Patagonian Worms

There has just been a shoot-out in the FIFA World Cup. Brazil has squeaked past Chile in a tournament that is now almost completely dominated by the South Americans.

Over the past few days, my mind too has been dominated by a book on the same region -- Bruce Chatwin's classic 1977 travelogue: In Patagonia.

It is the sort of book that makes you want to take the first available ship across the oceans to the "New World". The book begins with one man's quest for fossils and prehistoric civilizations but soon
swerves into the  age in which migrants, pirates, gold-hunters and farmers - most of them fleeing Europe - dislodged and decimated the Indians to make themselves home in a cold, hostile region.

The story of John Davis, in particular, caught my attention. He was the captain of a bunch of mutineers, abroad a ship called the "Desire". Off the coast of Patagonia (now S. Argentina and S. Chile), he came came across an island full of Jackass Penguins. The crewimmediately set about clubbing more than 20,000 of these penguins to death.

Davis and his comrades then stuffed as many of these carcases as possible into into their ship's hold and set sail again. As they approached the warm tropics, certain worms appeared from the decaying penguin flesh.

"There was nothing they did not devour," wrote Davis. "They destroyed shoes, clothing and then they began to eat the ship's timbers, threatening to gnaw through the sides. The more we laboured to kill them, the more they increased. At last we could not sleep for them; they would eat our flesh and bite like mosquitoes."

Out of a crew of 75 men, just 16 managed to reach Ireland.

What were these maggots or worms? has anybody studied them?

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REFERENCES

Miller, Mara (): DRESSED TO KILL

Wiki -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Patagonia

Life of John Davis -- http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/A_Life_of_John_Davis_the_Navigator_1550-1605_Discoverer_of_Davis_1000694547/313

Patagonia - A Cultural History -- English Mariners: Cavendish, Davis and Byron -- Google Books

Up & Away: Para-gliding in Himachal Pradesh

"It is quite easy....just lean, put your weight forward and run."

In any other place this seemed like an easy instruction to follow, but I was standing on a cliff 2500m high in the Himalayan foothills, preparing for tandem para-gliding jump, with an instructor standing behind me.

A few minutes earlier, we had driven up from a Tibetan settlement called Bir, near Palampur, Himachal Pradesh. A friend had called up a people she knew and were now waiting for our turn to jump. On the barren hilltop called Billing, a young woman was screaming that she did not want to jump while her boyfriend giggled nervously, putting on a brave face.

While the couple sorted out their nerves, our instructors quickly laid out parachutes on the hilltop, strapped us to the bucket-like suits, and before we knew it, our family of three had 'leaned forward' and found our feet feet suddenly dangling limp as the parachute soared into the skies.

It was an amazing experience. Each of us swirled over the hilltops in gentle circles and slowly glided over thick forests, monasteries, villages and wheat-fields before touching down at Bir.

As soon as we landed, the pilots gathered up the billowing parachutes, folded them back into their bags and guided us back to our starting point.

We had a  hearty lunch, picked up a few bottles of fruit wine and drove back to Palampur, stopping for a few minutes at the picturesque Binsar temple.

A few days after got back home we got a bit of news that rattled us. Our friend in Palampur had jumped off the same cliff and his parachute had developed a snag. Both the instructor and the student had plunged into the forest below and had been lucky to get their parachute tangled on an oak tree. It took more than two hours for them to disentangle themselves and clamber down the 60ft tree.

Considering  the fact there there were plenty of bald, deforested hills in the Bir-Billing area, this had been a close shave indeed!

Now, looking back, we realized that there had been absolutely no paperwork involved in our little adventure. We had not registered ourselves with any adventure company, we did not know if our instructors and pilots were adequately qualified for tandem flying and we had not received any receipts for the Rs.1500 each of us paid for the jump.

Was there any accountability in this line of adventure tourism?

As always, there are two sides to the story. The entrepreneurs who organize these adventure camps are quite wary of government oversight. The tourism-department 'inspectors' have neither the stomach nor the aptitude to handle the outdoors. Most of them would just be interested in squeezing the entrepreneurs for handing out permits and clearance certificates.

So, as of now, it appears that the para-gliding entrepreneurs just "insure" themselves offering free para-gliding trips to friends and families of the local decision-makers.  If you want a free-ride, all you have to do is turn up at Bir and flaunt your 'connections'.

In the long run, we all lose. Fewer people will try out this amazing sport. The total absence of paperwork or any form of oversight also guarantees we will not learn the right lessons when para-gliders suddenly drop off the skies.

