Column Centimeter

India staging a comeback in supercomputing race

2012-01-24T05:02:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, January 23, 2012, Mail Today

ALMOST two and a half decades after entering the supercomputing race but losing ground thereafter, India is now rebooting with a vengeance. The government has discreetly embarked upon a billion-dollar initiative to create next-generation supercomputers.

But unlike the $35 tablet PC, which is unfolding under the glare of high-voltage publicity, the supercomputing programme is shrouded in secrecy. So much so, that the plan details have not yet been shared even with scientists who have developed such mega machines in the past.

The government has committed Rs 5000 crore for the plan, making it the largest ever grant for a single research programme since Independence. The money is likely to start flowing during the 12th five-year plan period.

The only jarring aspect of the project is that its reins are being handed over to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, which has only been a user - not designer and developer - of supercomputers.

India had begun its foray in supercomputing nearly 25 years ago after the US denied it a supercomputer meant for weather research. When the first Indian supercomputer, PARAM, was launched in 1991, India was only the third country in the world to possess supercomputing power after the US and Japan.

China joined the race 10 years later than India but surpassed it soon. The current initiative, conceived in the Prime Minister’s Office and nurtured by the Planning Commission, is a direct response to the Chinese challenge.

Currently, Indian supercomputers are at a teraflop stage. This means they can perform several trillion floating point operations per second. China, Japan and the US have already achieved petaflop capability. Such supercomputers are able to perform a thousand trillion floating point operations per second.

These countries have also begun work on the next level — exascale — to develop machines with the capacity of an exaflop or one million teraflops. In order to remain in the race, India would first need to develop a petaflop machine and then aim for exascale.

When contacted, Dr T. Ramasami, secretary, department of science and technology, confirmed the development, revealing that the programme had been conceived with a view “to position India strongly in supercomputing” and would be implemented in mission mode. A detailed project report was ready and loose ends, if any, would be tied up soon.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced at the Indian Science Congress at Bhubaneswar in Odisha that the IISc would spearhead the project. “All knowledge institutions would be linked, but will be coordinated by the IISc,” Ramasami elaborated.

While the decision to rejoin the race could be a good strategic move, the choice of IISc as the leader of this ambitious programme has left experts baffled. The institute has never planned, designed and developed supercomputers in the past. In fact, its supercomputer centre is mostly focused on academic research and education.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) — it has developed a series of supercomputers, including PARAM, and already prepared a roadmap for a petaflop machine — would strangely have to play second fiddle to the IISc.

Other scientific agencies such as those working in the fields of defence, atomic energy, space and aerospace labs, too, have proven expertise in supercomputer design and architecture. In the private sector, Eka — a supercomputer developed by Tata’s Computational Research Laboratories — became the world’s fourth most powerful system in 2007.

“We lost ground to late entrants such as China only because of inadequate investment and a fragmented approach to supercomputing. And when the government is ready to invest, it has decided to make a non-player the captain of the game,” a leading scientist, who has been involved in developing supercomputers, said. The government, he added, had overlooked indigenous design expertise developed over the past 25 years.

“The IISc has its own strengths, but somehow it doesn’t spring to mind as the first choice for the nodal agency,” Anand Parthasarathy, formerly a scientist in the supercomputing team of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), felt. He is currently the editor of IndiaTechOnline.com.

The idea of bringing back India into the mainstream of high performance computing, he said, could be best implemented through a consortium of agencies such as CDAC, DRDO, BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) and Tata’s CRL. All of them have proven expertise in designing and developing supercomputers.

“They should come together in an ‘ego-less’ public-private alliance to pool their strengths and deliver a truly Indian platform for exascale computing,” Parthasarathy added.

After China emerged a global leader in supercomputing in 2010, sources said the pioneer of CDAC supercomputers, Dr Vijay Bhatkar, had shared a blueprint on ‘Building Exascale Supercomputing Capability’ with government agencies. The plan had mentioned an investment of Rs 500 crore to build a petascale facility in two years and Rs 5000 crore for reaching the exascale capacity by 2020. Bhatkar, however, did not comment on the latest development.

“Right now, we are in the dark about what the PM’s initiative is all about. No timelines, responsibilities and technological options have been revealed to anyone. Such a large scientific programme should be carried out in an open, transparent manner and should be peer-reviewed,” a Bangalore-based scientist said.

Malnutrition 'shame' lands on PM's doors

2012-01-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, January 12, 2012

The Prime Minister dubbing malnutrition a ‘national shame’ has focused the attention on an age old problem. But it seems Dr Manmohan Singh and his government themselves are not serious about tackling the problem in right earnest.

In October 2008, Singh had set up the Prime Minister’s National Council on Nutrition Challenges to guide him on addressing malnutrition. Far from treating malnutrition as a challenge, the Prime Minister and his office seem to have reduced it to a subject of least priority.

Surprisingly the high profile Council has met only once in the past three years. The first and the only meeting was held in November 2010, where some decisions were taken. All those decisions remain on paper, with little or no progress made on them. The council has not met in the past one and a half year to review its own decisions. In November 2010, Singh gave three months to agencies concerned to get cracking on all the four points.

One of the most important decisions was to strengthen and restructure the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). Only on Wednesday, minister for women and child welfare Krishna Tirath announced that ICDS would be restructured.

Official sources said the Ministry of Women and Child Development has taken more than a year to prepare a plan to restructure ICDS when recommendations of a number of committees are already available on this subject.

Similarly, little progress has been made on other three decisions of the PM’s council - multi-sectoral programme to address maternal and child malnutrition in selected 200 high-burden districts, a nationwide information campaign and bringing in ‘strong nutrition;’ focus in programmes of ministries dealing with health, drinking water, sanitation, education, agriculture and food.

Slow progress apart, PM’s association with launch of a nutrition report prepared by a foundation with dubious record on nutrition issues may also attract criticism. Ironically, the Hyderabad-based Naandi Foundation, which has prepared the hunger and malnutrition report, believes that biscuits are a good way to provide nutrition to malnourished children in the country.

The Foundation has partnered with leading biscuit maker Britannia to promote its Tiger biscuits and other processed foods as part of mid-day meal schemes in the past. “Britannia (has) played a significant role in the nation’s food basket with their biscuits penetrating 71 percent of the urban market and 45 percent of the rural markets”, boasts a report posted on the Foundation’s website.

Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), another partner of Naandi, is heavily funded by industry and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Britannia CEO Vinita Bali is a Board member of GAIN.

Biscuit makers like Britannia have been making a concerted bid to get into Mid Day Meal scheme and other nutrition-related programmes of the government for the past several years. They claim that biscuits and cookies fortified with iron and other nutrients are the only option to tackle malnutrition and hunger. Brittannia claims that one pack of its Tiger Banana delivers as much iron as one kilo of bananas, while ITC claims that five pieces of its Sunfeast Glucose are equal to one roti.

Interestingly, trustees of Naandi Foundation include Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Anand Mahindra and Anji Reddy.

Nuke czar to now promote solar energy

2012-01-09T02:59:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, January 6, 2012

In a bizarre move that smacks of unfair public policy making, the Prime Minister has appointed longstanding votary of nuclear energy Dr Anil Kakodkar as head of the government’s most ambitious, multi- billion Rupee national solar mission.

Dr Kakodkar, former head of India’s nuclear programme and currently a member of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), has been named Chairman of the newly set up Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). The appointment figured in the speech of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Indian Science Congress in Bhubaneswar.

The new government company has been positioned as the executing arm of one of the largest renewable programmes in the world - Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. It will have authorised and initial paid up capital totaling Rs 2600 crore, while implementation of the mission would involve several thousand crores of Rupees over the next few years.

Renewable sources of energy are considered the main competitors to nuclear energy, and Dr Kakodkar has always justified development of nuclear energy on the grounds that renewables have only a marginal role to play in India’s energy mix. In this sense, his appointment to head the solar mission is a clear case of ‘conflict of interest’. Even after his retirement he continues to be a member of the highest policy making body of nuclear energy – the AEC.

Despite huge investments during the past half a century, nuclear power contributes just a fraction of India’s energy needs. The total installed capacity of nuclear power in the country is 4780 MW, while the total installed capacity of renewable sources of energy is 20162 MW, according to data collected by the Central Electricity Authority.

Ignoring this contribution of renewable sources of energy, Dr Kakodkar has constantly projected nuclear energy as ‘inevitable and indispensable option’ that addresses both sustainability as well as climate change issues. His appointment as head of the solar mission is bound to upset anti-nuclear activists in the country who want the government to actively promote alternatives such as solar and wind while giving up investments in nuclear energy.

The new company, registered under Section 25 of Companies Act, 1956, as a not-for-profit company, will work under the administrative control of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). The ministry is now looking for a Managing Director-cum-CEO and other directors for the company.

Interestingly, one of the key qualifications for the post of MD is doctorate in a ‘renewable energy related subject’ and some experience in renewable sources of energy. However, MNRE officials feel that since the top man of the new corporation comes from a non-renewable energy background, it will set precedence for other top appointments.

Dr Kakodakar did not respond to emails of Mail Today.

Boy or girl? blood test will tell

2012-01-05T01:56:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, December 5, 2012

Falling sex ratio is already a bother for policy makers and sociologists In India. Now scientists have developed a new blood test that will allow very early detection of fetal gender, further endangering the girl child.

Unlike ultrasound tests currently used for finding out sex of unborn child, the new blood test would let expecting mothers know the sex of their baby as early as the first trimester.

The test measures ratio of two crucial enzymes from fetal DNA circulating in mother’s blood. The ratio of the two enzymes, DYS14 and GAPDH, is an effective indicator for the early detection of fetal gender, Korean scientists who have developed the test said. The research results have been published in the latest issue of the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

This is a non-invasive test and would require just a drop of blood from pregnant women. Till the onset of ultrasound, the procedure of amniocentesis was used for sex determination. But this is an invasive procedure and carries a risk of miscarriage. Moreover, it can’t be performed until eleven weeks of pregnancy.

Ultrasound gives reliable determination of fetal gender using but it can’t be performed in the first trimester, because the development of external genitalia is not complete till then. The use of ultrasound for sex determination has been outlawed in India, following its misuse for selective abortion of female fetus. Selective sex determination has lad led skewed sex ratio in many parts of the country.

Researchers from the University School of Medicine in Seoul discovered that various ratios of two enzymes, which can be extracted from a pregnant mother's blood, indicate if the baby will be a boy or a girl. Such a test would be the first of its kind, the researchers claimed.

“This can reduce the need for invasive procedures in pregnant women carrying an X-linked chromosomal abnormality and clarify inconclusive readings by ultrasound,” said Hyun Mee Ryu, one of the researchers.

The study involved analysing blood samples for 203 women during their first trimester of pregnancy. The presence of circulating fetal DNA and the quantity of the two enzymes were confirmed through a series of tests. The results were confirmed when women gave birth to their babies.

"Although more work must be done before such a test is widely available, this study does show it is possible to predict the sex of a child as early as the first few weeks after conception," said Gerald Weissmann, editor of the journal.

While the test is a major scientific advance, it could be misused in India where illegal sex determination tests using ultrasound are a major business. Child sex ratio in India in 2011 Census is 914 females to 1000 males - the lowest since Independence.

Pre-natal diagnostic tests were originally introduced for detecting genetic abnormalities in unborn child, but are being misused detection of sex of unborn child and subsequently for selective abortion of female fetuses. Selective abortion of female fetuses has led to skewed sex ratio in many regions in India. Son preference is prevalent in China and South Korea as well.

Go beyond the ritual of Science Congress

2012-01-04T06:31:00.001-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, January 4, 2012

The New Year seems to have taken off on a note of caution for Indian science. The annual jamboree called the Indian Science Congress has begun its week-long session in Bhubaneswar with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurating the show. Singh has echoed the same sentiments what his scientific advisory panel headed by C N R Rao did a few weeks ago – India is fast losing its edge in science to other Asian giants like China.

While it is true that our investment in science and technology has gone up in the past few years, but this is too little compared to China which is making huge investments in research and development in every important sector. Public investment in R&D in India has been growing at a healthy 20 to 25 percent per year during the eleventh plan period. Yet this comes to less than a percent of the GDP. The goal at the beginning of the Plan was to take it to at least two percent of the GDP. Ironically, this remains the goal for the 12th plan as well.

What is heartening is that even marginal increases in public investment have yielded fairly good results. The higher education infrastructure for science and technology is expanding a great deal. Universities are getting higher funding for research and the number of young people taking up research is rising slowly. The University of Rajasthan figures in the top 50 Indian scientific institutions in terms of citations per paper under international collaboration, as a result of a special programme to boost research in universities. Nearly one million students are getting scholarship so that they continue to pursue science. The number of papers published by scientists working in India has increased by over 12 percent annually compared to global average of 4 percent growth.

Today India produces nearly 9000 Ph Ds in science and engineering, compared to 3000 five years ago. At the same time, employability of these Ph Ds remains an area of concern, as reflected in a recent study which showed that 60 percent of 2000 women Ph Ds in science who were surveyed were unemployed. The main reason cited was lack of job opportunities. A good number of science and engineering scholars also migrate to lucrative disciplines such as investment banking and management.

Merely increasing funding in research also would not help much. We must direct this funding in a way as to serve our basic needs such as food, energy, water security. Agriculture research has been languishing for lack of funds and direction. As Singh rightly pointed out, publicly funded R&D at present is skewed in favour of fundamental rather than applied research. Science should help us shift our mindsets from the allocation of resources to their more efficient use. Technology and process engineering could be used to take the benefits of development to those who need it most. This is really the holy grail of scientific research. We did not hear any specific programmes to do this from the Prime Minister. Hopefully some of the intentions expressed by him would get translated into concrete action in the next plan.

Manifesto of a code rebel

2011-12-26T03:17:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, December 25, 2011

We are used to reading biographies, both unauthorised and authorised, autobiographies and hagiographies of people who have made it big in different spheres of life. But it is rare to find an unauthorised autobiography.

Yes, that's what the perennial rebel and non-conformist Julian Assange has written. It so happened that Assange shared his story with the writer he had enlisted to help him while under house arrest at Ellingham Hall, UK. It was all in some 50 hours of taped interviews. He had already signed a deal with the publisher, CanonGate, in December 2010, but when he read the first draft in March this year he wanted to cancel the contract, declaring that "all memoir is prostitution".

This could not be done because Assange had already spent the advance he was paid for the book in legal fees. The result is an autobiography that is unauthorised.

Assange is easily one of the most controversial figures of our times, having shaken the world with his whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which he founded barely five years ago. It is an amazing story of how a teenage hacker from the backwaters of Australia gets metamorphosed into an Internet rebel who sees information and communication as a means of justice.

Assange spent his childhood in tropical savannah in quaint Queensland with his mother and stepfather who had spent the lives of nomads, and in the company of animals, including a donkey and a pony. He went to some 30 schools and was not an obedient student but had a technical instinct. Hacking came naturally to him when he got his first computer as a teenager.

The first turning point came in his life with the device known as a modem, through which he could connect to other computers across the world, crawl into computers of government departments, corporations, telecom utilities and so on, and connect with hackers across the seas. Hacking, to him, was "a way getting over the high walls set up to protect power". It was overwhelming and liberating.

After a conviction for hacking and a mathematics course in the University of Melbourne, Assange flew out of the Australian city and launched himself into the wider world in 1998. He wanted to put all his hacking, cyberphunk and cryptology knowledge to create a platform for whistleblowers of the world, a kind of "intelligence agency of the people" to expose the veil of secrecy that governments and corporations used to perpetuate their authority.

The dream finally took the shape of WikiLeaks in 2006. One of the first breakthroughs was a leaked military video showing a US helicopter gunship killing innocent people in Iraq (the clip was called Collateral Murder), which pitted Assanage straight against the Pentagon.

The most revealing is the narrative relating to 90,000 Afghan War logs and 40,000 Iraq documents that Assange leaked to a media syndicate, which included the New York Times and The Guardian . It was while dealing with the Big Daddies of the western media that Assange discovered their real face.

After working with him for weeks, NYT shockingly chickened out. Its editor, Bill Keller, wanted, documents to go online first on WikiLeaks. "Here was the biggest newspaper in the world asking point-blank to go second," says Assange. Later, Keller described Assange as a "source" rather than a collaborator, ungraciously calling him "half-hacker, half-conspiracy theorist, using sex as both recreation and violation". This, Assange says, was the most heinous attack on him.

The Guardian too does not emerge in any better shade in the next big leak - the Cablegate. Despite signing a legal deal with WikilLeaks, the paper shared the cables with NYT . When Assange was under attack in the US after Cablegate, the paper not only did not publish anything in his defence, but wrote a dirty piece about him.

Assange has also detailed what happened in August 2010 in Stockholm, where he had gone for a political conference, but fell into a honeytrap. He had consensual sex with two women but was slapped with a rape allegation. He is still under house arrest for these charges.

The book is a commentary on the underbelly of the state and the big media, their unholy nexus, and about the lethargy seeping into mainstream journalism. It is an account of a maverick, who believes that technology should be used against those who prevent information from appearing in the public domain. It is simply explosive and unputdownable.

We must learn to celebrate science

2011-12-22T02:12:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, December 22, 2011

The year is ending on a happy note for Indian science. It is relatively rare that work of Indian scientists is featured on cover pages of international or even national news magazines.

That's why it surprised many in India when The Economist made an Indian discovery its cover story this week. It is all the more surprising because the story on conservation is focused on a lowly species like frog rather than often celebrated species like tiger and elephant. The discovery came not from any national lab or a top scientist but a conservation biologist, Dr S.D. Biju, from Delhi University.

Mail Today has tracked the work of Biju - the discovery of amazing species of frogs in the Western Ghats and the Northeast - regularly and he was featured among the top personalities of the year in our anniversary edition as well.

The last time an Indian science story hit international headlines was in September 2009 when the top scientific journal, Nature, put on its cover the path breaking work on genetic history of Indians.

Researchers led by Dr Lalji Singh used genetic studies to debunk the theory of an Aryan-Dravidian divide and showed that all Indians belong to two genetically divergent lineages - Ancestral North Indian (genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians and Europeans) and Ancestral South Indian that is not close to any group outside the subcontinent. This year the same group has published a follow up paper that thrashes the Aryan invasion theory.

However, the work of the likes Biju and Lalji Singh does not make 'headline science'
in India as similar work would do in the West. We don't quite know how to celebrate our scientists and science. Perhaps that's why Prof C.N.R. Rao, one of India's best known scientists who heads the scientific advisory council to the Prime Minister, made a caustic remark about all the talk in media about bestowing Bharat Ratna on cricketer Sachin Tendulkar.

While it is alright for cricket fans to talk about conferring the land's highest honour on their icon, but Homi Bhabha - to whom India owes its progress in nuclear space, electronics, computer sectors - was never given a Bharat Ratna for his outstanding skills of institution building, Rao rued while speaking to journalists in Bangalore last Sunday.

Since Independence, only two persons have got the top honour in 'science and engineering' category - Nobel laureate Chandrasekhara Venkat Raman (1954) and missile scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (1997).

Celebration of science should not be taken in the narrow sense of giving awards and observing rituals like the national science or technology days every year. These are all important, but we must go beyond this.

Public discussion about science, scientists and their work is very important for public understanding of science and firing the imagination of young minds. The best way to attract young people to science and research would be to create heroes and icons out of scientists.

The kind of buzz we create about film stars, cricketers, businessmen and million-dollar packages to IIT-IIM grads is disproportionate. If we can do a fraction of it for scientists and science, it would go a long way for Indian science in terms of attracting talent, funds and the attention it deserves from policy makers.

Aryan invasion is a myth

2011-12-09T23:44:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, December 17, 2011

Widely believed theory of Indo-Aryan invasion, often used to explain early settlements in the Indian subcontinent is a myth, a new study by Indian geneticists says.

The origin of genetic diversity found in South Asia is much older than 3,500 years when the Indo-Aryans were supposed to have migrated to India, a new study led by scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, says. The study appeared in American Journal of Human Genetics on Friday.

The theory of Indo-Aryan migration was proposed in mid-19th century by German linguist and Sanskrit scholar Max Muller.He had suggested that 3,500 years ago, a dramatic migration of Indo-European speakers from Central Asia played a key role in shaping contemporary South Asian populations and this was responsible for introduction of the Indo-European language family and the caste system in India.

"Our study clearly shows that there was no genetic influx 3,500 years ago," said Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CCMB, who led the research team, which included scientists from the University of Tartu, Estonia, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chennai and Banaras Hindu University.

"It is high time we re-write India's prehistory based on scientific evidence," said Dr Lalji Singh, former director of CCMB. "There is no genetic evidence that Indo-Aryans invaded or migrated to India or even something such as Aryans existed". Singh, vice-chancellor of BHU, is a coauthor.

Researchers analysed some six lakh bits of genetic information in the form of SNPs drawn from DNA of over 1,300 individuals from 112 populations including 30 ethnic groups in India.

The comparison of this data with genetic data of other populations showed that South Asia harbours two major ancestry components. One is spread in populations of South and West Asia, Middle East, Near East and the Caucasus. The second component is more restricted to South Asia and accounts for more than 50 per cent of the ancestry in Indian populations.

"Both the ancestry components that dominate genetic variation in South Asia demonstrate much greater diversity than those that predominate West Eurasia. This is indicative of a more ancient demographic history and a higher long-term effective population size underlying South Asian genome variation compared to that of West Eurasia," researchers said.

"The genetic component which spread beyond India is significantly higher in India than in any other part of world. This implies that this genetic component originated in India and then spread to West Asia and Caucasus," said Gyaneshwar Chaube of University of Tartu, Estonia.

If any migration from Central Asia to South Asia took place, the study says, it should have introduced apparent signals of East Asian ancestry into India. "Because this ancestry component is absent from the region, we have to conclude that if such an event indeed took place, it occurred before the East Asian ancestry component reached central Asia," it said.

Bringing state back in public health

2011-12-08T04:06:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, December 8, 2011

After several decades we are beginning to hear something positive about our public health system. For the first time in independent India, we have a blueprint to provide universal healthcare for all citizens as elaborated in the report of the High Level Expert Group (HLEG) led by Dr K Srinath Reddy.

The last time such a plan was proposed was in 1943 when the British set up a panel to develop a robust public health system for India under the chairmanship of Sir Joseph Bhore. In this sense, the work of Dr Reddy's panel is truly remarkable and historical.

All these years, there has been systematic downgrading of the state's role in the health sector and conscious promotion of private sector involvement. This has resulted in a skewed health system where citizens have to buy healthcare out of their pockets, while public spending on health is going down.

Healthcare costs are so steep that they alone send millions of people below poverty line every year. HLEG wants to reverse this. It wants public spending to go up and 'out of pocket' spending to go down. The vision it has set is indeed grand - free universal health coverage (UHC) for all citizens in a decade's time.

This would mean a package of essential primary, secondary and tertiary health care services to be guaranteed by the government.Clearly the idea is to move beyond insurance (that offers incomplete coverage and restricted services) and provide 'assurance' of total health care. Universal healthcare would thus be not just an aspirational goal, but an entitled provision.

An important aspect of the plan is its universality and inclusiveness not just to include poor and the margainalised but to include non- poor as well. This will ensure the creation of a sustainable system in whose success everybody has a stake. Otherwise UHC will end up being 'yet another scheme for the poor'. The logic is to protect both the poor and non- poor from the risk of impoverishment due to unaffordable health care expenditures.

Increased public spending on health is the necessary first step. Experience from elsewhere has shown that this results in improved health outcomes. On the other hand, mere availability of services in the private sector has not improved people's health, as Dr Nata Menabde, representative of WHO to India, pointed out at a meeting last week.

IN THE last five years, according to her, the private sector in health in India has grown six folds, while the public sector has grown 2.6 times. But private providers are not there where their services are needed the most.

Converting the UHC plan into reality would need both financial and political will. In addition, I foresee resistance from private sector healthcare and medical tourism lobbies. It is not as if the infrastructure set up by private sector would remain unutilised when UHC is implemented.

One of the options under consideration is that state and central governments would contract-in private service providers wherever and whenever needed. The task of delivering care would still be with the state. People would be free to opt out of UHC, pay out of pocket or directly purchase private insurance.

The question is: will private sector be ready to play second fiddle to the public system, after all these years of state patronage. They are still harping on 'public private partnership', in which the government pays all the money but remains a passive partner. This is a real danger.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/public-health-healthcare-uhc-mullaperiyar-dam-baby-food/1/163262.html

Geologists raise red flag over Jaitapur

2011-11-24T04:02:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, November 24, 2011

The government, which is battling protests over Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, is in for another shock with two leading geologists warning that Jaitapur in Maharashtra is not immune from large earthquakes.

“The apparent seismic quietness of Jaitapur does not mean that a severe earthquake can not occur there”, said Dr Vinod K Guar, eminent geologist at the CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation, Bangalore and his long-time scientific collaborator Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.

The scientists said that it would be wrong to exclude the possibility of a large quake in Jaitapur because available seismic data is insufficient.
Jaitapur , they said, lies in the same ‘compressional stress regime’ that has generated two large quake in the region in the past fifty years at Latur (magnitude 6.3) and Koyna (magnitude 6.4), both of which are located at approximately same latitude as Jaitapur.

“A similar sized earthquake could possibly occur directly beneath the power plant. The probability of this earthquake occurring is low but it is nevertheless possible”, the scientists said in their paper in scientific journal Current Science, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.

Since Koyna and Latur have been relieved of local tectonic stresses, ‘no shallow fault between latitude 16 degree and 19 degree (in which lies Jaitapur) may be invulnerable to future magnitude 6 and above rupture’, the scientists said. The occurrence of 1967 quake in Koyna has presumably loaded the Jaitapur region as a result of stress transfer.Though the probability of a large quake at Jaitapur is low, it is relevant from the point of view of designing nuclear power plants.

The scientists examined all available seismic records including those from the US Geological Service and the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) to come to the conclusion.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), which plans to build the power plant at Jaitapur with reactors from France, maintains that the site falls in the seismic zone III, where earthquake risk is low. However, Gaur and Bilham have rejected currently used hazard and seismic risk maps because ‘they assume that the seismic energy release of recent years is representative of future’. Latur was considered as a region of low seismic risk till the 1993 quake.

The scientific paper has provided new ammunition to anti-nuclear forces. The paper, Greenpeace said in a statement, showed that there is no scientific consensus on the issue of seismicity in the Jaitapur region. “The government can not say that seismicity is a sorted issue”, the statement said.

Innovation is all kid stuff

2011-11-24T03:58:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, November 24, 2011

This time of the year in Delhi is usually the seminar and conference time and innovation seems to be flavour of the current season. Industry chambers, management associations and sundry government departments are all going gung ho about innovation. The new found interest of all these bodies is understandable, given the fact that the government is loosening purse strings to promote innovation. However, Delhi seminarists busy discussing various models of innovation, appear to be blissfully cut off from ground realities of innovators.

Far from the heat of Delhi seminars, Prof Anil Gupta has been experimenting with various models of innovation in the quiet environs of Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad for a ling time. He staunchly believes that innovation is need-based and is driven by ordinary people - villagers, farmers, roadside mechanics, housewives and children - who come up with meaningful innovations. Over the years, his efforts have successfully brought to market many grassroots innovations. Now he is focusing on children. Through a unique national competition called Ignite, National Innovation Foundation started by him invited original technological ideas and innovations from school students. Over 4100 entries came from all over India, of which handful have been selected. The idea of this exercise is not just to give awards and send kids back. It is, what Gupta calls, ‘inverted model of innovation' in which children ideate, engineers build prototypes and companies commercialise them.

Just look at some of the Ignite ideas, converted into prototypes that were on display at IIMA last week. Very often two-wheeler riders don’t wear helmet, which is a basic road safety measure. Three girls from the Government Girls High School, Tiruvarur (Tamil Nadu) thought why not do have a helmet which is somehow connected to ignition. In effect, this would mean that until the rider wears helmet, the two-wheeler won’t start. Another school girl, Dhavala from Udupi conceived a bed-sheet squeezer to free mother from drudgery of squeezing water out of bedsheets and jeans after a wash. The growing incidence of molestation in Delhi prompted, Manu Chopra of G D Goenka School, to come up with an idea of an anti-molestation wrist band to ward off strangers. Four kids from different parts of the country have independently suggested a sensor-based system to prevent drunken person from driving a car.

Vignesh, Manoj Kumar and Raghav Simhan from Chennai have developed prototype of a navigation system for blind, while Mohit Singh from Sidhi (MP) has developed a medicine box with reminder facility. Shalini Kumari from Patna used to see older people struggle with their walkers while climbing stairs because walkers are not flexible. She conceived a walker with spring-loaded self-locking front legs so that when user pushes front legs on upper stairs and rear legs rest on lower stairs, the walker remains stable.

We have a lot to learn from children, says Gupta. Children are far less patient with unsolved problems than us. We face several problems in day to day life, but instead of trying to solve them we learn to live with them. Kids have the ability to connect various unconnected solutions and come up with something new. They are also more empathetic. They come up with ideas to make life of elderly or women better. Gupta says creative ideas are coming out of small town and not metros. Yet the thrust of public policies is on providing facilities and support to people in bigger institutions. Food for thought for another seminar!

Absurd! GM law can hamper organ transplants

2011-11-21T00:57:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, November 16,2011

The proposed law to regulate genetically modified foods, awaiting introduction in the parliament, will have serious implications not just for regulating GM crops but even in the health sector. If implemented, it could threaten organ transplantation procedures and stem cell therapies in the country, a leading scientist warned on Wednesday.

The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill 2011 was circulated among members of parliament during the last session and is likely to be tabled during the winter session. Experts have termed the bill as ‘unscientific, unethical and illegal’.

The very definition of ‘modern biotechnology’ given in the bill is wrong, leading biotechnologist and a member of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) Dr Pushpa M Bhargava said.

The subjects to be regulated by the proposed regulator, as enunciated in the bill, include ‘cellular products including products composed of human, bacterial or animal cells (such as pancreatic islet cells for transplantation), or from physical parts of those cells (such as whole cells, cell fragments, or other components for use as preventive or therapeutic vaccines’. In addition, the authority will also regulate ‘stem cell based products’.

“This is simply absurd. Are pancreatic islets or stem cells genetically engineered? How can BRAI seek to regulate them? “, Dr Bhargava asked, pointing out that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had detailed guidelines on the use of stem cells. A separate law may be in the offing for the same. “This bill, if passed in its present form, can threaten medical procedures like organ transplants. It is dangerous because by seeking to regulate (transplantation and stem cell therapies) you also acquire the right to ban”.

Another transgression proposed in the bill is regulation of ‘products of synthetic biology for human or animal use’, the scientist said. The bill does not define ‘synthetic biology’ which is an emerging area.

The bill seeks to set up a new three-member regulatory authority for GM crops under the Ministry of Science and Technology , replacing current 30-member inter-ministry regulatory mechanism called GEAC which functions under the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

This is the second time the government is attempting to set up a biotech regulatory body. A bill was proposed in 2009 but it was dropped following widespread criticism. The bill had provisions for sending anyone criticising GM crops to jail, as first reported in Mail Today on February 19, 2009.

The government has not given up the jailing clause completely. Clause 62 of the present bill also talks of imprisonment up to three months and fine up to Rupees five lakh for offenders who provide ‘false information in connection with a requirement or direction under this Act’.

The bill takes away the rights of states in dealing with agriculture – which is state subject – and places unlimited powers in the hands of the three-member regulator, pointed out Sridhar Radhkrishnan of Coalition for GM Free India at a consultation on the bill organised by the Delhi Alliance for Safe Food and Greenpeace. He said the bill should be scrapped and replaced with a ‘national biosafety protection authority’.

Chemotherapy tale has an Indian twist

2011-11-10T00:54:00.000-08:00

Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, November 10, 2011

Writing history, particularly contemporary history, is fraught with pitfalls if utmost care is not taken by the writer. The task is even more difficult when one is dealing with the history of science, and that too, with something highly contentious such as medical discoveries. The biography of cancer written by Delhi-born oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee is a case in point.

