ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Friends, If Monsoon had made irregular appearance before June- in April May last year, this time round, it’s been pretty hot, with no sign of rain God in the immediate future. Mercury level have been above 40 degrees in most parts of India. In some parts it had even crossed 50 degrees with death due to Sun strokes being reported from Andhra- Telangana parts of India. Drought in parts of Karnataka, Telangana, Maharashtra has been serious. Struggle for water has forced IPL matches out of Maharashtra. Thus the picture is not pretty from the agrarian front. If monsoon does not make early appearance, water crisis, may be for real. National Meteorological Office has predicted good monsoon, may be slightly more than normal, as of now, its bright sky with no dark clouds hovering around. Yes, rain is most welcome to the parched land across most southern states, so also to help mercury go down. Early on in the month of April, Panama Papers story had broken out. In what is described as the...

Jammu & Kashmir: When it comes to India, there is something basica lly wrong with a section of Kashmiris. Or else what can really be said of celebrating India’s loss to West Indies in the T-20 World Cup Semi final at Wankhade Stadium in Mumbai. While winning and losing of a cricket match depends upon the performance as well as winning of the toss, the reaction to celebrate the loss is diabolic to say the least. If some people and a section of the media terms it as anti-national they cannot be faulted. Besides, local police, beating a student, when he was only carrying the Indian tricolor in the protest march, is really reprehensible and totally unacceptable. However what is truly disappointing is the mindset of Kashmiri Muslims, at least, a section of it, who simply do not like the idea of being with India, probably only because of Hindu majority in India. This cock-eyed approach of these Kashmiris have neither won friends non-influenced people. Coming to politics, like Congres...

"IJTIHAD- IRSHAD MANJI & ISIS", (I&C April- 2016) This is good but looks dangerous. -Prof. B.M Hegde, Former V.C Manipal University, Via- email "IJTIHAD- IRSHAD MANJI & ISIS", (I&C April- 2016)  OK but could have been more forthright.                                                                                     B.R. Shetty, Bangalore "Aamdanni Athanni Kharcha Rupaiyya Nathija Tan-Tan Gopal", (I&C April- 2016) Correctly said. We are concerned for small borrowers who are always honest and let big fish go freely.                                                                   ...

NPAs An Interminable Saga of National Loot On 3rd of March, most newspapers across the country screamed “Mallya escapes”, leaving the entire Indian banking industry in lurch with Rs 9000 crores in outstanding bank loans and interest dues generally called as NPA. Suddenly NPA became central to all socio-political discourse across the country. To a banker, NPA or Non Performing Assets represents a loan which has stopped earning interest to the lending bank.  We all know, in life there is nothing free. So if you have borrowed, you have to pay the borrowed money plus the agreed amount of interest. Thus, the interest becomes a cost to the borrower, while to the bank, it is a revenue or income. Why does a bank loan become an NPA? A borrower agrees to a programme of repayment of loan - principal + interest, a schedule of liquidation of borrowed money with interest. Many a time, it may not be possible to keep the schedule and it can remain outstanding for a period beyond say, 3 ...

The epidemic that wasn’t. Prof. B. M. Hegde, hegdebm@gmail.com “The fact is that in creating towns, men create the materials for an immense hotbed of disease, and this effect can only be neutralised by extraordinary artificial precautions.”             Anonymous The memory of that “great” epidemic (that wasn’t) news broke out in all headlines in both print and electronic media in the summer of 2009. It continued day in and day out spreading from the sacred American media to the lesser media channels all over the world. Indian media is probably the most obedient of all as far as the western media news goes. Everyone was worried that they might die anytime due to this deadly pandemic where a deadly virus, that imaginary H1N1, had taken hold of this world! Today it is the scare of that deadly virus ZIKA which, luckily has failed to kill anyone since 1947. There is a twist in the tale now. The threat is not for you but for your yet to be born p...

Winning is all about mind over matter Washington: According to a recent study, fights are won and lost in the brain. Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have found that a deep-brain structure called the habenula contains two neural circuits that work in a complex interplay to influence whether a fight will be a win or loss. The circuits, which originate in the habenula and pass through the interpeduncular nucleus (IPN), terminate in the dorsal tegmental area. This part of the fish brain is thought to correspond to a region in mammals called the periaqueductal gray that regulates fight and flight behaviors. The proximity and possible homology of these brain areas inspired an investigation into whether the habenula is also involved in freezing, fleeing, and fighting behaviors. The results establish that two sub-regions of the dorsal habenula (dHb) antagonistically regulate the outcome of zebrafish fights, with activity in the lateral and medial parts associ...

3D technology helps save baby Beijing: Doctors in China have performed the first successful open heart surgery using a 3D-printed heart model to save a nine-month-old baby suffering from a severe heart defect, reports PTI.  The boy, who weighed 5.6 kgs before surgery, was experiencing shortness of breath after birth and was diagnosed with Congenital Heart Defect (CHD). The surgery performed in the northeast Jilin Province was the first open heart surgery performed using 3D printing technology through which a full-sized heart replica modeled the boy’s cardiac structure and helped the doctors plan the operation, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.   “With the model, we were able to know precisely where and how we should cut, and how big the incision should be. And with such a thorough plan, we spent only half the time we had expected to complete the surgery,” Zhang Xueqin, the baby’s surgeon and director of the pediatric cardiac surgery centre at the People’s H...

INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY THE HUNT Like a shrewd direct mailer, he sent succinct and polite requests for meetings, with a handwritten “personal” inscribed on the envelope, a tactic Dan suggested. This was to prevent an overzealous executive assistant from opening his letter and making the decision to either reject it or reroute it to the human resource department, from whom he could only expect a standard “thank you but no thank you” missive.   He was pleasantly surprised with the results. His Lunch Bunch was right- he was undershooting, and he did have a credible reputation in the industry. His requests for interviews were often granted. Dan had cautioned him that he needed to schedule fewer meetings in a day. This would allow the executives the flexibility of extending the interview to call in colleagues to meet him and, perhaps, take him out for lunch or supper to test his social graces and etiquette. The Lunch Bunch held mock interviews with him, sensitizing him to ma...

Outsourcing Sterilisation to NGOs- SC pulls up states New Delhi: The Supreme Court took strong exception to the outsourcing of sterilisation camps by state governments to NGOs, as questions were raised over the family planning targets set by the Centre which have to be fulfilled by the states. The matter being heard by the apex court related to such a camp in Bihar's Araria district where 53 women were operated within about two hours in January 2012. A bench headed by Justice M B Lokur also asked Chhattisgarh government to file an affidavit specifying details as to how much compensation was paid to the victims of such a camp held in November 2014 in Bilaspur district in which over dozen women had lost their lives. "It is a question of human life. We can't live with problems throughout our lives. It needs to be cured, solutions need to be found. This compensation thing is bringing all the problems. For this compensation, there is race against time and a number of...