Listen Up!

I just discovered an entirely new dimension to "reading books".

You can be washing the dishes, ironing the clothes or just pacing up and down on the terrace, while your mind is far-far away -- on a steamer chugging down the Congo river in Africa, or a strange hotel room in Sapporo-Japan or on a chilled pina-colada on the sun-kissed beaches of Hawaii. Audio books are just amazing.

All you have to do is to download the MP3 files on to your mobile phone, keep a set of earphones handy, and plug in whenever you have a few minutes to spare during the day.

My first audio book "Arabian Days and Nights" by Naguib Mahfouz,  the second, VS Napaul's "A Bend in the River". Today I finished my third book - Haruki Murakami's "Dance, Dance, Dance".

The two were quite distinct from each other. Naipaul's book was set in Africa and narrated by a person who seem to have really put himself into the shoes of Salim, the main protagonist, an ethnic Indian trader trying to make a name for himself in the dark interiors of Africa, at a town located at the 'bend of a river'. The book was fairly straightforward and so was the narrative.

Murakami's book was far more complex. It had almost all the usual ingredients - complex emotions, gourmet food, wine, sex, music, mysterious women, and surreal experiences. Cats were conspicuously absent. However, in narrator here is just not able to do justice to the women characters, all of whom uniformly sounded like transvestites.

Yet, this is just a minor quibble.

The convenience - and the advantages - of having interesting books readily available in your mobile helps you squeeze out much more out of your 24-hours, than ever before. You can give your eyes too some rest, for good measure!

Behind the Optic Fibre Networks

A hot summer afternoon in New Delhi. Next to a roadside manhole sit three youngsters under a rainbow colored umbrella. Clouds of dust swirling around them as they worked on dozens of strands of optic-fiber, each almost as thin as human hair.

Sweaty hand were deftly picking the strands one by one. They would be clipped using a small machine, wiped with a piece of tissue paper and then inserted into another unusual piece of equipment. Readings were being taken on a screen and then the process would start all over again with the next slender fiber.

The workers were apparently from Tata Telecom. They were just checking on a customer complaint on slow internet speeds. The equipment had come from "Fujikura" - 'Fuji's warehouse'. 

Fujiwara's equipment had customer-focus written all over it. Here was a semi-literate worker working in a dusty ditch in Delhi, using a sturdy piece of equipment made a company located 6000km away in Japan.

The wonders of technology -- and human ingenuity!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Fujikura Fusion Splicer -- http://www.fujikura.com/solutions/fusionsplicer/

FDI and the Export of Polluting Industries

An interesting article was posted on Academia today - "Japan's Global Environmentalism: Rhetoric and Reality".

It was a bit dated (1998) but the topic dealt with a time-period when I worked with Japanese ODA, and of how Japan deliberately advocating high-tech solutions to environmental problems in developing countries simply in order to maximize purchases of capital-intensive technology and high-tech production services from Japan.

Numerous I-wish-I-knew-that-before points turned up, for instance -

• The disastrous and ultimately aborted Narmada Dam project of theWorld Bank was closely linked to hydroelectric facilities funded by Japanese ODA (Kuroda, 1992).
• Japanese environmental problems have been transferred along with FDI in mining and manufacturing operations to developing countries like Malaysia and the Philippines (Harada, 1991; Kojima, 1994;Nester, 1990; Ofreneo, 1993; Ui, 1989).
• Kawasaki’s transfer of its iron ore sintering plant to the Philippines after environmental lawsuits were filed by local citizens near the original location in ChibaCity, Japan (Yokoyama, 1992).
• Japanese-made pollution filters do not work because the energy inputs are from low-grade coal, instead of the higher-quality fuels domestic Japanese corporations use. Therefore, dirty industries have been transferred overseas without the environmentally cleaner—but more expensive—technology which would be used if these industries were located within Japan (Harada, 1991). 
• Japanese practice of dumping of hazardous waste in the oceans, and exports of waste to Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand (Kumamoto, 1994). 
• Japan is the only OECD country not to adopt the decision on the Control of Trans-frontier Movements of Wastes Destined for Recovery Operations (Hopp and Olson,1994). 
• 15% of Japan’s landmass has been slated for resort development as a consequence of the 1987 Resort Act (Beasley, 1992), and much of this land has been used for golf courses. Recently, high land prices in Japan have fueled the expansion of golf courses across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
• In the early 1990s some of the world’s highest rates of deforestation occurred in Sarawak, Malaysia, where over 66% of logs were being exported to Japan to fuel demand for logs and pulp(Thompson, 1993).
• In fact Japan leads the world in the importation of tropical hardwoods by a large margin (ITTO, 1995). Japan also has extensive FDI in wood chip and pulp production in Chile, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the USA.
• Instead of banning tropical hardwood imports or urging its Southeast Asian neighbors to ban exports, Japan’s solution instead has been to offer environmental aid for reforestation. Reforestation, however, usually consists of particular species of imported trees (primarily eucalyptus) which are most profitable for export (Ui, 1989: 396).
• In the Philippines, Japanese aid has modernized the fishing port and market facilities and most of the large commercial fishing operations are Japanese owned (Ofreneo, 1993). As a result of over-fishing and ocean pollution,small-scale Filipino fishermen’s annual catch has been reduced dramatically (Broadand Cavanagh, 1993).
• Mitsubishi was a major contributor to Indonesian deforestation (Hurst,1990) and currently owns large shares of interests in logging companies, saw mills,and dangerously polluting industries in Malaysia (Karan and Jasparro, 1998).