His narrative on cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies, has won the Pulitzer and literary awards in India. The book is, in effect, a history of chemotherapy - the most potent weapon yet in our fight against cancer. Mukherjee has focused a great deal on Sidney Farber, whom he describes as 'father of modern chemotherapy' who 'accidentally discovered a powerful anti-cancer chemical in a vitamin analogue' called Aminopterin.

The American media is also showering praises on Mukherjee for having uncovered the story of RS - Robert Sandler, a child suffering from leukemia who was the first one to benefit from chemotherapy administered by Farber.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time someone has documented the birth of chemotherapy or told the story of Sandler. Both these episodes were written about in detail in a 1987 book In Quest of Panacea - a biography of Indian scientist Yellapragada SubbaRow, a contemporary of Farber in America - by science historian S P K Gupta.

The book, on the basis of published scientific papers and unpublished notes of SubbaRow, credits the scientist for development of the concept of anti-folics. As head of research at Lederle Laboratories, SubbaRow got Aminopterin synthesised in his lab as an offshoot of his work on folic acid and supplied it to Farber and another doctor, Leo M Meyer, for clinical testing in cancer patients.

A note dated December 19, 1946 of SubbaRow lab, quoted by Gupta, talks about animal studies and says: 'some evidence has been presented which indicates that folic acid has a deleterious effect in leukemia. The administration of an antagonist of folic acid to a patient therefore might inhibit leucopoiesis and cause a symptomatic improvement' (the note, along with other papers of SubbaRow, is now deposited with the National Archives of India).

Aminopterin was such an antifolate that SubbaRow's team synthesised over the next one year. Farber got a consignment of Aminopterin only in November 1947. Clearly, Mukherjee is off the mark when he says Farber 'accidentally discovered' the chemical. At several places in the book, it is referred as 'Farbers' Aminopterin'. This is particularly shocking in light of the fact that Mukherjee was aware of Gupta's work on SubbaRow (he had met him and seen some of SubbaRow's papers) while researching for the book.

Similarly, Gupta also gave Mukhrejee a copy of Sandler's picture which had appeared, along with his story of miraculous recovery from cancer, in Boston Herald on April 9, 1948.

Then how come, the codename RS was a riddle that Mukherjee is supposed to have solved, for which he is being hailed in America? Gupta says he has had an acrimonious correspondence with Mukherjee over e-mail since the book came out and that Mukherjee has promised to correctly cite Gupta's work in future editions of his book. He has also agreed to make suitable changes in the text that describes Farber as 'discoverer of Aminopterin'. If that is so, will Mukherjee rewrite the history of chemotherapy and present an authentic picture to his readers?

A century at Mail Today : 100th edition of Quantum Leap

2011-10-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

Hype and politics of low cost computing

2011-10-13T06:49:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, October 13, 2011

The fanfare with which minister for HRD Kapil Sibal launched a low-cost ‘access-cum-computing device’ called Aakash sounded familiar to me. Phrases like low-cost, accessible computing and digital literacy have been resonating in the corridors of Shastri Bhawan with uncanny regularity over the past three decades. Every time only the players change and hype gets louder.

In 1989, Prabhakar Shankar Deodhar – one of the favourite computer boys of Rajiv Gandhi –launched the People’s Computer for Rs 10,000. It was considered ‘low-cost’ given the fact that a low-end PC then came with a price tag of Rs 50,000 or so.

Another high decibel launch of a low-cost device followed in 2001 when HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi unveiled a PDA-like gizmo called Simputer. It was an initiative of a Bangalore company, Encore, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), with no government funding, but Joshi hijacked the credit. When I asked him at the launch what was the contribution of his ministry to the development of Simputer, he retorted “we pay salaries to professors of IISc”.

People’s Computer was a moderate success as it demonstrated that hardware and software costs can be negotiated and brought down. Deodhar convinced Microsoft to sell its Disc Operating System (DOS) for 7 dollars as against retail price of 25 dollars, and cajoled a Delhi startup – Softek -to sell three software packages for about Rs 600. Public sector companies tasked to manufacture the computer could not deliver, as a result of which just about 25,000 units of People’s Computer could be sold. Simputer, priced at Rs 10,000, too could not live up to the hype of a mass device but found niche applications over the years. The proponents of Aakash hope to procure 100,000 units initially.

Politics and hype apart, all the three innovations demonstrate caliber of Indians in developing reasonable quality hardware. However, they suffer from two major problems – subsidies and software. No device can be a marketing success as long as it depends on government subsidies. And no hardware can be useful if it does not come bundled with relevant software. Simputer suffered due to lack of software applications and Aakash could go the same way.

For the very same reason educational satellites launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation have remained underutilised. In addition, devices like Aakash are kept frills-free in order to keep costs low. But this makes them unattractive to users.
When one sees people running DVDs, playing games or sharing pictures on their laptops, it would be difficult to convince a digital neoliterate to settle for a plain vanilla device. After all, a digital device is also about rising aspirations. It is for this reason that low-cost PCs launched by commercial firms like HCL too did not take off.

So how does one bridge the so-called digital divide? The solution to this problem is not far to seek. It is already in the pocket of over 880 million Indians – the humble mobile phone. Active internet users are just 200 million. Today a mobile screen is the first digital screen that an average Indian encounters. It is digital, accessible, affordable and user friendly.

All it needs is relevant applications – educational content, local information, telemedicine applications and so on. Another device that can double up as an educational tool is cable or satellite connected television. Instead of reinventing a tablet and stripping it down or subsidising to make it cheap, Sibal and his ministry should look for less glamorous but innovative applications over mobile phones and cable television.

Get real on animal testing and cruelty

2011-09-22T02:44:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, September 22, 2011

The Animal Welfare Act 2011, drafted by the Animal Welfare Board of India, is a perfect example of how public money and time is wasted in drafting infructuous pieces of legislation. I am saying this not because I have no love for animals or am against animal welfare, but because a more comprehensive law exists in the form of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

Over the years this law has been amended several times and different sets of rules notified under it including those covering animals used in scientific experiments. One may complain of inadequate enforcement of its provisions, but this does not necessitate a new piece of legislation with a new title. It is criminal waste of taxpayers’ money. The environment ministry, under which the animal board functions, needs to explain why it is doing so.

The so-called new Bill has raised the hackles of scientists and scientific academies, as expected, and once again pitted them against animal rights activists. The arguments being advanced by both sides are same as in 1998 when new rules on animal experimentation were notified under the 1960 Act. The two sides appear to be fighting a pseudo battle yet again.

Instead of setting their house in order by ensuring that all scientific institutions enforce the existing rules relating to the use of animals in scientific experiments, science academies are raising the bogey of fear psychosis. Animal lovers, on the other hand, are seeking more powers in their hands instead of asking for stricter implementation of the existing rules.

The only major difference in the 1960 Act and the 2011 Bill is the quantum of punishment for violation. From Rupees 200, it has been sought to increase to Rupees 50,000 for first time offenders and Rupees 5 lakh for ‘repeat offenders’. A provision of imprisonment has also been added. Yes, this is a matter of serious concern for scientists who fear that this would bring biomedical research to a grinding halt because they all depend on experiments with animals.

Scientists also feel that the definition of an animal (‘any living creature other than a human being’) – as given in the existing law and as repeated in the new draft – could be misused to harass scientists. By this definition, any bacteria, virus or a single-cell organism will be considered an ‘animal’ and any ‘cruelty’ against them can land scientists in Tihar jail. The scenario, though farfetched, is feasible if the new draft becomes a law. Animal lovers also want to have a right to decide if the use of animals is needed in a particular experiment. This is dangerous and amounts to veto power on scientific freedom.

If all research labs, universities and drug companies follow the standard operating procedures laid down for ethical and humane use of animals, there would be no cruelty against animals. This can be achieved only through awareness, education and dialogue, and not through a regime of inspections, raids and jail terms as some militant animal right activists appear to believe.

Let’s not forget that you can’t do away with lab rats and monkeys altogether. There would be no new drugs, vaccines and even medical procedures (cardiac surgery was experimented first in dogs and cats) without them. But we must do everything to avoid ill-designed and unnecessary experiments, and treat experimental animals in a humane way.

India opts for weak nuke regulation

2011-09-09T01:50:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, September 9, 2011

A new bill introduced in the parliament for setting up a Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) may result in a regulatory system much weaker than the existing one.

At present the nuclear industry is regulated by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) which reports to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). After the Fukushima disaster, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had promised a strong and independent regulatory system for the Indian nuclear industry.

Though the proposed regulator will be independent of DAE, it will work at the mercy of the central government and will have limited powers. The central government will appoint Chairman and members of NSRA, and will also have powers to supersede it. In addition, the government can set up more regulatory bodies as well as an Appellate Authority.

On top of NSRA will sit another super structure called Council of Nuclear Safety, which will be presided over by the Prime Minister and will ‘oversee and review policies with respect to radiation safety, nuclear safety and other issues’. In any case, weapon grade nuclear material have been kept out of purview of the new regulator. Even if an accident involving weapon grade nuclear material takes place and radiation leaks, NSRA will have no role to play in ensuring radiation safety.

AERB is empowered to issue licenses and consent for setting up nuclear and radiation facilities in the country, covering all stages - siting, construction, commissioning, operation and decommissioning. The jurisdiction of NSRA will be confined only to ensuring radiation and nuclear safety relating to ‘production, storage, disposal, transport, transfer, import, export’ of nuclear and radiation material.

In matters of safety in design, location, construction, commissioning, operation and decommissioning of nuclear power plants, NSRA can only ‘develop and notify’ such standards and codes. There is no mention of enforcing such codes, unlike AERB. This means the new regulator will have no role whatsoever in ensuring design safety, appropriateness of location and safety during construction of nuclear power plants.

AERB grants consent in different forms - license, authorisation, registration, approval and type approval – based on hazard potential associated with different radiation sources. For instance, a license is required for a power plant, which falls in category of highest hazard radiation source. NSRA does not define such categories of consent. Its consent will not be required for location, commissioning and decommissioning of nuclear power plants.

All this will amount to lax nuclear regulation, especially in light of the government plans to allow a string of nuclear power parks based on several new and untested technologies from foreign companies.

UN public health summit in shadow of industry

2011-09-08T01:31:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, September 8, 2011

In about ten days from now, world leaders will gather at the United Nations for a two-day session focused on ‘prevention and control of non-communicable diseases’. This is only the second time in its history that the UN is holding such a session, the first being the general assembly on HIV/AIDS in 2001. It is recognition of the fact that non-communicable diseases – heart disease and stroke, cancers, diabetes and chronic lung diseases – are taking too many lives in low and middle-income countries and are beginning to affect their development.

Enough scientific evidence is available to show that these diseases are largely preventable if we can address common risk factors like tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol.

It is time for political leadership to take some tough policy decisions to translate this scientific knowledge into action. If policy decisions are taken to reduce major risk factors, it is going to hurt some of the largest corporations in food and beverages, tobacco and alcohol sectors.

It is for this reason the UN summit has turned into a battleground of powerful companies, ‘civil society’ propped up by them and public health experts. Every word that will make up the final declaration to be adopted by political heads is being contested upon.

The food industry wants to put the blame on ‘physical inactivity’ rather than ‘unhealthy diets’. The drug industry wants greater action on treatment instead of prevention. The alcohol industry is ready to join the bandwagon as long as commitments are ‘voluntary’ and not ‘binding’.

Highly paid lobby firms have been hired to stall any reference to regulation in the final document. Nobody wants any time-bound commitments or a mention of fiscal and regulatory interventions.

The UN system has facilitated negotiations so far in way that ensures that industry is heard loud and clear. Food industry officials are heading key committees and are part of many official delegations.

In fact, thanks to a platform called Global Compact created by Kofi Annan, industry biggies have claimed a rightful place on the UN high table. Global Compact is dominated by food companies and has no reservations in sleeping with it tobacco and alcohol industries. In its view, ‘since tobacco is a legal product whose use UN member states have not yet outlawed, the Global Compact Office is not able to exclude tobacco companies from the initiative if they still wish to join.’ Should industries that profit from unhealthy products be part of public health negotiations?

Civil society representation is going to be very high, but this too has been infiltrated by industry. Just sample Indian outfits duly approved by our government for participation in the summit – Centre for Adivasee Studies & Peace, Organization for Liberation of Rural Daliths, Shikhar Chetna Sangathan, Srinivasa Heart Foundation, Arise India Foundation, Disease Management Association of India etc.

These are typical NGOs whose websites highlight in multi-colour ‘How to donate’ buttons much above buttons like ‘objectives’. In any case, none of them have anything to do with non-communicable diseases or even health and some of them are industry funded.

If this is the level of civil society participation from a country which has some of the highest levels of non-communicable diseases, you can imagine the quality of delegates from poorer countries. Under these circumstances, it is highly improbable political leaders will take any concrete initiative to address risk factors of lifestyle diseases.

Cables expose ‘moles’ in India's space and nuclear hubs

2011-09-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, September 6, 2011

It seems top officials in sensitive scientific departments like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) have no hesitation when it comes to sharing confidential information with Americans.

This is what emerges from an analysis of a slew of cables sent by American missions in India after embassy officials and visiting delegations met leaders in space and atomic energy departments in the past few years. The cables are part of the latest lot leaked by Wikileaks.

In a meeting with American nuclear industry in Mumbai in March 2007, DAE secretary Anil Kakodkar told GE and Westinghouse representatives that “’there was room for everybody’ to get one of India's planned nuclear parks, but acknowledged, for the first time, that the Jaitapur site in southern Maharashtra would go to the French company Areva”. Till then the official stand was that “no decision has been taken” on Jaitapur.

In November 2008, Kakodkar met another US delegation. He, according to a cabled account to of this meeting, revealed that the Nuclear Power Corporation of India ‘planned to seek joint ventures with private firms in the nuclear power generating and management sector, possibly including foreign firms.’ This was a policy decision not shared publicly till then.

Top nuclear officials not just revealed secret policy decisions but also literally opened up doors of nuclear facilities to Americans. One such was the visit of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Dale Klein in November 2008, during which his delegation was given a conducted tour of reactors as well as the highly secretive Waste Immobilization Plant at Trombay. The embassy cable marked confidential called it “unprecedented official access”.

Top ISRO officials were less forthcoming, but others were not. A cable sent on April 9 2009 talks about the meeting embassy officials had the previous day with Shantanu Bhatawdekar, Officer on Special Duty of ISRO in New Delhi. Bhatawdekar gave important details about progress on GPS systems planned by the space agency, upcoming satellite launches and Google Earth-like application Bhuvan being developed.

The official told Americans that the GAGAN navigation system was designed to achieve “accuracy levels of less than three meters by using eight ground-based reference stations, a mission control center and a land uplink station to analyze ephemeris and environmental data and send correction information to the existing NAVSTAR constellation”. This, according to a cable, he said would form ‘knowledge base’ for development of the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System. Notably, he also revealed that this proposed system would be “usable by commercially available GPS receivers.”

On Bhuvan, Bhatawdekar informed US officials that contrary to press reports ‘Bhuvan has still not been completed and a prototype of the interface and database is not expected to be available for the director's review for 3-4 months’. He said ‘imagery of sensitive Indian sites will not be provided to the public but will be used for government and military purposes’, according to the cable.

Another ISRO functionary D Gowrisankar told embassy officials that Antrix gets its budget from the government and that all revenues from sales go back to the treasury, but also suggested that “Antrix was looking to change this to keep more of what it sells”, according to a separate cable. The information was crucial for Americans who were trying to figure out functional links between ISRO and Antrix.

Montek felt anti-GM voices funded by Europe

2011-09-06T02:07:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, September 3,2011

New India-related cables leaked by Wikileaks highlight American concern over the delay in clearance to genetically modified (GM) food crops in India.

Some interesting details have emerged about the position taken by top people in the Indian government on GM foods, In one of the cables sent after the decision of Jairam Ramesh to impose moratorium on Bt birnjal in February last year.

When the embassy’s science and technology advisor Dr. Nina Fedoroff met with Planning Commission deputy chairman Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia just before Ramesh made the announcement on February 9, Ahluwalia ‘noted that many of the non-government organizations in India protesting Bt brinjal were in fact closely associated with and funded by European NGOs’. He, according to the embassy cable dated February 11, 2010, also felt that the public consultation process on bt brinjal initiated by Ramesh was ‘one sided’.

“Ahluwalia considered the town hall meetings to be okay as a process, but in the end, he felt it would be a major setback if Minister Ramesh were to allow what was essentially a one-sided debate to cause a decision against commercialization of Bt brinjal”, the cable says. In his view, Ramesh “had failed to make the elementary arguments about why GM products are safe”.

The decision to impose the moratorium on Bt brinjal, the embassy assessed, ‘is a huge setback for the development and marketing of GM food crops in India as well as in other developing countries.’ The decision would particularly affect Bangladesh and the Philippines who “have been looking to India as a leader as they do not have the capacity for full-line evaluation of Bt brinjal”.

While Ahluwali felt that anti-GM bodies in India were being funded by their European counterparts, the embassy notes that Ramesh had not used any European studies or scientist as the basis for his decision. Instead, he quoted 'write-in' advice from four American institutions - Ohio State University, U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists, University of Minnesota and the Salk Institute of Biological Studies.

The decision of the environment ministry, the embassy felt, could set the clock back by five to ten years for further commercial release of GM crops in India.

Earlier cables released by Wikileaks had shown that the US government was acting on behalf of Monsanto in targeting the European Union for its stand on GM crops.

India's sick health system needs a Lokpal

2011-08-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 25, 2011

Among the multitude of people who flocked to the Ramlila grounds this week in support of the anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare were some surprises. A delegation of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) met Hazare and extended support to his fight against corruption. Subsequently branches of the association all over the country were told to organise candle light vigil and sit-ins against corruption.

IMA is the largest professional body of Indian doctors and their support to the anti-graft movement should be taken seriously. After all, doctors are considered strong opinion makers in the society. However, a careful look at the association’s past and its stand on the issue of corruption in medical community makes one wonder if IMA’s views on corruption have any value at all.

The biggest corruption scandal to rock the medical community in India is the medical college scam perpetuated by the Medical Council of India (MCI). The kingpin of this scam was a leading member and former office bearer of IMA: Dr Ketan Desai.

Even after Desai was caught red-handed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), charged for corruption and put behind bars, IMA continued to support him to the hilt. It even took out protest marches in his support. Now that Desai is on bail, the association continues to function under his tutelage. The tainted doctor still occupies a special suite in IMA’s headquarters at ITO whenever he is in the capital in connection with the string of cases he is involved in.

Not only this, IMA has constantly hounded whistle blowers who have tried to expose corrupt and unethical practices within the organisation. The case of Dr Babu VK from Kerala proves this. Dr Babu raised the issue of the association signing endorsement deals with PepsiCo and other companies throwing all ethical norms to winds. He dragged IMA office bearers to the ethics panel of the medical council and got orders for cancellation of licenses of those who signed these commercial agreements.

Despite all this, the ‘guilty’ office bearers continue to rule the association while Babu has been expelled and false cases foisted against him. By joining the Hazare movement, the medical body perhaps hopes to wash away all its past sins.

In fact, the health sector urgently needs a dedicated Lokpal-like regulatory system which is independent of professional bodies like IMA. At present, the MCI, which is supposed to regulate medical education, is in a mess. The government-appointed Board of Governors is ridden with conflict of interest and is functioning in secretive ways.

Cases of medical negligence by doctors are on the rise but are being stonewalled by state medical councils which are controlled by doctors from private hospitals. In the absence of any regulation on quality and fees in private sector, the cost of healthcare is going up. The public healthcare system is in no better shape. Bribes are routinely demanded for scheduling surgeries in government hospitals.

Though state funding has gone up substantially, large scale corruption has been reported in implementation of the government’s flagship programme – the National Rural Health Mission – in laggard states like Uttar Pradesh. The entire system needs thorough cleansing. A corruption-free health system would go a long way in improving vital health indicators and achieve the long-forgotten goal of health for all.

GM crops to be regulated by GM promoters

2011-08-17T01:43:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, August 17, 2011

In a major shift in the regulatory regime for genetically modified (GM) crops, the government has decided to take away regulatory powers from the Ministry of Environment and Forests and entrust them in the hands of a centralized three-member regulator that will be housed in the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) which is a funding agency for GM crop development.

The chairperson and two members of the proposed regulatory body will be selected by a committee of officials under the convenership of an official of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), according to the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill slated to be introduced in the Lok Sabha by minister for science and technology Vilasrao Deshmukh on Wednesday.

The state biotechnology advisory committees envisaged under the Bill will function under departments of biotechnology of respective states furthering the conflict of interest issue.

The bill also opens up the regulatory body to private sector intervention by permitting four private sector members in the Biotechnology Advisory Committee which is supposed to advice the regulator on all matters related to regulatory mechanism.

Currently the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), housed in the environment ministry, acts as regulatory body for GM crops. Jairam Ramesh, as minister of environment, had imposed a moratorium on commercial release of GM brinjal last year following health and environmental concerns over its release. The 30-member GEAC is now sought to be replaced by three-member BRAI.

Ramesh had also mandated that no GM crops should be introduced without concurrence of states. In the new regulatory regime, states will have no role. Besides concentrating all powers in three people, the work of BRAI will be shrouded in mystery. The Bill states that the chairman and members will have to take oath of secrecy and biosafety data of GM crops will not be made public, overriding the RTI Act.

Critics are livid over the new bill. “When an inter-ministerial body like GEAC could be found lacking rigour or independence so often in the past, how can BRAI with its just three full-time members be trusted to take independent decisions?” asked Kavitha Kuruganti of Coalition for GM-free India.

“The combination of a promoter sitting as regulator and denying information to public, on things as essential as biosafety information, is a recipe for an autocratic- non transparent single window clearance for GM crops”, Greenpeace said in a statement.

Seed giants face prosecution for biopiracy

2011-08-12T01:16:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 12, 2011

American seed giant Monsanto and its Indian collaborator, Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco) are to be prosecuted for allegedly ‘stealing’ indigenous plant material for developing genetically modified brinjal variety known as bt brinjal.

The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), a statutory body set up under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, has decided to initiate legal proceedings against the two companies and their collaborators for using indigenous brinjal germplasm without necessary permissions. Taking plant material without any permission and using it for commercial purposes is considered an act of biopiracy.

“The authority has decided to proceed legally against Mahyco and Monsanto, and all others concerned to take the issue to its logical conclusion”, NBA secretary C Achalender Reddy said. The decision on the complaint filed by the Bangalore-based Environment Support Group (ESG) was taken in June by the authority and it was formally confirmed during its meeting held in New Delhi this week.

Any violation of the Biodiversity Act is a non-bailable, cognizable offence and the authority plans to initiate criminal proceedings against the offenders. It took almost one year for the authority to prepare a case against the two companies and their partners. This is going to be a test case of biopiracy because for the first time a commercial entity will be booked under the Biodiversity Act. “We have taken a decision and we now have to proceed to operationalise it”, Reddy said.

ESG had accused the two seed companies and their Indian collaborators including UAS of using germplasm of six local varieties of brinjal in development of Bt brinjal.

While Monsanto and Mahyco are trying to blame the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Dharwad, for supplying the local brinjal varieties, this may not weaken the case against them because the law makes no such distinction. Even USAID which facilitated agreements between Mahyco and Indian universities will have to share the blame.

“This is an unprecedented development in the conservation history of India”, said Leo Saldanha of ESG who had filed the complaint against seed companies along with Bhargavi Rao. “While we are happy that action is finally being initiated, it is also a sad indicator that NBA acted only on the basis of our complaint and our persistence that some action was taken”.

When contacted Monsanto tried to distance itself from the case by saying that it had not developed Bt brinjal, but it had been ‘developed by Mahyco, with the Cry1Ac gene accessed from Monsanto, in collaboration with multiple public sector institutions’. This is only half-truth because Monsanto is 26 percent owner of Mahyco, and also has a separate joint venture called Mahyco Monsanto Biotech Limited which handles its bt business.

Interestingly Mahyco too passed the buck to UAS. It said that the Karnataka Biodiversity Board had informed it in April that “there has been a violation by UAS, Dharwad in using six local varieties of brinjal and with respect to the same, information was sought pertaining to the objectives of the agreements between UAS, Dharwad which has been duly provided by Mahyco and the same is under consideration by the authorities.”

Meanwhile, the moratorium imposed on commercial release of Bt brinjal last year by the environment ministry remains in force.

Save our onions from seed predators

2011-08-11T05:08:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 11, 2011

An internationally reputed entomologist, Petr Svacha, was arrested and put behind bars in a Darjeeling jail a couple of years ago for allegedly violating the Biodiversity Protection Act 2002. His crime: he was found collecting some moths and insects in forest areas. None of them were endangered species nor was Svacha in a protected forest.

Now contrast this with another case of biopiracy. A multinational seed firm is accused of ‘accessing’ nine local varieties of eggplant and using this plant material to develop a genetically modified brinjal variety – popularly known as bt brinjal. One of the state biodiversity boards finds prima facie violation of the Act and forwards the complaint to the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) for further action. NBA not only sits on the complaint for over a year, but also processes a fresh application by the same company to ‘access’ indigenous germlines of onions. In one case, a scientist is summarily jailed allegedly for being a biopirate, while in another no action is taken even after evidence of biopiracy is found against a powerful commercial entity.

These two incidents demonstrate how India has made a sham of its biodiversity regulation. NBA had to be set up to fulfill obligations after India signed the Convention on Biological Diversity. It took a long time for the authority and state boards to become functional. Once NBA was set up, it was promptly converted into a convenient parking lot for bureaucrats from agriculture and environment ministries.

All its chairmen since 2003 have been serving or retired babus, and members are all joint secretary level officers from different ministries. One can call it a committee of joint secretaries rather than NBA. Even so-called non-official members are also drawn from the same pool. In fact, for the first time NBA will have a Chairman from outside the babudom this week. The problem with these people is that they consider the authority as an extension of the government, and have reduced it to a clearing house of applications from multinationals for accessing India’s biodiversity. While applications from commercial firms for accessing biological material are processed with alacrity, complaints against them are not handled with the same level of efficiency. The time taken by NBA in dealing with the complaint of biopiracy against Monsanto, which now wants to access onion parental lines, is a case in point.

The Monsanto application for the use of onion plant material for developing commercial grade onion hybrid seeds also raises some fundamental issues. How do you arrive at value of plant material and who decides this? The company is going to pay Rupees ten lakh to the Indian Institute of Horticulture Research for 25 grams each of Male sterile (A line) and Maintener (B line) of MS 48 and MS 65 as ‘onetime license fee’. Is this the right price for a plant material which would perhaps spin a multi-billion dollar hybrid onion business for Monsanto? Should it be Rs 10 lakh or Rs 100 crore? (the export market alone of Indian onions is in excess of Rs 1000 crore a year). When hybrids are already being developed in state-funded Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, should a predatory seed firm be allowed entry at all? All these questions need convincing answers. Onion prices can bring tears in the eyes of politicians at the time of elections and bring down governments. Hope the issue of biodiversity of onion will be dealt with the same level of gravity.

You are what you click and share

2011-08-07T04:01:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today August 7, 2011

If you are a cyber citizen, there is high probability of your every single move online being monitored, tracked – and perhaps monetised – by someone without you knowing. It is not as if all of this tracking is being done surreptitiously. You are actually providing much of the information voluntarily through your activities on social networking sites like Facebook, professional networks, blogs, and through subjects you search for, websites you visit, books and DVDs you buy or the ads you click.

Practically every click of yours while you are online is converted into a data point or a ‘click signal’. This could range from you clicking on the ‘Like’ button on Facebook to the key words you search for. All these bits of information are being converted into usable ‘profiles’ of millions of people by massive, intelligent servers that use some of the most sophisticated pieces of software. These ‘profiles’ are then sold to marketers so that they can target products and services which are specific to you. Welcome to the era of personalisation.

The contextual ads that appear on the margins of In Box or news feeds on top of the Gmail are old hat now. Google went a step ahead in December 2009 when it quietly made search personalised according to your profile. Top results and number of results could vary from person to person, location to location. One website may have different ads for different people, while in some cases even content could be different. Websites like Amazon began personalisation early on using the type of books one searched for.

Now personalisation has gone beyond what you buy on the internet. It has begun shaping the entire information flow on the net, warns online campaigner Eli Pariser in his book. It’s not just about buys, but about moulding perceptions and behaviours. Information that reaches you is carefully filtered so that so you get only what you are and ‘what you want’ (as decided by some intelligent algorithm). The filters look at the things you seem to like, things you have done and are likely to do or the things people like you may like – and try to extrapolate. Facebook wants you to share more and more –photos, music, commercials, news links, videos etc - just to create more sophisticated filters. In effect, each of us is living in a ‘filter bubble’ or an information universe of our own. The book has unveiled unknown secrets of top technology companies currently engaged in a fierce battle of dominance in cyberspace through increasing personalisation.

The way personlisation works to the advantage of marketers, as detailed by Pariser, is shocking. Suppose you search for a cheap Delhi-New York flight on Travelocity or Kayak. Irrespective of whether you buy this ticket or not, the website sells this tiny piece of information to a data company like Acxiom or Blue- Kai, which then auctions it off to the highest bidding airline, say United. Once United knows that you are interested in a Delhi- New York ticket, it can show you relevant ads of flights not just on the travel website you started with but on almost every website you visit across the internet. The whole process – collection of your data to sale to United – takes less than a second!

Dangers of personalising news – through websites like News.me that cater their headlines to our particular interests and desires or designer front pages – are even greater. Someone else is deciding what’s important to you – is it news about war in Afghanistan or the latest launch of Apple. In fact, personalisation is killing the very spirit of internet – free and open exchange of ideas and experiences. The author says that while the internet proliferated with the potential to decentralise knowledge in a democratic way, in practice ‘it is concentrating control over what we see and what opportunities we are offered in the hands of fewer people than ever before’. This is the real danger.

Filter Bubble is a highly readable, well researched and well told book on the latest trends in the internet.

[A review of 'The Filter Bubble: What the internet is hiding from you' by Eli Pariser, Viking, 2011]

It's time to revisit space exploration

2011-07-27T03:09:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, July 27, 2011

The space shuttle programme of the American space agency, NASA, has come to an end, marking a turning point in the history of space exploration and the geopolitics surrounding it. The space race was central to the cold war between America and the Soviet Union. The building of the 100 billion dollar International Space Station (ISS) brought this race between two superpowers to a conclusion and opened an era of mutual cooperation.

The end of the shuttle era, however, has stoked the dead flames of old rivalry again. Till a commercial space taxi like SpaceX Dragon, Boeing CST-100 or the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser is available sometime in 2016, Americans will have to depend on the Russian space shuttle to carry its astronauts to the ISS. They will be paying $ 50 million for a seat on Soyuz. So, for the next five years only Russians will have the power and means to access ISS. Russians are already calling it the ‘Soyuz epoch’.

An equally important announcement was made in India around the same time. After its successful lunar orbiter mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had begun pushing for an ambitious manned space flight by 2016 or so. The scientific community backed the idea and preliminary estimates put the cost at about Rs 15,000 crore. Even astronaut training programme was on the cards. But two back-to-back failures of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) – a higher version of which was to be used for manned flight – has made the space agency give up its plans to do the flight on its own. Its chief K Radhakrishnan now says ‘all options are open’ including hitching a ride on Soyuz – the only operational spaceship currently available.

The Indian decision on manned space flight also implies that the space agency is quietly opting out of the so-called Asian space race, at least for some years to come. China has already had three manned space missions with Taikonauts even doing a space walk, and is now planning a permanent manned station in space. After the lunar orbiter mission of India, there was much talk about rivalry between the two Asian giants. All such talk should end now because China is ahead and India is now giving up on manned missions. It is pretty much clear that Russia and China are going to dominate the scene for the next few years.

Besides showing off technological and political prowess, manned space missions have not been able to live up to the hype. In the initial days of the shuttle programme, people talked about solving the problems of mankind like cancer and HIV through experiments in space. No such breakthroughs have come from space. ‘The shuttle was never about science’, noted a recent editorial in journal Nature. The flight schedule for the last Atlantis was crowded with some ‘low-quality space studies’ like a study of microbial virulence in zero gravity, experiments on weightless mice and an iPhone kitted out with ISS apps, the journal pointed out.

