apply for it to become a deemed university with minority status. The campus is spread over 56 acres in the national capital region and is worth thousands of crores of rupees. If the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) do not take stern action against this kind of banking, which exists in almost every locality where a considerable Muslim population resides, the shylocks in the community will not allow Muslims to even join the debate on the issue of modern banking, far less avail themselves of its benefits and join the mainstream economy. And the Al-Falah kind of scam will happen again.
A main focus of the tussle between the Muslim world and others are the financial avenues available to the former, particularly oil-rich countries. The debate in India is as vigorous as in any other Muslim country. For recent trends one need only look at reports and other discussions in Muslim newspapers the world over, India being no exception. Arab Times, a leading daily in Saudi Arabia, devoted a page on 27 April 2011 to news related to Islamic finance, with a lead story titled “UK Promotes City as Centre for Global Islamic Finance” by Mushtak Parker. Terry Lacey’s report on the Fifth World Islamic Economic Forum in Jakarta, Indonesia, titled “Islamic Finance in a Changing World”, which was published in the Milli Gazette, New Delhi (16-31 March 2009: 16), was an example of the debate on the subject in an Indian Muslim newspaper. For the campaign against mainstream banking among the masses, a good amount of material is distributed. The propagators turn a blind eye to the so-called Islamic banking prevailing in almost every locality with a substantive Muslim population simply because these banks help Islamists consolidate their constituencies by polarising them in the name of Islamic banking.
Finance institutions in India are commonly categorised as banks and non-banking financial institutions. The definition of banking, according to the Banking Regulation Act of 1949, is “accepting, for the purpose of landing or investment, of deposits of money from the public, repayable on demand or otherwise, and withdrawable by cheque, draft, order or otherwise”. Banks in India are governed by the Banking Regulation Act 1949, the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, the Negotiable Instruments Act 1881 and the Cooperative Societies Act 1961. The existence of so-called Islamic Banks is not covered under these Acts.
In 2005, the government of India asked the RBI to examine Islamic banking instruments and the RBI constituted a working group in June that year that comprised five members representing the Department of Banking Operations and Development, Foreign Exchange Department, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Oman international Bank. This was an informal group and no formal terms of reference were drawn up. In its five meetings, the group concluded that in the current statutory and regulatory framework, it would not be feasible for banks in India to undertake Islamic banking though it made no specific recommendation warranting any action by the RBI. A copy of the report was forwarded to the ministry of finance in July 2007 and no action has been taken so far to the best of public knowledge.
Beyond Fukushima & Jaitapur is the Catastrophe Awaiting Planet Earth
Prof. Bengre Narayana Karkera
Certain death of the planet earth is waiting beyond the nuclear tragedy at Fukushima in Japan and the public opposition at the proposed Jaitapur nuclear facility in Maharashtra, India. The planet earth is the only known ‘Living-Planet’, existing for the last 4.5 billion years in the 100 billion year old universe. This lonely ‘Living-Planet’ is the home of 5,000 year recent human civilization; which is just 0.1 second in 24 hour cosmic clock, representing 4.5 billion years of earth’s existence. In this extremely small fraction of cosmic time frame, we humans have punctured its extremely thin protective atmospheric cover resulting in its drift towards certain death by becoming a lifeless red-planet. We humans have ill-managed the exponentially growing power needs of modernizing civilization by spewing trillions of tones of ozone depletion gases to upper atmosphere.
Catastrophe:
* Curdling of the milk cannot be interrupted, once the curdling is initiated.
* Destruction by a mountain boulder rolling down a hill, cannot be interrupted, once initiated.
* Wiping out of a village en-route an avalanche cannot be avoided, once initiated.
* Similarly, wiping-out of the protective ozone layer cannot be interrupted, once it is initiated. A punctured hole is seen in the year 2005 satellite image of Antarctic. Hole allows the cosmic ray to burn all the planet life forms. We have to keep our fingers crossed and hope to reverse this puncturing before it initiates the wiping-out of the protective ozone layer.
