The Body

 

I have been a fan of Bill Bryson for many years now. Starting with "A Short History of Nearly Everything"(2003), I have tried to keep up with his numerous books on popular science that blend hard facts with a wry sense of humour.

"The Body: A Guide for Occupants" is perhaps one of his fattest books. In over 500 pages (excluding the refs and index) it covers not only many parts of the human body but also what happens when things go wrong due to diseases or cancer. 

What fascinated me the most is the number of times he begins a sentence with the phrase "we still don't know", or "It is still a mystery why...".

Take for instance his description of a patient name Frau Deter who approached a psychiatrist complaining of persistent and worsening forgetfulness. She could feel her personality draining away, like sand from an hourglass. The psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915) now has the disease named after him. Researchers have since figureed out that the Alzheimer's begins with an accumulation of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid in the sufferer's brain. What do these protein fragments do in the normal course? we don't know. Patients also accumulate tangled fibrils of tau proteins about which, once again, we know hardly anything. What we do know is that as these proteins build up in the brain - 

Alzheimer's first demolishes short-term memories, then moves on to all or most other memories, leading to confusion, shortness of temper, loss of inhibition and loss of bodily functions, including how to breathe and swallow...People with the disease die twice - first in the mind, then in the body.

Nobody know why some people get Alzheimer's and others don't. It accounts for 60-70% of all dementia cases, and is thought to affect about 50 million people around the world. Little is known about the remaining 30-40% of dementia cases. We have given some of them unique names and recognise them from typical symptoms but the only thing we know is that is is caused by the "disturbance of neural proteins"! One of them is Lewy Body Dementia which is particularly distressing to loved ones because victims frequently lose inhibitions and the ability to control impulses, so they tend to do embarrassing things - shed clothes in public, steal from supermarkets, etc.,  

BB also has something to say about the limits of "modern medicine". Alzheimer's drugs have a 99.6% failure rate (!), one of the highest in the whole field of pharmacology. At the same time, most  of the money available for research is skewed towards ailments of the rich. There is a whole category of 'neglected tropical diseases' that affect more than a billion people worldwide. One of them, Lymphatic filariasis, affects more than 120 million people. Ditto for leishmaniasis, trachoma and yaws.

Perhaps it takes a kind of mad obsession to tackle diseases of this magnitude, and we owe much of what we know to those who paid with their lives. A German parasitologist, Theodor Bilharz (1825-62) wanted to have a better understanding of a tropical disease called schistosomiasis (akal Bilharzia or Snail Fever), so he bandaged the pupae of cercaria worms to his stomach and took careful notes as they burrowed through this skin en route to invading his liver. He survived this experiment but died at 37 (!) while trying to stop a typhus epidemic in Egypt.

So, as Max Ehrmann says in his Desiderata, "with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world!". For the human body, it is still an extraordinary fact that having good and loving relationships alters your DNA...and conversely, not having such relationships doubles your risk of dying from any cause!

Rainbow Trouts in Bhutan

 

I guess it does not take much of marketing to sell a fish that evokes images of kisses, mountain streams and rainbows. 

The rainbow trout, aka Oncorhynchus mykiss, loves cold, clean, fast-flowing mountain streams. Native to the Americas it has, over the centuries, become a valuable table-fish - thanks to its great taste (it belongs to the salmon family), the fact that it can be reared with relative ease in fish-farms, and because it fetches a good price in the markets. In India it sells for over INR 1200/kg and counts among the 'high-value' fishes sold across the country. Globally, the top three exporters of Trout are Turkey, Chile, and Vietnam. In 2023, the rainbow trout market was valued at US$ 4.2 billion 

Inspired perhaps by the success of Vietnam, many asian countries have been trying their hand at rearing and exporting this fish. Bhutan is one of them. With its pristine Himalayan mountain streams it ought to have a natural advantage in this business but the record so far has been limited. What could be the reasons for this? 

Efforts started way back in 2008, National Research Center for Riverine and Lake Fishes (NRCRLF), at Haa. Personnel trained at trout farms in Kokernag, Kashmir, replicated a raceway at Haa, and this has been been the centre for trout farming efforts in Bhutan for nearly two decades. The Trout Breeding Centre at NRCRLF has been producing and distributing hundreds of thousands of fingerlings to affiliated farms which in turn produce around 35 tonnes of fish every year. Yet, even at the most fancy restaurants in Thimphu, you are unlikely to find rainbow trout on the menu. Why is this the case? Where does all the fish production go?

