ISSUES AND CONCERNS

A BIG THANK YOU After completing our journey of 150th issue, we had come out with a booklet primarily intended to promote subscription for I & C. It was called “QUESTION OF ANSWERS…..An Invitation to Participate”. The booklet contained 20 subscription forms. Among others, we also had the pleasure of giving this booklet to Dr Hegde. Surely, we couldn’t have asked for more. Dr Hegde responded magnificently by sponsoring 20 of his friends, relatives and colleagues to be readers of I & C for 10 years. WE PROFUSELY THANK DR N.V.H FOR HIS EXEMPLARY GESTURE. We have pleasure in sharing some of our thoughts on the man in the following paragraphs.  In Mangalore, if you are searching for a good human being with multiple dimensions, who is an industrialist, an educationist, a philanthropist, a spiritualist, a samanwaya man and an extempore speaker, you just have to take the elevator to the 8th floor of Ram Bhavan complex at Navbharat Circle and ask for Dr Nitte Vinay Hegde. As ...

Friends We are well into summer. But somehow, it has not been very hot. But being May, monsoon may not be too far. Hope the parched land in the interiors of India, especially around Deccan plateau, shall have some earnestly awaited reprive with some good south west monsoon very soon. Political heat that descended last month on Bangalore has spread all over Karnataka, with election to state assembly slated for 5th May. What shall transpire is anybody’s guess. There is a possibility that incumbency factors can be decisive. Of course at I & C, its always wishing good for the best man out there. Month-in-Perspective, subject to space constraints, tried to look at different happenings during the month, across India. The physical attack of a 5 year old girl child in Delhi, again exposed the vulnerability of children and barbaric instincts of sexually depraved men including teenage boys. Police once again proved, how badly law breakers they are. Aam Aadmi Party for the firs...

MAHARASHTRA: Khwaja Yunus, 27 year old engineer from Parbhani in Maharashtra, was picked up in 2003 January, for his alleged role in the 2002 Ghatkoper (North Mumbai) bomb blast. While being transported to Aurangabad, allegedly he escaped and police alleged that in the encounter that ensued, he was killed. But the CID inquiry ordered by the Bombay High Court revealed that he had died in police custody. API Sachin Vaze, naiks  Rajendra Tiwari and Rajaram Nikam and Constable Sunil Desai are the four accused in the case. Recently, Advocate RV Mokashi, the Special Public prosecutor for the CID in this case, had resigned, without assigning any reasons. Reportedly Mokashi is known to be an upright lawyer of high integrity, hence legal circle was rather shocked at his abrupt exit.  The mother of Younus, Aasiya Begum was despondent at the latest development, but appeared determined to fight for the justice. “I have seen so many setbacks, this is just one more. As a mother who ...

Sanjay Dutt: Barking up the wrong tree! & Arvind Kejriwal:  Making of a political Mahatma Is there something wrong with the way private thoughts are being articulated in public space? When I & C conducted an elocution competition, for district colleges, last year, the subject was “Towards Fair Society – Where did India go wrong?” Top Prize winner of the competition from St. Agnes College had reversed the question and asked “Where did India go right?” Of course, she had enough and more to prove her point. Thus the 1st question that can similarly be asked, ‘Is there anything right the way private thoughts are being articulated in public space, primarily intended for private benefit!’ There have been many subjects of the private nature which were brought in as a subject of public debate. One such debate is the mere 3 ½ years of imprisonment confirmed by the highest court of the land, for an offence, the apex court called ‘serious’, to the bollywood actor Sa...

The  Zero bill resturant Imagine going to a restaurant, ordering from a ‘no prices’ menu, and when you are done with your meal, your bill reads zero. Sounds impossible? Not really. At Seva Cafe you never pay for your meal, because the person who had come before you had already paid for you. A concept that aims to instill a sense of generosity, the cafe, which began its journey in Ahmedabad seven years back, is run chiefly by volunteers. In today’s age when money is the chief mode of transaction, it attempts to defy the laws of economics, and continue daily transaction on peer-to-peer generosity. So at Seva, in order to continue this cycle of giving, you are expected to contribute an amount — any amount that you wish — towards the next customer’s meal. So instead of a bill, what a customer gets is a small note, saying that the meal was a gift from someone who came before him or her.  “Our model is counter intuitive to big models of transaction. The aim is to foster p...

