ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Friends We are into 2016. Old order changeth yielding place to the new. Hence at the outset, it’s WISHING ALL OUR READERs, PATRONs & WELL WISHERs A GREAT NEW YEAR. The year 2015, that went by, like the previous year had its ups and downs, politically, economically and even socially. In U.S, forthcoming, presidential election has thrown up myriad personalities in both Democratic and Republican camp, with Donald Trump making the most controversial demand of banning entry of Muslims into the United States. ISIS attack on Paris, has been the high water mark of emerging socio/political upheaval that this year could witness. Syria and Iraq continues to be a problem area with major political players, like U.S and Russia being joined by France, Britain and Germany in fighting the barbarous terror outfit. Economically the world is rather sedate with China sliding down in its GDP, with only India showing some steady growth. Crude appears to be on a bad spin with prices on a continue...

Jammu & Kashmir: 30 girl students from the state were on a nationwide tour under the Indian Army’s ‘Operation Sadbhaavana’ programme. While in Delhi, they visited Lok Sabha and other prominent places of historical interest. One of the important stop was Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Both the President Pranab Mukarjee and the group of girls were enthusiastic about the visit and naturally as a souvenir, they had a group photograph with the president to take home a copy of it. It was naturally uploaded on the Facebook. Finding it on social media, those who were apparently unhappy with the girls’ posing for photograph with president, started threatening and abusing the girls. So it was not the BJP or the Prime Minister Modi, it was the president, the Symbol of whole of India, that these groups of people did not like. Apparently, they are against the idea of India. May be they would have celebrated if they had met the Pakistani president. Strangely there were hardly anybody who came to the def...

I refer to your I&C, volume 16, no. 189 of Dec 2015 and my observation are as follows: 1. New Delhi- Page No.5 “A PWD project in Delhi Asadpur- Prembhari flyover was completed before time and within the budget,- no extension of time sought and no introduction of inflation clause and saved Rs 100 crores. This is really wonder of wonders. It is very rare, rather never happened.” Very true. You have correctly appreciated the whole achievement. But then Sir, don’t you feel that such a rare achievement should find a place in the first cover page of I&C no 189, than publishing ‘Bihar Election 2015’? I strongly feel that the issue should have been highlighted in the first cover page itself. 2. Bihar- page 7. “To break the psychological logjam vis-à-vis the Bihar Election results, the central Govt., led by Modi shall do well to start acting on the Rs 1.25 lakh crore development funding promise Modi has made before the beginning of election” Well- political suggestion to P.M!! ...

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi Maananeeya Pradhan Mantri Narendra Modiji, Jai Shree Krishna! Hope this finds you hale and hearty and in good spirit in the midst of all your multifarious activities. This is my second open letter to your honourable self. The first was sometime in April 2012, published in Issues & Concerns in its May 2012 issue. That was the period you were in the zenith of your popularity. The Godhra carnage and the mayhem that followed had completed 10 years. Came 2014, your party BJP decided to close rank and proposed you as the party’s Prime Minister candidate for the Loksabha election due in May 2014. Rest, as the cliché goes is history. The slogan ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarcar’ gave your party and your partners in NDA, an unprecedented victory. Thus ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarcar’ became a resounding reality in India’s public life. Modiji, whether, as the Prime Minister of India, or as Chief Minister of Gujarat, your former avataar, or plainly as Nare...

The Placebo Effect Prof. B. M. Hegde, hegdebm@gmail.com Placebo is an inert substance that has no effect on your body. In medical research, placebos are used as controls against which the effects of drugs are measured. The placebo effect is becoming a big headache for drug developers as they are finding it difficult to produce new drug molecules which are statistically more effective compared to a placebo. Interestingly this placebo effect is becoming more assertive in American clinical trials in the last one or two decades according to a Canadian researcher: The change in response to placebo treatments for pain, discovered by researchers in Canada, holds true only for US clinical trials. 'We were absolutely floored when we found out,' says Jeffrey Mogil, who directs the pain-genetics lab at McGill University in Montreal and led the analysis. Simply being in a US trial and receiving sham treatment now seems to relieve pain almost as effectively as many promising new dr...