Greater scientific objectives have been served by missions like the Hubble and Chandra. Robotic explorations of planets and other bodies could be more cost effective and useful to science. In India, earth observation and communication satellites have had far greater societal impact than perhaps a manned mission. Hope space agencies globally will rethink on these lines and not indulge in a mindless space race once again.

Carbide dictated a deal and India obliged

2011-07-25T01:23:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, July 25, 2011

More skeletons relating to handling of the Bhopal gas disaster are tumbling out of cupboard of the Indian government.

New revelations show that Union Carbide mooted the idea of a ‘negotiated settlement’ within weeks of the gas leak that took place in its Bhopal plant in December 1984. Not only this, it also decided on the quantum of compensation to be paid to victims as part of this settlement and in exchange sought exemption from any liability.

The idea found ready acceptance in the Rajiv Gandhi government, and Carbide eventually got exemption from liability in exchange of a settlement as demanded.

While getting the government engaged with the idea of a settlement in 1985, Carbide also cleverly outlined ‘categories of claims’ for those injured. Camouflaging the fact that the leak would have long term health effects, Carbide proposed four categories of injuries which ignored multifarious lifelong as well as inter-generational health impacts of MIC. The Indian government used the same classification in 1987 in its petition in the court and finally in the negotiated settlement it stuck with Carbide in 1989.

Worse, the same 1985 classification has been used by the government even in the civil curative petition it filed in the Supreme Court for enhancement of compensation in December 2010. As per this curative petition, the world’s worst industrial disaster had just 42 victims under the category of ‘utmost severe cases’. The petition is likely to come up for hearing next month.

The picture on how the idea of negotiated settlement emerged has got clear with documents obtained under RTI and made public on Saturday in Bhopal. A scrutiny of these papers shows that a top Carbide functionary Rolf H Towe, along with managing director of Indian subsidiary V P Gokhale, made the proposal for a negotiated settlement in a meeting with B B Singh, who was then chemical and fertilizer secretary on February 28, 1985.

Singh was told that Carbide chief Warren Anderson had already met Indian ambassador in Washington on this issue and he had been told that ‘the Government of India had an open mind on this issue’ but it would like Carbide to take the first step, according to minutes of the top secret meeting.

Following this meeting with Singh, Carbide made a formal proposal on March 4, 1985 stating that it was ‘intended at avoiding protracted litigation in India or in the US by or on behalf of the claimants’. The proposal contemplated ‘the payment of a predetermined fixed sum or money by UCIL and UCC to the central government’. Carbide chose arbitrarily the Railways Act for fixing compensation amount to be paid for deaths and injuries arising due to the gas disaster, overlooking the fact the havoc caused by the gas leak was in no way comparable to a railway accident.

The most shocking part of the Carbide offer was this. It clearly stated that ‘in exchange (of the settlement), UCIL and UCC will require that all claims by Indian citizens, corporations, partnerships or other entities arising out of, or connected with, the Bhopal gas leak disaster against either or both of them, their affiliates, directors, officers and employees to be fully released and extinguished in all respects’.

Instead of rejecting such an offer for indemnity from any claims in exchange of a negotiated settlement, the chemicals and fertilizers ministry accepted the proposal and started discussing it with other wings of the government. It is this process which finally led to a settlement in the Supreme Court six years later and freed Carbide of any liability in India.

“The injury categories assigned to victims by Carbide were unscientific and without basis. The Indian government introduced the same injury categories and paid the minimum amount of Rs 25,000 as compensation to 94 percent of the victims with lifelong injuries by arbitrarily assigning them temporary injury category”, pointed out Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, which obtained the documents under RTI.

Sarangi said some of the same mistakes were being repeated in the curative petition filed by the government now. The petition has not asked for any compensation for damages caused to the next generation of victims.

The curative petition seeks enhancement of the compensation to Rs 3000 crore to Rs 6000 crore, while calculations made by the Bhopal groups based on data generated by the ICMR put this figure close to Rs 37,000 crore or 8.1 billion dollars.

Food regulator in new 'Conflict of Interest' row

2011-07-22T01:43:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, July 22,2011

Despite the rap from the Supreme Court for its pro-food industry tilt, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is refusing to mend its ways.

Food industry representatives not only continue on important panels of the food regulator, they are also being routinely nominated by the regulatory body as part of official Indian delegations to key UN meetings that deliberate international food standards. Involving industry in standard making – which is a regulatory function - is a clear case of ‘conflict of interest’.

FSSAI was forced to remove all food industry officials from its scientific panels after the Supreme Court took note of the Mail Today expose about the presence of industry persons on its key panels dealing with issues like labeling, additives, advertising claims and genetically modified foods.

Now fresh investigation by Mail Today has revealed that food industry continues to be present in key panels dealing with food standards under the aegis of FSSAI. Known as Shadow Committees of the National Codex Committees, these panels prepare official stand of the Indian government for international negotiations on food standards held by Codex Alimentarius Commission - a joint forum of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

One dozen such Shadow Committees were formed last year and each one of them has a representative of either the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) or the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) or both. Though on paper it is FICCI or CII which is represented, in effect, food companies are represented because both industry bodies nominate key officials of food companies to attend Codex meetings. Some of them get to represent India at international meetings of Codex.

Padmaparna Dasgupta of GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare attended Codex committee on food labeling in Quebec, Canada in May this year, along with two FSSAI officials - CEO V N Gaur and deputy director Anil Mehta. Similarly Norbert Karikkassery, CEO of Alleppey-based Interseas was part of the official Indian delegation at the Codex meeting on ‘fish and fishery products’ at Tromso, Norway in April.

The Codex meeting on ‘contaminants in food’ held at The Hague, Netherlands in March was attended by Jasvir Singh of ITC’s food division as an official representative of the Indian government. Dr Srinivasa Bhat of Nestle, who has been dropped from scientific panel of FSSAI following the SC directive, continues to be a member of the Codex shadow committee on ‘nutrition and foods for special dietary uses’. He represented India at the Codex meeting held at Santiago, Chile in November 2010, along with three official nominees.

The CEO of FSSAI did not respond to repeated queries, but a senior official of the authority defended industry participation in the Codex process. He said the SC directive does not apply to Codex Committees.

“We involve all stakeholders in the process. Industry persons are included in official delegations because a lot of trade issues are involved”, he said. In any case, he said, different ministries recommend names for Codex meetings and ‘we are only forwarding them’. The name of Nestle official was recommended by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, he added.

The industry tilt in India’s official position in the international negotiations is clear from a proposal moved by India for developing industry standards for ‘special dietary foods’ as a means to treat malnutrition. As per the proposal, specific standards should be developed for ‘enhancing the cereal content, minimum protein contents and energy density’ of packaged food ‘for preventing and addressing the nutritional needs of underweight infants and young children’.

Independent observers see the Indian proposal as an industry move to bring in a ‘market-based intervention’ to address malnutrition. The last attempt by the industry to replace freshly cooked food with processed and packaged food items like biscuits in the midday meal programme had failed. If Codex develops an international standard for special foods for malnourished children, it will provide legal sanctity to industry plans.

Ganga crusader poisoned?

2011-06-16T04:22:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, June 16, 2011

The unholy nexus between the mining mafia and politicians has once again been exposed with the death of Swami Nigamanand amid serious allegations that the fasting holy man was poisoned and the BJP-ruled Uttarakhand government turned a blind eye to it.

The pathological report of Nigamanand's serum sample shows evidence of organophosphate poisoning. The test was performed at Dr Lal's Laboratory in Delhi on May 4. The cholinesterase serum test is usually done to measure exposure to organophosphate insecticides. In the case of Nigamanand, doctors recommended it when his aides reported signs of poisoning.

Nigamanand, fasting since February 19 against illegal quarrying on the Ganga bed, was forcibly shifted by the local administration to the District Hospital, Haridwar, on April 27 (the 68th day of his fast). He was given an injection by an unknown nurse on the afternoon of April 30, according to a police complaint lodged on May 11 by Nigamanand's ashram, the Matri Sadan. The development is suspicious since she took away the used syringe.

When Nigamanand's condition worsened, he was moved to the Doon Hospital and subsequently to the Himalayan Institute Hospital, where he was first diagnosed with "unknown poisoning". He was treated with antidotes after the serum report confirmed the poisoning.

The complaint claimed that Himalaya Stone Crusher Pvt. Ltd. owner Gyanesh Kumar Agarwal connived with the doctors to kill Nigamanand, who was agitating against quarrying by his company. The Matri Sadan was also engaged in a legal battle with Agarwal and the state government against quarrying and pollution in the Kumbh Mela notified area in and around Haridwar.

The stone crushing mafia is close to the party ruling the state. Agarwal, according to the Sadan's members, is close to the Sangh Parivar and also enjoys the BJP government's patronage. He was the chief guest in July last year at the annual Guru Dakshina programme of the RSS' Haridwar branch. His father has been an RSS officebearer in the Haldwani area.

While Nigamanand slipped into deep coma following the alleged poisoning, the high court of Uttarakhand at Nainital gave an order in his favour on May 26, ordering for the closure of the Himalaya Stone Crusher and saying that the crusher was "causing inherent damage not only to the eco-fragile zone, which is environmentally very sensitive, but is also being run to the utter violation of the licence conditions".

"The death of Nigamanand under mysterious circumstances has shocked us and points to the deep-rooted nexus existing between the mining mafia and the government," Hemant Dhyani of Ganga Ahvaan said. "Even the doctors have colluded with the administration," he added.

Nigamanand and other sadhus of the Sadan were deeply disturbed by the growing menace of quarrying in the Kumbh Mela area. The Himalaya Stone Crusher was mining and crushing boulders on the Ganga's banks on the outskirts of Harid-war. "Under this pretext, the crusher owners started digging up the floor and banks of the Ganga and caused deleterious effects," the high court observed.

Due to the consistent digging and mining, the river bed got lower and the water table in the surrounding villages slipped. This illegal mining also caused air pollution and soil erosion in a large area along the river.

Perils of being a global consumer

2011-06-09T03:51:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, June 9, 2011

The superbug scare is back with a bang. This time the focus of a new global health scare is not India, but a developed country like Germany. The outbreak of a deadly strain of E Coli appears far more serious than the threat posed by the NDM-1 bug, at least in terms of immediate fallout. In the UK and Denmark, another drug resistant superbug, MRSA, has been found for the first time in cow milk. We have seen outbreaks of Salmonella and Mad Cow disease in Europe and elsewhere earlier.

Such outbreaks are not new but their frequency and the rapidity with which they are occurring and spreading is getting shorter with every new outbreak. The way some of the known pathogens and their mutations are moving across plants, animals and humans is keeping scientists across disciplines busy. Two issues emerge as central to this trend - overuse and abuse of antibiotics and globalisation in terms of movement of people and goods.

More and more antibiotics are being used globally by humans, they are being given to animals and are being pumped into the environment inadvertently. All this is making bugs and pathogens - many of them otherwise harmless - resistant to drugs and turning them into tiny monsters waiting to strike surreptitiously. For the new MRSA strain found in cows, a British scientist has blamed use of powerful antibiotics in dairy animals by farmers who are under ' relentless financial pressure' from supermarkets.

This brings us to another aspect of the problem - globalisation. In the past two decades or so, our food platters have become truly global. Free trade regimes and emergence of global food chains has ensured that we are no more eating what's grown locally. The cheese on your plate may be coming from Switzerland, milk from Denmark, fruits from the Far East or China, olives from Spain, pears from New Zealand, apples from Washington, dry fruits from the Middle East and so on. Even fresh vegetables are moving across countries and across oceans.

Free flow of fruits, vegetables and dairy products also means free flow of pathogens and hidden superbugs, as suggested in the current outbreak. Cucumbers imported from Spain were initially blamed for the E Coli outbreak in Germany. Then it was organically grown beans sprout. People have also been advised not to consume raw tomatoes and lettuce as well. The jury on the source of infection is still out. Whatever may be the case, the source appears to be a food product.

Food regulators the world over are ill- equipped to ensure absolute safety of food items that move across borders. Since many of the pathogens are new or mutated, existing tests are of little help. Whenever such outbreaks occur all that we see is mass destruction of suspected fruit or vegetable and restrictions imposed on imports from the country where the infection may have originated. At times, outbreaks are not reported or played down for fear of likely impact on trade. Trade and industry lobbies play their bit in this. For instance, under pressure from the meat industry, the name swine flu had to be dropped and infection was given its scientific name - Influenza A H1N1 infection.

By its very nature, the supermarket culture demands that farm products travel thousands of kilometers before they reach your dining table. In order to keep them ' fresh' and withstand pressures of packing, transportation and storage, grains, fruits and vegetables are subjected to a number of chemicals and treatments both on and off farm and they are touched by several hands on the way. All this makes them vulnerable to contamination. So, the next time around you hear of a new outbreak in Europe or America, don't think you are safe because as a global consumer you are equally vulnerable.

Desire to serve still drives some doctors in India

2011-05-26T05:30:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, May 26, 2011

In these days of crass commercialisation of healthcare, it may be hard to believe that a band of dedicated young doctors is giving up lucrative assignments and even risking their lives to serve in rural areas on a voluntary basis.

You may have never heard of a group called 'Doctors for You' (DFY), but this group created ripples in international medical circles this past week by winning the best 'Medical team in a crisis zone' award leaving behind strong contenders such as Medecins Sans Frontieres and Save the Children. The group got the award for medical relief it offered during the 2008 Kosi floods in Bihar. The award, instituted by publishers of the British Medical Journal celebrates an individual or team that has had an exceptional impact on a crisis situation.

The group deployed 110 of its members who treated 130,000 patients over six months through 300 mobile clinics, district hospitals and camps.

Interestingly, this group of mostly young doctors and medical students from government hospitals and medical colleges was born out of a necessity in August 2007.
It is not a typical NGO looking for opportunities for social work. During the monsoon season, government hospitals face shortage of blood and platelets when they are flooded with cases of malaria and dengue. In order to deal with such shortages, some medicos in Mumbai formed a group to promote voluntary donation of blood and platelets.

When Bihar faced the flood situation, Dr Ravikant Singh - who hails from the state and had founded the voluntary blood donation group - decided to take a small medical team there in August 2008. This slowly grew into a larger engagement over the next six months with several teams providing medical relief in flood- affected villages in rotation.

One young member of the team, Chandrakant Patil, lost his life when he was struck by lightning while sleeping in the open in a medical camp. Because of his pre-occupation in Bihar, Singh had to lose one full term of his post graduate training and an attractive offer to work for the WHO. DFY continues to prepare itself for future emergencies through constant training and by forging alliances with organisations all over the globe.

'A snakebite and a heart attack are both medical emergencies but you need different skill sets to handle them', pointed out Dr Vivek Chhabra, an active member. The group has set up maternal and child health centres - one in Biratpur in Saharsa district and another one in a Mumbai slum. Since March 2009, the Biratpur centre has treated over 50,000 patients and conducted over 100 hospital deliveries without charging any fee. The centre, manned by two doctors and nurses each, has six beds and provides round- theclock emergency services to pregnant women. The plan is to replicate this model in other districts of Bihar and other states like Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.

It is the dream and determination of groups like DFY which offers some hope for the health system in India.

Box to save newborns

India has one of the highest rates of neonatal deaths in the world. Many babies die because rural hospitals do not have incubators ( or electricity supply to use them, if they have one) to keep new born babies sufficiently warm soon after birth. Since a large number of deliveries still take place in homes, the incubator is not a solution for rural India. There are instances of babies getting burnt due to faulty incubators or when crude heaters are used to keep them warm.

To overcome such problems, a Mumbai doctor, Subhash Chandra Daga, has developed a simple low cost device - a styrofoam box with four breathing holes - which can be used as a home incubator and a transporting device to keep babies warm. The box is inexpensive, reusable and washable.

It prevents bacterial growth, being a non- vegetative material. Oxygen can also be administered to a baby in the box at a predictable concentration. Over the years, a number of studies have proved that the box performs well in home and hospital settings as well as a transportation device for high risk newborns who require continuing special care while being shifted from one hospital or another. Dr Daga's innovation has been recognised in the category of ' innovation in healthcare' in the BMJ awards. The device, he says, holds hope of survival for thousands of low birth weight babies that are born at home, in harsh weather conditions, and in poor and remote areas of the world. Hopefully the award will lead to greater use of this innovative technology.

RIL research bid throws up conflict of interest questions

2011-05-26T05:26:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, May 26, 2011

The irony behind the proposal of Jairam Ramesh to set up a joint research centre on marine biodiversity with Reliance Industries could not have been starker – an industrial house accused of posing a threat to marine biodiversity due to its mega projects funding a research centre on biodiversity in collaboration with government agency incharge of protecting biodiversity in the country.

The research centre on marine biodiversity proposed to be set up jointly by Reliance Industries Limited and the environment ministry is bound to attract criticism on several grounds.

The minister has sought to justify his proposal on the grounds that India lacks research facilities in this area. This is far from truth because the country has a string of research centres with capacity for research in marine biodiversity. These include the National Institute of Oceanography, Central Marine and Salt Research Institute, Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, National Institute of Ocean Technology and several universities in coastal states.

At the central level, the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the Ministry of Environment and Forests run large funding programmes for research in marine biodiversity. “By saying that India lacks research in this field, the minister is running down programmes run by his own ministry as well as other agencies of the central government”, commented a scientist.

More serious is the fact that collaboration between RIL and the environment ministry would amount to direct ‘conflict of interest’ because the group is engaged in projects in ecologically sensitive areas with likely adverse impact on marine biodiversity. “This is completely unethical, absurd and unacceptable. How can the environment ministry, which is supposed to protect biodiversity, work with an industry which is posing a threat to biodiversity?”, questioned Himanshu Thakkar, an environmentalist.

“Marine biodiversity in Gujarat is under great threat due to ports, power plants and special economic zones coming up in coastal and ecologically sensitive areas. Environment impact assessment of such projects is not done properly. Now if private industry starts doing research in biodiversity, the situation would get worse”, pointed out Bharat Patel of Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Samiti in Kutch.

It is also feared that the proposed research centre could be used to churn out favourable EIA reports for projects of the industrial house setting it up.

Food safety authority finally gets rid of Cola and Ketchup ‘experts’

2011-05-23T03:34:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, May 23, 2011

India’s food safety regulatory authority has finally purged all industry ‘experts’ from its crucial scientific panels and replaced them with independent experts.

The action follows expose by Mail Today in August 2009 that the Scientific Committee and different Scientific Panels of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) were infested with so-called experts from food industry. When the matter was raised in Supreme Court in February this year , the Court directed reconstitution of the panels.

Representatives of top food companies - PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Hindustan Unilever, GSK Healthcare, Britannia, Marico, ITC, Nestle – have been dropped from different scientific panels that were set up to advice the authority on range of issues like labeling, additives and genetically modified food. Industry executives were made members of these panels in what was seen as a classic case of the regulated becoming regulators.

The most curious was the panel on ‘labeling and claims/advertisements’, which had as many as six industry members including one from the Confederation of Indian Industry(CII). This had raised eyebrows as one of the major roles of the food authority is to enforce nutritional labeling of all food products in the country.

All the eight scientific panels as well as the apex Scientific Committee have now been completely recast with experts drawn from national research labs such as the National Institute of Nutrition and Indian Agricultural Institute, besides bodies like the Department of Biotechnology, the Indian Council of Medical Research and Indian Institutes of Technology.

The appointment of industry members had violated the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 under which FSSAI has been established. Section 13 of the Act clearly states that “the Food Authority shall establish scientific panels, which shall consist of independent scientific experts”. When the issue was brought before the SC this year, the bench comprising justices Dalveer Bhandari and A K Ganguly commented that “the panels do not consist of independent persons. It is contrary to the Act. What kind of recommendations do you expect from such a panel?’’

A careful analysis of the lists posted on the authority website shows that while industry experts have been dropped from different Scientific Panels, the apex panel under which all these panels will work still has one member – Dr Jagdish S Pai – who could have potential conflict of interest. He represents an industry body called Protein Foods and Nutritional Development Association of India. All top food companies are its members and endorsement of industry products is one of its various activities. The governing board of the association is currently headed by a Coca Cola executive.

New board of MCI riddled with conflict of interest

2011-05-17T03:02:00.000-07:00

Mail Today, May 17, 2011

The Medical Council of India (MCI) – the regulatory body for medical education and medical ethics – appears to have perfected the art of remaining in news for wrong reasons.

The new appointments in MCI made by the health ministry have shocked medical circles in the country as almost all members of the Board of Governors either have conflict of interest or are misfits for their new role.

The most glaring is the nomination of Dr Purushottam Lal, Chairman of Metro Hospitals, a cardiologist who has been accused in the past of conducting unethical medical trials involving gene therapy. He was subject of an enquiry by the drug controller general of India and the issue had been widely reported in medical journals such as The Lancet in 2001. Ironically, the health ministry thought it fit to appoint Dr Lal to the administrative machinery at MCI, which among other things, also surpervises enforcement of medical ethics in the country.

Another member, Dr Harbhajan Singh Rassam comes from Max Hospital. His appointment too represents conflict of interest as MCI is currently dealing with cases of medical negligence against Max Hospital. It is not clear how Dr Rassam, as part of MCI, would handle complaints against his own hospital.

Dr Rajiv Chintaman Yeravdekar, Dean of health sciences from Symbiosis International University, is another new appointee. SIU is a deemed university and does not even offer any medical degree. It only offers B Sc in medical technology.

In fact, barring Dr K K Talwar, who has been named Chairman of the Board, none of the members have any experience of medical education or teaching. Such experience is prerequisite as the council is engaged in redrafting medical curriculum as well as admission procedures. Three members of the five are from private sector hospitals and their appointment constitutes severe conflict of interest as MCI is not only incharge of medical education but also deals with cases of medical negligence. Surprisingly, three of the five new members belong to one discipline – cardiology.

“While the last Board had started to lose public trust and clearly there were some definite evidence of some wrong-doings, this latest move of health ministry appears to be a sinister motive to put in place puppet regime in MCI”, commented a senior medical education expert.

Ramesh flip-flops not good for environment

2011-05-12T06:10:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, May 12, 2011

The public confession of environment minister Jairam Ramesh that he has had to bend rules while giving environmental clearances to important projects under pressure from various quarters in the government has raised more questions than answers.

The confession was made just a couple of days after he gave the final nod for diversion of forest land for Korean company Posco's steel plant in Orissa. While giving earlier clearances to this project, Ramesh had invoked significant 'economic, strategic and technological' implications.

Does this mean the green nod in this case was under directives of PMO? If this is so, then why was Vedanta treated differently? Has Ramesh cleared the Jaitapur nuclear power complex also on grounds other than environmental? Why was Loharinag Pala hydroelectric project in Uttarakhand shelved even though Ramesh had claimed that the work can not be stopped because the government had spent Rs 500 crore already on the project? The minister's confession is undoubtedly significant and has left many in the government red- faced, but it needs more clarity in public interest.

With his candid admission, Ramesh has once again sought to project himself as an environment-friendly minister which, his die hard critics say, he is not.

Environmental clearance is not a matter of discretion or a policy issue, but a legal and statutory matter. If someone is bending rules or using discretion, then he is guilty of breaking the law of the land. Secondly, Ramesh has done nothing to bring about systemic changes in the environmental governance regime which he presides over, despite, again, publicly saying that various processes like Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) and public hearings are rigged or fixed.

If public hearings are fixed, then what has the minister done to make them credible? What concrete measures have been taken to ensure that EIAs are not reduced to a farce? The minister takes pride in clearing various high profile projects with a string of conditions to give an impression that environment protection on top of his agenda. But the ministry has no mechanism to monitor if these conditions are being complied with.

Ramesh should tell us what is preventing him from setting up such a mechanism. His frequent flip-flops and confessions on various issues on his table may help Ramesh create some sort of space or constituency for himself, but it would do no good to the environment. If no systemic changes are brought in green governance, there is imminent danger of the environment ministry slipping back into the good old days of being a 'rubber stamp' if another politician moves in his place. This is what happened to the tobacco control agenda of the health ministry after the exit of Dr Anbumani Ramadoss, who too like Ramesh, had publicly confessed that he was under pressure from chief ministers, cabinet colleagues and lawmakers to tone down his anti-tobacco stance. Politicians like Ramesh and Ramadoss would do well if they make long- lasting changes their top priority rather than look for short-term gains.

Toxin from GM crops found in human blood

2011-05-11T02:12:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, May 11, 2011

Fresh doubts have arisen about safety of genetically modified crops, with a new study reporting presence of Bt toxin – used widely in GM crops – in human blood for the first time.

Genetically modified crops include genes extracted from bacteria to make them resistant to pest attacks. These genes make crops toxic to pests but are claimed to pose no danger to the environment and human health. Genetically modified brinjal, whose commercial release was stopped a year ago, has a toxin derived from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (bt).

Till now, scientists and multinational corporations promoting GM crops have maintained that bt toxin poses no danger to human health as the protein breaks down in the human gut. But the presence of this toxin in human blood shows that this does not happen.

Scientists from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, have detected the insecticidal protein, Cry1ab, circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women. They have also detected the toxin fetal blood, implying it could pass on to the next generation. The research paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in journal Reproductive Toxicology.

The study covered 30 pregnant women and 39 women who had come for tubectomy at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke(CHUS) in Quebec. None of them had worked or lived with a spouse working in contact with pesticides. They were all consuming typical Canadian diet that included GM foods such as soybeans, corn and potatoes. Blood samples were taken before delivery for pregnant women and at tubal ligation for non pregnant women. Umbilical cord blood sampling was done after birth.

Cry1Ab toxin was detected in 93 percent and 80 percent of maternal and fetal blood samples, respectively and in 69 percent of tested blood samples from non-pregnant women. Earlier studies had found trace amounts of the Cry1Ab toxin in gastrointestinal contents of livestock fed on GM corn. This gave rise to fears that the toxins may not be effectively eliminated in humans and there may be a high risk of exposure through consumption of contaminated meat.

“Generated data will help regulatory agencies responsible for the protection of human health to make better decisions”, noted researchers Aziz Aris and Samuel Leblanc. “Given the potential toxicity of these environmental pollutants and the fragility of the fetus, more studies are needed, particularly those using the placental transfer approach.”

Experts have warned of serious implications for India. Cottonseed oil is made from seeds of genetically modified cotton and thus bt toxin may have already entered food chain in India. “Indian regulators should be immediately calling for detailed toxicological studies to know the extent of contamination of the human blood with bt toxins coming from cottonseed oil, and also ascertain its long-term health impacts,” Sharma said.

Dr Johan Fagan, an American biosafety expert currently visiting India said, “the GM industry has all along argued that Bt toxin breakdown in human gut. This study is evidence that it does not. There could be unknown health effects”

‘Gates Foundation promoting interests of food and drug companies’

2011-04-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, April 14, 2011

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major donor in health sector in India, has links with food and drug corporations including Coca-Cola, McDonald, Merck and Monsanto. These links constitute a conflict of interest to the foundations' philanthropic work, reveals a new study published on Wednesday.

Several large grants that the Foundation makes in developing countries including India are linked to companies in which the Foundation has invested. Its grants in health sector may benefit leading pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline through partnerships to test or promote their vaccines and drugs, points out the study by Sanjay Basu of University of California and others in journal PLOS Medicine.

On his recent visit to India, Gates lobbied with the health ministry for introduction of rotavirus vaccine manufactured by Merck. The Foundation is already funding acceptance studies related to another Merck product in India – HPV vaccine. Tribal girls in Andhra Pradesh have died during these controversial trials.

The Foundation’s endowment mainly comes from Bill Gates’ personal fortune and stock in Berkshire Hathaway given to the Foundation as a gift from Hathaway’s CEO Warren Buffett. Its corporate stock endowment is heavily invested in food and drug firms. The Foundation has significant shares in McDonald, Coca Cola, Johnson and Johnson, Eli Lilly, Wyeth, besides Merck.

About half of the Foundation’s stock holdings are already invested in Berkshire Hathaway, which in turn owns shares in Kraft, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi- Aventis, and Procter & Gamble. “Since Buffett is gradually transferring ownership of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Foundation, it will soon be the largest stakeholder of Coca-Cola and Kraft in the world”, the study notes.

The bias due to foundation’s investment in junk food companies is reflected in its grant pattern in the health sector. It has given just 3 percent of its grants for non-communicable diseases which experts feel are being fuelled by consumption of junk food, among other factors, coming from Coca Cola and McDonald. One such subsidiary bottles alcoholic beverages in Mexico. In fact, the foundation has given direct grants to Coca Cola subsidiaries that ‘encourage communities in developing countries to become business affiliates of Coca-Cola’. Melinda Gates has been projecting Coca Cola as an example to follow in promotion of global health.

Though a private foundation has the legal right to spend money however it wishes, researchers said, it is reasonable to subject the decision-making processes of such entities to public debate, particularly in an environment where private foundations influence the future direction of what programmess will be introduced into a foreign community.

A Super Cover-up on Superbug

2011-04-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, April 14, 2011

The easiest way of tackling the superbug problem is to use the notorious ostrich strategy which denies the existence of the problem: stop looking for these bugs, stop looking for the hidden resistance mechanisms and closing your eyes even if you find them.' These are not my words. This is what an editorial on NDM-1 written by a reputed Indian medical journal - Journal of Association of Physicians of India (JAPI) - had said one year ago, much before British researchers published their first study on NDM- 1 superbug in August 2010.

The editorial penned by Dr Abdul Ghafur, an infectious diseases expert from the Chennai-based Apollo Hospital, was almost prophetic. It also said: 'Indian medical community has to be ashamed of the NDM-1 gene. Even though we have not contributed to carbopenem (a frontline antibiotic) development, we have contributed a resistance gene with a glamorous name.' One year down the line, forget being ashamed of NDM-1, the Indian medical establishment is calling reports about presence of NDM-1 gene in Delhi's sewage as unscientific and attributing motives to researchers.

The JAPI editorial was triggered by the first report about discovery of NDM-1 in hospital patients, published in the same issue. Doctors at the P D Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre had found the rogue gene in 22 of 24 isolates collected in a short period of three months in 2009, and had described the situation as worrisome. They even warned that 'this may have adverse implications for medical tourism'.

NOBODY in the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the health ministry, corporate hospitals or electronic media even uttered a word. How will they? Nobody had perhaps heard of JAPI or NDM-1 or perhaps no one cares for Indian researchers or research published in Indian journals. Otherwise, why will ICMR - and the medical tourism industry - wait to react the way it has till NDM-1 was reported by British scientists in The Lancet Infectious Diseases .

The jingoism being displayed by the ICMR and the health ministry is unjustified and misplaced. It is not the job of the ICMR to protect the interest of an utterly commercial and highly unethical activity called medical tourism.Instead of initiating urgent research on antibiotic resistance and other pressing problems, the agency is indulging in a shameless cover- up operation which is unbecoming of a scientific agency.In my view, dubbing a study published in a highly respected and peer-reviewed medical journal as 'unscientific' is itself an unscientific act. In defence of his statement that the superbug does not exist in India, the ICMR head cited a study on antibiotic resistance which was conducted much before NDM- 1 was discovered. In the scientific world, this is like getting away with murder.

It's time ICMR wakes up and delivers what it is supposed to - promote biomedical research in line with national health priorities. Drug resistance is a national health priority. Medical tourism is not.

The ICMR's criticism of Lancet is hypocritical

The way The Lancet is being targeted by ICMR, the health ministry and an uninformed electronic media is hilarious.It was not The Lancet which published the study but an associated journal - The Lancet Infectious Diseases . The distinction is important because both journals have separate peer-review systems. In fact, The Lancet had rejected the first British paper on NDM-1- at the recommendation of reviewers which included an Indian microbiologist. After suitable changes, the paper was submitted to The Lancet Infectious Diseases which again subjected it to review and published it. The Lancet also regularly publishes comments and research papers by Indian authors.
Ironically, the most recent example of this is a comment co- authored by ICMR chief Dr V M Katoch (who is accusing the journal of bias) on the status of medical research in India. How can an eminent scientist display such double standards in public?

