The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Jagan’s warning
No end to Congress’ troubles in Andhra

Mr Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has become a big problem for the Congress — whether he is in or out of it. His statement in New Delhi that the Kiran Kumar Reddy Government in Andhra Pradesh is “at his mercy” and that he is doing “a favour” to the Congress by asking his MLAs not to quit the party and oust the government is a warning signal to the party. Congress spokesman Manish Tiwari may have rebuffed Jagan’s tantrums, but the presence of 24 MLAs and two MPs of the Congress at Jantar Mantar where Jagan had observed a day’s fast ostensibly to protest against the “injustice” meted out to the state’s farmers by the Krishna Waters Dispute Tribunal proves that he has the numbers to topple the government. In the 294-member State Assembly, the Congress has 156 members (eight more than the half-way mark), the Telugu Desam Party 91, the Praja Rajyam Party 18, the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen seven, the BJP two, the CPI four, the CPM one and Independents three. Even if the Praja Rajyam Party and the Majlis bail out the government if Jagan asks his supporters to withdraw support, it will be a lameduck government.

Of course, there is no immediate threat to the government as Jagan says that he will not disturb it until the 2014 Assembly elections which he and his supporters will contest on his party ticket. (He has applied to the Election Commission for getting his party registered). However, the Congress leaders — in New Delhi and Hyderabad — are worried over the manner in which he is taunting them on their own turf by demonstrating that he is now a credible political opponent.

The crowds in Jagan’s rallies prove his support base in the coastal and Rayalseema region but will these be translated into votes is the question. Even as the Congress is grappling with the Jagan factor, the Telangana problem continues to haunt it and is affecting governance. Predictably, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the BJP have rejected the Srikrishna Committee report. Nothing short of separate statehood for Telangana with Hyderabad as the new state capital is acceptable to them. If violence returns to the state, the Centre may be forced to clamp President’s rule as an interim measure, but that won’t help resolve the Telangana problem which may eventually change the political configurations in the state. Either way, the Congress will have to walk a tightrope.

‘New’ Chandigarh
UT Admn must safeguard city’s interests

After Zirakpur, Mohali and Panchkula, the Union Territory (UT) of Chandigarh is soon expected to have its fourth satellite township in Mullanpur. Located barely 2 km from PGI on the UT’s northwest, the Punjab government has planned the Mullanpur Local Planning Area, which it has deceptively decided to christen as ‘New Chandigarh’. Punjab’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary’s comparison of New Chandigarh with Navi Mumbai is inane to say the least considering that while Navi Mumbai is an extension of the same city in the same state, ‘New Chandigarh’ is not planned as an extension of Chandigarh and will be located in a different state altogether. If anything, Punjab is shrewdly seeking to encash on the brand name of Chandigarh.

The issue of the name apart, the development of this Mullanpur township is of major concern to Chandigarh, which is already burdened by three satellite cities. In the south is Mohali, which is set to expand to as many as 126 sectors extending as far as Kharar and Banur; on the east is Zirakpur, which is expanding further eastwards to Dera Bassi; and on the north east is Panchkula, which again is fast expanding towards Pinjore and Nadda Sahib. Mullanpur township will notably comprise a 1,200 acre Super Mega Mixed Use Integrated Industrial Park being built by DLF, a 170 acre mega housing project by Omaxe and a 400 acre urban estate being built by the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority. While the saving grace is that Mullanpur township has been planned and designed by a Singapore-based company, for Chandigarh and its residents there is a serious long term implication of the consequent burden on its infrastructure.

Indeed Chandigarh is paying the price for being a planned and affluent city, and also for possessing institutions of excellence. The governments of the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana have continuously been violating the Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control Act of 1952 with impunity. It is the duty of the UT Administration to be pro-active in safeguarding the city’s interests.