Malnutrition Can be Managed Saadia Azim It was the same old fare that Pramila Hembram, 22, a resident of Siri Village in Deoghar District, Jharkhand, used to dish out for every meal-rice, potatoes and, sometimes, dal. Despite the fact that wild greens and pumpkin grew in the vicinity of her home, they were never generally cooked because traditionally, food in the family was all about rice and potatoes. What Pramila did not know was that such sustained imbalanced intake was effectively making her family vulnerable to ill health and putting her four-year-old son, Pramod, at risk of malnutrition. According to Rajesh Jha of the Centre for World Solidarity (CWS), a local non-government organization that is involved in combating malnutrition in the region under the Fight Hunger First Initiative (FHFI), Pramila was not the only one who was cooking up a carbohydrate-rich meal in the region. He says, “Siri wasn’t an isolated village facing nutrition deficiency. The reality was that peo...

Indians are least honest! London : When it comes to honesty, people rate India among the least honest countries along with China, Japan and South Korea, says a significant study, suggesting that people’s honesty varies significantly between countries, reports IANS. In the coin flip test among 1,500 participants from 15 countries, the four least honest countries were found to be China, Japan, South Korea and India. However, Asian countries were not significantly more dishonest than others in the quiz, where Japan had the lowest level of dishonesty, said the researchers from Norfolk-based University of East Anglia (UEA). According to lead study author Dr David Hugh-Jones, the difference between Asian and other countries in the coin flip may be explained by cultural views specific to this type of test, such as attitudes to gambling, rather than differences in honesty as such. The findings also suggest honesty is less important to a country’s current economic growth than during ea...

INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY THE HUNT Pradeep Anand A few hours later, after dinner, when he had lulled Seeta to sleep and gently placed her on her Little Mermaid bed, he went to Monica, who was cleaning up the kitchen, and hugged her tightly from behind. She was taken aback by the warmth and strength of the embrace. “What is it?” she asked as she struggled out of the hold to continue loading the dishwasher. “I’ve got to tell you something,” he said as he swung her around to face him. He hugged her again tightly and whispered, “Monica, I may not have said this to you, but you are my pillar of support.” “Go away,” said Monica as she struggled to get out of his hold, assuming that this was yet another romantic ploy. “No, I am serious. Without your strong support, I will have a hard time finding a job.” “Do you want me to look for a job, Satish?” she asked. “No, that’s not what I meant. I want you to be strong at home so that I can focus on hunting. If I have to focus o...

Have we discovered Alzheimer’s dark secrets! Mumbai : In a major breakthrough, Indian scientists have managed to get a glimpse of the protein fragments known as amyloid beta, which hallmark Alzheimer’s disease, reports IANS. “Everybody wants to make the key to solve Alzheimer’s Disease, but we don’t know what the lock looks like. We now have a glimpse of something which could be the lock. May be it is still not the real thing, but as of now, this is our best bet,” said research co-director Sudipta Maiti from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) here. The possible lock looks like a bunch of amyloid beta molecules in the shape of a hairpin, but with a twist, the researchers found. Knowing the shape and form of the toxic molecule could lead to better ways of defeating it and evolving an effective therapy for Alzheimer’s disease that robs the old of their memory. “This has been suspected earlier, but what we found was an unexpected twist in the structure, now becoming a bet...

Ideal Scooty Baglakot: A teacher and a student of the mechanical engineering department at the Basaveshwara Engineering College here have devised a micro hybrid scooty that can give a mileage of 366 km per charge. It cost second year student Suraj C Raikar just Rs. 35,000 and constant effort for one year to build the vehicle under the guidance of Dr Vinay V Kuppasta, assistant professor in the department Another feather in the cap of the teacher-student duo is that the hybrid scooty has won accolades from the office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They have been promised that their project will get a look-in and support under the Make in India programme. Its low cost, more mileage and less pollution are the salient features of the scooty, Kuppasta told Deccan Herald. Top companies have released electrical scooters to the market, but their mileage and ability to carry large weight have been found wanting. But the hybrid scooty addresses these concerns. They run both on t...

Staff Dies of TB in TB Hospital Mumbai : One more staff-member from Sewri TB hospital succumbed to multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), just two days after the strike of hospital workers on October 29 which focused on paid leaves for workers diagnosed with TB. With this, the death toll of hospital workers who died owing to TB has increased to eight so far this year. The increasing deaths have led to an atmosphere of fear of contracting the deadly disease among other staff-members and workers at the hospital, which is Asia’s largest TB hospital. The deceased was a 51-year-old woman, a senior laboratory technician with the hospital since 2011 who was diagnosed with MDR-TB in August. Her treatment was started on August 20 at Asian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Dombivli where she breathed her last on Saturday. Hospital sources said that her condition worsened as she was a diabetic. Sewri TB hospital bears the highest load of TB patients with critical and high-resi...