Science is understanding nature! Prof. B. M. Hegde, hegdebm@gmail.com “Whosoever would be a man must be a non-conformist.”                                                           - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Science is all about telling stories about how this wonderful wonder, nature, works. Each story teller understands nature in his/her own way. Naturally, science will have differences of opinion and keeps changing from time to time. That which does not change does not qualify to be called science.  Naturally, we have had our share of surprises as also misunderstandings. All this is fine. The big bang theory, the relativity theory, quantum mechanics, as also many others that followed do have their share of misunderstandings in built into them as long as scientists just rely only on their five senses to study and understand ...

Govt panel finds lapses in drugs approval New Delhi: A government panel has found irregularities in approval of 38 drugs without clinical trials on Indians with nine of them cleared by drug controller without reference to any expert and said the exemptions “appear to be due to pressure from pharma companies”, reports media. The expert committee, set up by the government to look into irregularities in approving drugs, has recommended that all 38 such approvals, shall be reviewed by the newly constituted New Drug Advisory Committees. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health had in its 59th Report pointed out that 38 drugs were approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) without conducting clinical trials on Indians between 2001 and 2010. “Such approval was sporadic till 2007 (only 4 drugs given exemption in 7 years). The spurt started in 2008 when six drugs got exemption and the number has risen to 14 each in 2009 and 2010. The reasons are not clear but appears to...

351 excellence schools for SC students Bhopal: The Scheduled Castes Welfare Department is running 351 Schools for Excellence for scheduled caste students in the state to impart quality education to them. Of these, 90 are district-level and 261 division-level Schools for Excellence. At present, 18 thousand students are pursuing education in these schools. A provision of Rs. 11 crore has been made to run these institutions during current fiscal. Admission to these hostels is given to tribal students having obtained over 60 percent marks and on the basis of merit list. There are 45 hostels each for boys and girls at the district-level. There are 147 boys hostel and 114 girls hostels at the division level. Free training in computer, library and career building is being imparted to students at these hostels by subject experts. There are exemplary youngsters! Oslo — Two Norwegian teens returned 467,200 kroner (some 62,000 euros, $81,500) they found left on a train by an elderl...

Lost & found London: A UK man has been reunited with his stolen wallet after 35 years with all the contents intact  except for the small amount of money it contained.  Richard Lane suspected the wallet was stolen at a leisure centre in his hometown of St Ives, Cambridgeshire in 1978. The wallet was found by the contractors behind a wall on the top floor, near the lift shaft. The battered old wallet complete with everything apart from the money has now been found inside a brick wall cavity by builders refurbishing the leisure centre in St Ives.An appeal to find the owner was launched and Richard was alerted by his mother.   Queen Elizabeth II gets £5mn pay hike   London : Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has been given a hefty pay hike of 5 million pounds for the current financial year to carry out her official duties. The 86-year-old Queen received 31 million pounds last year, but that will be increased to 36.1 million pounds in 2013-2014 financial year....

The menace of political blackmailing Dr. M. V. Kamath Nothing is more sickening than Bihar Chief Minister’s cheap attacks on Narendra Modi in recent times that reflect a mixture of rank jealousy, consuming hatred, massive ignorance of past history and pure selfishness of which one can find no parallel in India’s long and turbulent past. Nitish Kumar wants to capture the Muslim vote in his state by book or by crook. And he thinks that this is best acquired by targeting Modi as a blatant communalist. Most unjustly Modi is charged with inciting riots following the bestial killings of 55 plus innocent women and children in a Sabarmati Express coach at halt in Godhra. Deliberately forgotten is the fact that Modi had summoned army assistance to help control riots within 24 hours of the first incident. Two facts are forgotten, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Rajiv Gandhi took his own time to summon the army. Two, no Hindu was ever killed in the gruesome and deliberately organized ...