Thought for the Day

The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore. — Dale Carnegie

ARTICLE

Darkness falls on Pakistan
India needs to play stabilising role
by B.G. Verghese

THE deepening political gloom in Pakistan is fast darkening into a dangerous and uncertain night of medieval barbarism that threatens its very coherence and the entire neighbourhood. Two seemingly separate but related events last week point in this direction. Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat confessed in Srinagar that the Hurriyat had been living a lie. In Pakistan, a bold, liberal voice for sanity was silenced with the brutal assassination of the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer.

Professor Bhat told a seminar that Moulvi Farooq (the former Mirwaiz), Abdul Ghani Lone and other leading intellectuals were killed not by the Indian Amy or the police but “by our own people”. The separatist movement needed such “martyrs” for the cause, which Pakistan has mentored, financed and armed. The present Mirwaiz, Umar Farooq, has disowned his father, who spoke in accents of peace as did Ghani Lone. Fear stalks Kashmir, where truth has been and remains a prime casualty: the ethnic cleansing of Pandits, the false charge of mass rape at Kunan Poshpora, the wanton destruction of Charar-e-Sharif by Must Gul and his thugs from Pakistan, the artificial frenzy whipped up over the alleged evil design to effect a demographic change through the machinations of the Amarnath Yatra Board, the Shopian incident, the more recent stone-pelting carnival and other events, all of which have unravelled. “Martyr’s” are needed for myth-making

This is not to dismiss or condone human rights violations by the state in J&K. It is to underline the role the Big Lie plays in furthering the “Cause” by instilling fear and hatred of the “enemy” and putting it on the defensive. The separatists’ silence after Professor Bhat’s denunciatory truth-telling is eloquent. The counterpart is the BJP’s wholly negative role in whipping up counter-jingoism. The latest gimmick is a planned long march to be climaxed by the hoisting of the national flag at Lal Chowk, Srinagar, on Republic Day in remembrance of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’s “sacrifice for the unity and integrity of the country”. This is inviting trouble.

In Rawalpindi, Taseer was gunned down by a member of his own bodyguard (who had earlier been temporarily removed from the special branch duty on suspicion of being a security threat) while the rest of the security detail merely watched. Taseer’s crime: he criticised the death sentence awarded to Asiya Bibi, a Christian woman, under Pakistan’s obnoxious blasphemy law. The mullahs and religious extremists have applauded the murder. It was not easy to find a member of the clergy to lead the funeral prayers for the deceased. By volunteering to defend him, members of the Bar (who fought Musharraf’s tyranny not so long ago) and powerful sections of the media have virtually upheld the assassin. The Lahore High Court said it would annul any pardon the Governor might grant Asiya Bibi.

A Senator, Ms Sherry Rehman, who has moved a Bill for the repeal of the blasphemy law, has been threatened. PPP ministers have spoken in favour of the blasphemy law (which makes a mockery of the due process and justice). Mr Nawaz Sharif has said Taseer should have acted more cautiously as both fundamentalists and liberals must speak with balance and moderation as “people here want the blasphemy law”.

The clerics have raised their voice in Pakistan and democrats are in retreat. The Talibanisation of Pakistan has proceeded apace. Radical Islam has displaced the humanistic sufi, syncretic Islam of the subcontinent, as in J&K too. Rival fanaticisms feed on one another and threaten peace and social harmony. This was not the Pakistan Jinnah had envisaged. But he unleashed a tiger by championing a false two-nation theory buttressed by “direct action” that inevitably went out of control.

The rot started with the language riots in East Pakistan and the anti-Ahmediya movement in the early 1950s. Religious zealotry could not bind the nation. Nor was the new state able to define what or who it meant by Islam. Failing to develop an identity of its own, Kashmir (the theory of a moth-eaten Pakistan) and an ever more radical Islam became a political opiate, pushed long by Zia (with American/Western encouragement to battle Soviet communism) until Talibanisation was put on auto-pilot, bringing into being an enigmatic military-mullah combine. Afghanistan fuels this partnership.