Antibiotic policy

THE government has finally announced an antibiotic policy. The policy is a result of recommendations made by a committee set up right after the superbug row erupted in August 2010 and has been announced within a week of the second British study. Still, the government does not want us to believe that the policy is a direct consequence of the NDM-1 expose by British scientists. If the government was serious about antibiotic resistance it would have reacted after the JAPI paper in March 2010. According to a 2010 report of market research firm Datamonitor, the market for high-end antibiotics in Indian hospitals is worth Rs 30.3 billion with an annual growth of 49.8 per cent. This only shows whose interests would be hurt most if we stop overuse of antibiotics.

Paying price for honest research

It is astonishing how far the Indian health establishment can go when it wants to cover up something. The superbug issue is a good example. The first study published by Dr Timothy Walsh and his team, in August 2010, had involved several Indian researchers mostly from medical colleges.

The health establishment not only issued a verbal gag order on them but also threatened them with punitive action. Karthikeyan K Kumarasamy of the Department of Microbiology in Dr A L M Post-Graduate Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Madras, and other Indian coauthors of the study were served ' show cause notices' on their collaborative research with British scientists. That's why Walsh did not involve any Indian collaborators in his second study on drinking water and sewage samples from Delhi.

When I asked about this, he said "When your Indian colleagues, who have also become your friends, are the subject of a vicious witch- hunt and threatened with their livelihoods and even jail we thought it would be prudent to do this study alone. The treatment of our Indian co-authors from the last study by the Indian authorities was disgraceful and highly unprofessional." The government is also targeting other experts doing antibiotic resistance work, even in private hospitals. They are either being offered membership of government committees or being asked to keep shut to avoid persecution.

Making a farce of green clearances

2011-04-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, April 13, 2011

In its zeal to grant environment clearance to power projects in fast track mode, the environment ministry seems to be ignoring even basic rules of the game. In total violation of norms, the ministry has allowed power companies to undertake environment impact assessment (EIA) of power projects in Sutlej basin in Himachal Pradesh.

In its last meeting, the Expert Appraisal Committee for River Valley and Hydroelectric Projects (EAC), which clears all hydro projects in the country, decided to allow Shimla-based ‘Forum of the Hydro Power Producers and other Stakeholders in Satluj Basin’ to conduct a cumulative EIA study for hydro powers projects in Sutlej Basin.

A large number of hydro power projects are coming up in the ecologically sensitive river basin. While 19 projects are already operational, an equal number are under various stages of allotment and investigation by the state electricity board. Another 19 are in the pipeline. Just three projects have been dropped on environmental grounds so far.

Cumulative EIA is supposed to recommend as to how much more hydropower capacity is viable in the basin. The environment ministry has entrusted this task to a developers’ body. Obviously, they cannot be expected to limit the number of projects they can develop. The Himachal Pradesh government, which has promoted the Forum, has already conveyed to the ministry that ‘there is no substantial evidence to put a moratorium on the hydel projects’ in the basin.

Members of the Forum include Jai Prakash Hydro Power Limited, Himachal Sorang Power Limited, Nuziveedu Seeds, Yangthang Power Ventures, National Thermal Power Corporation, Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam, Bhakra Beas Management Board and HP Power Corporation.

EIAs have to be conducted by independent experts and not project promoters themselves. Giving this task to companies which are engaged in constructing projects in the river basin constitutes clear ‘conflict of interest’, experts feel.

Former power secretary E A S Sarma said “EIA is meant to help the public consultation process to take place on the basis of an objective appraisal of costs, risks and benefits of any project for the local community. The study should not only be credible but also appear to be credible to the public. In the case Sutlej basin, it fulfills neither of these conditions”.

The decision, Sarma said, also shows “how biased and contemptuous the EAC is in dealing with the public consultation process”. In his opinion, “the EAC itself suffers from its own conflict of interest as some of those that form part of it are evidently prejudiced in favour of the project developers”. In fact, the last EAC chairman P Abraham had to resign following expose by Mail Today that he was on board of several power companies, constituting conflict of interest.

“This is complete farce of environment decision making”, said Himanshu Thakkar, an expert on water issues. “The Forum is essentially a body of the hydropower developers and they have a vested interest in pushing more hydropower projects in the basin. It cannot be expected to do a credible cumulative assessment”.

The issue has been raised with environment minister Jairam Ramesh. The EIA of Sutlej basin must be done by an independent body that has environment credentials and not be hydropower Forum which has no track record of taking independent position, pointed out a letter written by the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People to Ramesh.

The ministry should constitute an ‘independent, credible and multi-disciplinary’ group of experts to conduct the EIA, said Kulbhushan Upmanyu of Himalay Bachao Samiti. The exercise should identify zones that are geologically, ecologically, economically sensitive where developing a project would be not feasible or prove to be counterproductive.

Superbug now in Delhi's environment

2011-04-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, April 7, 2011

The infamous superbug named after the Indian capital, NDM-1, is back with a bang. This time around it has emerged as a greater danger. The antibiotic-resistant gene is no more restricted to hospitals, but has spread to the environment, a new study by British researchers revealed on Wednesday.

The New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM) 1 gene, which makes bacteria resistant to an array of antibiotics, has been found in open water pools, water from overflowing sewage and even a couple of drinking water samples, according to findings of the study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. An earlier study by the same group of researchers had found the gene in medical tourists who had been treated in Indian hospitals.

The water samples in which the superbug gene has been found come from water supplies which people use for drinking, washing and food preparation, the study pointed out. Most significant finding is the presence of this gene in bacteria - Shigella boydii and Vibrio cholerae - that cause dysentery and cholera respectively. This could make these bacteria drug resistant and make these diseases untreatable with available drugs. The gene was also found in 11 bacterial species in which it has not been previously found.

In all, 171 samples of seepage water and 50 public tap water samples were collected from sites within a 12 km radius of central New Delhi between September and October 2010. Samples were tested for the presence of the NDM-1 gene using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA probing. All bacteria isolated from the water samples were also tested for antibiotic susceptibility and examined for NDM-1.

The ability of this resistant gene to transfer to bacteria was examined at three different temperatures relevant to the Indian environment - 25°C, 30°C, and 37°C. The transfer rate (at which the NDM-1 gene is copied and transferred between different bacteria) was highest at 30°C.

The NDM-1 gene was found in two of the 50 drinking-water samples and 51 of 171 sewage and other water samples, said the study led by Timothy Walsh from Cardiff University. The water samples were collected – and visually documented – by a team of Channel 4 television. The water samples were transported to the UK where they were analysed. The current import-export rules do not require any government permission for exporting sewage water samples, researchers said. The study was funded by European Union, but it had no role in its design, data collection or interpretation.

The two positive drinking water samples were from designated public water supplies - one was taken from Ramesh Nagar and the other just south of the Red Fort. The NDM-1-positive sewage samples were collected from several places across the city including locations close to the Connaught Place. Positive samples were also collected close to the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Gole Market.

“NDM-1 is widely disseminated in New Delhi and has spread into key enteric pathogens”, the researchers warned. “Whether this data can be extrapolated to other Indian cities is unknown, but clearly there is an urgent need for broad epidemiological and environmental studies”.

After the publication of the first paper by the British group – which linked NDM-1 to medical tourists who had visited India - last year, the Indian medical tourism industry as well as the government went into a denial mode. The health ministry set up an expert group to work out a antibiotic policy, but it is yet to see light of the day.

“The problem of antibiotic resistance is significant but the situation is not yet grave as far as NDM-1 is concerned. If proper measures are taken and a stringent antibiotic policy is enforced, we can control the situation”, said Dr Mohd Shahid, a medical microbiologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, Aligarh.

In search of geeks in banana republic

2011-04-03T04:34:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, April 3,2011

The high growth trajectory of Indian economy is attracting not only foreign investors, multinational corporations and observers from the Western world but also attention of a plethora of writers and journalists. Whoever has had a brief posting in India or has any remote connection with the country wants to write a book on contemporary India and its place in the emerging world. Subjects covered by such books are wide ranging, from travel to technology. Some indeed are scholarly works – well researched and thought provoking. But, unfortunately, many recent books on India penned by foreign writers do not fall in this category. They are impressionistic, half-baked, ill-researched and factually incorrect accounts of different facets of this country. Angela Saini’s book belongs to this growing genre.

The title of the book, blurbs and publicity material all are provocative. The author declares upfront that she is a geek, her father – who left India in the 1960s – is a geek, and ‘wherever in the world we live, Indians and people of Indian origin are famous for being swots, nerds, dweebs, boffins and dorks’. The declared objective of her project was to find out why. It appears to be a grand mission, which took her to the rocket launching station at Thumba, forensic labs in Mumbai and Gandhinagar, Sanskrit research centers in Melkote and Mysore, hill station Lavasa and of course, IIT Delhi.

The geek presence is all pervasive in the book – space scientist U R Rao is a geek, India’s most celebrated chemist C N R Rao is a geek, N R Narayanamurthy of Infosys is a geek, Vineeta Dixit (an official in the Ministry of IT) is a geek, wipro engineer Gopal Krishna working in Lavasa is a geek. In IIT Delhi, she had to look hard to find one. All those who attended the opening of the 97th Indian Science Congress session in Thiruvananthapuram were geeks. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, according to Saini, was a geek. Talking of Nehru, the author says, the e-governance initiative of Chandrababu Naidu in 1999 was ‘reminiscent of Jawaharlal Nehru’s funding of India’s space programme more than thirty years earlier’.

In most of the chapters, readers can get a true flavour of the places the author visited or what she ate. I was floored by her description of Lavasa – about which she came to know (predictably) through an advert in an inflight magazine. She says ‘and here in the middle of the Western Ghats, in what can reasonably be called nowhere, I descend into a steep valley and find myself in one of the most advanced cities on earth’. She found the hill station to be ‘a geek’s paradise. And not only will the geeks live here, the geeks will rule’. Perhaps Lavasa should start marketing itself as the Geek’s Kingdom.

Talking of government ministries in Delhi, Saini says ‘Indian civil servants are famous for turning up to the office only a little before midday, taking long lunch breaks, and knocking off at about four’. She found Mumbai people louder than people in other cities, ‘as though they are all living through an audition for a film part’. She also found the Maharashtra capital to be ‘a city synonymous with slums, gangsters and terrorism’. A few pages later, she changes her opinion and while talking of her visit to Gandhinagar, and notes ‘Like Mumbai, Gujarat is a scientifically forward thinking place’. Why? because ‘state officials opened a Science City theme park on an empty plot of land’ in Ahmendabad. In Bangalore, the Hosur Road Elevated Expressway made her feel ‘as if I have arrived in Hollywood. It’s comfortably high enough above the dirty mess of the garment factories and wooden shacks below’. Isn’t India a geeky country, it can surprise you anywhere.

A visit to a couple of IT companies, three or four research labs (including one on forensic science) and an educational campus makes Saini come to this profound conclusion: ‘outside the ivory towers of a few universities, the offices of biggest IT companies and the best research laboratories, some parts of India can be as confusing and lawless as any banana republic’. How is this ‘banana republic’ taking over the world in science and technology? May be other authors will have to explore this question. As for this book it is it makes eminently dispensable reading.

(A review of Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World by Angela Saini)

Public policy in the shadow of charity

2011-03-31T01:38:00.001-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, March 31, 2011

The cacophony of public relations surrounding the visit of the three trustees of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffet - has died down.

It is time now for a reality check. India is on the priority list for the world's largest private grant-making charity. A search for keyword 'India' on its website throws up 1336 results - of which 57 relate to grants and ongoing projects. In comparison, search for 'China' yields just 117 results.

The size of the projects in India ranges from about 50,000 dollars to 20 million dollars. A bulk of this mega funding is going for work related to new vaccines, technologies and approaches to disease control and prevention. All the funding is routed through a bunch of US-based organisations like the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), World Bank and a few universities (Columbia, John Hopkins, American). Gates' grants come attached with strings, making demands on sovereign governments to change their public policies.

Let's see how this is happening. The Foundation selects diseases as well partners to be funded. This selection process is not transparent and is handled not by epidemiologists (so it is not based on dominant disease patterns) but by people who were previously employed with management consultancies and drug companies.

By selecting a disease, a technology to tackle it (vaccine, drug, implant), commercial partner (drug and vaccine makers) and target group for the intervention, the Foundation is effectively making key policy decisions about a country's health programmes.

For instance, Gates wants India to use a vaccine for diarrhea and is rooting for newly developed vaccine product. Is it not for India's health ministry to decide whether it wants to tackle diarrhea through a technological fix - a vaccine - or through public health approach of providing clean water and sanitation? Not only that, Gates is using recipient countries like India to test new vaccines, drugs and approaches. Field trials on social acceptance of HPV vaccine is an example. He is also pushing a costly and controversial pentavlent vaccine, which multinational pharma companies have been lobbying for a long time.

He is even funding a market research study to assess 'willingness (of the poor) to pay' for oral rehydration salts (ORS)! It is amazing how Gates has surreptitiously become a part of India's formal public health policy making apparatus as well.

His nominees "advise the Minister of Health and Family Welfare and senior officials of the Ministry on strategies to achieve key objectives" of the UPA's flagship programme - the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). They are member of a so-called International Advisory Panel which itself was born as a result of a grant of $661,244 Gates gave to Columbia University. One of the foundation's largest recipients is the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) - which is charged with developing public health capacity in the country. It has received grants totaling a whopping $33 million. And Gates got three seats on policy making body of PHFI. Now this number is reduced to two, as one of the Gates nominees Rajat Gupta had to resign from both PHFI and Gates Foundation following charges of insider trading in the US.

The Gates charity is by no means a benign giver, but is an ambitious attempt to create a global health governance system which promotes big pharma and which is accountable to none.

The arrogance of India's nuclear leaders

2011-03-17T02:37:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, March 17, 2011

It is often said that a crisis brings out the best in people. The meltdown in Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan should do the same. But, in my experience, every time there a crisis like this or doubts cast over sustainability or viability of nuclear power anywhere in the world, it tends to bring out the worst in leaders of the Indian nuclear establishment.

Therefore I was not surprised when Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Srikumar Banerjee made a farfetched statement in Mumbai that the EPR - the type of imported nuclear reactors to be installed at Jaitapur - is so safe that even if an aircraft crashed into it, it would remain intact. I have heard even more bizarre statements from Banerjee's worthy predecessors at AEC. Soon after the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, doubts were raised about the safety of Indian nuclear reactors. The Kaiga power plant was at the stage Jaitapur is today. There were protests by local groups and activists in Karnataka and to douse those fires the then AEC chairman came to Bangalore and delivered a talk at the Indian Institute of Science.

When confronted about possible effects of radiation leakage from power plants in case of an accident, he looked at me angrily and said "don't think that people are going to die like flies". The questions about safety cropped up once again in the wake of the massive earthquake at Killari (Latur) in September 1993.

This presented another opportunity to discuss the safety of Indian nuclear plants. The first reactor of the Kakrapar nuclear power station was in the final stage of going critical. Asked about its safety from possible earthquakes, the AEC boss - this time with a smile on his face - said, "if you happen to be near a nuclear power plant in the event of an earthquake, you should rush and take shelter inside the plant because our plants are 100 per cent earthquake resistant!" Such statements make one conclude that all this is nothing but nuclear bravado and reflects the attitude of the atomic energy establishment which borders on arrogance.

Accidents in risky industries like nuclear and space are not uncommon.They provide an opportunity to those engaged in it to better themselves and induct greater safety.
However, unlike the space industry where the damage is limited in case of a mishap or failure, nuclear accidents pose far greater dangers as we have seen in the case of Chernobyl and are seeing at Fukushima.

Nuclear is the only form of producing electricity where the inherent dangers are so large and long lasting. One has never heard of an explosion in a thermal power plant, a leakage in a solar plant or a meltdown in a hydel power station. The regulatory and safety costs as well as risks involved in nuclear business are extremely high. Let's go back and rework our energy needs and policies to meet them.

The story of nuclear power in India has been a sorry tale so far. Nearly four decades after commercial nuclear power production began in the country, nuclear power contributes less than 3 per cent of the total installed capacity.
Power from renewable sources - wind, solar and biomass - which began contributing to the grid much later makes up for an impressive 7 per cent of the installed capacity. What is intriguing is that though installed capacity of nuclear power has been rising marginally in the past one decade, actual production of electricity from this source has been falling. Installed capacity of nuclear in 2001-2002 was 2720 MW, which rose to 4340 MW in 2009-2010.

Logically, electricity production should have gone up in the same proportion. Power generation measured in terms of million units produced per MW has fallen from 7.16 in 2001-02 to 4.29 in 2009-10. The generation per MW installed capacity has been reducing every year since then.

"Someone needs to explain why this is happening", says Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, who has compiled the data from records kept by the Central Electricity Authority.

He also points out that power generation from nuclear stations constituted 2.38 percent of total generation in 2009-10 - just a fraction of the transmission and distribution losses. This means India could do without any investments in nuclear power if it could cut down its power loss by just a tiny bit.

Economic growth no guarantee of reducing malnutrition

2011-03-10T04:36:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, March 10, 2011

High economic growth seen in India is not automatically translating into reduction of malnutrition among Indian children. Only direct investments in nutrition and preventive health could perhaps result in improvement of nutrition status of children.

These are the conclusions of a study conducted by researchers from the Schools of Public Health at University of Michigan and Harvard University, published in journal PLoS Medicine on Tuesday.

The findings are based on an analysis of data from three National Family Health Surveys conducted between 1992 and 2006, by the Ministry of Health, covering over 23,000 children.

While the Indian economy grew at an annual rate ranging from 7 to 9 percent during this period, nutrition status did not change drastically. The prevalence of underweight decreased from 49.1 percent in 1992-93 to 43.8 percent in 1998-99 to 40.2 percent in 2005-06. Stunting prevalence decreased while the prevalence of wasting decreased only marginally from 24 percent in 1992-93 to 22 percent in 2005-06.

Both economic growth and nutrition indictors varied substantially among states enabling researchers to examine if economic growth was associated with a reduction in the risk of a child being undernourished in a given state. It was found that a state’s economic growth was not associated with reducing the risk of underweight, stunting, and wasting. Haryana and Meghalaya exhibited the highest rates of growth yet experienced high levels of undernutrition.

“We failed to find consistent evidence that economic growth leads to reduction in childhood undernutrition in India”, pointed out the study led by Malavika Subramanyam.

Researchers said there could be several reasons for this disconnect between growth and nutrition status of children. It is possible that economic growth may have benefited only the privileged sections of society translating into higher incomes among the better-off but not among the disadvantaged.

Secondly, it has been seen that direct investment in preventive programmes could lead to improved nutritional status even in the absence of economic growth. The pulse polio campaign was one such intervention, which encouraged parents to bring their children to health centres and seek government’s nutrition programmes and other health services.

Yet another explanation could be that economic growth over a 13-year period was not be sufficient to overcome the impact of intergenerational factors, such as the long-term and short-term nutritional status of mothers on the risk of undernutrition among children, the study said. In any case, direct investments in health programmes pay higher dividends.

From Unicef to Nestle, with love

2011-03-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, March 3, 2011

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has just released a glossy report on the state of the world's children. Senior officials of the UN body made the right noises about children, the need to improve their nutritional status and so on, at media dos in several important capitals across the globe.

At a similar occasion a couple of years ago, Ann Veneman - who was Executive Director of the agency till April 2010 - had articulated Unicef's position on how exclusive breastfeeding for toddlers is critical to combat hunger and promote child survival. Post-retirement the UN official has undergone a change of mind.

She will now be on the board of a company which has been accused of subverting efforts to promote breastfeeding by flouting laws in order to market its formula foods. Yes, Veneman is joining the Board of Directors of Switzerland-based food giant - Nestle

Veneman's transition from advocating nutrition and health to the board room of a multinational food company has been rather smooth, but has shocked health advocates all over.

It is nothing short of a coup for the food industry which is increasingly under attack for promoting unhealthy snacking and eating habits among children.

Veneman has had an 'illustrious' past.In 2005, when she was appointed to the top post in Unicef, not everyone was comfortable because of her past connections with agrobusiness as secretary of agriculture in the Bush Administration.

" Veneman's promotion by the Bush Administration - Unicef is traditionally headed by an American - was greeted with concerns by some grassroots activists because of her good relations with big business and her limited experience in child welfare issues", medical journal The Lancet had noted in 2006.

While at the UN body, Veneman consciously emphasised the use of ready- touse foods as a strategy to counter malnutrition.

As per her own admission made a few months before her term ended, " Unicef has significantly contributed to accelerating the use of ready- to- use therapeutic foods for treatment of acute malnutrition, with Unicef purchases of the product increasing from 100 metric tons in 2003 to over 11,000 metric tons in 2008". Veneman's appointment is part of the trend which has seen junk food makers trying to position themselves as marketers of healthy and nutritious foods.

A few years back PepsiCo appointed Derek Yach, former Executive Director of non- communicable diseases at the World Health Organisation ( WHO), as its head of health and nutrition policies.

Yach frequently writes or coauthors review articles and comments in medical journals, pushing the industry point of view. Such articles are then cited to influence policy makers.

PepsiCo got the head of cardiovascular diseases at Centre for Disease Control ( CDC) - a US government arm - to head its own division on heart health. By appointing people connected with top health bodies, these companies want to portray themselves as part of the solution and not problem, and also want to influence policy making in health and nutrition.

At this rate, the day is not far off when junk food makers will position themselves as ' health and nutrition research' outfits and start dictating national health policies.

Abolish Space Commission

2011-02-21T05:16:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, February 21, 2011

The government may feel that it has been successful in silencing its critics over the Antrix-Devas affair by taking steps to annul the controversial transponder deal signed by the commercial arm of the country's top space agency and a firm floated by some of its former scientists. But the story is far from over. The government action is just half a step, a firefighting measure. There appears to be no willingness to look at the root of the problem and address it. The problem lies in the way our scientific establishments are governed.

On paper, the space establishment presents a picture of perfect governance. At the top is the Space Commission - supposedly a policy making body. Then comes the Department of Space (DoS), which is the executive wing of the government looking after space. Under this department functions the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which is responsible for running the space programme. ISRO's commercial arm is Antrix.

In practice, the system is not so perfect. All powers reside in the hands of just one individual who is the Chairman of the Space Commission, ISRO and Antrix, besides being secretary of DoS. That's why it sounds absurd when the government says the decision was taken at the level of the Antrix board and the Space Commission and the DoS were kept in dark.

G. Madhavan Nair - better known as the hero of the moon mission - headed all the four organisations between September 2003 and October 2009. As Chairman of Antrix, Nair was party to the agreement the company signed with Devas, as Chairman of the Space Commission he gave the nod to design and development of the satellite that was needed for Devas, got the cabinet approval for the same in his capacity as secretary of DoS and finally as Chairman of ISRO led the design and development of the satellite at the space agency.

He must have actually signed files relating to Devas at each of the four agencies he headed. Not just this, top bureaucrats ( including Cabinet Secretary, National Security Advisor and Finance Secretary) who are members of the Space Commission are to be blamed because they approved the launch of a satellite without asking how its transponders are going to be used.

Right now, there are no signs of any major systemic changes. All that the government plans is to have a separate Chairman for Antrix. This won't help much. We need to abolish the Space Commission and similar archaic structures existing in the atomic energy establishment. Some of these structures have become parking lots for never- retiring scientists and bureaucrats.

Only a thorough cleansing of the system at the top can make our scientific establishments robust and responsive. Too many scientific agencies and multiple committees don't necessarily translate into good science.

SC asks food regulator to remove industry reps from scientific panels

2011-02-09T02:24:00.000-08:00

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)has been finally made to cleanse itself and remove food industry representatives from its panels. The Supreme Court on Tuesday (February 8, 2011), asked the authority to reconstitute its scientific panels and remove all industry representatives. The SC directive comes in an ongoing public interest litigation in which the Mail Today report - which exposed the body's nexus with food industry - was cited by the petitioners.

Indian banks lax on data security and privacy

2011-02-08T01:20:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, February 8, 2011

The next time around you swipe your debit card at a petrol bunk, use a credit card to buy a movie ticket or pay a bill online, do it at your own risk. A new security survey of Indian banks has revealed that many banks are not following even basic measures to ensure card security or protect your personal information.

The survey has found that banks in India are lagging in security of cards transactions. “Against the backdrop of well known global cases of card breaches, it is surprising to note that basic measures for ensuring card security have not been adopted by many of the banks”, points out the survey done by the Data Security Council of India and KPMG, under the aegis of CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team), cyber security wing of the Ministry of Information Technology.

In all, 20 public sector, private and foreign banks were surveyed and their chief information security officers (CISOs) were interviewed for the study.

Banks are still following highly risky practices such as storing and printing authorization information like CVV and expiry date and non masking of card numbers. Merchants are allowed to create card records in plain text. All such practices followed by banks are “non-conformant to globally accepted practices for card security”, the survey report says.

Most banks have put in place security provisions such as SMS alert, separate transaction password and virtual keyboard for online banking, but this is not enough. They are still not introducing features that will make card transactions secure such as as One-Time-Password (dynamic token), identity grid and risk based authentication, according to the study.

Such additional security features are necessary because in an electronic card payment system, data is directly accessed and processed by customers, service providers as well as other partner institutions. While all an integrated environment like this has made banking experience smooth for customers but it has introduced a new gamut of risks.

The survey says that while most banks enforce basic ‘hygiene factors’ like enforcement of password policy, password change at first login, account lockout and session timeout, some of them do not enforce expiry of password after stipulated time. Technology systems in 37 percent of surveyed banks require download of external applications or mobile code – which increases vulnerabilities. Most CISOs interviewed felt that managing security of online banking remained challenging task.

When it comes to privacy of customer data, the scenario is worse. Though the IT (Amendment) Act, 2008 makes privacy of data, but concrete systems fore customers’ privacy protection are yet to be implemented by many banks, the study says.
Almost 80 percent of the banks surveyed did not have a separate privacy function. In 75 percent of the banks, security teams consisted of less than 10 people and in 80 percent of the banks no separate privacy teams existed.

Survey results indicate that banks are constantly being exposed to sophisticated, organized and financially motivated threats and customers are being targeted through phishing, vishing, smishing attacks. Yet banks don’t have mechanism in place to track frauds and continue to largely depend on incidents being reported by customers and employees.

Internal management systems of banks are also not fully geared for the digital age. “Information security has no or minimal role in fraud management. The silo in the security and fraud management role would lead to a significant gap in banks effort to curb financial frauds as security compromises are seen as a tool for committing financial frauds”, the study says. Information security is still seen as an IT centric function, in contrast to global trend of positioning security as an important corporate function.

The only silver lining, according to the study, is that most banks have in place appropriate protocols to ensure security of payment gateways. Banks also encrypt card number and other confidential data during storage and transit.

“The significance of data protection and privacy has been underscored in the IT Act, but understanding of this issue in many banks is still lacking”, said Dr Kamlesh Bajaj, chief executive officer of DSCI. “Banks also need to understand the key role chief information security officers should be made to play in their overall business strategies”.

Lack of adequate security and data protection measures can make customers vulnerable to attacks from fraudsters and cause result in hacking or misuse of their bank and credit card accounts.

The survey reveals that banks do not feel constrained due to inadequate budgets or technical skills for information security. But they seem to be neglecting security issues due to “increasing omnipresence of banking services and endeavor to enhance customer experience”, the report notes.

Banks must align internal policies, procedures and deploy technology safeguards for protecting sensitive personal information, it is suggested. Survey results reveal that understanding of data privacy in the banking sector is growing with over half of the respondents being aware of privacy principles and roles and entities for data protection. However, data privacy has not yet fully permeated in the banking sector.

Implementation of specific measures like formulation of privacy policies, privacy impact assessments and embedding of data privacy in business processes have not gained significant traction, the report pointed out.
With customer base of banks growing, the study says, it is the responsibility of banks to make consumers aware of security issues. Some banks have launched media campaigns, but more needs to be done.

Food giants target adolescent girls in garb of 'nutrition education'

2011-02-07T00:11:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, February 6, 2011

Food giants are surreptitiously using public-funded education system to promote commercial brands and encourage consumption of unhealthy foods in the name of ‘nutrition education’, a group of health experts has warned.

“Collaborations of food multinationals with public funded educational institutes to educate girls and women about food and nutrition is a ploy to exploit them for commercial gains”, points out Alliance Against Conflict of Interest in a letter written to HRD minister Kapil Sibal.

The group has asked the minister to issue new guidance to make collaborations between food companies and educational institutions illegal. Such a directive could be issued under the National Council for Higher Education and Research.

A recent case of Nestle signing agreements with a string of agricultural universities to take up programmes for “creating health and nutrition awareness of village women and girls in government schools in rural areas”, has prompted the Alliance to take up the issue with the government.

“We strongly believe that commercial entities like Nestle exploit such partnerships to promote their image and brands, which includes artificial milk, and snacks as fast foods”, the letter said.

The intent to target adolescent girls in India for commercial gains has been expressed publically by the Vice President of public affairs of Nestlé in a meeting in London in May 2010, according to letter.

The letter quotes the official as saying “this is important to us because it's consumer demand of demanding better nutrition products that's going to make us a successful business. …now we’ve started a programme to educate teenage girls on good nutrition before they get married and become pregnant, because that's where we think we have to start, really - before the woman even becomes pregnant. So we strongly believe in the power of education.”

The MoU between Nestle and Indian public sector universities is reprehensible as Nestle is facing a criminal case in India for violation of the Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, said Dr Arun Gupta, convener of the alliance and head of the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India.

Nestle’s is not the sole case. PepsiCo has signed deal with the Indian Medical Association for school health promotion programmes. IMA is also endorsing some products of the company, despite the Medical Council of India terming it unethical. Globally, food companies are trying to associate with medical bodies to build an image of their products being healthy.

Radio tags are meant for wild cats

2011-02-03T01:27:00.001-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, February 3, 2011

Ankle bracelets have always been part of traditional ensemble of fashion accessories for Indian women. The immigration and customs enforcement wing of the US Department of Homeland Security, however, seem to have found a new use for a modern version of such bracelets - Indian victims of a fraudulent university.
The American authorities call them ankle monitors and portray them as a benign monitoring device. One can argue that it is not just criminals or offenders who are made to wear an ankle monitor.

One US official in Hyderabad seems to think they are even trendy. After all, a celebrity like Lindsay Lohan wore it. So did Andy Dick and Michelle Rodriguez. Well, what they wore were SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor) bracelets - an alcohol monitoring device - at the direction of trial courts. This gizmo takes random samples of your perspiration at least once an hour, analyses for the presence of alcohol and transmits the results to authorities over the internet or via a wireless phone. Radio collars or GPS monitors - which Indian students have been tagged with - work on the same principle.

They monitor your movements and transit the information to authorities via satellite or a wireless network. One can say these are compact, civilised versions of antennas popping up from heads of aliens often portrayed in old comic books.

The use of radio collars is not new in India as well, but not in humans. Our wildlife researchers have used this tool to track tigers in Sundarbans who often stray into Bangaldeshi side of the wildlife sanctuary.

Elephants are being radio collared in Karnataka to study their movements so that a solution could be found to their conflicts with humans. Radio collars have been fitted on rhinos in Assam to combat their poaching.

Elsewhere birds and marine animals too have been similarly tagged. This technique helps researchers get an insight into population dynamics, dietary habits, range size etc and use this information to prepare management and conservation plans for different species.

American authorities would have us believe that the use of ankle monitors is "widespread across the US and (is part of) standard procedure for a variety of investigations". This is far from the truth. The use of radiocollars is very new in the US and is restricted to petty criminals, sex offenders and parolees.

It is still being tested as an alternative to keeping minor offenders in prisons because of the high cost of detention and correction involved. Criminals or convicts are made to wear it only with the permission of courts. There are offenders who are sentenced to spend their weekends in jails. Some American states are conducting trials if such ' weekenders' can be allowed to spend time at their homes with ankle monitors on.

In Germany, a small trial of ankle monitors began only a few months ago.

All this makes one wonder if radio collaring of Indian students in California is also part of a trial being conducted to test its efficacy in tracking aliens.

Conditional clearance is license to violate green laws

2011-02-01T00:10:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, February 1, 2011

Going by his pronouncements on all important issues relating to environment Jairam Ramesh may appear to be a pro-active environment minister, but he has failed to bring about any systemic changes in environmental governance in the country.

In fact, he has introduced an element of subjectivity and uncertainty by popping up a so-called ‘yes, but’ category for granting environmental clearances to various development and infrastructure projects. This new category denotes clearances granted with number of conditions that project developers are supposed to comply.