The complete paper, published in Political Grography is available here.

> Taylor, Jonathan (1998): Japan's Global Environmentalism: Rhetoric and Reality, Pergamon Political Geography, 18, 1999

What is Biotechnology?

Recently, I was witness to an interesting exchange between two professors. One was using Tissue Culture to raise orchids, and sell them to farmers, while the other ran 'Biotech Park' where the latest gene-splicing technology was being used to make recombinant-DNA products. The latter insisted that Tissue Culture was merely 'agriculture' and that it did not qualify to be called Biotechnology.

So what is Biotechnology?

According to the United Nations,

"Biotechnology refers to any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use."
(Article 2 of the Convention of Biological Diversity and Article 2(d) of the Nagoya Protocol)

OECD says the same thing a bit more precisely:

Biotechnology refers to activities that apply scientific logic and technologies to organisms, parts or part of an organism, products, and product-related models in the process of modifying living organisms or non-living things with the aim of producing knowledge, goods, and services (OECD data, 2004)

Government of India has a definition colored by socialism:

"Biotechnology... refers to tools and technologies that address the problems of agriculture productivity, food production, nutrition security, health care and environmental sustainability by providing new and emerging products and services at affordable prices, generate employment opportunities and make India globally competitive in the emerging bio-economy."
(DBT - Vision)

Wikipedia prefers to keep it short and simple:

"Biotechnology is the use of living systems and organisms to develop or make useful products"

Whichever way you look at it, Biotechnology seems to include everything from TC to gene manipulation.

Behind that Yummy Crust

Is there a connection between Asparagus, the golden-brown crust on breads, and... cancer?

Its amazing how our understanding of organic chemistry can change the way look at the most ordinary things in life.

Among the 20 most commonly found amino-acids (the 'bricks' that make proteins) is one called Asparagine. It was the first AA to be isolated and it was originally found in - no prizes for guessing here - Asparagus juice. Since then asparagine has been found in many places - especially in starchy foods.

When starchy substances are baked or fried, asparagine undergoes a process called Maillard Reaction, responsible for giving baked/roasted/fried foods their brown color, crust and toasty flavor. Unfortunately the reaction also produces carcinogens like Acryamide and some heterocyclic amines.

How does one deal with this problem? Apparently, if you add an enzyme (Asparaginase) to break down Asparagine in the starchy substances,  the amount of Acryamide can be reduced by 90% without any change in food taste, color or 'crustiness'!

The problem is that food-grade Asparaginase does not come cheap.

Until public-awareness matches with buying power, perhaps we will all continue to consume carcinogens with each bite into a crusy morsel!


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LINKS / REFERENCES

*
- Mannitol - sugar derivatie used to prodce medicine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannitol
- Tumor cells too cannot make their own Asparagine, a non-essential  amino acid. L-A removes it from the blood and starves tumors to death!
- Present marketshare of for therapeutic recombinant proteins is around $200 billion
- Erythropoietin - A glycopptotein hormone / cytokine (protein signalling molecule) that controls RBC production (erythropoiesis). Mkt leader - Amgen ($2.15b)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentilla
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asparagine