American support for the military-mullah combine has been at the cost of Pakistan’s ever-fragile democracy and civil society which has struggled to take root in a feudal, militarised society in which both the military and the mullahs seek legitimacy in battling a permanent “enemy” in (Hindu) India which “occupies” Kashmir. This denial of its own identity in favour of the “Ideology of Pakistan” has been the country’s undoing.

However, deep down, the ordinary people of Pakistan remain liberal and yearn for democratic self-determination for themselves. The Pakistan Human Rights Commission, the newly formed Citizens for Democracy and similar groups symbolise this yearning. These are elements with which India (and the world) must engage even as we dialogue with the powers-that-be. Yet we have erected barriers against intellectual and cultural exchange on exaggerated security considerations. Unilateralism here would pay.

There has to be a serious national debate on how we engage with Pakistan and not only with its government. Let us try and get liberal Pakistan (and Bangladesh) scholars to join their Indian counterparts in writing a common, objective, popular social and cultural history of the subcontinent. Poisoned and parochial histories divide and build walls of hate and suspicion. These may be small beginnings, apart from finding common ground for partnership in matters of global trade, climate change and so forth. A liberal, united, stable, prosperous Pakistan is in India’s highest interest. A sensible J&K solution (internal and external) is also urgently necessary to remove illusions and irritants. This is where Professor Bhat has blazed a new path.

MIDDLE

He taught students, not subjects
by Virendra Kumar

On October 29, 2010, I received a flash message calling on me to join as a panelist for an interactive session with a galaxy of 46 visiting Judges from across Canada on November 1 at 10 a.m. sharp. The two other panelists were Mr Justice R.V. Raveendran, Judge, Supreme Court of India, and M. Justice P.V. Reddi, Chairman, Law Commission of India. The venue would be the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi.

The invitation was indeed a pleasant surprise. May be it was due to my proximity with the University of Toronto (U of T) where I had the privilege of studying for my doctoral degree way back in 1969-73.

Since the exposure at U of T proved providential for me, I shared spontaneously some of the facets of my experience with the visiting Judges. I recalled what I learnt from one of the most distinguished teachers of the Law Faculty, Prof Albert S. Abel. He was a student of Professor Roscoe Pound, Dean, Harvard Law School, and a very dear associate of Prof Bora Laskin who rose to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Once on a summer afternoon I was with Professor Abel in his office for the periodical review of my doctoral work. While we were amidst intense discussion, a visitor escorted by the Dean of the Faculty walked into his room. The visitor instantly asked: ‘What subjects do you teach Professor Abel?’ Promptly he responded: “I do not teach subjects; I teach students.”

Professor Abel occasionally delivered lectures on constitutional law that were meant for faculty and students across disciplines. During delivery, his eyes were invariably closed. Once on such an occasion, a distinguished judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, in his presidential address remarked, whether the ‘closed-eyes’ delivery prompted his students to play truant. Instantly came the response from one of the students in the audience: “Intense involvement in the progress of the lecture left no room for making an escape even if one wished to go on an errand!’

After successfully completing my doctoral thesis, I returned to India in January 1973. However, the U of T advised me to receive the degree in person at the university convocation to be held in June that year. The prompting factor was that the degree of Doctor of Juridical Science was being awarded by the university after a gap of more than two decades. My faculty also told me that I was the fourth person and the first Asian to receive this degree at U of T.

Before returning to India, I went to my revered teacher to pay my gratitude to him. In response, he gave me a copy of his book, Laskin’s Canadian Constitutional Law (4th ed., 1973) by inscribing: “For Virendra — one of those students whose dedication to scholarship makes teaching rewarding for Albert Abel.”

The late Prof Albert Abel was truly an embodiment of a great teacher and all the Canadian Judges present echoed the same sentiments, albeit by striking varying emotional chords.

OPED-HEALTH

The price of Insanitation
Why create diseases through our dirty habits, and waste our resources on cure and prevention?
Shakuntala Lavasa

THE study of disease is really the study of man and his environment. The key to man’s health lies largely in his environment. In fact much of man’s ill health can be traced to adverse environmental factors such as water, soil and air pollution, poor housing conditions, adulterated, unhygienic and imbalanced food, presence of animal reservoirs, and insect vectors of diseases. Most of these factors are man made from micro to macro level. It is the undesired daily human activities which create environmental hazards to human health. The attainment of healthy environment is made more and more complex by man himself.