Sizeable chunk of the civilization is in India, emitting 638,000,000 tonnes of CO2 yearly with NTPC in Centre for Global Development’s (CGD’s) “red alert” category for spewing out the deadly gases. We have a huge projected power demand of 1,200 GWe till the year 2050. Civilization should not be power-starved; but should be prevented from annihilation by reversing the impending catastrophe. Renewable energy cannot meet this need. A 1 GWe coal-burning power plant could release as much as 5.2 tons/year of uranium (containing 34 kg of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons/year of thorium in addition to 530 pounds of mercury. Being ‘intelligent’ humans, we Indians have learnt from our past mistakes and are leading the march-forward to reverse this catastrophic drift towards certain death by opting for economical green-nuclear-power. To meet the above power need, we have opted for 650 GWe green-nuclear-power till 2050. At present, India is operating & building 12.28 GWe nuclear power reactors in 7 nuclear power stations. The proposed eighth nuclear facility at Jaitapur is being opposed in the light of the nuclear tragedy at Fukushima in Japan.
We have addressed simultaneously the issues of survival of very life on the planet earth and concerns of common man as: [1] The consequences of thermal power generation; [2] The drawbacks of renewable energy sources and resulting option for nuclear energy; [3] How we could in parallel, reduce thermal power generation & increase nuclear power generation; [4] To clear the public’s worst nightmares on nuclear energy, Nuclear waste and radiation-exposure minimization.
We have defined the source of ultimate clean energy as nuclear to arrest the catastrophic drift. Further, we should reverse the catastrophic drift by steadily phasing out coal & gas based thermal power stations by upgrading them as green-nuclear-power stations. Engineers are the destroyers of planet earth through coal & gas based power generation. Also, they will be the saviors of planet earth by arresting and reversing the above catastrophic drift through nuclear power generation. We Indians should recommend the following 4 actions to prevent this global catastrophe: (i) We should changeover to nuclear power in totality through the next 3 steps; (ii) We should slow down thermal power plants’ proliferation by heavy carbon-credit taxation; (iii) As the next step, we should stop thermal power plants’, proliferation by heavy carbon-credit penalty and political isolation; (iv) Eventually we should modify & upgrade the existing thermal power stations for nuclear power generation.
The most debated safety issues raised by environmental groups and answered well by BARC are:
a. Radiation effects on people due to reactor accidents caused by unintentional or intentional (terrorist inflicted) malfunctions
b. Intentional diversions and modifications of nuclear fuel to make nuclear weapons
c. The disposal of radioactive waste can be carried out safely
d. All nuclear sectors in India are permitted under the strict regulation of AERB
e. Spent-fuel transported in a collision roof casket
f. The heavy steel caskets are designed to tolerate external bomb blasts. It would take a casket piercing missile with high explosives to vaporize a fuel element into radio-active aerosols
g. Overall probability of a harmful radiation exposure due to the movement of radioactive materials is less than 10-9 per transport
h. Overall risk that a person may get cancer from drinking contaminated water near a nuclear storage site is on the order of 10-7 in 100 years or 10-9 per year
i. This compares with a chance of 10-4 per day for an automobilist to have a collision and a probability of 10-7 per flight to be in a plane-crash for air travelers
j. The only public deaths due to a nuclear power plant accident occurred in1986 at Chernobyl in the Ukraine and now at Fukushima.
k. After 107 MWe-years of worldwide nuclear power that was generated over the past thirty years, the observed risk of causing a human fatality in the public due to a reactor meltdown is 5 × 10-6 per MWe per year
l. For a typical 1000 MW reactor the worldwide risk of causing a human death would then be 5 × 10-3 fatalities per year (one death in 200 years)
m. The worldwide risk for underground mining is more than one fatality per year per mine
n. After the Chernobyl accident, many new sophisticated accident prevention techniques and public safety measures were introduced at all nuclear power plants in the world. Now, the Fukushima-disaster related design issues are being studied. At Fukushima, the nuclear fatality is less than 1 % of the net fatality.
o. For a modern water-moderated 1000 MW(e) power reactor with a properly designed containment vessel (absent at Chernobyl), the probability of public exposure to particulate fall-out radiation after a reactor core meltdown or destruction (by earthquakes, plane crash strike, or a suicide terrorist), is estimated to be less than 10-6 per year
p. The probability for a terrorist group to make a nuclear weapon is extremely remote unless they are aided by a sovereign nation
q. The theft of a completely functional nuclear weapon from a heavily guarded military facility is also very unlikely
r. Only an independent country could design, build, and test a nuclear weapon at great expense (over $ 1 billion) if its government wants to do so
s. Avoidance of building future nuclear power plants will not prevent any determined nation from developing nuclear weapons
t. Weapons proliferation is a separate issue
u. It would be as senseless to halt nuclear power plant development as it is to stop making jet aircraft or bulldozers or kitchen knife because the latter could be converted into military fighter planes and tanks, or because their materials of construction can be diverted to making bombs, or can be used for stabbing someone to death.
