ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Friends, This 15th Aug marked the 71st birthday of free India, when on the same day in 1947, Union Jack finally came down for the Indian tricolour to unfurl at the historic Red Fort. Yes, tiranga fluttered for all these past 70 years. This time round it was the newest President of India, RamNath Govind (Kovind) who spoke to the nation on the 14th night calling for a compassionate and an egalitarian India without any discrimination of gender or faith, with the well  being of the poor and underprivileged being of paramount    importance in the all round development of the country. Addressing the nation from the rampart of Red Fort, Prime Minister Modi invoked the image of majestic India by 2022, by asking all Indians to march together with the dream of an India of grandeur and majesty by the 75th year of India’s independence. His 2014 speech was inspirational, followed by 2015 and 2016 which were more matter of fact. By 2017 he had probably realized that the promises he...

J.Shriyan  JAMMU&KASHMIR: Jammu&Kashmir is in the news for all wrong reasons most of the time. This time it was the robbery in the J&K Bank branch in Arwani in Bijbehara, the home town of CM Mehbooba Mufti. Bank robbery can take place anywhere depending upon the security, or the lack of it, the law and order situation prevailing in the area. Everywhere the robbers plan with a modus operendi which could be unique. But in J&K robbers went for an easy way. The same way, the imam of Lal Masjid in Karachi did to escape from the mosque when it was surrounded by Pakistani police. He was in a burqua and police couldn’t and didn’t stop him. Same way these robbers used burqua to enter the bank premises. So, one thing is clear, burqua can be a security risk. Of course there may be many who may not agree, like this media member Deccan Herald titled their story in their yesterday’s edition “Masked militants loot Rs. 5 Lakh from J&K Bank”. They, the DH, and there are ma...

My very special friend, Profound apologies for the delay. I have continuously been out of Bengalooru for many reasons and will be abroad for six weeks. I only saw your mail today. Enclosed is the cheque for Permanent Membership. I will write my feed back on I&C on my return.   Personal regards., Justice (Rtd.) M.F. Saldanha, Bengalooru Sir, we are truly indebted to your very special salutation, and for the time taken to write to us. Your apparent appreciation has really bucked us up to rededicate ourselves towards a purposeful regimen. We hereby acknowlegde with thanks the receipt of the cheque for ` 10,000/- -EDITOR I am a regular subscriber/reader of ISSUES&CONCERNS which is by itself a unique periodical for its coverage and quality print without much ad. While appreciating your sincere efforts & commitment for the awareness journalism and the will to carry forward the magazine to further heights I am enclosing a cheque for `10,000/- as a well wisher and admire...

India @70 Modinomics & Muddled Priorities “Men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.” wrote Tennyson in his poem ‘The Brook’. Indeed for many Indians, it’s the same story- Independence day may come and Independence day may go, but for millions of Indians the joy of Independence Day celebration was clearly missing, the unremitting uncertainties of life goes on, as if interminably. As usual Prime Ministers have come to the historic Red Fort, unfurled the national flag, made speech, followed by army & air-force drill and displays of tabloid etc to tell the world, ‘we are militarily strong and multi cultures across India is thriving.’ And crowd goes home, happy at the visuals. This year was no different. 71st Independence Day of India came and gone into the national amnesia as just another day. Prime Minister Modi, in his 4th Independence Day speech didn’t add much lustre to buck up the national spirit, which was already damp with the news of some 60 deaths in a U.P ...

The oft forgotten Nocebo effect Prof. B. M. Hegde, hegdebm@gmail.com “Finish last in your league and they call you idiot. Finish last in medical school and they call you doctor.”  Abe Lemons The placebo (I please) effect has been at least known to some lay people but very few, if any, know the effect the most powerful nocebo effect in human health and illness. While placebo effect can have such powerful healing capacity as shown both in elegant studies in medical and surgical situations were placebo has proven better than the drug or surgery (Sc. Transl. Med 2011; 3: 70 and J. Amer coll cardiol 2005;) there has been no study done on the far more dangerous nocebo effect on the patients’ life and illness. When I wrote in the BMJ on “In the company of specialists life becomes miserable on earth,” there was a spate of rapid responses to my above rapid response. In my response I had said: “In view of the new scientific wisdom on the Placebo effect in human illnesses, are ...