The dictionary meaning of sanitation is “the science of safeguarding health”. In the past sanitation was centered on the sanitary disposal of excreta. Sanitation to many people still means only the construction of latrines. In fact, the term sanitation covers the whole field of controlling the environment with a view to preventing disease and promoting health. A number of factors in environment like food, water, housing, clothing, disposal of excreta, waste disposal are controllable. These controllable factors are those included in the “standard of living”. It is control of these factors which has been responsible for the improvement of the standard of living and disease prevention to a large extent in developed countries.

The purpose of environmental health is to create and maintain ecological conditions that will promote health and thus prevent disease. One of the most essential tasks is safe water and the safe disposal of excreta. More than one billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water and more than two billion lack adequate system for disposal of excreta. The most important diseases because of these factors — diarrhoea, the major killer, and intestinal worm infestations, the major cause for anaemia — account for 10 per cent of the total disease burden of developing countries. From various statistics it is an undisputed fact that we need to control our environment on a war footing.

Instead of telling the do’s and don’ts, let me just inform my countryman about the consequences of insanitation. We know that majority of killer diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis, malaria, dengue, tuberculosis, measles, swine flu, diphtheria, polio, tetanus etc are infectious diseases and all of them are preventable by our own efforts even at individual levels.

The prevention of all of them starts as soon as the baby is conceived. Taking two doses of tetanus vaccine during pregnancy and a safe institutional delivery will prevent neonatal tetanus which certainly is a very cheap prevention of this killer disease which arises due to unhygienically handled umbilical cord at birth. Later in childhood and also in adult life regular immunization will prevent it throughout life.

Starting mother’s milk soon after birth and exclusive breast feeding for at least six months of life will prevent diarrhoea and dysentery. Our unsanitary habits like introducing bottle feeding is killing so many due to diarrhoea! Even those who survive are surviving at a high cost to individuals and community. Doctors often prescribe antibiotics and many other medicines which are in fact detrimental. Injudicious use of antibiotics is a major concern in drug resistance besides the economic factors and health hazards.

Another form of insanitation results from giving apple, anar and palak juice to the baby with the hope of preventing anaemia. One can imagine the unhygienic method of making these unnecessary juices which no baby needs. Anemia prevention can be best done by hygienically cooked home food. The anaemia producing hookworms live in the soil which is littered with human and animal excreta. Therefore, not walking barefoot, not washing hands with “mitti” , thorough hand washing frequently, eating salads after proper washing etc are anaemia prevention tricks. Often water is inadequate in schools , offices and other public places. We must exercise our intelligence to somehow have access to clean and ample water which is a key to prevention of many diseases.

The disease producing microbes are all over in our atmosphere due to our dirty habits. The indiscriminate disposal of human and animal excreta, the waste from homes , the leftover organic and inorganic matter in front of shops, homes, sabzi mandis, the fecal contamination of leaking pipes ,the un- flushed excreta of blocked toilets, the ditches with stagnant water etc are storehouses for flies, mosquitoes and germs and parasites which the naked eyes cannot see but they are in the air everywhere clinging to us looking for opportunity to invade us for their survival. The result is all the above diseases. Diarrhoeas, hepatitis , typhoid , dysentery are waterborne, malaria and dengue are also indirectly waterborne as the mosquitoes survive in stagnant water.

Typhoid is due to dirty fingers , dirty fluids and flies which survive on feces. Look at the cost of treatment of typhoid. Germs are getting resistant. The treatment may not be available one day. The vaccine is available but how many parents use it regularly?

Even food handlers like people working in hotels and restaurants are not being vaccinated as a rule so that they do not pass on the hidden germs of their carrier state. Typhoid has a carrier stage. It means people may not suffer but they can pass on infection through food. Indiscriminate spitting and similar dirty habits spread the germs of tuberculosis. BCG vaccine at birth prevents tuberculosis to some extent.