While granting such clearances, Ramesh has often cited non-environmental reasons such as economic growth, development, strategic interests and need for more power and infrastructure. While pursuing this ‘pragmatic’ stance, the minister is almost giving hints that environment laws can take backseat in such cases. Clearance to Posco is a clear signal that he is willing to accommodate and be ‘investor-friendly’. By doing so, he is compromising on his basic job as environment minister – protecting the environment and ensuring compliance with environmental laws.

The ‘conditional clearance’ approach is dangerous on other counts as well. The environment ministry neither has requisite mechanism nor will to enforce compliance with conditions it lays down, if past experience is any indication. It has not taken any action even in cases where violations have been brought to its notice. This is despite the fact that the ministry has sweeping powers under the Environment Protection Act, 1986 to stop work on a project if environment clearance is being violated.

Every project developer is supposed to send a compliance report to the ministry every six months. Officers from the ministry’s regional offices are also required to visit project sites to see if all the conditions are being complied with. But this mechanism exists only on paper. The Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh was cleared in October 2005, but a RTI query in 2010 revealed that not a single compliance report was sent to the ministry nor did the ministry ask for any.

In many cases, there are repeated and wilful violations yet the ministry does not act, pointed out Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.

“We have brought to the notice of the ministry serious violations in several hydroelectric projects, but no action has been taken”, Thakkar said. On Monday, the South Asian Network sent photographic evidence of violations in four projects in the Sutlej basin, including the 1500 MW Nathpa Jakhri Hydroelectric project, to the ministry. These pictures muck dumping in Sutlej and non-release of water in violation of all environmental norms. Such action, it is feared, could adversely affect downstream projects like the Bhakra dam.

While no systemic changes have been brought about in environment clearance process under Ramesh, his leadership at the Paryavaran Bhawan has brought some fresh air after nearly ten year rule by DMK politicians at the ministry. Unlike his predecessors, Ramesh is open, accessible and willing to engage with civil society and environmental groups on all issues.

Gujarat protecting medical don

2011-02-01T00:08:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, January 31, 2011

In bizarre twist to the corruption story of tainted doctor Ketan Desai, the Gujarat Medical Council (GMC) has refused to strip him of his license to practice medicine as directed by the Medical Council of India (MCI) in October last year.

The state council has leaned upon ‘legal opinion’ given by former chief justice of India A M Ahmadi to arrive at its decision. It on Saturday conveyed the decision to Kolkata-based patient rights group, People for Better Treatment (PBT), upon whose complaint MCI had cancelled Desai’s license pending full enquiry.

Desai, who was also GMC President, had resigned from the post after he was caught red handed while accepting a bribe of Rupees two crore from management of a medical college in Patiala. Subsequently he was also dismissed from the government medical college where he was working as a professor. PBT had filed a complaint with GMC against misconduct by Desai in May last year. When the state council did not act against him, a complaint was filed with MCI which in October decided to cancel Desai’s license. This decision prevented Desai from taking over as President of the World Medical Association.

But apparently, GMC does not believe in supremacy of MCI in this matter. It hired the services of Ahmadi and got his legal opinion, according to which MCI can not be an appellate authority against a state medical council and has no right to cancel license of a doctor registered in a state. “MCI would become authorized to remove the name of any medical practitioner from the Indian Medical Register only upon the removal of the name of the said medical practitioner from the State Medical Register on account of a decision by the concerned state medical council”, GMC has pointed out in its resolution.

Clauses 8.7 and 8.8 of MCI’s professional conduct rules – under which action was taken against Desai by MCI - empower the central council to be appellate body. These provisions were specifically added to the rules in 2004 after the Supreme Court directed the government to do so while hearing a PIL filed by PBT. MCI had acted as an appellate body and heard many complaints against state councils even when Desai was its President.

Section 8.7 says that state medical council must complete investigation against errant docs within six months after which a complainant may appeal to MCI for transfer of the case. Section 8.8 states that one can appeal to the MCI against the decision taken by a state medical council.

Jairam must take a call on bt brinjal

2011-01-20T03:08:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, January 20, 2011

While announcing the moratorium on bt brinjal a year ago environment minister Jairam Ramesh had said it would remain in force till independent scientific studies establish safety of its long-term use on human health and environment.

No new studies have been initiated till now. But independent analysis of data submitted by Mahyco to the regulator has raised new questions. First it was Dr David Andow of University of Minnesota who had pointed holes in environment risk assessment data submitted by Mahyco. Now Dr Lou Gallagher has done the same with toxicity issues. She has pointed out that the toxicity data is full of holes, inconsistencies and conclusions that do not match raw data.

Sets of ten male and female rats were fed with powder of Bt brinjal mixed with vegetable oil for 90 days (they could not have been fed baigan bharta!). This study, according to evaluation of raw data by Gallagher, revealed signs of inflammation, allergy, tissue injury, liver damage, reproductive toxicity and chronic infection and even blood cancer.

Neurological functions, behavioral effects, reproductive performance and biological resilience were not even tested. Yet Mahyco concluded that Bt brinjal produced no toxicity and was safe for human consumption.

In contrast, six science academies have cleared Bt brijal for human consumption - like an ostrich - even in their revised report released recently. Now Jairam has to make a choice - between two independent reports and one white washed version of plagiarised report of Indian academies. Don't think it is going to be tough for him.

This also exposes how our regulators work. Many years ago a medical expert familiar with drug approval procedures narrated to me how easy it was to get new drugs approved in India.

Companies are supposed to conduct animal studies and human clinical trials which generates huge amounts of data, based on which the drug controller takes a decision. But many times, the expert said, companies submit old dossiers with just a few new pages on the top because they know that nobody had time or expertise in the government to review raw data.

Now it seems the same practice is being followed for approval of genetically modified (GM) food crops. The biotechnology regulator accepted company data without a rigorous peer review and gave its goahead.

Everyone else - including six hallowed science academies - accepted this as Gospel truth. It is a pity that no Indian scientist cared to examine raw data - available on the website of environment ministry - before issuing ' safety certificates' to Bt brinjal. This amounts to scientific treachery of the highest order. One wonders how can scientists - who swear by truth and experimental evidence - can be so blind to stark reality.

Meanwhile, have a suggestion for disposal of Bt brinjal seed stocks - feed them to rats and surely rats would die given the sickness they developed on a miniscule dose. At least this way, Bt brinjal will help in pest control.

Stretching rubber to make it GM

Genetically modified crops have put Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh in a tight spot. Currently, the regulatory authority works under his ministry so what he says carries weight. While putting bt brinjal on hold, he had made it clear that the moratorium was specific to this case and that he was not opposed to GM technology as such. So, when the issue of field trial of GM rubber in Kerala came up, he declared that he was not opposed to it.

The GM rubber is being developed to spread rubber cultivation to regions beyond Kerala by making it drought resistant. Ramesh has declared that this rubber is actually not transgenic – as it does not carry any gene from unrelated species (bt brinjal has a gene from a soil bacteria) but just has additional copy of a gene from rubber plant itself.

However, those opposed to introduction of GM rubber have countered the minister by pointing out that though the gene – MnSOD – is a rubber gene, the ‘gene construct’ (functional unit necessary to make the gene work) introduced in GM rubber is transgenic. It contains ‘Cauliflower Mosaic virus V35S’ as a promoter, an antibiotic resistance marker called Neomycin Phosphotransferase and a reporter gene from bacteria E.Coli. Introducing genetic material from viruses and bacteria into a plant makes it transgenic.

Moreover, it has been pointed out that genetically engineered drought-tolerance could have unpredictable and unwanted effects on other traits like yield and quality. The Rubber Board, which has backed the research effort, however, claims that both the foreign genes used in the gene construct are used extensively in several GM crops including edible crops and ‘no adverse effects have been reported so far’. Only time will tell if this is a case of another research dossier being cooked up.

Mahyco’s own data shows bt brinjal is toxic

2011-01-17T02:21:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, January 17, 2011

The consumption of genetically modified brinjal can make you sick. If eaten regularly, it can adversely hit immune response of the body, cause liver damage and lead to reproductive disorders.

This has emerged from toxicity studies done by Mahyco in rats fed on bt brinjal for upto 90 days, but the company either suppressed these facts or misrepresented them while submitting data to the regulator - Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC). Based on this data, GEAC approved commercial release of bt brinjal but the approval was subsequently put on hold by environment minister Jairam Ramesh in February 2010. The moratorium remains in force till now.

An analysis of publicly available raw research data done by an independent expert has now revealed that major health problems arising in test animals were deliberately ignored and standard research protocols set by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) were not followed.

Mahyco had concluded that there were no health effects of bt brinjal and that it was fit for human consumption – which was readily accepted by the regulator without any questions. But a close scrutiny of the same data has revealed “serious indications that the consumption of bt brinjal can cause inflammation, reproductive disorders and liver damage”.

The analysis was done by Dr Lou Gallagher – an epidemiologist from New Zealand – at the request of Aruna Rodrigues who is the chief petitioner in the ongoing case on GM foods in the Supreme Court. Gallagher’s analysis is also in response to the call for independent studies on “the safety of bt brinjal from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment”, given by Ramesh when he imposed the moratorium on bt brinjal. The study was supported by GEKKO Foundation, Hamburg and Testbiotech.

The raw data shows that rats fed with Bt brinjal experienced “organ and system damage and had ovaries at half their normal weight, enlarged spleens with white blood cell counts at 35 to 40 percent higher than normal with elevated eosinophils, indicating immune function changes.” Toxic effects to the liver were seen in the form of elevated bilirubin.

Mahyco did not accurately summarise its results and most important, ignored toxic effects seen in rats. “The text (in Mahyco study) does not match data”, she said. For instance, while significant changes in both ovarian and spleen weights for the female rats fed Bt brinjal have been listed in Table 6 of the 90‐day report, yet the conclusion says “no alterations in the absolute and relative organ weights of rats treated at 1000 mg/kg [were found]”.

In addition, DBT protocols were flouted. In one of the trials, exposure days were reduced by 29 percent while in another, only three animals were tested per dose group as against 10 prescribed in protocols. On the other hand, the number of healthy rats used for comparison was arbitrarily hiked to three times the prescribed limit. Similarly, there is no clarity on concentration of toxic protein in dried brinjal powder fed to rates. “Every departure (from DBT protocols) has resulted in lower standards being used, with less power to detect changes in rats eating Bt brinjal,” the report says.

This is the second independent report on bt brinjal. The first one – done by Dr David Andow of University of Minnesota – had pointed to holes in environment risk assessment (ERA) data submitted by Mahyco. In contrast, six science academies have cleared bt brijal for human consumption without bothering to look at the raw data generated the company itself.

“Release of Bt brinjal for human consumption cannot be recommended given the current evidence of toxicity to rats in just 90 days and the studies' serious departures from normal scientific standards”, the report has concluded.

Universal healthcare system proposed for India

2011-01-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, January 12, 2011

Given the poor state of India’s healthcare, a universal system that ensures cash-free and accessible healthcare for all in another ten years may almost sound like a dream. But a group of public health leaders put together by medical journal The Lancet feels this is possible and has proposed a blueprint to achieve this ambitious goal.

At present, Indian health system is one of the most fragmented and comercialised systems in the world. The government spends less than one percent of the GDP on health. A bulk of the health-related expenditure – 78 percent – is spent by people themselves. This is one of the highest rates of ‘out of pocket’ expenditures on health in the world. The money spent on healthcare is pushing 39 million Indians below the poverty line every year.

“Yes, the goal of a universal healthcare system is ambitious but achievable”, said Dr K Srinath Reddy, who lead the team of experts. “One of the reasons (for this optimism) is the increase in the government’s capacity to finance such a plan, created by the unprecedented economic growth”. The plan has been elaborated in a series of papers published in The Lancet, and discussed at a meeting of health experts in the capital on Tuesday.

The recommendations have also been presented to the Prime Minister. “Political will is crucial. Politicians must realise that health is an essential pre-requisite for transforming economic growth into a meaningful outcome”, said Dr Richard Horton, editor, The Lancet.

The plan comes at a time when the government has also shown some concern over the state of health in the country. A high level expert group on Universal Health Coverage is currently working on a set of recommendations for the next five year plan. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also recently emphasised the need for universal care.

A twin strategy of increasing government spending on health from 1 percent of GDP to 6 percent of GDP, and gradual decline in ‘out of pocket’ expenditure to 20 percent has been proposed by The Lancet group. It says an integrated national health system should be developed to provide free healthcare at the point of use. It should be financed through sources other than ‘out of pocket’ costs. An insurance fund should be set up with financing from public, employer and private sources.

“The existing private sector can be integrated in such a system provided there is a strong regulatory system to ensure quality, costs and patient rights”, Dr Reddy explained.

Dr Binayak Sen, jailed doctor who was scheduled as one of the speakers at the conference, in his comments published in the journal, however, remained skeptical about the plan.

“The stunted public health system is hardly geared up to absorb increased allocation. Already state governments are returning allocated money because of their inability to absorb increased allocations”, Sen noted. The National Health Bill 2009 – which addressed issues like equitable access health facilities and drugs as well as safe water and sanitation, Sen said, makes no commitment to public financing.

The idea of integrating private sector into the national healthcare system has also attracted criticism. “The corporate-led private sector can not be controlled by integration – it has to be confronted by being made to compete against a well-resourced and managed public system that is run by public funds”, commented Amit Sengupta of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.

When Patni experienced Eureka moment of outsourcing

2011-01-12T01:21:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, January 12, 2011

The billion dollar mega deal that brings Patni Computer Systems (PCS) under the fold of US-based iGate is historic not just for its size. It is literally historic because it was founders of PCS who discovered the model of outsourcing in 1972 and showed the way for others to follow the path.

Narendra Patni - one of the founders of PCS who was trained at MIT and later at Sloan School of Management under Jay W Forrester (discoverer of magnetic core memory) – leant his early business lessons the hard way. While working with Forrester at his consulting firm, he saw an opportunity in publication of academic books and journals since Forrester and his colleagues were engaged in writing such books.

Printing technology was then at the cusp of a change - from linotype machines to high-speed photo typesetting machines driven by paper or magnetic tapes. Encoding data on such tapes was laborious and demanding. Narendra had seen similar paper tapes coming out of telex and teleprinters in India. “That’s where this idea came to me that why this tape can’t be punched overseas, and it started the whole thought process in me about trying to outsource data conversion work to India,” he would recall later.

What Narendra sensed then was a mere business opportunity in data conversion, hardly realizing that actually he was showing the way for a completely non-traditional way of doing business that would catapult India to the forefront of global technology business at the turn of the century. He formed Data Conversion Inc (DCI), forerunner to PCS, to convert physical data into paper and magnetic tapes.

Before shipping tons of documents – mostly legal proceedings - to India for conversion into tapes, Narendra and his wife Poonam actually tested the offshore model at their apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They designated the living room as the ‘United States’ and the bedroom as ‘India’. Documents, along with written instructions, were sent to ‘India’. It was decided that there would be no oral communication between the people in ‘India’ and the ‘United States’ - simulating the ground reality of poor telephone links between the countries. A team of two dozen data entry operators was then hired in Poona for the job.

Narendra formed PCS, along with bothers Gajendra and Ashok (both products of IIT
Delhi) in 1976 as a reseller of minicomputers of Data General. It then got into writing software solutions for Data General customers. Narendra picked up N R Narayana Murthy, an M. Tech from IIT Kanpur, to head software division in August 1977. Murthy, in turn, built a software team of six people – whom we all know as founders of Infosys.

In 1979, PCS signed up one of the largest offshore software deals, valued at $500,000, for developing an apparel package for an independent software vendor in New York — Data Basics Corporation (DBC). It was this project that made the American firm realise the value of Indian programmers and it decided to stay back for more work. In December 1980, Murthy resigned from PCS, later floated Infosys and eventually DBC became the first customer of Infosys.

The model was replicated by several other minicomputer resellers of that period. American minicomputer makers discovered software writing skills of Indian engineers and India programmers, in turn, got exposed to American customers.

Beyond the ritual of Science Congress

2011-01-06T04:49:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, January 6, 2011

The annual ritual of the Indian Science Congress is underway in Chennai this week. Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan – who is participating in the event along
with two other co-winners of 2009 Chemistry Nobel - has described it as ‘the world’s most ceremonious science congress’. This is perhaps an apt description given the nature of such events and how they are held. Yet such occasions provide us an opportunity to reflect on the state of science education and research in the country.

After many years of empty announcements and failed schemes to enthuse new blood in science education and research, we seem to be moving ahead. Firstly, there is great amount of institution building happening. I don’t think there was ever so much of frantic institution building after the Nehruvian era which saw new Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and central universities come up. At the end of 2000s, not only are IITs and IIMs multiplying and new IISERs (Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research) taking seed, the government has grand plans for setting up a dozen innovation universities, some 30 new central universities and a string of Navratna varsities – desi version of the famed Ivy League institutions- as announced at the science congress by Kapil Sibal who happens to be both HRD and science minister.

Another signal of changing atmosphere comes in the form of induction of new talent in research. In order to arrest the trend of cream of science students taking up management or engineering streams, a scheme was launched a couple of years ago to offer doctoral scholarships for first rankers in any branch of science, engineering, medical, and agricultural technologies. As a result, 380 such rank holders - two-thirds of them women - have joined research streams.

Universities – starved of funds for research all these years – are gradually returning to research. About Rs 200 crore has been disbursed to 14 universities as research incentive under a 2008 initiative called ‘Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence’ designed to reward universities publishing more research papers. Another 29 universities have joined the scheme now. Nearly a third of Indian papers published last year emanated from universities. This is indeed significant.

Notwithstanding these green shoots of research and education, areas of concern remain. The foremost is quality. The existing institutions are suffering due to shortage of faculty. According to official data, about 1300 faculty posts are lying vacant in seven older IITs. The situation in newer ones is no better.

With the government allowing private participation in higher education, regulation has also become critical. The experience of engineering and medical education regulators shows that the existing set up can’t be trusted. In research, we need clear direction and goal setting, otherwise increased availability of resources would be wasted with just incremental results. Let’s set these things in order and move ahead.

A blank page in medical history filled

Very few Indians would know that it was an Indian Dr Yellapragada SubbaRow who had discovered many antibiotics including tetracycline which changed the face of medicine in the last century. Fewer would know that he was not allowed to publish some of his earlier work while he was working at Harvard in 1930s. Some believe this work was pioneering and could have advanced the birth of modern biotechnology by a few decades.

In 1965, Nobel Laureate George H Hitchings affirmed that his Harvard colleague had isolated period several phosphorus compounds that were in all probability nucleotides involved in the synthesis of RNA and that these had to be rediscovered years later by other workers because SubbaRow was not allowed to publish them. The birth of biotechnology was delayed to that extent.

Now SubbaRow’s all previously unpublished 80-year-old scientific papers have been made public as part of the ‘Doctor Yellapragada SubbaRow Archives Online’ which includes, as part of all his personal papers. This monumental work is a result of personal efforts of his biographer, S P K Gupta, over the past three decades.

“Now historians of science, especially biotechnology chroniclers, have the opportunity to check the affirmation of Dr Hitchings”, says New Delhi-based Gupta, a former journalist. The papers are based on SubbaRow’s research at Harvard Medical School from 1929 to 1935 and fill a vital blank page in his curriculum vitae. All the papers can be accessed freely at the online archives, which is a sub site of www.ysubbarow.info

The unpublished papers were made available to Gupta in 1965 by Lederle Archives where they had been kept after SubbaRow’s death in 1948. SubbaRow had worked in Lederle where he discovered several antibiotics, isolated folic acid and antifolates which led to development of cancer chemotherapy. Gupta has donated the microfilms to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and its digitised copies have been made available at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.

IMA docs might as well act in a commercial

2010-11-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, November 25, 2010

THE ROT in the country’s medical system appears to be deep rooted.Despite the Medical Council of India ( MCI) rapping its top leaders for product endorsements the Indian Medical Association ( IMA) is refusing to mend its ways.

It has claimed that the MCI decision against endorsements infringes upon the IMA’s ‘ right to convey health information to people’. The statement is shocking but may not be surprising for anyone who knows how the IMA functions. It is an organisation controlled by a coterie of doctors which cares two hoots for ethics. Essentially this is the same coterie that was running the MCI and several state medical councils under tutelage of tainted doc Ketan Desai.

The endorsement deals actually bare the nexus between the IMA and Desai. In October 2007, IMA’s Endorsement Committee agreed to put its seal of recommendation in products of PepsiCo India ( Quaker Oats and Tropicana Juice) and Dabur India ( Odomos cream, gel and lotion), for a consideration of Rs 1.56 crore and Rs 69 lakh respectively. This was purely a money making transaction because the IMA is not an independent or accredited laboratory which can test and certify products nor is mandated to endorse products for a fee.

What has come to light later ( from internal documents of IMA) is even more shameful. When objections were raised within IMA, Dr S. N. Mishra, Dr Ajay Kumar ( who signed the deal) and Dr Dharam Prakash ( who carried it forward) justified the huge amounts involved by saying the money was needed to finance IMA’s ‘ international activities’. The money was used to fund their travel — along with Desai — to World Medical Association ( WMA) meetings abroad to convince the world body to hold its next meeting in India. The IMA succeeded and hosted a lavish session of WMA in 2009 and got Ketan Desai elected as its next president. Meanwhile, when an IMA member from Kerala Dr Babu V. K. complained to MCI citing the code of ethics, MCI then presided over by Desai took no action for obvious reasons.

Not only this, in order to ward off criticism, the IMA leadership changed the name of the ‘ endorsement committee’ ( which finalised the deals with PepsiCo and Dabur) to ‘ Public Private Partners Initiative Committee’ so that ‘ it ( IMA) can give messages supporting a particular cause’ and ‘ may charge some amount of money for this’ . The MoUs signed with the PepsiCo were revised to include holding of seminars and lectures on nutrition and hygiene in collaboration with the junk food maker.

Just look at what the so- called custodians of our health are doing — fooling gullible consumers by endorsing questionable products and using that money to fund the rise of a corrupt doctor so that the money making machine continues to run. Fortunately for us, this vicious cycle has been interrupted with the arrest of Desai and the corruption infrastructure that he built over the years is gasping for life.

REMEMBER the endorsement malaise goes beyond IMA. With every consumer brand wanting to get a ‘ certified by medical body’ tag, several so- called professional bodies have begun endorsing products.

Take for instance, Delhi- based Heart Care Foundation of India which endorses a popular brand of besan and a foreign brand of ‘ chakki fresh atta’. A Child Health Congress held recently was sponsored by Lifebuoy and every page of the recommendations was printed in redand- white colours easily identifiable with the soap brand. Endorsements of toothpaste and toothbrush brands by dental associations have been going on for years.

Not just this, large food companies are floating NGOs and professional associations with scientific- sounding names to endorse products and conduct so- called research studies to suit their product lines. One hopes MCI will not stop at IMA and will come out with clear ethical guidelines on product endorsement, sponsorships and use of ‘ doctors’ in advertising.

It should not shy away from joining hands with other bodies like food safety authority and the advertising council in this endeavou

A new triad in science challenges the old one

2010-11-17T03:38:00.000-08:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, November 17, 2010

The power equations in the arena of science and knowledge creation are changing rapidly.

The dominance of America, Europe and Japan is eroding with the emergence of China, India and South Korea as formidable players in global research and development (R&D) pecking order, the Unesco Science Report 2010 has revealed.

In 1990, over 95 per cent of R&D was carried out in the developed world and just seven members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) accounted for more than 92 percent of world R&D. The share of the US, Japan and European Union in global research and development has dropped to 76 percent in 2007.

In contrast, Asia led by China, India and the Republic of Korea, has increased its share from 27 to 32 percent between 2002 and 2007.

“We seem to be on the verge of a structural break in the pattern of knowledge contribution to growth at the level of the global economy”, the report says. “Achieving knowledge-intensive growth is no longer the sole prerogative of the highly developed nations of the OECD.”

While investment in R&D is growing globally in volume, emerging countries are clearly gaining strength in science and technology. This is reflected in the rising gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD) of countries like China. Besides R&D investments, the report also measures other indictors like number of research papers published and patents filed.

The US still leads the world in scientific output in absolute terms, but its percentage share of papers published is falling. The EU too is seeing a dip its share. But China’s share has more than doubled in just six years and now represents more than 10 percent of all research papers published in the world - second only to the US - though the citation rate for Chinese papers remains much lower.

India’s share of research papers has gone up from 2.6 to 3.7 between 2002 and 2007. China has increased its share of US patents from 3.5 to 4.7 percent of all patents filed, but India still lags with just 0.5 percent of all US patents.

“The bipolar world in which science and technology were dominated by the Triad made up of the European Union, Japan and USA is gradually giving way to a multi-polar world, with an increasing number of public and private research hubs spreading across North and South,” points out Unesco Director General Irina Bokova in her foreword to the report.

Azad waging farcical war on tobacco

2010-10-28T01:10:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, October 28, 2010

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad speaks in two toungues when it comes to tobacco control. In public, he wants a jihad against tobacco but in his ministry he is on the side of tobacco lobbies.

The delay in enforcing harsher pictorial warnings on tobacco products is a direct consequence of Azad’s interference in implementation of the anti-tobacco law under which warnings were introduced last year, internal documents of the ministry have revealed.

The first set of graphical warnings were set to be replaced by much gory pictures from June 1 this year and a notification for doing so was issued on March 5. But Azad intervened and wanted this notification to be kept in abeyance. When tobacco control wing in the ministry warned of a backlash, a compromise was arrived and instead of keeping in abeyance, the deadline for new warnings was postponed by six months.

The minister directed officials in a meeting held on May 13 to ‘set aside’ the March 5 notification, according to minutes of the meeting prepared by the additional secretary incharge of tobacco control. In his report, the official, however, warned that the move is “certain to attract major criticism not only from anti-tobacco activists and media but possibly also in courts and the parliament’.

“We should be very careful about withdrawing the newer and harsher pictorial drawings. Our task in the Ministry of Health is to actively discourage smokers and horrible pictures of diseased mouths and lungs are an effective deterrent. We need not plead the case of the Ministry of Commerce or the Ministry of Labour”, the additional secretary pointed in his note to the health secretary K Sujatha Rao.

The very next day, the health secretary wrote a note to Azad cautioning of serious consequences if the notification was withdrawn. “In view of direct adverse impact of tobacco products on cancer and cardiovascular diseases and the extremely pro-active stand taken by the former minister (A Ramadoss) on this issue, it would be advisable not to give the impression that the ministry is backtracking”, cautioned Rao.

Officials then prepared a compromise. It was decided not to set aside the notification – as directed by Azad – yet harsher pictorial warnings were not implemented from June 1 as per the notification. Instead, another order was issued to permit tobacco product manufacturers to continue with existing milder warnings till December 1, 2010. As a result, the tobacco industry got another reprieve.

All the documents have come to light as a result of a Right to Information application filed by activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal of Delhi.

The deadline was postponed under tremendous industry pressure – which came in the form of representations from industry lobby called Tobacco Institute of India, companies like ITC and regional bidi manufacturers associations. These lobbies effectively used politicians to plead for their case. A surprise request came from Law Minister M Veerappa Moily who pleaded the case for postponement on behalf of an entity called Pan Shop Owners Association of India. Curiously, Moily used letterhead of All India Congress Committee to plead the case for postponement of the deadline. Azad, in his reply, promised to ‘have the matter examined’.

It is also surprising that while tobacco lobbies flooded the ministry with requests to put off the new warnings, none of the vocal anti-tobacco voluntary bodies cared to send any request to go ahead with the warnings.

Rajasthan turns to Monsanto for agro boost

2010-10-22T02:23:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, October 22, 2010

If the Rajasthan government has its way, key responsibilities of the state in agriculture including development, field trials and release of new varieties, seed production as well as extension services could pass into the hands of private seed companies like Monsanto.

In an unprecedented move, the state government has signed separate deals with as many as seven seed companies in the past few months, giving rise to fears that it could lead to total privatisation of all agricultural activities and could leave farmers at the mercy of foreign and Indian seed companies. The list of companies which have inked Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with the state include Monsanto India, Monsanto Holding Private Limited, Advanta India, Pioneer Seeds and Krishidhan Seeds.

In all the agreements, the departments of agriculture and horticulture, three state agriculture universities and the state seed corporation have been made parties on behalf of the state government. The agreements are overarching in nature and explicitly mention specific products to be promoted in the state.

As per the MoU with Monsanto, the company will promote its hybrid maize, hybrid cotton, and hybrid vegetable seeds (hot pepper, tomato, cabbage, cauliflower etc). Its responsibilities would include seed production, seed processing, research and development and extension activity among farmers. R&D activities, the agreement says, ‘would involve extensive testing of Monsanto’s proprietary germplasm ‘. For testing maize hybrids, the state would allow ‘Monsanto-owned breeding programme and stations’.

It also says the company would get “fair opportunity for partnership in any seed distribution programme being considered and/or conceived by the Government of Rajasthan under its schemes for improving the lives of farmers as well as those aimed at improving productivity and availability’ of maize, cotton and vegetables.”

Confirming the development, state’s Agriculture Commissioner J C Mohanty said “the objective is to make Rajasthan seed hub of North India” and the exercise is part of the state’s policy to promote Public Private Partnerships in different sectors.
Mohanty said the agreements only laid down broad framework of cooperation and details would be worked out for specific projects. No company has submitted any concrete proposals far.

However, a close study of the MoU with Monsanto shows it does include some specific points. For instance, “production of Monsanto’s hybrid maize seeds on grower fields in suitable locations in Banswara” has been mentioned as an area of collaboration with the state seed corporation. Similarly, it talks about evaluating Monsanto’s “protected culture seeds (formerly DeRuiter Seeds)” in the state. The company would also develop a Centre of Excellence for horticulture at Bassi. Its vegetable hybrids are also proposed to be tested in Alwar region.

Asked if the agreement with Monsanto would also mean free entry for its genetically modified crops in the state, Mohanty said the state has no specific policy with regard to GM foods and would go by the decision of regulatory authorities. He said before proceeding with specific projects, state agriculture universities would take necessary approvals from the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR).

The introduction of hybrids in semi-arid areas of the state could be unsustainable though it may give higher yields initially, experts feel. “This will spell disaster for the state and wipe out traditional agricultural practices as well as cropping patters”, pointed out Devinder Sharma of Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

In Gujarat, Monsanto has been running Project Sunshine in tribal areas. While maize yields have gone up, hybrids promoted by Monsanto are high cost farmers have to buy them every season, according to action groups who have surveyed the area. In addition the hybrids are changing rainfed and marginal cultivation practices and food preference in the tribal belt.

Academies manufactured consent on Bt brinjal

2010-10-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, October 14, 2010

It now appears that Indian science academies not only plagiarised their report on Bt birnjal but also manufactured consent while preparing the report. The academies say that a meeting of fellows interested in airing their views on the subject was held on June 1 at the Indian National Science Academy (INSA). Based on views expressed in this meeting, the report was prepared. It is interesting that while close to three pages have been reproduced from views expressed by one scientist - Dr P Anand Kumar – views of several others who did not agree have been completely left out.

At least one such fellow of INSA, Dr P C Kesavan has now come out in open. He told me that he clearly expressed biosafety, environmental safety concerns and possibilities of Bt brinjal becoming resistant to fruit and shoot borer. Dr Kesavan was opposed even to limited open trials of Bt brinjal – which the inter-academy report has recommended. “There can’t be consensus between right and wrong”, says Kesavan, who is distinguished at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai. He says he was supported by a few other fellows at the meeting. So, what the academies are projecting as consensus is actually a manufactured consent of vested interests.

In their attempt to defend the indefensible, science academies have come out with more half-truths. In a note posted on its website, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) says a letter was sent to fellows of three science academies seeking their views on transgenic crops, but there is no mention of how many fellows of each academy responded and what were their views.