v. Comparing safety in mining of coal versus uranium shows that many more accidents with loss of life occur in coal mines
w. Daily railroad transportation of kilotons of coal is more accident-prone than monthly uranium transports of kilograms of uranium yellow-cake with a few trucks
x. Radioactive waste cannot explode and is absolutely non-fissionable
y. Annual Individual Radiation Exposure, as percentage of total :
i. From Nature : Radom Radiation: - 48.4 %
ii. From Nature : Earth Crest : - 17.1 %
iii. From Nature : Cosmic Radiation : -- 14.5 %
iv. From Nature : Internal from own body : - 8.6 %
v. Human Made : Medical : - - 11.2 %
vi. Others, including Nuclear : - 0.2 %
z. Radiation - a fact of life :
i. Chest X-Ray (one film) : - - 20 to 25 mR
ii. Dental X-Ray (whole mouth) - 200 mR
iii. Breast Mammography (one film) - 1,500 mR
iv. Heart Catheterization before bypass surgery : 45,000mR, which is the 9 year allowance for a radiation worker
Author is a Ex. Head MDPDS, BARC & IAEA Fellow, currently attached to NITK, Surathkal as Adjunct Faculty, can be contacted on email: karkerabn@gmail.com
Born again medicine
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
When a patient comes to consult a doctor s/he has two important questions in mind. What is the problem? And when will s/he be fit again? Modern medicine, sold to the gullible public as very scientific and evidence based has major problems in answering both those basic questions honestly! Science of modern medicine is faulty in that it uses the age old linear mathematical base in a dynamic fully non-linear system but survives by using the most imprecise statistical prop to stand up. Evidence base of modern medicine, where all interventions have to go through the “rigors” of the randomized controlled studies before being let loose on the public, is so porous that most of what doctors do today is based on a foundation of wet sand. Almost all randomized controlled studies (RCTs), which have spent millions of tax payers’ dollars in many advanced countries, have been shown to be fatally flawed in their very structure.
Answering the two vital questions in the patient’s mind, therefore, depends on the doctors’ confidence in his clinical judgment and past experience just as the astrologer predicts the future of his client. Both doctors and astrologers have been predicting the unpredictable future of man! Hard sciences like physics, biology and chemistry do not score over medical science either in this field although physics, after the advent of quantum mechanics, has made a quantum leap in its understanding of the world. Physics now accepts consciousness as a scientific reality while medicine still lives in its hoary past glory of reductionism. In fact, medicine that deals with human beings should have taken consciousness into its fold much before physics did as the latter only deals with inanimate matter. That was not to be as a huge money spinner industry had developed around this statistical science of medicine for interventional quick-fixes both in pills and surgical operations. Now for medical science to take another route of correct science of non-linearity and chaos will be very difficult.
“That may be fine when we’re talking widgets, but when it means more heart surgeries, less time with patients, more collusion with drug companies, and higher prices for less care—well, even Adam Smith would feel a little ill. But believe me, he’d think twice before summoning the ambulance,” writes Maggie Mahar in her excellent book Money Driven Medicine. Medicalisation of life means that more and more of our day today problems in life are added to the list of medical problems needing intervention. There would be no one who could call himself healthy and well after the routine screening of the apparently healthy. Screening is being sold as the panacea for all human ills. The fact, however, is that no illness could benefit from our detecting it in the pre-symptomatic stage to intervene before symptoms develop. Change it must for the good of mankind.
For the sake of this discussion let me label the future new medical science as born again medicine. Every disease gets born in the mind (consciousness) of the individual to grow in the body aided and assisted by the environment in which one lives but is influenced by the genetic constitution. We need a new holistic approach to health and ill health. Health is not then just the absence of physical disease. None of the negative definitions of health take into consideration this new science of holism except the one that we could propose as that state of being where the individual has the enthusiasm to “work and love”. The word love here does not connote lust but the capacity to love humanity at large which is the basic need of this world. Hating others is a kind of disease, in fact.