One logical answer to this could be that all the rainbow trout produced in Bhutan goes across the border to the Indian market. It takes about five hours to cross 167km of mountain roads to reach Phuensoling, the border town. Even across this border, competition is likely to be stiff from Indian trout farms. 

In Sikkim alone, for instance, there are 760 rainbow trout raceways with an annual production of 340 tonnes in 2022–23, up from 95 tonnes in 2014–15. The state also operates nine hatcheries, producing 619,000 fingerlings in 2022–23. Next door in Arunachal Pradesh, trout broodstock and seed production is being done in two main hatcheries situated at Shergaon of west Kameng and Nuranang in Tawang district. Shergaon has ova production capacity of 100,000. 

India's rainbow trout production has increased from 147 tonnes in 2004–05 to over 842 tonnes in 2015–16 (31% annual growth rate!), with a notable rise in private sector involvement. Key states contributing to this growth include Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Arunachal Pradesh . With such competition just across the border, it is not easy for Bhutan. 

Two crucial inputs trout fish farms - eggs/ova and feed - is dependent on expensive imports. Annually about 200,000 one-eyed Ova (fertilised eggs) are imported from Denmark. Specialised fish feed, with a purported high feed conversion ratio (FCR) of 1:1 (!) is imported from BioMar in the Netherlands for around Nu.200/kg. Biomar itself learnt the ropes of the fish-feed business from American companies and is among the dominant players now. Quite amazing to think that fishes being reared in the Himalayan streams need to be fed with something that is imported from a tiny country 7,300 km away!

This brings us back to the Vietnamese. How did they make themselves one of the top exporters of rainbow trout? As in the case of cashewnuts they surely have many lessons for those who want to approach agribusiness with a clear head and a hard nose for business!

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REFERNCES & LINKS

• Global Rainbow Trout Market (2023) - https://www.factmr.com/report/2084/rainbow-trout-market
• Bongo Gewog, Chukha, to Launch Rainbow Trout Project 
• https://derafarms.com/products/himlayan-rainbow-trout

Dynamics of the North East

At first glance Sanjoy Hazarika's book may seem rather dated. It gives a snapshot of the North Eastern states up to the early 1990s. 

Much of the turmoil described in the book has died down - insurgencies that roiled the North East for decades after independence has given way to a superlative push for development -  the new longest river bridge in India, 10,000km of new highways, railway links pushing further eastwards,  and ten new airports, a new impetus to the agriculture sector...all this has done much to integrate the region with the rest of the country. And yet, thanks to the recent troubles in Bangladesh, and the breakdown of trust and goodwill bodes ill for the seven sisters. 

This history of the seven sisters is a lot more complex than I expected. It also goes way beyond the unequal Treaty of Yandabo (1826) through which the British grabbed large swathes of Burma into British India.  The vast Brahmaputra valley has seen multiple invasions from the east of whom, perhaps the Ahoms lasted the longest.  Originally from the Shan region bordering Burma and China, the Ahoms conquered the area in the 13th century, adopted Hinduism, married into local communities and ruled for the next 600 years.  Even during this period it seems the tribes inhabiting the hills raided the plains but the rules were sanguine about pursuing them into the hills - 'can an elephant enter the hole of a rat?'

In terms of language and culture, a certain pecking order was imposed on this region. Soon after the British conquest of Assam, Bengali became the language of the courts and remained the official language till 1873. The Assamese in turn tried to impose their language on the hill states much to their resentment.

Partition of British India, tensions between India and Pakistan and  the creation of Bangladesh cut off the North East from its natural trading partners. The most accessible port at Chittagong went to Bangladesh even though it was located in Chakma region dominated by christian tribes. On top of this, power politics in North India forced the NE to subordinate it natural resources to states like Bihar. Petroleum extracted from Assam was sent in pipes all the way to Barauni refinery for processing!

Hazarika's book is a valuable record of the missed opportunities in the North East. It also provides a perspective on how the ongoing transformation of the seven sisters.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- PIB Press Note on the North East 

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