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-product

An enzyme in India -

* Mohan, Vishwa (2014): Unique enzyme discovered by CSIR institution to increase shelf life of fruits and vegetables, ToI, 11May2014
- CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bio-resource Technology (CSIR-IHBT), Palampur has signed a MoU with its industry partner— Phyto Biotech, Kolkata, to formalize technology transfer for production of unique enzyme which may be used in developing anti-ageing cream.
- enzyme — Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD) — may also be used in food and pharmaceutical industries for end applications like extending shelf life of fruits and vegetables.
- Medicinal plant based research, discovery of APIs and related molecules
- enzyme — Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD) — may also be used in food and pharmaceutical industries for end applications like extending shelf life of fruits and vegetables.
- Source - 10,000 feet in the Western Himalayan region from Potentila astrosangunia, plant growing under snow cover
- work over the years has resulted in the isolation of the SOD gene -  a protocol was developed for cloning of the gene in E Coli.
- stability and functionality ranging from sub-zero to high temperature (above 40°C) with varying specific activity

Ashoka - Search for the Lost Emperor

Ashoka by Charles Allen.

This is the sort of book that makes you wonder what on earth Indian historians have been up to since 1947. Why is it that hardly any of them writes about our own history in a manner that is both engaging and scholarly?

We have all plodded through history in our school textbooks. We see Ashoka's royal insignia on every single coin and currency note we pass around, and yet, how many wonder about the kind of international effort that has gone in, to piece together the life and times of a king who ruled most of today's India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 300 years before Christ was born?

Charles Allen weaves a wonderful narrative based on ancient texts recovered from Sri Lanka, China, Persia, Myanmar, and, of course, India. In the end, he notes:

‘It is striking - even downright disheartening - how the quintessentially Indian monarch still fails to be accorded a wholehearted welcome in the land of his birth more than a century after he first emerged as a subject fit for a biography... 

The nation that adores Rama - the mythical hero - but has very little time for the real thing: the man who first forged India into a single nation state, and thus the real claim to be its founding father; the first ruler with a distinctive, identifiable voice; the pre-Gandhian pioneer of non-violence, the first proponent of conquest by moral force alone, whose words remain absolutely, unequivocally unique among rulers as a statement of governing principles.

Amazing book.

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LINKS / REFERNCES

* Review - Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13220954-ashoka

* Allen, Charles (2012): ASHOKA, Little Brown, UK  -- Google Books - http://books.google.co.in/books?id=K4vHjbUtf_4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Eyeing Botox

Clostridium botulinum (Image source: Wikipedia)

In 1895 a Belgian bacteriologist named Ermengem took a close look at a piece of rotten ham that had poisoned thirty-four people.

Under the microscope, Ermengem discovered a bacteria that would become the center of attention for military strategists, doctors, cosmetic surgeons, and foodies: Clostridium botulinum.

C. botulinum is an anaerobic spore-forming Gram positive bacteria which produces Botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) - one of the world's most lethal biological weapon agents. One single gram of BoNT can kill 14,285 people (ingested), 1.25m people (inhaled), or 8.3 million people (injected). Amazingly, this very same toxin is now being used to cure vision disorders like Strabismus (squint eyes), amblyopia (lazy eyes), and for the removal of facial wrinkles (botox)!

How on earth did people discover that the most lethal neuro-toxin in the world can cure eye problems and make ladies look prettier??

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LINKS / REFERENCES:

- Botulinum Toxin Type-A (BXTA) - First Indian manufacturer (2007) - Bio-Med, Ghaziabad - brandname "BotoGenie" - http://www.biomed.co.in/aboutus.html
- Allergan Inc., USA - http://www.allergan.com/index.htm
- Coleman & Zilinskas (2010): FAKE BOTOX, REAL THREAT, Scientific American, June 2010 -- http://www.fakebotoxrealthreat.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/sciam-botox-june2010.pdf
- NIH / NCBI: BIOWEAPON & MAGIC DRUG --- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3028942/
-Talreja, Vishaka (2007): CHINESE BOTOX WON'T LET YOU LOOK YOUNG, TOI, 28Oct 2007 -- url -- http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2007-10-28/news/28481698_1_botox-treatment-botox-shot-chinese-botox
- A 100 unit Botox vial is priced at Rs 16,650. On the other hand the Chinese botox is available at a price 40% less than AllergAn's Botox.
- Anti-wrinke procedure costs Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 20,000
- 25,000 non-surgical Botox procedures in 2007 --- In USA there were 3 million such cosmetic procedures in 2006

Kamakhya & the Ahoms

The city of Guwahati has an intriguing landscape. It sits on the flood plains of the mighty Brahmaputra river, and yet, unlike the Gangetic plains, the landscape here is dotted with little hills, poking out abruptly here and there. 