What would be the science of the born again medicine, other wise called meta-medicine, as it follows after the modern medical science of reductionism? The new science will take into account the total organism in its surrounding into consideration before intervening. David Eddy has come up with an elegant computer model of this new mathematical model of human physiology of holism in his soft ware www.archimedesmodel.com which incorporates more than ten thousand differential equations, the hall mark of non-linear mathematics. In the ancient science of Ayurveda human beings were classified into separate genetico-constitutional groups with major three groups-vaata, pitta ands kapha- and many sub-groups. Patwardhan and his colleagues have come up with studies in these groups to show that they belong to distinct genetic groups using HLA markers. Combined together this would be the ideal set up to study human beings for health and ill health.
When it comes to interventions, except in cases of emergency care for all medical and surgical emergencies and corrections of congenital defects which need modern medical quick-fixes for sure, for the rest, which forms about 90% of the sick population on a given day, one could use the best practices in many other complementary systems in existence for “times out of mind” in this world. The fact that mankind did not become extinct for thousands of years existence without the help of the faulty modern medical science that came into being in the past half a century should make us sit up and take note of the wheat leaving the chaff behind in all those systems of yore in existence for managing the non-emergency situations and chronic degenerative and malignant diseases. The complementary systems need to be rigorously scientifically authenticated before being amalgamated in the born again medical system. The latter effort is going in some centres and a glimpse of that is given hereunder. Prof. Rustum Roy, a great scientist of repute at the Penn State University, has been working in this area for the past several decades and has achieved commendable success in making the world take note through his organisation, the friends of health.
We have been working in this area of authenticating the effect of breathing techniques in the great science of yoga for nearly three decades now. The use of breathing rhythms was known to Indian saints of yore who used Yogic breathing, praanaayaama, for keeping themselves healthy and fit. They even used it to get energy! Our group has been working at it to see if those methods had any scientific basis. In a sophisticated computerized model to test the Heart Rate Variability with praanaayaama, we have come up with exciting data. In addition, we have also used this to manage patients with coronary artery disease as an adjunct to conventional treatment with very good results.
We are now working on a new theory-sono-luminescence-a scientific method to create energy by coalescing and bursting bubbles in liquids to release energy. Using yogic breathing, added to chanting of a mantra, OM, we are trying to see if human vocal cords could convert sound of the mantra into ultra sound to energize the bubbles in the alveoli, (where bubbles remain for a long time without bursting, thanks to a special chemical, surfactant, that gets secreted in the alveolar walls from the 7th month of gestation in the baby), to release energy and convert ADP to ATP. It is premature to discuss the results but the prospects look good. This may also explain how ancient Indian rishis (re-see in contrast to re-search) used to meditate for months together without food.
Many of the methods of managing the sick used in various systems like Siddha, Unani, Arabic and Tibetan medicines, herbal medicines used by aboriginal races, acupuncture, Chinese medicines, chi-gong, praanic healing, energy medicine, nano-particles used in the ancient ayurvedic bhasmas, or in the most recent nano-solutions of silver etc, as also the most potent immune boosters used in the ancient systems need to be urgently authenticated. All these need money and the usual funding agencies are allergic to fund these activities. When the drug industry wakes up to realize the potentials of these complementary systems money will start pouring into this areas as well. As of now, even without proper scientific authentication, the budget of complementary medicines runs into billions of dollars and a few companies have tasted got involved with this area. To keep the science of holism unadulterated by business interests’, money with strings attached should not be accepted for future research. Pharma companies are the most powerful people to fund this area but then the integrity of the researchers must be strictly monitored lest the new system also falls into the same trap of modern medical research.
In conclusion, in all our studies in modern medical sciences today “passion makes some of the best observations but, draws, many times, most wretched conclusions” as noted by John von Neumann years ago. Our research has made some wonderful observations but we have drawn wrong conclusions from those studies. Let us change the science of medicine from the reductionist science of linearity that we discussed above to that of the future science of chaos and holism as was elegantly shown by Professor David Eddy, a former professor of cardiovascular surgery at Stanford converted to a mathematician, to get at the right holistic science for medicine in his ground breaking research work. While patients could survive without doctors, doctors will not be able to survive without patients. Let us change before all patients leave us and go elsewhere for help. Long live medicine for the good of humankind.
(Author is former Vice Chancellor of Manipal University)
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