There is a footnote which says a similar letter was sent by the President of National Academy of the Medical Sciences to its fellows. No dates are given for this letter nor is the text of this letter been shared. The curious part is that the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences did not follow a similar process but indicated that it would nominate Fellows on its own. We don’t know who was nominated and how. This is crucial because Dr P Anand Kumar – whose article the academies’ copied in the report – is a fellow of the agriculture academy. INSA is also trying to imply that it was draft report circulated for getting ‘further inputs and feedback’. If it was so, the report that was circulated does not mention it. Secondly, if it was a draft why was it sent to the government? The academy is also making light of the plagiarism part by calling it a mere “glitch”. Will INSA come out with full truth and be transparent in its dealings, Dr M Vijayan?

When leaders of Indian science see a serious charge of plagiarism a ‘glitch’, why shouldn’t junior scientists follow suit? In fact, the incidence of plagiarism in Indian science appears to be on the rise going by the number of cases being reported. In the past few weeks, nearly all the Indian Institutes of Technology have been in the news on this count.

The Society for Scientific Values – an independent watchdog for scientific misconduct in India – is flooded with complaints of plagiarism from several public funded institutions across the country. From just a handful of complaints a few years back, the number has gone up to almost 80 this year. A bulk of the complaints comes from universities and other educational institutions, according to Dr R K Kotnala, secretary of SSV.

Despite plagiarism being the easiest kind of misconduct to detect and establish, generally there is reluctance on part of institute directors to take action against culprits. If no action is taken for scientific misconduct which can be easily established, it shows that more serious forms of misconduct such as data fabrication and cooking up CVs are going undetected and unpunished. Inaction in cases of plagiarism only helps in institutionalisation of misconduct. For long, SSV has been demanding setting up a government mechanism to investigate misconduct and fraud in science, but the scientific bureaucracy has not found the suggestion palatable. If such an office is set up, perhaps it should begin by investigating the inter-academy report on genetically modified crops.

Medical don Ketan Desai is no more a doctor

2010-10-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, October 11, 2010

Dr Ketan Desai – the kingpin of medical education mafia in India – has lost the right to practice as a medical doctor.

The extreme step against the sacked President of Medical Council of India (MCI) was taken by the Board of Governors of the council on Saturday, following recommendation made by its Ethics Committee.

The council decided to suspend the license of Desai and debar him from practicing as a doctor or attending any national or international conference as a doctor with immediate effect, according to the two-page order sent to Desai at his Ahmedabad residence. The action against Desai has been taken under the Professional Conduct Regulations 2002.

“In view of the serious and grave allegations against you having prima facie merit, permission granted to you to practice medicine has been suspended during the pendency of the complaint”, the order said.

The complaint against Desai was filed by US-based patient rights activist Dr Kunal Saha seeking cancellation of Desai’s license. Dr Saha had first filed the complaint with the Gujarat Medical Council (GMC) soon after Desai’s arrest in April this year. Since GMC did not take any action against Desai, Saha appealed to MCI. As per GMC website, Desai continues to be its President.

Desai was arrested in April this year by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) while he was accepting a bribe of Rupees two crore from management of a medical college in Punjab. Last week he filed an application in the court of CBI Special judge O P Saini, seeking permission to travel to Canada to attend the annual meeting of the World Medical Association (WMA) scheduled to begin on October 13 at Vancouver. He was granted the permission and released on bail. Ironically, Desai is to take over as President of the world body.

Moving swiftly, the Board of Governors at MCI wrote to CBI as well as the health ministry to prevent Desai from leaving the country. The council has also written to WMA authorities. Now WMA has been told of the council’s latest decision to cancel Desai’s license.

“The right place for Desai is CBI custody and he has no business roaming overseas as a free man. He is a disgrace for the medical community around the world”, commented Saha, who heads Kolkata-based group People for Better Treatment (PBT). Saha has also served a legal notice to WMA for having invited a criminal doctor to attend its meeting.

Ketan Desai ready to flee from India

2010-10-09T03:39:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, October 8, 2010

The Medical Council of India (MCI) on Thursday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take immediate steps to prevent disgraced former President of the council Dr Ketan Desai from leaving the country to attend the conference of World Medical Association (WMA) in Canada next week.

Desai was released on bail by the Delhi High Court on his plea that he should be allowed to travel to Vancouver to attend WMA conference where he is to take over as President of the world body. “CBI should file an immediate appeal against the order directing the release of passport of Desai. The fact that he has no right or authority to represent doctors of India in the said conference be mentioned in the appeal”, MCI said its letter to CBI.

Desai has no authority in law to represent MCI or doctors of India in the conference. “He has fraudulently obtained the order granting permission to him to attend said conference purportedly on behalf of MCI” eventhough the government issued an ordinance instituting a new Board of Governors to run MCI, the letter stressed.

The Board of Governors of MCI “strongly feels that by corrupt practices, Desai has brought disrepute to community of doctors in particular and has incalculable harm to the reputation of medical practitioners in the eyes of general public in general.” Such a tainted person should not be given opportunity to represent doctors from India at world level, the letter said.

“Desai is accused in six cases of heinous nature. The Board of Governors is having apprehension that he may flee out of the country and he is using this as pretext to run out of the country”, the council pointed out.

MCI has also decided to take up the issue with WMA. In the past, WMA has maintained that it would not take a stand till Indian courts convict him. Desai was elected president of the world body in its executive council meeting held in Delhi last year while Desai was still heading MCI.

Egg on academies’ face over eggplant

2010-09-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, September 30, 2010

The genetically modified brinjal has brought shame to Indian science. Top six science academies, which unanimously recommended lifting of moratorium on Bt brinjal imposed by environment minister Jairam Ramesh in February, are in the dock for the worst crime a scientist can commit – intellectual cheating or plaigiarism. Individual scientists being accused of it is nothing new , but for the first time ever all academies as a collective have been found guilty of plaigiarism.

The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) President Dr M Vijayan has admitted, what he calls, a ‘slip’. But he is not willing to take the next logical step - withdrawal of the report. In any case withdrawal is irrelevant now because the man who commissioned it – Ramesh – has already consigned the report to its rightful place – dustbin.

The slur on the academies is a grave issue. The question is not mere lack of attribution or citation of the copied material – as academies are trying to make it out - but ‘bad science’ (some critics have dubbed it ‘gutter science’) the report epitomises. Scientists who drafted the report did not to care to examine data submitted by developers of Bt brinjal to the regulator based on which clearance was given.

Instead, they relied on ‘views’ of one scientist – P Anand Kumar – expressed in a newsletter. Interestingly, it is a double whammy because Kumar in his article published in Biotech News drew liberally from report of a Monsanto and Mahyco-funded outfit – International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). So, in effect, academies based their so-called recommendations on industry data. And why shouldn’t they do so (copy or quote ISAAA data) when science and technology minister Prithivraj Chavan can do so in an official letter or when Minister of State for Agriculture KV Thomas do so repeatedly in his replies to the Parliament?

On the same day when the disgraced report of academies was being circulated, another report on Bt brinjal – the Scope and Adequacy of the GEAC Environment Risk Assessment (ERA) – by Dr David A Andow of the University of Minnesota was released. Andow was contacted by the US National Academy of Sciences for a scientific evaluation of the Expert Committee –II (EC-II) report, based on which Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) cleared bt brinjal.

Compared to the stink raised by the Indian academies, Andow’s report comes like a breath of fresh air. It dissects the ERA data on bt brinjal with the precision of a surgeon, with several pages of references. Andow, unequivocally, concludes that the scope of ERA set by GEAC was too narrow and that EC-II did not perform an adequate ERA. Because of resistance, he predicts, Bt brinjal is projected to fail in 4 to 12 years. Irrespective of the findings, the report is a shining example of good science and I would strongly recommend Presidents of all six Indian academies to read it.

Nilekani's UIDs will 'aid illegal immigrants'

2010-09-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, September 29, 2010

The Unique Identification Number (UID) scheme to be formally launched this week by the Prime Minister could prove to be a gateway for illegal migrants to settle in India, a Census expert has warned.

This is because the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) headed by Nandan Nilekani is using data collected by Census authorities to prepare the National Population Register (NPR) to create the UIDs. The NPR is not an exclusive database of Indian citizens. It contains data on all residents of the country, including foreigners.

Therefore, issuing UIDs based on the data in the NPR will help illegal migrants get these IDs and will allow them access to government services and programmes. "They would be entitled to obtain Indian passport, register their names in the electoral rolls, obtain identity card issued by the Election Commission of India, get ration cards and open bank accounts. All this will make them eligible to contest elections at all levels, and even enter the police and armed forces," S. P. Sharma, the former deputy registrar general (Census and tabulations), said.

Nationality of individuals is one of the variables being recorded during the enumeration for the NPR. But the instruction to Census personnel says: "Nationality of each person has to be asked from the respondent and recorded as declared by her/ him." The officials have been asked to advise people "to give correct nationality" and that "she/ he can be penalised for giving incorrect/ false information".

According to Sharma, such advice may not work with illegal migrants. "They are unlikely to report their correct nationality and may get themselves listed as Indians," he said.

In Sharma's opinion, the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) should form the basis on which the UIDAI assigns UIDs because it should enlist only those persons whose nationality has been decided based on the provisions of The Citizenship Act, 1955. The names of those unable to prove they are citizens of India should remain in the NPR alone, he said.

The completed NPR schedules, along with photographs and fingerprints, will be displayed at prominent places for public scrutiny. If someone raises an objection, it will be enquired into by local revenue officials.

This record will then be used by UIDAI for assigning UIDs to all those registered in the NPR. A UIDAI official said: "We are not going to issue citizenship certificates. It is the duty of the government. We will only be assigning ID numbers based on data from the NPR. It will be for the state governments to authenticate and verify the information."

Top science academies copy industry lobby data to push GM brinjal

2010-09-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, September 26, 2010

INDIA’S top science academies have done the unthinkable. They have copied and quoted extensively from an industry lobby report to give a clean chit to the controversial genetically modified ( GM) brinjal.

Key portions and data in the much touted Inter- Academy Report on Genetically Modified Crops have been lifted straight from a report of a lobbying group funded by seed companies, including Monsanto and Mahyco.

In March, environment minister Jairam Ramesh had asked the six science academies — the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the National Academy of Medical Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences ( India) — to give an unbiased scientific assessment on the feasibility of transgenic crops and the proposed regulatory mechanism for GM food. They submitted the report to Ramesh this week, recommending the commercial release of Bt brinjal.

But it turns out that the academies have relied heavily on data generated by USbased GM lobby International Service for the Acquisition of Agri- biotech Applications ( ISAAA). They have recommended the commercial release of Bt brinjal and the lifting of the moratorium imposed on it by Ramesh.

Earlier, science and technology minister Prithviraj Chavan had plagiarised from reports by the same ISAAA in a letter to cabinet colleague A. Ramadoss while defending Bt brinjal. This was exposed by M AIL T ODAY in February this year.

The report in question currently has copied most of the data and information in support of Bt brinjal from an ISAAA report The Development and Regulation of Bt Brinjal in India and an article Bt Brinjal: A Pioneering Push by Dr P. Anand Kumar in Biotech News — a publication of the Department of Biotechnology.Both were published in 2009. Being a developer of GM crops himself, Kumar is a vocal supporter of Bt brinjal.

The academies have declared Bt brinjal safe by copying the following paragraph verbatim from Dr Kumar’s article: “ Bt brinjal ‘ Event EE- 1’ has been subjected to a rigorous biosafety regulatory process encompassing all aspects of toxicity, allergenicity, environmental safety, socio- economic assessment etc.

“ Studies on food and feed safety have been conducted on rats, rabbits, fish, chickens, goats and cows. Similarly, environmental impact assessments to study germination, pollen flow, invasiveness, aggressiveness, weediness, and effect on non- target organisms were also carried out.” The data that has been lifted from the industry document relates to key issues. The copied portion says: “ It ( brinjal) is an important cash crop for poor farmers who transplant it from nurseries at different times of the year to produce two or three crops, each of 150 to 180 days’ duration.” Again, on losses caused by pests, an entire paragraph has been lifted from the ISAAA report: “ Brinjal Shoot and Fruit Borer ( BSFB) causes significant losses of up to 60 to 70 per cent in commercial plantings. Damage starts in the nursery, prior to transplanting, continues to harvest and is then carried- over to the next crop of brinjal. BSFB damages brinjal in two ways.

First, it infests young shoots during the vegetative phase, which limits the ability of plants to produce healthy fruitbearing shoots, thereby reducing potential yield.” Another piece of data used to justify Bt brinjal has been lifted from the industry report: “ Farmers usually spray twice a week, applying 15 to 40 insecticide sprays, or more, in one season depending on infestation levels.” Figures relating to the financial cost of insecticide spray by farmers too come from the industry document.

The similarities in the ISAAA report and the Inter- Academy report go on without anyone getting a hint about the source of the data. No references or citations have been given, as is normal with any scientific document.

Pharmas hire ghostwriters to review medicines favourably

2010-09-08T02:37:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, September 8, 2010

It has emerged that pharmaceutical companies often use professional medical journals to promote unproven benefits of their drugs or to discredit products of rival companies.

In doing so, they even hire professional ghost writers to pen research papers and review articles, and have them published in the name of doctors handpicked for the purpose. The sole idea of this exercise is to insert marketing messages in credible scientific journals and underplay side effects of drugs in scientific literature.

This is much like what tobacco industry has been doing for decades to deny any link between tobacco and cancer, and ill-effects of passive smoking.

Pharma companies pay huge sums of money to ‘medical education and communication companies’ who actually decide what data to present, recruit ‘authors’, select journals, create abstracts and posters for scientific conferences and ‘position the product appropriately to influence prescribers’. The fee for producing one such paper could be as high as $ 25,000.

All this has been revealed in an analysis of 1500 documents unsealed in an ongoing litigation against pharmaceutical giant Wyeth (now part of Pfizer) in the US. The analysis, done by Dr Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor at Georgetown University Medical Center, appears in journal PLoS Medicine this week.
Analysis of dozens of ghostwritten reviews and commentaries published in medical journals and supplements has revealed that Wyeth used them to promote unproven benefits and downplay harms of Prempro - a brand of menopausal hormone therapy (HT)—and to cast competing therapies in a negative light. These articles were widely circulated to medical reps and doctors to disseminate the company's marketing messages.

The company hired services of a medical communication firm called DesignWrite to produce ghostwritten articles in order to mitigate the perceived risks of breast cancer associated with Prempro and to project the unsupported cardiovascular ‘benefits’ of the hormonal treatment. It also used research articles to promote off-label but unproven uses of Prempro such as the prevention of dementia, Parkinson's disease, vision problems, and wrinkles, pointed out Dr Fugh-Berman.

Marketing messages in credible journals have almost certainly contributed to its widespread among millions of women who may not have needed the drug at all, points out the analysis.

DesignWrite was paid thousands of dollars to ghostwrite articles reporting clinical trials, including four manuscripts on a large trial involving low-dose Prempro. The firm was also assigned to write 20 review articles about the drug, for which they were paid dollars 20,000 each.

Clinical trials, reviews, case reports, letters, and other publications are used by pharmaceutical companies to convey specific marketing messages, notes Dr Fugh-Berman. Besides extolling the benefits of a specific drug, marketing messages emphasise prevalence or severity of targeted conditions, promote unproven uses or reassure doctors that adverse effects are “rare, manageable, or not specific to a targeted therapy.”

Ghostwriting has been documented for drugs other than Prempro. For example, Forest Laboratories’ 2004 marketing plan for Lexapro stated “bylined articles will allow us to fold Lexapro messages into articles on depression, anxiety and comorbidity developed by (or ghostwritten for) thought leaders”. Other brands promoted through ghostwriting include Paxil, Fen-phen, Neurontin and Vioxx.

Trumpet call for elephants

2010-09-08T02:35:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, September 5, 2010

For anyone who has lived in Delhi for long, elephants are a familiar sight. One can often spot them on the ITO bridge or on the ring road as their mahouts take them for ceremonial duties or religious functions. In earlier times, we have seen them performing some charming tricks like riding oversized tricycles in circuses.

Elephants are often an attraction for foreigner tourists visiting cities like Jaipur and a mode of transportation in wildlife sanctuaries. They are an essential part of all famous temples in South India and occupy the place of a revered species in the Hindu pantheon. It is this ubiquity of elephants in our everyday lives that makes this mega herbivore probably the most familiar of all Indian wild animals. Perhaps this familiarity has given rise to the notion that elephants require little help in terms of protection and conservation. But this is not so, as the report of the Elephant Task Force submitted this week elaborates. The shrinking of natural habitats of elephant and selective killing of tuskers in key populations by ivory poachers pose grave challenge for survival of this mega species.

The Task Force, set up by the environment ministry, was headed by Dr Mahesh Rangarajan and included leading elephant researchers as its members. It has made wide ranging recommendations for conservation of the elephant including a new governance structure and declaration of the elephant as India’s new National Heritage Animal recognising its dual identity as our symbol of ecology and of culture. Unlike tiger, points out Rangarajan, the elephant is not facing immediate extinction. “It is attrition of living spaces and tense conditions of the human-elephant encounter on the ground that requires immediate redress”, he says.

Elephants - the largest terrestrial mammals - are highly sociable and long living. They always move in groups of 6 to 7, and sometimes two or more such groups join to form a herd. It is also an extremely mobile species, known to roam over a large area but preferring to stay close to water bodies. From conservation standpoint, this makes elephants much different from other wild species such as tiger or lion. Since elephants require a larger area for survival, they are considered a flagship species – conservation of whose habitat could mean conservation of biodiversity and several other wild species over large tracts.

Natural habitats of elephants are under immense pressure. The historical range of elephants has shrunk considerably. The Indian sub-continent has an estimated population of 27000 to 29000, which is about half of the total Asian elephant population. Hydroelectric and irrigation projects, national and state highways, railway lines and mining projects have severely depleted and fragmented the elephant habitat. Many elephants die due to electrocution by high tension transmission line. About 150 elephants have been killed due to train hits alone since 1987, points out the Task Force report.

Degradation, fragmentation and shrinkage of habitat are confining elephants into distinct geographical zones. For survival, elephants not only need to roam over large areas but also need viable populations or a good male to female ratio for breeding and maintaining genetic diversity. Poaching of male elephants for tusks has declined but it has left elephant populations unviable in many reserves and parks. There are too few males – in some cases just one male for 100 females. Anything beyond 1: 5 is a cause of worry. It has been estimated that the country has just 1200 tuskers of breeding age in an overall population of 25000 to 27000.

The dwindling habitat is also resulting in increased human-elephant conflicts as elephants stray into human habitat and agricultural lands. We often hear of crop raids by elephants and retaliatory killing of elephants by villagers. On an average nearly 400 people are killed annually by elephants and about 100 elephants are killed by people in retaliation. Preventing such conflict, in fact, is the biggest conservation challenge. “The complexity of elephant conservation and management of its territory, movements, breeding and reasons of conflict are not fully understood despite the species being so close to Indians in many ways”, feels Ravi Singh, secretary general, World Wildlife Fund India. “Hopefully the execution of the task force report will hasten conservation efforts”.

The task force has proposed a new approach to elephant conservation. Elephants cannot survive simply through strict protection of a few parks and sanctuaries, the report points out. Just focusing on Protected Areas or elephant corridors is inadequate for the long term conservation of elephants. So, a new concept of Elephant Landscapes has been proposed. Typically contiguous reserves in adjacent states will form part of a unified landscape. Ten such landscapes have been suggested covering 32 existing and proposed elephant reserves. “The Elephant Landscapes will encompass reserves, which can be focal point for land use planning to avert - rather than simply manage- human-elephant conflict”, explains Rangarajan.

The task force is the first major effort for conservation of the species since the launch of Project Elephant in 1992. One can only hope its recommendations are going to be implemented and elephant conservation would not suffer due to lack of funds and resources as it has happened in the past. After all, survival and ecological security of elephants is linked to our very own.

There is more to dengue than the Commonwealth Games

2010-09-08T02:27:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, Sep 2, 2010

The latest threat looming large over the beleaguered Commonwealth Games comes from a lowly creature – the mosquito. Reports of sportspersons bitten by female mosquitoes infected with the deadly virus of dengue are sending shivers down the spine of athletes and officials who are planning to be in Delhi for the games. But this is hardly a surprise.

As far back as last year, officials from the World Health Organisation had warned that Games construction sites are breeding Aedes aegypti mosquitoes – the vectors for dengue viruses. In fact, dengue has become a seasonal affair in Delhi and some states like Kerala. Increasingly vector-borne diseases like malaria, dengue and chikungunya – the ones which are transmitted through infected mosquitoes – are occurring more often, affecting more people and causing a lot of strain on the healthcare system.

The political leadership and policy makers are yet to recognise that this is fallout of our economic growth, increasing migration and globalisation. In the health sector, we need to undertake round the year surveillance, besides both basic and applied research to understand different viruses and develop new vaccines. For vector control, we need elaborate machinery at various levels. But is too serious a matter to be left to health inspectors and ward officers of local municipalities.

The solution to this problem lies in non-health sectors. We need to examine closely socio-economic determinants of these diseases, carefully design communication strategies, make regulations and enforce them ruthlessly. Active involvement of communities at all levels is also a prerequisite. For instance, sanitation rules should mandate that if mosquitoes are found breeding in any school, hospital, government building, temple or a construction site, the head of the institution- be it a principal or a building contractor – will be fined personally and the fine should be heavy.

It is most shameful that the country’s premier medical centre – the All India Institute of Medical Sciences – has become a mosquito breeding ground and its staffers are dying of dengue.

For long, leftover water in desert coolers has been blamed for mosquito breeding. Thanks to the economic boom, coolers have been replaced by air conditioners in middle class homes but they have moved to urban villages and slums. We need communication strategies targeted at these new owners of coolers and water storage tanks. One suggestion is that one day in a week – perhaps Sunday – be declared a “dry day” when all coolers and tanks are emptied and dried.

The same should apply to offices which have drinking water dispensers, potted plants and decorative fountains etc. By all means, blame the Games for mosquito breeding and expose municipal agencies for the shoddy sanitation work they are doing, but also look around your offices and homes and see what you are doing. Let the war on mosquitoes begin from your doorstep.

New Age greens are here

2010-08-30T02:30:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 29, 2010

The kurta-clad, bespectacled Hemant Dhyani could pass of as any other research scholar on the Jawaharal Nehru University campus in Delhi. But this 28-year old is more than a scholar pursing his Ph D in nano science and technology at the university. During day he is doing his research work and in the evenings he turns a social activist either making presentations from his laptop to parliamentarians on the damage hydroelectric projects can cause to Ganga or preparing RTI applications. Over weekends and holidays he is back in home state Uttarakhand organising demonstrations against dams, shooting violations of environmental laws with his handy cam and trying to convince sadhus in Haridwar to join the struggle to save the river from turning into a trickle.

Dhyani is representative of the new age greens who have just tasted their first success in scrapping of the Loharinag Pala hydroelectric project on Bhagirathi. This came just days ahead of the decision on Vedanta’s mining projects in Orissa – giving some hope to scores of organised movements against mining projects, thermal power plants, new ports or special economic zones all over the country.

Unlike movements in 1970s and 1980s which focused on the excesses of state-led industrialisation, new greens are targeting the excesses of free market-led industrial and mining development.

What is striking is the speed at which the movement against Loharinag Pala spearheaded by a little known group from Uttarkashi – Ganga Ahvaan – could achieve its goal. The struggles against Tehri and Narmada projects went on for nearly three decades – and still the dams were built – while Ganga Ahvaan has done it within four years. In contrast to big names like Sunderlal Bahuguna, Baba Amte and Medha Patkar who led earlier movements, seeds against Loharinag Pala were sown in 2006 by a Sadhvi in Uttar Kashi – Priyadarshini Patel. The English-speaking, computer savvy 38-year old Patel initially organised small groups of women against dams being built near the origin of Ganga, and soon involved local youths like Dhyani who had been associated with her Arya Vihar Ashram earlier. These youth became the face of the movement in Dehradun and Delhi.

In fact, this is how most of the groups are working in different parts of the country. “There is an urban face and a rural face of all the new movements. You will see matriculate pass boys and girls becoming activists in rural areas and their counterparts in urban areas will be professionals – sometimes former corporate executives - yet well connected to the movement on the ground”, pointed out an observer. The use of new technologies – mobile phones, digital cameras, handy cams, laptops, electronic newsletters, skype, online petitions – are facilitating two-way connectivity and wide networking. The most important tool – which was not available to the likes of Bahuguna and Amte – is the Right to Information Act. New age greens are effectively using RTI to mine information about environmental violations, feasibility of projects, forest clearance, compensation and so on.

“The data we gathered about other dams in the area – which were all functioning much below their capacity – through RTI helped us explode the myth that ‘dams means development’”, pointed out Dhyani. Even gram sabhas are using RTI to gather information about projects, passing resolutions against them and getting the minutes notorized so that it can be presented as evidence of villagers’ opposition to a project. New laws relating to forest rights, tribal rights and environmental clearances – which make holding of public hearings mandatory – have further empowered communities and groups.

Other factors are also at play. “Today’s movements are gaining strength from the huge work done by several movements over the years. Also there is increased consciousness among the people and their readiness to fight. Third is the increased global awareness on environment issues due to climate change impacts in recent years”, feels Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People. “The recent leadership change in the Ministry of Environment and outside is an additional factor”.

At the same time, long time watchers of green activism in India feel that it would be premature – and possibly inaccurate - to dub new movements as more successful just on the basis of scrapping of a project or two. In their view, movements like Ganga Ahvaan are too narrow – focused just on one project and not bothered about similar destruction being caused in rest of Uttarakhand. “There are no larger takeaways here. This will have no impact on how other hydroelectric projects are going to be cleared in future, in other states and even within Uttarakhand”, pointed out Thakkar.

Comparisons with earlier movements may also be unjustified. “Chipko made the question of environmental justice a national and global issue, Silent Valley was crucial in fostering awareness of biodiversity in general (not just tigers and elephants), Narmada placed the issue of the suffering of the displaced on the public consciousness”, explains environmental historian Ramachandra Guha. Older movement, he says, played a major role in generating a national debate and raising public awareness on links between development, environmental sustainability and social justice.

“With the onset of liberalisation, environmental and social justice agendas were abandoned by the state and the media, who became cheerleaders for the corporate sector. Now that we have had twenty years of unbridled destruction caused by the abandonment of any environmental safeguards for mines and factories, there is a rising tide of protest, which the state, and the media, is forced to take note of”, Guha says.

Don’t be jingoistic about medical tourism

2010-08-25T02:53:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 25, 2010

The ostrich-like reaction of the Indian government and its top health agencies to research findings on the drug resistant gene named after New Delhi – its place of origin – is shocking. Without batting an eyelid, scientific and health agencies of the government have attributed motives to researchers – several of them Indian - and are portraying their work as an attack on the country’s medical tourism industry. These very words were parroted by parliamentarians of every hue in their sound bites in the parliament and on television channels. Even Apollo Hospital – two of whose doctors have co-authored the ‘offending’ paper – has rubbished the study.

One has never seen such unanimity of views among politicians, government agencies and private healthcare industry on any health related issue in recent times. In recent past, The Lancet has published some remarkable studies on slow progress in achieving Millennium Development Goals and on maternal mortality and infant mortality rates – which in some of India’s poorest districts are worse than sub-Saharan Africa. None of this merited even half-a-sentence reaction from all those who are crying wolf over medical tourism today. Even in this case, the substantive part of the study – growing drug resistance due to abuse of antibiotics – has been conveniently ignored.

In a way, the episode has brought to surface the silent nexus that has been at work in India’s health sector for the past one decade or so. It involves the government and its agencies, politicians and corporate healthcare industry. The goal of this nexus is to promote private healthcare industry in whichever way possible – be it gradual retreat of the state from healthcare, promotion of medical tourism, developing India as a destination for clinical trials or encouraging costly assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). All top industry chambers, leading corporate hospitals, diagnostic laboratory chains, manufacturers of medical devices, big pharmaceutical companies and international consulting firms are all partners in this game. Real health problems of the majority are only incidental. Otherwise, there could be no justification for promotion of medical tourism by the government in a country which has just six doctors for a population of 10,000 and whose public expenditure on health is comparable only to Burundi and Sudan.

The very idea of promoting healthcare as a pleasure activity – which is at the core of any type of tourism – is obnoxious. Inspired by the success of Ayurveda-centric medical tourism, corporate hospitals hit upon the idea of extending the concept to include curative treatment and surgeries. But going to a spa or a health resort in Kerala for rejuvenation through Ayurveda and other forms of alternative medicine may not be as pleasurable as undergoing chemotherapy for a deadly cancer or getting blockages in your heart removed through a bypass surgery.

The cost advantage – a bypass heart surgery in India costs $ 6,500 compared to $ 30,000 to $ 40,000 in the U S – is a big attraction for patients from the West. Then there is the problem of long waiting lists for elective surgeries in government health systems in the UK and the US. It is such demand side factors – coupled with good image of Indian doctors and surgeons in the West - the Indian medical tourism industry wishes to cash in to become a multi-billion dollar giant. In fact, medical tourism has existed for long, without this fancy tag. Foreigners were coming to Chennai and Mumbai for organ transplants – particularly kidney transplants in good numbers till the Human Organ Transplantation Act came into force. Even now the internet is full of advertisements of middlemen in the West who offer package deals for organ transplantation. The business or surrogacy and human tissue such as eggs and sperm is on the rise. You can even get a shot of stem cells on the sly.

As a pure market-based activity, medical tourism is a legitimate business. There is demand in the West for treatment services and surgeries. We have the skills to supply those services in a cost-effective manner. Yes, this would make perfect sense if we are dealing with a commodity or even a service like IT outsourcing where there may be abundance of production or availability of skilled labour. Unfortunately, it is not so in the health business. We are running short of doctors, specialists, nurses and even paramedics. Thousands of them are already serving in the US and the UK. Scores of them continue to migrate to such destinations every year. Those who stay back are concentrated in urban areas. And just a handful of them are deployed in public health system meant for the poor. As a nation, we are struggling to produce more quality health professionals and workers. From state-run multispecialty hospitals, there is a gradual shifting of skilled manpower to private corporate hospitals. There is already a deep crisis on the healthcare manpower front. Medical tourism is accentuating this crisis by taking away scarce manpower - bulk of which is trained at the cost of the Indian taxpayer - for treatment of foreigners.

What is worrisome is the government is proactively promoting medical tourism at the cost of providing healthcare to the poor. The National Health Policy of 2002 minced no words when it stated that “to capitalize on the comparative cost advantage enjoyed by domestic health facilities in the secondary and tertiary sectors, NHP-2002 strongly encourages the providing of such health services on a payment basis to service seekers from overseas. The providers of such services to patients from overseas will be encouraged by extending to their earnings in foreign exchange, all fiscal incentives, including the status of deemed exports, which are available to other exporters of goods and services.”

The state is promoting this business through several other means such as tax breaks, subsidies, free land, an industry-friendly accreditation system and so on. However, when it comes to quality of services and fees, there is no regulation on healthcare providers. The Clinical Establishments Bill – hanging fire for a decade now – does not provide for any cap or formula on fees that hospitals can charge for treatment and procedures. Also, in times of emergencies medical tourism-oriented hospitals are reluctant to provide a helping hand for fear of loss of ‘export business’, as was seen during the H1N1 pandemic last year.

Clearly, this is an industry which is on shaky ethical and legal grounds. It is unethical to waste scarce resources on treating foreign patients. All the fiscal incentives and concessions given to this industry coupled with its dependence on government hospitals and colleges for manpower mean that in effect, Indian state is subsidizing (and Indian taxpayer is paying for) healthcare of the rich West. Logically, all these facilities and resources should go to improve India’s health indicators – which are among the worst in the world. For the Western patient too, it is not a good deal. He or she may get a cheap deal on a kidney transplant or a bypass surgery or a womb-on-hire, but what happens if something goes wrong later. Indian doctors can’t be sued in other countries nor can foreigners hope to get quick justice in Indian consumer courts. Medical tourism is not a win-win situation as big hospitals and Indian government would have us believe. It is patently lose-lose situation superbug notwithstanding.

Bacterial cocktail to eat up oil slick on West coast

2010-08-23T05:55:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today, August 23, 2010

A massive operation began on Friday to clean up the oil pollution on the West coast caused by the collision of oil containers recently. Scientists from Indian Oil Corporation are using a cocktail of microbes that eat up oil content in soil to clean up the mess.