3D Tissue to repair damaged heart Guwahati: Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati have fabricated a 3D cardiac tissue patch using silk protein membranes seeded with heart muscle cells. The patch can potentially be used for regenerating damaged heart tissue. “The 3D patch that we fabricated can be implanted at the site of damage to help the heart regain normal function. It can also be used for sealing holes in the heart,” says Biman Mandal from the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Guwahati, who led the research. Cardiac tissue gets permanently damaged when oxygen supply is reduced or cut off during a heart attack. The damaged portion gets scarred and does not contract and relax, which over time leads to a change in the shape of the heart and reduced pumping capacity. While currently available grafts fail to mimic the structure and the function of the native heart tissue as well as maintain high cell numbers, the patch developed by th...

THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE ANTI-ATROCITY LAW MITIGATION AND ITS MALCONTENTS Anand Teltumbde The Constitution of India, besides guaranteeing to all citizens basic civil and political rights and fundamental freedoms, has special provisions directed at the practice of caste discrimination over a range of situations, from access to public places to state employment to admission at all educational institutions. All forms of untouchability and forced labour stand abolished. There are also positive duties imposed on the state to redress imbalances due to past injustices against untouchables: reservations and 'beneficial discrimination', or simply affirmative action, come under these. Indeed, in its governance, the state is enjoined to 'promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and in particular of the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs), and to protect them from social injustice and all forms of ex...

Women Technology Park Gollapudi Srinivasa Rao The first of its kind Women Technology Park (WTP) set up by the S.R. Engineering College with the help of government agencies is proving to be a boon for the rural poor. Women are being identified and brought to the park to expose them to latest technology and entrepreneurial ideas. From construction technology, making of brass items, preparing yarn from banana fibre and much more are being taught to the women here. Project Coordinator K. Kiran Reddy said that they had trained ten women on extraction of banana fibre to make yarn also called ‘musa yarn’. “Enthused with the training, they all want to buy the machine and produce it by themselves. However, we want them to use our machines for now until they get to know about buying raw material, marketing their produce among others,” he said. The WTP is sponsored by Science for Equity, Empowerment and Development (SEED) Division under Department of Science and Technology (DST). It ...

Multi Specialty Hospital: But labourer gives birth outside! Jaipur: The Rajasthan government has ordered an inquiry after a woman gave birth to a baby outside a government-run multi-specialty hospital in Jaipur. Ashoka Bai, who works as a construction labourer, was admitted to CHC, a primary health centre in Jaipur’s Sanganer area. However, since she had developed complications due to high blood pressure, doctors there thought it was better to refer her to the nearby Jaipuria Hospital, a government hospital with multi-specialty units. Ashoka’s family members, however, claimed that she had to deliver on the road as the doctors in Jaipuria Hospital failed to attend to her on time. She was brought to the Jaipuria hospital by her family members, but the doctor on duty refused to admit her, while assessing that the delivery of the child was not likely to take place during the night. Prostrating at cop’s feet is passé Lucknow: Infamous for its insensitivity, the Uttar Pr...

Telemedicine Odisha style Odisha: A telemedicine project started by an Odisha-based social entrepreneur is slowly going national after the Central government adopted it as a model project two years ago. Started in 2009, the unique model that focuses on sustainability involves training of local youth in e-medicine services and enables them to set up e-health centres in government-run primary health-care centres (PHC), community health centres (CHC) and subdivisional hospitals. These centres have created job opportunities for over 500 youth in Odisha and reached out to over five lakh patients. For jobs and health “There are two main problems that ail us — unemployment and bad health. Through this micro-entrepreneurship programme we have attempted to tackle both,” says Kedarnath Bhagat, managing trustee of Odisha Trust of Technical Education and Training (OTTET) under the aegis of which the telemedicine model was conceptualised. At OTTET, local youth are trained for a month in an...