Hepatitis of many varieties is waterborne and comes in epidemics killing so many. Only for some forms of hepatitis we have the preventive vaccines which also has to start right from birth.

Easy solutions
One of the most essential tasks is safe water and the safe disposal of excreta.
The most important diseases because of these factors — diarrhoea, the major killer, and intestinal worm infestations, the major cause for anaemia — account for 10 per cent of the total disease burden of developing countries.
Starting mother’s milk soon after birth and exclusive breast feeding for at least six months of life will prevent diarrhoea and dysentery.
Injudicious use of antibiotics is a major concern in drug resistance.
Not walking barefoot, not washing hands with “mitti”, thorough hand washing frequently, eating salads after proper washing etc are anaemia prevention tricks.
Access to clean and ample water is a key to the prevention of many diseases.
Indiscriminate spitting and similar dirty habits spread the germs of tuberculosis.

The writer is a noted paediatrician and allergy specialist

Staggering cost

What were the total economic impacts due to inadequate sanitation in India? A study by the Water and Sanitation Program estimates that the total economic impacts of inadequate sanitation in India amount to Rs. 2.44 trillion ($53.8 billion) a year. This means a per person annual impact of at least Rs 2,180.

The methodology adopted by the study included disaggregating the economic impacts of inadequate sanitation into the following categories:

Health-related impacts: Premature deaths, costs of treating diseases; productive time lost due to people falling ill, and time lost by caregivers who look after them.

Domestic water-related impacts: Household treatment of water; use of bottled water; a portion of costs of obtaining piped water; and time costs of fetching cleaner water from a distance.

Access time impacts: Cost of additional time spent for accessing sharedtoilets or open defecation sites; absence of children (mainly girls) from school and women from their workplaces.

Tourism impacts: Potential loss of tourism revenues and economic impacts of gastrointestinal illnesses among foreign tourists.

The health-related economic impacts of inadequate sanitation, at Rs. 1.75 trillion (US$38.5 billion), accounts for the largest category of impacts. Access time (productive time lost to access sanitation facilities — shared or public toilets — or sites for defecation) and drinking water-related impacts are the other two main losses, at Rs. 487 billion (US$10.7 billion) and Rs. 191 billion (US$4.2 billion), respectively.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in India. India accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year nearly two million people in India develop TB, of which around 0.87 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that annually around 330,000 Indians die due to TB, according to WHO India.

TB is one of the leading causes of mortality in India — killing 2 persons every three minute, nearly 1,000 every day, says the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Every patient who is cured stops spreading TB, and every life saved is a child, mother, or father who will go on to live a longer, TB-free life.

Since 1993, the Government of India (GoI) has been implementing the WHO-recommended DOTS strategy via the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP). The revised strategy was pilot-tested in 1993 and launched as a national programme in 1997. By March 2006, the programme was implemented nationwide in 633 districts, covering 1114 million (100%) population. Phase II of the RNTCP started from October 2005, which is a step towards achieving the TB-related targets of the Millennium Development Goals. Since 2006, RNTCP is implementing the WHO recommended “Stop TB Strategy”, which in addition to DOTS, addresses all the newer issues and challenges in TB control.

Equally serious is the anaemia threat. Estimates suggest that over one third of the world’s population suffers from anaemia, mostly iron deficiency anaemia. India continues to be one of the countries with very high prevalence. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) reveals the prevalence of anaemia to be 70-80% in children, 70% in pregnant women and 24% in adult men.

Prevalence of anaemia in India is high because of low dietary intake, poor availability of iron and chronic blood loss due to hookworm infestation and malaria. While anaemia has well known adverse effects on physical and cognitive performance of individuals, the true toll of iron deficiency anaemia lies in the ill-effects on maternal and foetal health. Poor nutritional status and anaemia in pregnancy have consequences that extend over generations.