This is the first time this bioremediation technology is being used on marine soils. It was recently tested to clean up oil spills off the Orissa coast. The technology has been under use on land areas for cleaning up oily sludge generated in refineries and in tank farms for some years now.

The technology basically makes oily sludge ecologically friendly through bioremediation. It involves the use of specialized cultured bacteria which eat away the oil in the sludge, making it natural soil without causing any harm to the environment. Usually polluted soil is gathered in a pit and the bacterial cocktail is added to it. Within a few days, the bacteria do their job and turn the sludge into natural soil.

The clean up on the West coast is being jointly conducted by Faridabad-based Research and Development Centre of IOC and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) which had originally developed the technology. A team consisting of Dr D K Tuli of IOC and Dr Banwari Lal of TERI visited the spots and sites affected by the oil spill, along with officials of the Maharashtra State Pollution Control Board. About 100 volunteers from different agencies are carrying out the operation.

According to Dr R K Malhotra, director of research and development at IOC, some 1500 kgs of microbial mixture has been specially cultivated in large scale bioreactors jointly by TERI and IOC. These microbes have been dispatched to Mumbai in special containers for the cleanup operation.

In the Orissa spill caused by sunken ship Black Rose at Paradip port, the microbial mixture was used and it worked very well. The mixture called - Oilivorous-S – is a blend of five microbes selected to biodegrade a wide range of hydrocarbon contaminants including oily sludge and sulphur. These are of natural bacterial isolates and pose no threat to those who handle them or to the environment, officials said. The bacteria remain localised and get attached to targeted molecules of hydrocarbon.

However, extending the same technology to aquatic or marine systems where the conditions are altogether different in terms of nature of medium needs further research. Microbes don’t thrive and survive very effectively in saline water.

How Niyamgiri became a victim of King Aluminium

2010-08-23T05:51:00.001-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 22, 2010

Orissa is one of the few places in the world where greenfield alumina refineries to convert bauxite ore into aluminium are still being built. No wonder, the state has been recipient of some of the biggest foreign direct investments in recent times. Unfortunately, these very natural resources and massive investments to convert them into shiny metal have turned the state into a battleground between the state and tribals who inhabit the pristine Niyamgiri hills.

What’s happening in Orissa over bauxite mining projects is nothing new. The history of the mining industry – particularly the Aluminium industry – all over the world is replete with stories of bloody battles, human rights abuse, environmental violations, exploitation of the poor and the nexus between the state and the corporate world.

This industry is a hydra-headed giant with its tentacles spread all over – from auto sector to weapon industry, from consumer goods to pharmaceuticals. It has been cleverly working its way through governments, regulators, environment ministries, judiciary, media, parliaments and of course, politicians of all hues. It is this amazing network of the aluminium industry that the well-researched and argued book by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das has exposed.

It covers every aspect of the Aluminium Age - starting with the discovery of aluminium as an element in 1807 by Sir Humphrey Davy – to the dubious ways in which the aluminium industry operates in the globalised world of the 21st century. As the authors put it, this book is actually an anthropology of the aluminium industry.

Exploitation of bauxite in India began in early 20th century with the British
Aluminium Company setting up its operations, followed by opening of bauxite mines by Marwari businessmen – Juggilal Kamalpat Singhania and G D Birla as well as the Tatas. The industry was restricted to just a few private and government companies till the New Minerals Policy of 1993 – an extension of new economic policy of 1991 – allowed foreign-based companies to invest in and exploit India’s minerals. This opened up the flood gates for foreign collaborations and made Vedanta-Sterlite a major player.

While furthering the interests of mining companies in every conceivable way, the mining policy has weakened the laws and regulatory bodies that are supposed to protect village people and the environment. The book has provided detailed evidence of this happening in the case of Vedanta. Interestingly, Kautilya – the master of statecraft – had precisely warned against such a situation arising 2300 years ago. He had highlighted mining and metals as a key source of power and wealth, and warned of dangers to the state if private or independent operators were allowed to take charge of mines.

The book also exposes the myth of aluminium being a ‘green metal’ because it is recyclable and reduces hydrocarbon consumption by making cars lighter. It is actually a highly energy intensive industry and often dams have to be built to meet its energy needs. Then there are several other `externality costs’ - pollution of different types, ecological damage, displacement of people, huge water consumption and so on – which are not accounted for. So the ‘green metal’ tag flaunted by the likes of Vedanta is actually greenwash.

Using the benign use of aluminium, the industry is constantly trying to push up its consumption in India and other poor countries. The increased use of foils and shiny packing for food stuff and products like Gutka in India are a result of this campaign. Driving demand and consumption is crucial to keep the profits going for the mining giants.

The aluminium industry, according to the authors, is indeed an extreme case of ‘resource curse’ and is leading to ‘enclave colonialism’ in numerous regions such as Orissa. The complex financial, business, political and legal structures used by these companies is similar to the colonial machinery of the Raj era – both designed to exploit resources from India and other countries. Such exploitation is meeting stiff resistance from tribals in the form of grassroots movements witnessed in Orissa for long.

The increasing influence of naxalites in the region has to be seen more in the context of the government’s failure to check corruption and injustice. However, naxalism is no answer to the problems posed by mining lords in Orissa, as the authors feel that naxalites sometimes are as ‘tyrannical and arbitrary as the system they oppose’, and they often ‘replicate government-style hierarchies and terror’. The 700 plus pages book is a must for anyone who is keen to uncover the real story behind the humble foil in which he or she packs daily lunch.

[This is a review 'Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel'By Felix Padel and Samarendra Das]

Swedish scientist certain about origin of superbug gene in India

2010-08-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi

The Swedish scientist who first detected the drug resistant gene in the urine culture of an Indian patient has ruled out the possibility of the patient acquiring the infection in Sweden after he relocated there from India, as alleged by some Indian officials.

“The patient had visited India and had been hospitalized in Punjab. Later for several weeks he was in a hospital in New Delhi”, said Dr Christian G Giske of Department of clinical microbiology at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm. Giske had co-authored the first paper on NDM-1 in 2009, along with researchers from Cardiff University.

Immediately upon arrival back in Örebro, a small town in the middle of Sweden, a urinary culture of the patient was taken and he was hospitalized in a single room, which is the standard practice in Sweden for any patient who had been earlier treated outside of the Nordic countries, pointed out Giske. The culture showed strain of K. pneumonia which was resistant to carbapenem class of antibiotics.

It is mandatory to report all such drug resistant strains from all laboratories in Sweden, as per the Communicable Disease Act. “It can, therefore, be completely ruled out that we have had such strains circulating in Sweden prior to this case”, said Giske, who heads the Swedish group for methodology in antimicrobial susceptibility testing. “When I found that the isolate was producing beta-lactamase (antibiotic destroying enzyme) but was negative for all known resistance genes, I contacted Tim Walsh for assistance with characterization of the new gene and the isolate was referred to Cardiff”.

Following characterization of the new gene, Walsh and Giske met in Sweden and reviewed the DNA sequence as well as the patient history. “We decided to follow the tradition of naming new genes after the city where they were first detected (not necessarily where they were first present) and went for New Delhi, since the patient had been hospitalized there, and it was evident that he was colonized with this strain when he arrived back in Sweden”.

The name of a new gene or a strain, he said, does not tell “where the problem emerged, but rather where it was first detected”. But in the case of NDM-1, he said, all evidence points to its origin in India. Efforts should now be made to limit the spread instead of debating the name of the gene.

“I find the debate over corporate financing very strange. Implying that we should be part of a conspiracy against India with corporate financing is indeed absurd. Rather, I think that India should be satisfied with the fact that this problem has been revealed, so that it is now possible to counter-act the problem, and by doing so hopefully save Indian lives”, the scientist said while dismissing charges of conflict of interest in the study.

Dineshc.sharma@mailtoday.in

Celebrating the past and the future of Indian mathematics

2010-08-19T02:49:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, August 19, 2010

The Commonwealth Games is not the only international event India is hosting this year. An event of far greater import is beginning in Hyderabad on Thursday – the International Congress of Mathematics (ICM). Like the Games, this one also takes place every four years and there is stiff completion among countries to host it. This is the first time India is hosting the congress since its inception in Zurich in 1897.

And much like the games, medals will be awarded to the most distinguished mathematicians – the top most being the Fields Medal which is considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics. The Indian bid for hosting this event was made first in 2004. Canada was the other bidder, while Australia had withdrawn its bid earlier. One of the factors that went in India’s favour, besides issues like funding and logistics, was the long tradition of mathematical research, spanning three millennia, which continues even now. We have a large mathematics community and a number of eminent mathematicians.

Whenever we talk of mathematics, a few images come to our mind – India gave to the world the concept of zero and decimal place-value system, Srinivasa Ramanujam was a great Indian mathematician and that the knowledge of mathematics has given the country an edge in the field of software. All this is true, but it is not the complete story.

A ninth century inscription in a temple in Gwalior with the number 270 appearing in it bears testimony to the early writing of numbers in a way that is now common place. The earliest explicit statement of what we have all studied as Pythagoras' Theorem goes back to an ancient text called Baudhayana Sulvasutra, dating back to 800 BC.

Aryabhatt described algorithms for solving intermediate equations and for finding square roots and cube roots as well as the value of Pi. Similarly, Brahmagupta developed formulas for determining products of sums of squares and areas of cyclic quadrilaterals. Siddhartha, Mahavira, Jayadeva and Bhaskara worked on several topics in arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry.

Nilakantha Somayaji of the 'Madhava School' in the 15th century made considerable progress in mathematical analysis which anticipated the work of later Western analysts contributing to the rise of calculus. In modern times, Ramanujam made great contributions which continue to be interpreted even today. ICM provides an opportunity for all of us not just to reflect at this glorious past but also to cheer up Indian mathematicians who continue to work silently to make life simpler for us.

After all, mathematical equations and algorithms are at the heart of all machines and software that drives them, propelling technologies that make our lives simpler.

UK Doctor stands by bug's origin

2010-08-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 15, 2010

British researchers – at the centre of the controversy over their finding relating to a novel gene that renders antibiotics ineffective - on Saturday reiterated that the gene named after New Delhi indeed originated in the city and also denied any conflict of interest in their study.

“The patient in which this resistance was first identified contracted this resistant strain through travel to New Delhi. The infection was established in India prior to relocation back to Stockholm”, said Dr Timothy R Walsh, professor of medical microbiology and antimicrobial resistance at the School of Medicine, Cardiff University, in an interview. Indian health officials and doctors have been alleging that that the Swedish national might have acquired the infection elsewhere and not in New Delhi.

The name New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase or NDM-1 was given for the first time in a presentation made at the International Conference on Antibiotic Agents and Chemotherapy held in Washington in October 2008. Subsequently, detailed research findings were reported in a scientific journal called Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in 2009. After this, research groups in Mumbai and Delhi took up independent studies – the first such was reported in Journal of Association of Physicians of India (JAPI). Clearly, the scientific community in India was aware about the naming of NDM-1 after New Delhi, and there were no protests of any sort in the past two years.

Dr Walsh also brushed aside charges of conflict of interest articulated by the health minister, the Indian Council of Medical Research and medical tourism industry. The conflict of interest was declared in the paper itself. He said bulk - about 98 percent - funding came from the European Union and Wellcome Trust – which is a charity and not a drug company.

“Wyeth only sponsored (Chennai researcher) Karthik Kumarasamy’s travel to the UK under an educational fellowship to come to our lab and learn some techniques”, he said. “The company was not offered any information prior to publication of the paper and have had no influence over any of the data or the way in which it was presented. Nor have they received any isolates from the study.”

Asked if Wyeth, which has since been acquired by Pfizer, manufactured any antibiotic that can be effective against NDM-1 as alleged by doctors in India, Dr Walsh said “the antibiotic most consistently active against these bacteria – Colistin - is long out of patent and unlikely to be profitable any one company.”

As regards another antibiotic – tigecycline – that Pfizer makes, he said “you will note from our study that there are some strains even resistant to tigecycline and there are some infections for which this antibiotic is not licensed. To think we can just fallback on tigecycline (for those strains that are sensitive) and colistin to treat NDM-1 bacteria ad infinitum is crazy. Resistance will invariably occur so we desperately need new and novel drugs.”

On allegations by Indian authors that they were not shown the final version of the paper and concluding statement about NHS patients travelling to India for surgery, Dr Walsh said he was “surprised and saddened” by these allegations and said that “they (Indian collaborators) may have felt under some pressure.” He said the statement in question has been an integral part of this paper since March and all authors had signed their agreement with its content and findings. “We also have clear evidence in the form of emails that these authors did see final versions of the paper and agreed with it”.

Why the uproar? Many bugs named after cities

2010-08-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 14, 2010

The brouhaha over naming of the gene that makes bacteria drug resistant after New Delhi appears misplaced.

Health agencies, including the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) which on Thursday "strongly refuted" the naming of the new gene as New Delhi metallo beta lactamase or NDM-1, seem to be ignorant of basic rules relating to microbiology research and naming of new organisms.

The NDM-1 is not the first gene to be named after India or an Indian city. Nor has New Delhi been singled out with the naming of the new gene by British researchers.

Scores of bacteria and new organisms have been named after Indian cities, towns, states, rivers and scientists-including in projects funded by the ICMR. Bugs have also been named after their places of origin in the US, Europe and Asia. The list of cities which have bacteria named after them include Washington, Oregon, Texas, Berlin, Adelaide, Singapore, Beijing, Moscow, Zurich and several cities in France.

One of the first organisms to be named after Delhi was delhiensis-way back in 1959 by Dr B. R. Subba Rao and Dr A. K. Sharma of the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI).

Several bacteria belonging to this family continue to be discovered, the latest being Pseudomonas delhiensis which was isolated from a fly ash dumping site in the city in 2007 by scientists from the University of Delhi.

A bacterium found in the sediments of the Bay of Bombay in 1994 was named Methanolobus bombayensis.

Scores have been named after India itself. For instance, a rod- shaped bacteria isolated from a water sample collected from the Lonar Lake in Buldhana, Maharashtra, has been named Indibacter .

Bacteria names have also been taken up from several smaller towns from where they were isolated. These include Devosia chinhatensis (village Chinhat near Lucknow), Marichromatium bheemlicum (Bheemli), Roseospira goensis (Goa), Rhodovulum kholense (Khola), Thiomonas bhubaneswarensis (Bhubaneswar) and Rhodovulum visakhapatnamense (Visakhapatnam).

Among the bacteria bearing the names of scientists is Aeromonas sharmana-isolated from a warm water spring in Assam and named after Dr Manju Sharma, former secretary of the department of biotechnology for being " a great proponent of research on microbial diversity in India".

Scientists from the Cardiff University have named genes discovered by them after their places of origin, such as Sao Paulo (SPM- 1 SÃ£o Paulo metallo-betalactamase) and Verona Italy (Vim-1 or Verona integron-encoded metallo-betalactamase).And there were no protests in Brazil or Italy !

The naming of bacteria is done according to procedures laid down under the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes ( formerly the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria).

Delhi superbug is new threat to global health

2010-08-12T04:46:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 12, 2010

The latest threat to your health has New Delhi as its first name. A new enzyme that originated in the city is turning a number of disease- causing bacteria into superbugs, posing a new threat to global health.

The enzyme called 'New Delhi metallo- beta- lactamase' or NDM-1 makes several serious infections antibiotic-resistant. It has been isolated from bacteria that cause a number of diseases ranging from urinary tract infection to pneumonia. It can make all of them resistant to topline antibiotics, rendering them useless and leaving you with no cure.

What is alarming is that the new threat is not limited to hospitals or to one city. NDM-1 has already been found in over 100 patients who suffered various bacterial infections in a dozen cities across the country and has even spread to the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada through people who had travelled to India for surgery or treatment.

The enzyme is "extremely mobile", scientists said. It can jump from one bacteria to another in the environment. That's how several bacteria have been rendered resistant to drugs.

The NDM- 1 gene was found on plasmids - DNA structures that can be easily copied and transferred between different bacteria - suggesting "an alarming potential to spread and diversify among bacterial populations". The transmissibility and plasticity of NDM-1 implies there could even be outbreaks of NDM- 1 carrying bacteria in communities.

Even more disturbing is the fact that most of the India isolates from Chennai and Haryana were from community acquired infections, suggesting that NDM- 1 is widespread in the environment, pointed out Dr Mark A Toleman, one of the co-authors of the study.

Experts said since NDM- 1 makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics which are considered last treatment option for several infection, morbidity and mortality due to these infections could significantly go up.

Besides Delhi from where it was isolated first, NDM- 1 has spread to Chennai, Mumbai, Varanasi, Guwahati, Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Rohtak and Port Blair. In Pakistan, it has been found in eight cities and in Dhaka as well.

"The rapid emergence of multi- drug resistant NDM-1 producing bacteria and their potential worldwide spread could herald a period in which antibiotics could become redundant," researchers from India, the UK and Pakistan warned on Wednesday in a study published in scientific journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

"We need to urgently start very close international monitoring and surveillance." In 2009, Dr Timothy Walsh from Cardiff University in the UK had first identified NDM- 1 in two bacteria - Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli taken from a Swedish patient of Indian origin admitted to a leading corporate hospital in Delhi. Worryingly, NDM-1-producing bacteria are resistant to many antibiotics including a group of antibiotics known as carbapenems, which are usually reserved for use in emergencies and the treatment of infections caused by multi-resistant bacteria.

"The NDM- situation is likely to get substantially worse in the foreseeable future. It is of great concern because there are very few antibiotics in the pharmaceutical pipeline and none that are active against NDM-1," said Dr Walsh, who led the research team which included scientists from Indian medical colleges and Apollo hospitals.

Indian microbiologists too are worried. "It is an extremely serious situation and our health authorities are not able to realise the gravity of it. We are seeing a number of patients with resistance to antibiotics every day," commented Dr Chand Wattal, head of clinical microbiology at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

"This is the metabolic response of pathogens to antibiotics," Dr Wattal said. "Unbridled use of antibiotics has led to this situation.

NDM- 1 just pumps out antibiotics from pathogens." The researchers collected bacteria samples from Indian hospital patients and those suffering from community associated infections, and from patients referred to the UK's national reference laboratory between 2007 and 2009.

Samples were tested for antibiotic susceptibility and the presence of the NDM-1 gene using a technique called the polymerase chain reaction.

The gene was isolated from four per cent of 3,521 samples from Chennai that were analysed. It was present in 24 per cent of the samples collected from Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak. These isolates, scientists said, were primarily from community acquired urinary tract infections, pneumonia and bloodstream infections.

The new discovery could spell doom for the lucrative medical tourism business. Several of the British NDM-1 positive patients had travelled to India or Pakistan for surgical procedures including cosmetic surgeries within the past year. Since India also provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans, it is likely NDM- 1 will spread worldwide, scientists warned.

Dr Johann Pitout from the University of Calgary in Canada has cautioned that patients who have medical procedures in India should be screened for multiresistant bacteria before they receive care in their home country.

"If this emerging public health threat is ignored, sooner or later the medical community could be confronted with drug- resistant bacteria that cause common infections, resulting in treatment failures with substantial increases in healthcare costs."

Big pharmas dictating vaccine policies

2010-08-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, August 5,2010

Every time you visit a pediatrician’s clinic for a health check up for your kid, you are dished out a colourful brochure about a new vaccine in the offing. In the waiting room, you are surrounded with glossy posters of young mothers and their well-fed children staring it you with catchy slogans. But you not realise that behind this gloss is hidden the ugly face of a well-oiled marketing machinery run by multinational drug companies, so-called ‘vaccine initiatives’ funded by the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Healtth Organisation (WHO), health ministries and a plethora of powerful ‘experts’.

The sole objective of this unholy nexus is to promote costly vaccines through private practitioners and also have them included in national immunization programmes somehow. Both are lucrative options. In order to achieve its goal, members of this nexus can go to any extent, even committing horrendous acts like fudging, suppressing or twisting scientific data.

This has been exposed once again with the recent recommendation of an expert panel on introduction of a five-in-one or pentavlent vaccine for prevention of Haemophilus influenzae B (Hib), DPT and hepatitis B. While doing so, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) has chosen to ignore uncomfortable scientific data as well as field experience from countries where the vaccine has caused deaths of children.

The shameful nature of the whole affair is clear from the fact that an activist pediatrician had to resort to the RTI Act to obtain details of an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study done in Vellore about incidence of all-cause pneumonia in children under five. Government agencies and NTAGI were suppressing this data because this study showed very low incidence – 50 times lower that projected by Unicef. Had they included these results, they would not have been able to justify inclusion of a costly and ineffective vaccine in immunization programme.

Two pediatricians from Delhi’s St Stephens Hospital, Dr Jacob M Puliyel and Dr Zubair Lone, who have blown the whistle on NTAGI, also question WHO’s role in this regard in an editorial published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research. WHO has recommended inclusion of Hib vaccine in immunization programmes universally, irrespective of an individual country’s disease burden, not withstanding of natural immunity attained within the country against the disease, and not taking into account the rights of sovereign states to decide how they use their limited resources.

“The mandate and wisdom of issuing such a directive, for a disease that has little potential of becoming a pandemic, needs to be questioned”, the duo notes. Clearly, big pharma, WHO and national agencies are acting in unison.

How Nooyi is subverting debate on obesity

2010-07-21T22:24:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, July 22, 2010

Believe it or not, the Chief Executive Officer of one of world’s biggest food companies notorious for marketing its carbonated sugary drinks to children (thus contributing to the obesity epidemic) has been described as a leading obesity ‘expert and policy maker’ by a top American public health outfit in its annual obesity report card.

Yes, Indra Nooyi - the bubbly CEO of PepsiCo – has earned this title in the report ‘F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future’ released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her two-page ‘perspective’ on obesity in a major public health document is nothing short of a coup for food giants whose products are being blamed for the tsunami of lifestyle diseases all over. The ‘perspective’ is motivated to water down the debate on obesity and demands for imposing ‘soda taxes’ to reduce consumption of fatty and sugary junk food – discussed in the very same report.

This is not an isolated episode but part of a well crafted strategy by Big Food to masquerade as ‘champion of nutrition and health’, basically to stall any regulation on junk food. Nooyi cleverly hired some of the most ‘credible’ names in public health from the Center for Disease Control, Yale University, Mayo Clinic and the WHO itself, and gave them fancy titles such as ‘Head, Global Health Policy’, ‘Vice-President, Global Nutrition’ etc.

Her game plan is to subvert scientific debate on obesity and lifestyle diseases and confuse consumers – what tobacco and alcohol industries have been doing for decades. PepsiCo’s health experts have begun infiltrating scientific journals.

PepsiCo’s Derek Yach – who formerly worked for WHO – recently wrote a ‘research paper’ in journal Globalization and Health, brazenly pushing Pepsi’s PR stuff on nutrition. He says ‘scientists and policymakers have yet to find large-scale examples of what works well to reduce obesity at the population level and most clinical studies demonstrate that early weight changes are not sustained beyond a year.’

Not just this, Yach has written an invited editorial in the latest issue of another scientific journal ‘Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases’. It is shocking how scientific journals are accepting unadulterated commercial propaganda as scientific research. Wonder why are they becoming willing partners of Big Food?

To say the least, Nooyi’s health agenda – blindly lapped up by many in the Indian business press – is as fizzy as sugary water her company sells. Just look at one of PepsiCo’s ‘nutrition’ goals – ‘Reduce the average amount of added sugar per serving in key global beverage brands by 25 percent by 2020’. Every word in this goal has been selected in such a way that nothing will change in the cola that you drink for next several decades. The plan is so long-term that by then a whole generation of children would have got addicted and become obese.

If this propaganda goes unchecked and unchallenged, don’t be surprised if Nooyi is appointed honorary nutrition ambassador of WHO or heath advisor at FAO.

Transparency in short supply at MCI

2010-07-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

Mail Today, July 22, 2010

It seems transparency and Medical Council of India (MCI) don’t go hand-in-hand, no matter who is at the helm. The six-member Board of Governors – appointed by the government to replace disgraced MCI president Ketan Desai and his henchmen – has not made any difference to the functioning of MCI as far as the issue of transparency is concerned.

Dr Shiv K Sarin, chairman of the Board, had proudly announced in his first press conference that the council would work in an open manner and everything – including inspection reports of medical colleges – would be made available online. Nothing of this sort has happened.

Just the names of colleges approved and rejected have been posted on the council’s website. Forget inspection reports, no reasons have been given for rejection or for approval of previously rejected colleges.

MCI – under Desai – was at least posting on website minutes of Executive Committee meetings. The Board under Dr Sarin is not doing even this.

India's sex determination law has major loopholes

2010-07-12T00:44:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, July 12, 2010

Even 15 years after implementation of the much touted law to curb female foeticides through sex selection, government agencies charged with its enforcement are unclear who is allowed to run an ultrasound clinic.

While hearing petitions filed by two Delhi doctors whose applications for running ultrasound clinics were rejected by the state health authorities, the Delhi High Court this week asked the government to step in and make necessary changes in the law – the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act of 1994 , popularly known as PNDT Act.

“The absence of clear rules and guidelines spelling out unambiguously the qualification, training and experience required for operating a diagnostic clinic offering ultrasound tests has resulted in unethical practices being adopted in many such clinics in violation of the PNDT Act”, Justice S Muralidhar observed in his judgment.

As per the existing provisions, a sonologist or an imaging specialist is “a person who possesses any one of the medical qualifications recognized under the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 or who possesses a post-graduate qualification in ultrasonography or imaging techniques or radiology”. Praveen Khattar, advocate for one of the petitioners, argued that authorities incharge of granting registration to ultrasound clinics were using this definition selectively. Doctors whose applications were rejected were told that they need to be radiologists in order to qualify though they fulfilled the criteria of training. Asked by the court, the Medical Council of India (MCI) supported this view, but when approached by doctors independently the council told them it had nothing to do with ultrasound courses.

As a result of weak definition of the term `sonologist’, the court said, mushrooming growth of diagnostic clinics could not be effectively regulated. It asked the government to amend the Act to provide for a clear definition of a sonologist and notify names of institutions state-wise which are recognized for training of sonologists. The changed criteria must be made not only prospective but sufficient time given to enable those seeking registration or renewal to fulfil the changed criteria, the court ruled.

“This judgment would nip in the bud moves by some medical lobbies and MCI to promote radiologists as ultrasonologists because radiologists command a higher ‘market value’ “, a senior doctor commented.

Environment is paying for Delhi's greed

2010-07-08T05:21:00.001-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, July 8, 2010

It seems Delhi’s thirst for water can’t be quenched easily. The mega city keeps demanding more and more water, without ever caring for its implications for the environment and people from where this water comes.

Look at where all Delhi has been sourcing its water from - Sutlej river (Bhakra dam) Yamuna (Hathnikund barrage and Western Yamuna Canal), Ramganga (Ramganga dam), Bhagirathi and Ganga rivers (Tehri dam). Everywhere these projects have caused widespread displacement of people, environmental destruction and loss of biodiversity.

Delhi is now eyeing yet another pristine source to quench its thirst - river Giri, a tributary of Yamuna. Himachal Pradesh plans to construct a 148 meter high dam in Sirmaur district to store and supply water to Delhi. The state has paid Rs 215 crore to Himachal for displacement and land acquisition related costs. For Delhi, it Rs 215 crore is just peanuts (on a 35 km road to commonwealth village in East Delhi it has spent Rs 337 crore!).

But look at destruction this Rs 4000 crore dam is going to cause - 6000 people from 34 villages will be displaced, 1600 hectares of fertile land and biodiversity-rich forest will be submerged and lakhs of trees will be uprooted.

What is shocking is that Delhi is pushing for this project, without even considering other options such as plugging avoidable losses, cutting down non-essential use of water, promoting rainwater harvesting, wastewater recycling, groundwater recharging and so on. Why should Delhi be demanding more freshwater from outside without achieving all this? Ask environmentalists in a letter they have written to chief minister Sheila Dixit recently.

George is a wakeup call for all of us

2010-07-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, July 8, 2010

On a day when leading lights of opposition parties were out to make Bharat Bandh a success, a veteran of many a fiery bandhs George Fernandes was a picture of loneliness and withdrawal. His face was expressionless and he hardly responded to people wishing him when he was brought to the Delhi High Court. Fernandes, who turned 80 this past June, is a classic case of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and is perhaps harbinger of a new problem facing Indian society – the problem of age-related degenerative diseases.

Usually, illnesses like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are, in popular perception, problems of the rich West. It is no more so. With the rise in life expectancy – thanks to better health care, nutrition and diminishing burden of communicable diseases – the burden of age-related disease is going up. India, as per unofficial estimates, has 3.7 million people suffering from dementia and of them nearly 3 million are AD cases. This number is projected to double by 2030.

Let’s deconstruct what’s happening with disease patterns in the country. We are actually undergoing a phenomenon called epidemiological transition. Abdel Omron proposed this theory in 1971, according to which this transition has three stages. The first one was called ‘the age of pestilence and famine’, when famines and hunger killed people and life expectancy was below 40 years. The second was the ‘the age of receding pandemics’ when life expectancy increased to about 50 years. India has already moved past these two stages. In the third phase – ‘the age of degenerative and man-made diseases’ - mortality due to communicable diseases continues to decline, while that from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular gets dominant.

In 1986, a fourth stage– that of ‘delayed degenerative diseases’ – was added to Omran’s theory. In this phase, disease prevention and health promotion leads to prevention of cardiovascular diseases and their onset is delayed but aging-related diseases like AD rise. Bulk of India is in the third stage - heart disease is already number one killer – and sections of our society are also entering the phase of delayed degenerative diseases. Kerala – where the average life expectancy is 74 – is an example of this.

Our policy makers and politicians are yet to recognise this silent change. Our health programmes are still frozen in the framework designed in the 1950s to tackle communicable disease. We are yet to see a policy response to the heart disease and diabetes problem. Dementia and AD are far from being on the radar screen. The problem is going to be very acute because social support systems are also breaking down. There is nobody to care of ageing people are children move over to other cities and countries for education and employment, points out Dr K Jacob Roy, a Kerala doctor who has set up Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India, and is fighting for a national policy on AD. Perhaps, Fernandes’ plight would wake up the bureaucracy in Nirman Bhavan.

Don't turn womb hiring into an industry

2010-06-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, June 24, 2010

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has, at last, unveiled draft of the much awaited law on Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). It has taken more than a decade for the council to prepare this piece of legislation and perhaps it would take another few years for this draft Bill to become an Act. Add some more years for the elaborate regulatory infrastructure – envisaged in the Bill – to be set up and associated rules to be notified. Meanwhile, the technology sought to be regulated would have moved ahead rendering the law outdated, as it has happened since the exercise to make this law began in late nineties.

The experience with some recent medical laws– the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act of 1994 enacted to check sex determination, and the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 designed to curb kidney business – has not been encouraging.

The very intent of the new law is suspect. Instead of taking a rational and scientific approach to the problem of infertility, the draft bill seeks to legalise – and actively promote – costly and hazardous technologies along with unethical practices going on in the field of ARTs in India.

It seems it has been written by providers of these reproductive technologies. It is ICMR’s gift to the multi-crore reproductive industry which is exploiting the problem of infertility and thriving on the ‘fertility tourism’ growing at a scorching rate. I happened to cover the first consultation held by ICMR in early 2000s, where leading doctors (service providers of the fertility industry) were present. On seeing the agenda for the meeting, these doctors walked out of the consultation. It would appear that ICMR finally decided to join hands with the industry – which was adequately represented in the panel that has drafted the present bill – and let them have their way.

For instance, take the issue of surrogacy. The bill makes surrogacy agreement legally enforceable and allows payment of ‘monetary compensation’ by biological parents to surrogate mother in addition to medical and insurance expenses. A woman can act surrogate for as many as five ‘successful live births’ in her life including her own children. But she won’t be able to donate her eggs.

This would mean a reproductively healthy woman (acting as surrogate) would have to undergo hazardous and costly procedures such as in vitro fertilisation rather than simpler ones like intra uterine insemination. The bill seeks to create a new layer of middlemen or service providers called ART Banks who would be legally allowed to recruit surrogate mothers through advertising and supply them to infertility clinics. Similarly, clauses relating to foreigners seeking surrogates in India are extremely liberal.

Instead of addressing the problem of infertility through rationally devised health and medical interventions, the ICMR and health ministry are solely responding to the market needs. The bill is full of business jargon such as banks, clients, monetary compensation, companies etc. A more appropriate title for this bill should have been named ‘Regulation and Promotion of Human Womb and Related Industry Bill.’

Mobile phone that can test your eyesight

2010-06-24T02:56:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, June 24, 2010, Mail Today

The humble mobile phone is soon going to be your ophthalmologist. You will be able to self-test your eyesight just as you check your body temperature, blood pressure or blood glucose using digital devices.

All you will need to do is run a simple application on your phone, look at the screen through a tiny attachment and press a few keys. And within seconds, you will have the status of your eyesight on your phone's screen.

This is an innovative piece of technology developed by a group of researchers led by India-born Ramesh Raskar at the media lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It has yielded encouraging results and will soon be field-tested in India in collaboration with the Hyderabad-based L. V. Prasad Eye Institute. The device has been named NETRA or Near-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment.

The device has the potential to make routine eye-testing simpler, cheaper and accessible to millions of people. It takes advantage of the huge improvements in the resolution of digital displays and their widespread proliferation on mobile phones, which have become ubiquitous in developing countries.

NETRA currently works with phones having high-resolution displays. But researchers are expanding the range of phones that it can work on and are also developing pattern designs that can work with low-resolution phones.

"You can think of it as a thermometer for visual performance. Just as a thermometer measures corporal temperature and does not prescribe medicine, NETRA measures the refractive error and does not necessarily prescribe glasses," says Raskar, who heads the Camera Culture group at the media lab. "It allows a user to self-assess the performance of his or her eyes over time. The goal is to empower people, not replace optometrists."

Apart from the software to run on the phone, all that's needed is a snap-on plastic device, which, researchers say, can be produced for about $ 2 (about Rs 93). But it would cost much lesser if produced in large quantities.

The plastic device can be clipped on to the front of a cell phone's screen. The micro-lens array in front of the LCD essentially creates a 4D display. The user looks into a small lens and presses the phone's navigation keys until sets of parallel green and red lines overlap. This is repeated eight times, with the lines at different angles, for each eye. The whole process takes less than two minutes, at which point the software loaded on to the phone provides the prescription data.

The prototype developed by Raskar's team has an array of tiny lenses and a grid of pinholes that, combined with the software on the phone, forces the user to focus at different depths.

This enables the eye's focusing ability to be measured. The test works by transforming any blurriness produced by aberrations in the eye into an array of separate lines or dots instead of a fuzzy blob, which makes it easier for the user to identify the discrepancy clearly.

Rather than estimating which of the two views looks sharper, as in conventional eye tests, the user adjusts the display to make the separate lines or dots come together and overlap, which corresponds to bringing the view into sharp focus.

Earlier, people have tried all kinds of things as possible replacements for the heavy and expensive conventional eyetesting systems.

"The key thing that differentiates ours is it doesn't require any moving parts," says Ankit Mohan, a member of the research team.

Big dam lobby gains ground in green body

2010-06-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, June 23, 2010

The top post of the environment ministry’s panel on appraisal of hydroelectric projects seems to be reserved for proponents of big dams and hydropower industry lobbyists.

Former power secretary P Abraham, who headed the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) for environmental appraisal of river valley and hydroelectric projects, had to resign from his post last year after Mail Today exposed that Abraham had direct interest in certain power companies.

Now the government has appointed Rakesh Nath, former Chairman of Central Electricity Authority (CEA), as new chairman of EAC. The notification was issues on June 14. Nath is a known supporter of big dams and till the last month was President of Indian National Committee of International Commission on Large Dams (INCOLD), an organisation engaged in promoting big dams. “It is a rabidly pro-large dam organisation, essentially working as a lobby mechanism for large dams”, said an environmentalist.

The list of INCOLD’s members includes executives from private and public sector power companies such as NTPC, NHPC, GMR Energy, Jaiprakash Associates, North Eastern Electric Power Corporation, A D Hydropower Limited, L &T and THDC. As EAC chairman, Nath would now be dealing with project proposals from all these power companies.

“Nath has clear conflict of interest. He has been engaged in power sector development including pushing the case for large hydropower projects, whereas EAC is designed to evaluate environmental and social impacts of large dams and also explore ‘no dam’ options. EAC chairman needs to be a person with a far more balanced and independent approach on large hydro and river valley projects”, said Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.

Civil society groups have written to environment minister Jairam Ramesh against Nath’s appointment. “The EAC needs to have people with history and experience of spearheading environment and social concerns who can take independent decisions without any conflict of interest. Else it is not likely that the EAC would be any different from the CEA or any government's power sector bodies solely interested in the expansion of hydroelectricity at any cost”, 13 groups from all over the country, pointed out in their letter to Ramesh.

In a separate letter to Ramesh, EIA Resource and Response Centre (ERC) said Nath’s appointment was illegal as it violated orders of the Supreme Court of India as well as the High Court of Delhi regarding appointments to environment and forest approval committees of the ministry. “Nath’s credentials so far as environmental issues and subjects are concerned are not reflected in any of his past appointments. As the chairperson of EAC, there is surely a ‘direct and obvious conflict of interest’ with his affiliation to hydro projects”, the letter said.

PM gives GoM 10 days after 5 duds in 18 years

2010-06-15T02:27:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, June 15, 2010

Payment of house rent allowance (HRA) and city compensatory allowance (CCA) to judicial officers, appointment of ‘chowkidars’ for manning officers of deputy claims commissioners, need for security guards if victims attack claims commissioners.

This is not an agenda of a routine meeting in a government office. These are some of the ‘issues’ that dominated the first high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on Bhopal appointed in 1992, which was headed by Manmohan Singh, then the finance minister.
Eighteen years after successive GoMs failed to resolve any of the issues such as relief and rehabilitation, medical follow-up, extradition of Warren Anderson and cleanup of the tragedy site, the Prime Minister gave the current GoM a deadline to assess the issues.

On Monday, Manmohan Singh directed the newly constituted GoM to “assess options and remedies available to the government on various issues involved”. He gave the group 10 days to resolve all the issues that successive GoMs, including the one headed by him, could not achieve in the past 18 years.

The functioning of GoMs on Bhopal has been nothing short of a farce. Five of them were set up since 1992, they held just 17 meetings in 17 years and failed to make any substantive progress on relief, rehabilitation, medical follow up, extradition of Warren Anderson and cleanup. Instead, ministers spent more time on trivial administrative and political issues.

An analysis of minutes of all the 17 meetings of GoMs that took place between January 1992 and June 11 2008 – done by Mail Today - revealed that serious issues brought before ministers were tossed back and forth among different ministries of the central government and the state government, or refuge was taken under the fact that some aspects are subjudice. As a result, all of them remain unresolved even in 2010. The documents were obtained under the RTI Act by Bhopal Group for Information and Action.

For instance, it took nearly two decades of ‘discussions’ in GoMs for the MP government to submit an action plan worth Rs 982.75 crore in June 2008 and as a matter of routine, the GoM forwarded it to the Planning Commission for comments. No GoM ever reprimanded the state government for submitted the Action Plan after quarter of a century of the disaster.

Dr Singh presided over as many as 8 out of 17 meetings of GoMs on Bhopal held till June 2008. Other GoMs between 1998 and 2008 were chaired by Yashwant Sinha, Arun Jaitley and Arjun Singh. On an average, Bhopal GoM met only once in a year.

The GoM under the chairmanship of Arjun Singh took two major decisions in 2008 - setting up of an empowered commission on Bhopal and asking ICMR to restart medical research in Bhopal – but these two proposals were not initiated by the group. The ministers were forced to take these decisions after a group of victims walked all the way from Bhopal to Delhi and sat on hunger strike for over a month. The empowered commission is yet to be set up because MP government has opposed it.

The MP government which was represented in all GoMs kept asking for funds from the centre and made tall claims about progress on medical rehabilitation. Its main demand was to include 20 unaffected wards in Bhopal also in the list of gas-affected wards, purely for electoral purposes. On the other hand, the state government could not solve a simple municipal issue such as providing safe drinking water in areas affected due to contamination of groundwater from the factory site. It was only after hunger strike by survivors in Delhi that the Prime Minister released a sum of Rs 14 crore in 2006.

On the important issue of setting up a hospital with money from the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the GoM chaired by Dr Singh was the first one to suggest in December 1993 that the hospital be set up through money raised by selling shared attached by the court. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had opposed release of attached funds saying “if the attached property (shares) is released, it shall have adverse effect on trial and UCC shall never appear for trial.” The Law Ministry said “it is a matter of policy and needed a political decision”. But the GoM on January 2, 1996, took no decision but left the matter for courts to decide.

The meeting held on January 1, 1994 dealt exclusively with window dressing needed for the visit of the International Medical Commission on Bhopal. The minutes of this meeting read almost like a plan for a cover up. The GoM decided that “we should adopt the approach that we have nothing to hide any material from anyone” and that “we should not even remotely give any impression that we do not want to interact with the team or prevent the visit of the team”. Yet the ministers decided that only NGOs that “have adopted a positive approach to the work done by the government so far” should be involved in the exercise.

While critical issues were made to linger, the last GoM took up promptly the offer made by Ratan Tata to set up a ‘site remediation fund’ for cleanup of the site in lieu of government absolving Dow Chemicals – the current owner of Union Carbide – from any liability. The GoM also discussed a foreign technology agreement that Reliance wanted to sign with Dow Global for a petrochemical technology.

Nuclear Bill is a recipe for many Bhopals

2010-06-11T03:24:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, June 10, 2010

The genie is out. After the much awaited judgment in the Bhopal gas tragedy, it should be very clear to everyone why the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010 has been drafted. Touted as an innocuous piece of legislation to ‘operationalise’ the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, the bill is actually a devious weapon to protect corporate interests at the cost of Indian taxpayers. Its objective is to codify into law a patently unjust system of handling people in the event of a mega disaster like Bhopal. The sole motive is to make US-based nuclear suppliers and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India achieve under the ambit of a law what Union Carbide and the Union Government had to achieve in the form of an ‘out of court settlement’ duly brokered by the judiciary in 1989. In lieu of the compensation dole of $ 470 million, Union Carbide was granted sweeping criminal and civil immunity. That’s the reason the company has consistently refused to be part of any investigation, legal procedure, rehabilitation, remediation of the factory site, environmental clean up or any other activity connected with the disaster. Had a Bhopal-like tragedy occurred in Carbide’s West Virginia plant, the company would have gone broke overnight.

Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) – the parent of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) – was allowed majority ownership despite restrictions on foreign investments, ostensibly because of technological sophistication of the plant. UCC designed and selected all production processes, imported all plant designs, operational procedures and was responsible for all safety audits. Yet when the leak of MIC occurred, UCC could get away saying it was UCIL’s responsibility. We are faced with exactly the same scenario in 2010. American nuclear reactor suppliers are going to supply reactors designed and manufactured by them, these reactors will be run as per operational and safety procedures laid down by American suppliers, and yet in the event an accident the supplier will not have to shell out a paisa. The Indian government will pay for the damages and that too not more than the amount that was paid by Carbide in the infamous settlement of 1989. Who says we have not learnt any lessons from Bhopal? Manmohan Singh government has certainly learnt its lessons from Bhopal, at least, on this count.

The nervousness in the US camp over the public debate on Bhopal and civil liability issues after the court verdict is palpable. The timing of the judgment is particularly worrying because the proposed nuclear liability law is under parliamentary scrutiny now. If it can make it in its present form, it would be a perfect recipe for many more Bhopals in future.

Most people remember the gas tragedy as an isolated accident that occurred in a factory engaged in manufacturing pesticides. It was not so. The leak of MIC from tank 610 in the Carbide factory was culmination of a series of safety lapses in preceding years, and the management had been forewarned about possibilities of a deadly accident several months earlier. Bhopal: The Inside Story, a seminal book written by T R Chouhan, who was operator of the MIC plant, has documented all these safety lapses. An MIC production unit was added to the Bhopal factory in 1979 but it kept making losses. So UCC directed its Indian arm to shut down and sell it off. Financial losses and plans to dismantle the MIC plant led to negligent maintenance and substantial reduction in trained personnel. Safety audits had clearly warned of the possibility of a runaway reaction in the MIC storage tanks. It was also mentioned that no evacuation plan was in place for surrounding communities. UCIL managers told UCC that in order to implement such a plan they would have to publicise dangers posed by the plant, which would be contrary to claims they had made to government agencies in order to be labeled ‘non-noxious’ and to avoid relocation, according to Chouhan. All this was known to top brass of UCC and UCIL including Anderson and Keshub Mahindra. Safety issues were consistently raised by labour unions and were raised in media by investigative journalist Rajkumar Keswani.

Bhopal GoMs met 17 times in as many years, but nothing changed on ground

2010-06-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, June 10, 2010

They came, they met and they dispersed to meet again. This is what ‘Group of Ministers’ set up to resolve all pending issues relating to the world’s worst industrial disaster did for 17 years since 1992.

The main issues – medical follow up and economic rehabilitation of survivors, environmental cleanup of the factory site, provision of clean drinking water, extradition of Warren Anderson, a permanent mechanism to deal with Bhopal – all remain unresolved even though GoMs set up by successive governments since 1992 have periodically discussed them many times over. Besides central government ministers, a representative of MP government has been a permanent invitee to these GoMs.

All these issues have been tossed back and forth among different ministries of the central government and the state government, or refuge was taken under the fact that some aspects were subjudice. In all, GoMs under different regimes met 17 times. The last meeting was held on June 11, 2008. After about a decade of discussions, the MP government submitted an action plan MP government worth Rs 982.75 in this meeting. The GoM forwarded it to the Planning Commission for comments.

The MP government persisted with its demand to declare 20 unaffected wards in Bhopal also in the list of gas-affected wards, despite no scientific basis for doing so. It also wanted local MLAs and MPs be included in the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust. Considerable amount of time was spent on such issues of political nature, as per minutes of all GoMs available with Mail Today. On the other hand, an issue of grave urgency – cleaning up of the factory site – was left to linger for years together without any justification. The MP government also could not solve drinking water problem in areas around the factory which are surviving on contaminated groundwater.

Two decision that the last GoM under the chairmanship of Arjunn Singh took - setting up of an empowered commission on Bhopal and restarting of medical research by ICMR – were not its own and were taken after a group of victims walked all the way from Bhopal to Delhi and sat on hunger strike for over a month. Yet the two decisions remain on paper even after two years.

While critical issues were made to linger, the last GoM took up promptly the offer made by Ratan Tata to set up an site remediation fund for clean up of the site in lieu of government absolving Dow Chemicals – the current owner of Union Carbide – from any liability. The GoM also discussed a foreign technology agreement that Reliance wanted to sign with Dow Global for a petrochemical technology.

Bhopal continues to bear the brunt of toxic disaster

2010-06-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, June 9, 2010

Disastrous health effects of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas that leaked from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal on the night of Dec 2–3, 1984 continue to unfold even after quarter of a century. The absence of any long-term follow up of the survivors and their offspring by any medical research agency of the government has left large gaps in knowledge about the long-term effects of MIC.

Small research studies and anecdotal evidence point out continued effect of the gas among those exposed as well as among children born to gas-affected parents and, in some cases, in third generation also. The health impacts range from stunted growth to cleft lips.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had followed up a cohort of over 80 000 people exposed to the gas from 1985 to 1994, but published its first report only in Nov, 2004. After survivors approached judiciary demanding medical follow up, the council last year decided to re-start research work in Bhopal. But its call for research proposals has received only lukewarm response.

More than half a million people were exposed to MIC, and around 120 000 of them continue to suffer from chronic respiratory, ophthalmic, reproductive, endocrine, gastro-intestinal, musculo-skeletal, neurological, and mental disorders. The diversity of symptoms prompted the ICMR to conclude that MIC alone could not have been responsible. The aerosol of toxic gases inhaled by the victims possibly contained a mixture of over 20 aqueous and thermal decomposition products, and a host of byproducts of MIC—including hydrogen cyanide (HCN)—generated in runaway reactions in the tank at very high temperature. It was for the first time that chemicals including high levels of cyanides were traced in human bodies after a massive chemical disaster.

A study done by Sambhavana Trust Clinic provided first evidence of selective growth retardation in boys, but not in girls, who were either exposed as toddlers or were born to gas-exposed parents. The main chemical that escaped from the plant was MIC, which is readily degraded on contact with water and in the body. One of the degradation products of MIC is trimethylamine, which has been reported to produce selective growth retardation of male progeny of mice. Scientists believe it is possible that similar hormonal effects were produced by MIC, its metabolites, or other substances.

The clinic has subsequently undertaken a large study among children born to exposed parents, but its results are yet to be published. “We are analysing the results of this study which involved about one lakh children in different categories”, said Rachna Dhingra of Sambhavana.

Experts feel long-term monitoring of the affected community needs to be done for the next several decades. At present, no genetic studies are going on. The only long-term follow-up is in the form of a population-based cancer registry. Continuous follow of the gas-affected could help agencies take important decisions about action on detoxification, short-term and long-term treatment, long-term health consequences, and the implementation of a programme to compensate victims.

Yet another problem Bhopal faces is the toxic remains of the Union Carbide factory. A series of investigations by Indian and international organisations have found evidence of contamination of subsoil and groundwater with heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants from the abandoned pesticide plant. Greenpeace has found chemicals such as carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, trichloroethene, tetrachloroethene, and dichlorobenzene, in concentrations ranging from five to 600 times safe limits. Such chemicals stay in the environment for tens of thousands of years and have known health effects on the liver and kidney, while some are carcinogenic

Damages amount to a pittance for them

2010-06-11T03:16:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today June 8,2010

The judgment pronounced in the criminal liability case of the Bhopal gas tragedy does not mean much to the victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster, because the civil liability of the accident was settled arbitrarily in 1991 by the Supreme Court. On an average, those suffering from the after-effects of MIC have received just about Rs 50,000 each in two installments – in 1992 and 2004.

In February 1989, the SC arrived at a ‘final settlement’ of all Bhopal litigation in the amount of $470 million and directed that all civil proceedings against Union Carbide should be transferred to it and “shall stand concluded”, while all criminal proceedings against the company “shall stand quashed”. The settlement was promptly accepted by the central government as well as the company. In October 1991, the SC confirmed the settlement and closed all legal proceedings, bestowing sweeping civil and criminal immunity to Union Carbide.

When challenged by victims and civil society in a review petition, the SC upheld the settlement but reinstated criminal charges against the company. It is this criminal case which had been settled on Monday.

Surprisingly, the court-endorsed settlement capped the company’s liability at $ 470 million even before the claims had been categorised and extent of the damage fully assessed. The settlement was based on an estimate of 3000 dead, 30,000 permanent and total disabilities, 20,000 temporary and partial disabilities and 50,000 minor injuries. The actual numbers were at least five times more than what the SC settlement had accounted for - 15,248 dead and 554,000 injured as per government records in 2003. This brought down the compensation to be paid to victims by five times.

The central government’s role in the settlement was also intriguing. Just one year before the court came up with the figure of $ 470 million, the government had told the Bhopal District Court that the claims related to the gas leak would exceed $ 3 billion.

The settlement not only capped the liability of Carbide but also prevented victims their individual right to prove the extent of damage caused to them and claim suitable compensation. Event to get the pittance the settlement offered, victims had to go through an elaborate procedure before the claims courts that were set up – registration, identification, notification of their hearing, categorisation, adjudication and in many cases, appeals. They had to make innumerable trips to hospitals to get certificates from doctors, lawyers, banks and courts, and often pay bribes.

Victims began getting the compensation from 1992 onwards. On an average, they got Rs 25,000 for injuries suffered due to the gas leak. Of Rs 750 crore ( $470 million at the prevailing rate) settlement, Union Carbide Corporation paid $420 million which was held in a dollar account, while its Indian subsidiary paid Rs 68.99 crore ($ 44 million) which was held in Rupee account. Due to appreciation of dollar and interest earned on undistributed funds, this money – which was with RBI - grew to Rs 1500 crore. Victims once again approached the SC, which in July 2004 ordered that the remaining funds be disbursed among victims. As a result of this, another Rs 25,000 each was distributed.

“Overall, what we have got is negative compensation, because we have spent much more on court procedures, medicines and in paying bribes. Many people had to repay debts, so they are left with nothing”, points out Syed M Irfan, president of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha. “While paying, they even deducted Rs 200 that was paid as interim relief.”

The settlement also included setting up of a hospital in Bhopal by Carbide. In 1992, the company set up "The Bhopal Hospital Trust" in London and made its former attorney Sir Ian Percival as sole trustee. The Madhya Pradesh government gave, free of cost, 80 acres of land for the hospital. Union Carbide paid merely $ 1000 to the trust. Following the death of Percival, the trust was transformed into "The Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust" and funds for it came from sale of Union Carbide India shares confiscated by the government. Justice A M Ahmadi, who allowed this sale, became chairman of the hospital trust. The hospital started functioning only in 2001.

Synthetic cell is just the beginning

2010-05-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, May 27,2010

Synthia, the synthetic cell developed by Dr Craig Venter in his laboratory has taken the world by storm. While some have compared this development as path breaking as discovery of agriculture and industry, others feel Venter has not created life but has only tinkered with existing forms of life. But there is near consensus that the synthetic cell is indeed a great advance for science with profound implications for humanity.

Venter – often called the ‘showman of science’ – has a great penchant for discovery. During his last visit to India in March 2008, I had an opportunity to interact with him. It would be worth recalling what he had told me about his approach to science. While talking about his project to discover new species, he had said: “When I started my PhD work, I was told that it is very difficult to make a discovery in science because all was known. Now it is just the opposite. We know that ‘it’s not all known’. You can take a glassful of sea water and discover more new species than what’s has been discovered in the past one decade. That’s pretty exciting. It’s all about how science is taught. It’s taught as if everything is known.” It is this unending quest for discovery – and perhaps enormous commercial applications of the same – is what is driving Venter’s work.

If we carefully look at his work, we would find that Venter is actually not going against nature but is trying to make good use of genetic material available in nature so that he can design or recreate organisms with desired traits or convert one species into another. In a way, his goal is to speed up the process of evolution.

That’s why he and his research teams are engaged in deciphering genomes of organisms from the depths of sea to the insides of human gut. Venter’s research teams have completed a circumnavigation of the world’s oceans on a research vessel, uncovering thousands of new species. As a result of this project, they have been able to build a repository of some six million new genes. They are also scouting the human body, cataloguing bacteria and viruses that thrive in various body cavities. The idea is to identify and characterise the human microbiome - the microbial populations that natively inhabit our bodies - and to determine its role in health and disease. Venter believes that understanding the human microbiome is as important as the human genome. In fact, the first results from this unique project were published last week in the same issue of scientific journal Science, in which the synthetic cell was announced. So, Venter might appear as ‘creator of life’, he is actually delving deep into existing life around us and life within us with the ultimate goal of solving problems relating to health of this planet as well as humans.

Venter’s synthetic cell divides the world

2010-05-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma in New Delhi, Mail Today 22 May, 2010

The stunning announcement about creation of a synthetic cell in the laboratory by maverick geneticist Dr J Craig Venter evoked extreme reactions on Friday. While scientists described it as “one of the most important scientific achievements in the history of science”, religious groups and critics called for a moratorium on such research.

The main fears related to certain ethical and safety issues. Critics fear that the technology of creating synthetic building blocks of life developed by Venter and his research teams could be used by terrorists to develop weapons of bioterrorism.

Venter agreed that it is powerful technology that falls in the category of “dual use technology”, but said “it's hard to find a technology today that's not dual use where it could be used to do harm to somebody, or used for public benefit”. He says while the new technology could provide “a linear increase in the ability for somebody to do harm, but it's an exponential increase in a toolset that can be used to help humanity”.

Bob Friedman of J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) said it would be possible for someone to use this new technology to synthesize a pathogen. “We have a government infrastructure that controls access to really nasty stuff that we would not like to have fall into the hands of a potential bioterrorist”, he pointed out. The US government is considering screening procedures for genomic companies so as to detect whether somebody was trying to synthesise a pathogen. One of the scientific ways to control new pathogens could be so called “suicide genes” that kick in to prevent the organism from living outside of the lab or environment in which they were grown.

Responding to fears of risks involved in the new development, President Barack Obama asked the Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to “consider the potential medical, environmental, security, and other benefits of this field of research, as well as any potential health, security or other risks.” The panel has also been asked to identify ethical boundaries and risks involved in synthetic biology research.

“It is a major scientific breakthrough, but it needs to be treated with great deal of caution”, commented Dr Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign. “Synthetic biology has great potential for misuse as well as harm to the environment. Here we are dealing with organisms that are not a product of evolution, they have no pedigree, our bodies have no immune response to them and we don’t know how they are going to impact on the environment”.

Sahai also feels that synthetic biology is a commercial venture and application of this new knowledge could be limited as it would all be covered under patents. Synthetic Genomics Inc, founded by Venter, has filed 13 patent family applications on the inventions of the JCVI team.

Besides fears of biosafety and biosecurity, religious groups are opposing Venter’s work on the grounds of ethics involved in tampering naturally occurring life forms. “Only God can create life”, they warn scientists. “The organised religion has always been opposed to new ideas and new knowledge. They had even opposed surgery and painkillers”, pointed out Sanal Edamaruku of Indian Rationalist Society.

“Venter’s achievement would seem to extinguish the argument that life requires a special force or power to exist”, said Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at University of Pennsylvania.

Some scientists have also sounded a note of caution. “These new powers create new responsibilities. Nobody can be sure about the consequences of making new forms of life, and we must expect the unexpected and the unintended”, noted Mark Bedau, bioethics expert at Reed College, Oregon, in a special commentary in scientific journal Nature.

Man is Now God

2010-05-21T00:40:00.000-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, Mail Today, May 21, 2010

The future is here. Scientists have created an artificial life form using a genetic code written on a computer.

The life form - a living bacterial cell - has been created by writing a new genetic code and transferring the same into a bacterium to replace its natural code. Powered by the man-made genome, the bacterial cell could replicate and make new set of proteins.

The breakthrough is a result of 15 years of research by a team led by maverick genetic scientist Dr Craig Venter of the J. Craig Venter Institute. The result of this landmark study would appear in leading scientific journal Science on Friday.

“It is an important change on how we approach life and think about life, and a powerful tool to design what we want biology to do”, Venter said in an interview released by the journal.

“This is the first synthetic cell that's been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer,” said Venter. “We built that software molecule from over a million letters of genetic code, put that into a recipient cell and with that information converted the cell into a new species.”

The development is restricted to micro organisms and scientists at present do not see its extension to higher animals or humans. But the ability to write genetic code of organisms has immense potential to benefit humans as this would enable scientists to direct cells or organisms to perform desired jobs.

Venter plans to use this technology to further probe what he calls “the operating system of life” and to engineer bacteria specially designed to solve environmental and energy problems. His company, Synthetic Genomics Inc, plans to design algae that can capture carbon dioxide and make new hydrocarbons that could go into refineries. The firm is collaborating with energy giant ExxonMobil and some of Venter’s projects are backed by the US Department of Energy.

New ways of making vaccines are also in the pipeline. Novartis is already talking to the Venter Institute to use a technology that will ‘shorten the process of making flu vaccines by 99 percent”. The application of this technology, Venter says, “will be mostly limited by our imagination.”

The feat of creating the synthetic cell was achieved through a complex and highly challenging sequence of genetic assembly. The building blocks of DNA—adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thiamine (T) are not easy chemicals to artificially synthesise into chromosomes. As the strands of DNA get longer they get increasingly brittle, making them more difficult to work with.

The researchers first synthesised the genome of a bacterium called M. mycoides and added DNA sequences that “watermark” the genome to distinguish it from a natural one. It was further modified in yeast using yeast genetic systems. This genome was then transferred to another bacteria, E. coli, and back into yeast. After three rounds of assembly, the researchers had produced a genome over a million base pairs long.

The scientists then transplanted the synthetic M. mycoides genome into another type of bacteria, Mycoplasm capricolum. The new genome “booted up” the recipient cells and produced only M. mycoides proteins, scientists explained.

It has been Venter’s dream to design organisms with minimal genetic codes so that desired genes could be added to turn a bacterium into a factory producing compounds useful for humankind. In 2007, he demonstrated that natural chromosomes from one microbial species could be transplanted into another. In 2008, he showed that he could make an artificial chromosome with “watermark” DNA sequences that would distinguish synthetic genome from the natural one. Now, Venter and his team of researchers have combined all this knowledge and created new cells that are specified by the synthetic DNA.

Venter compares DNA to life’s software. If you can change this operating system software, you can play with life. “When we look at life forms when see them as fixed entities. But our work shows how dynamic they are. They change from second to second and that life is basically a result of information process, a software process. Our genetic code is our software and our cells are constantly, dynamically reading that genetic code, making new proteins”, the scientist said addressing a press conference.

“But it is hard to imagine how dynamic this process is until we found that by simply replacing that software we started making a whole new cell formed by that software.”
This is “a defining moment in the history of biology and biotechnology,” remarked Mark Bedau, a philosopher of science and editor of the scientific journal Artificial Life.

When asked if the same technique can be applied to higher organisms, Venter said “certainly not on near future. Bacteria are comparatively simpler to work with. They don’t have complex regulation system as higher organisms.” Venter had shot to prominence in 2001 when he published the first human genome.

The research, however, could open a Pandora box of ethical issues though Venter’s work has been assessed by bioethicists in the past. There are also fears of the technology landing up in wrong hands. Experts feel that the technique is too difficult to appeal to future bioterrorists. However, “the possibility of misuse unfortunately exists,” says Eckard Wimmer of Stony Brook University. Since Venter has applied for a number of patents covering all his work, fears of his company monopolising the emerging field of ‘synthetic biology’ exist.

The 24-member team of Venter included three scientists of Indian-origin - Sanjay Vashee, Radha Krishnakumar and Prashanth P Parmar.

Why does jailed Desai still rule the roost?

2010-05-13T03:17:00.001-07:00

By Dinesh C Sharma, May 13, 2010

The chief of India’s medical education regulatory authority, Dr Ketan Dhirajlal Desai, is in jail for close to three weeks now. The first action against him has come from his home state Gujarat, where the government suspended his services from the B J Medical College. But he continues in several other positions including at the Medical Council of India.

He is also the President-elect of the World Medical Association. A few days prior to his arrest, I had asked WMA on how it had elected a tainted doctor as its top post. The body’s spokesperson was candid. First, he pointed out that it was the Indian Medical Association (IMA) which had nominated him to the WMA presidency and “we have no reason to distrust our Indian colleagues.” The next thing he told me was surprising – “the President of India and the Health Minister attended our ceremonial session (held in Delhi where Desai was elected unopposed in October 2009) on the initiative of Dr Desai.” Does it mean Desai used the presence of the President and Health Minister to prove to the WMA leadership that he was clean and to gloss over the Delhi High Court judgment that had found him guilty of abuse of power and of accepting bribe of Rs 65 lakh in 2001? At least, minister Azad owes an explanation here.

Desai’s biodata on MCI website proclaims him as “an apostle of genuine imagination, innovation and creativity, which has resulted in his enviable ascendency to the key positions.” Every word here is true. It was indeed very creative the way Desai subverted important institutions to have his way.

Starting with Gujarat Medical Council in 1993, he successfully managed every medical institution. Soon after the Delhi High Court removed him from MCI and while CBI was still probing him, Desai became President of IMA. Then he returned to MCI by successfully ‘managing’ members of Supreme Court-appointed monitoring panel to give him a ‘clean chit’. Desai gave jobs in MCI to kith and kin of CBI inspectors investigating his case, relations of desk officers handling his cases in the high court and even employees of IMA who made his stay comfortable at the IMA House in ITO. It is said the health ministry too obliged him by posting his nominees to its medical education desk and to the council itself.

Instead of having its own law officer, MCI chose to hire services of topnotch lawyers, some of whom got crores of Rupees as fee. This list reads like who’s who of Indian politics. While one such eminent lawyer was defending MCI in courts, the council was dealing with applications of a medical college run in the name of his father in Maharashtra. This only shows how practically every institution – private and public - involved was compromised. The point is while Desai is the kingpin of the medical education racket, the army of colluders he heads is really large.