On the outskirts of the city, the river is more than 16km wide, so it is not surprising that much of the urban sprawl is spread around a few hills that constrict the river, narrowing it down to a point where bridges are relatively easy to build. On one of these hills sits the ancient Kamakhya temple.

To my untrained eye, the temple looked as though it has been transplanted from Western Himalayas. The narrow pathway to the temple resembles Kangra, the sculptures look like the handiwork of masons from Bageshwar, but the apparent absence of proportions in the temple complex leaves you a little confused.  

And then you have the animals. A large black goat nibbles at ornamental plants near the gate, sheep of various sizes amble all over the Shikara area which is home to hundreds of pigeons in white, brown and grey. These are not pets. 

Special scaffoldings are built around the temple tell you where the black goat is going next. In side the temple you need to go down a narrow, dark flight of stairs to reach the sanctum where the Devi is represented by an irregular mound. The Panda sitting here has two things by his side - a towel spread on the floor for collecting the cash offerings, and a set of decapitated animal heads - two buffalos, five sheep.

The temple may be as old as the earliest settlements in lower Assam but the present structure was mostly built by the Ahom kings (). Like the Cholas in South India, the Ahom economy was built on the agriculture surplus coming from the fertile Bahmaputra plains.

The surplus has to be carefully protected against regular raids from the hill tribes and enemies further afield. It is interesting to know that the military structure and hierarchy that evolved over the centuries is still reflected in the surnames of people in this area:

1. Bor-fukan: Supreme commander of the armed forces
2. Bor-baruah: Senior commander
3. Baruah: Commander
4. Hazarika: Leader of a 1000 men
5. Saikia: Leader of 100 men
6. Bora: Leader of a team of 10 men

A similar hierarchy existed for the intellectual / spiritual / political leadership. 

1. Budha-gohain
2. Bora-patra-gohain
3. Bor-gohain
4. Gohain

It is perhaps no surprise that the Kamakhya temple resembles the resembles the Himalayan shrines. This temple too has seen numerous sieges and and may have been pulled down quite a few times by the Muslim armies. The last round must have been during the Ahom-Mughal wars (1615-1682).

The temple we see today may have been a hasty, piecemeal reconstruction that has been happening over the last two centuries.

LINKS / REFERENCES:

* Thekaekara, Tarsh (2014): WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, Indian Express Eye, 27Apr14

* Sanyal, Sanjeev (2014): ONCE UPON A RIVER, Indian Express Eye, 27Apr14

- 1661 - Ahom Kingdonm repulses Aurangazeb's attack

- Dec. 1667, Aurangazeb sent a huge Turkik-Rajpur army

- Ahom army heded by Lachit Borphukan defeats the Mughal army in March 1671 at Saraighat, near Guwahati

- Bharmaputra - 2900km long - originates from Mansarovar area - flows as "Tsangpo" in Tibet - enters Arunachal as "Dihang/ Siang" - enters plains at Pasighat

- Secret Surveyors - 1880 - Chinese Lama and Sikkimise surveyor called Kinthup - throwing logs into Tsangpo

Costumes in the North-East

In North-East India, how easy is it to guess tribal affiliations through costumes?

While driving up the Guwahati-Shillong road, one of the first things that strike you is the toga-like dress women wear while they go about their lives. Vendors seem to prefer a more utilitarian combination of skirt + blouse + toga while the younger ones seem to prefer jeans + t-shirt + toga. 

At first I thought all these ladies were all Khasis. The only other matrilenial community in India, apart from the Nairs in Kerala. However, after a visit to the amazing Don Bosco Museum in Shillong it was quite plain that there could be no simple generalizations. 

Khasis traditionally wear a covering garment across both their shoulders while the the Jaintia women prefer to tie-up on one side. 

Now, some women prefer to have the knot on the left, while others have it on the right. Does it mean anything? I don't know...

Guwahati - Notes

At 8:30 in the morning we found ourselves in a big traffic jam in Guwahati. Our vehicle was on a road leading up a metal bridge across the Brahmaputra river. Traffic crawled on this narrow, single-lane bridge. "Why don't we try the next bridge?", I asked the driver.

He gives me the are-you-making-fun-of-me look. "The next bridge across this river", he says blandly, "Is 200 km away, in Tezpur".

As we finally get to the bridge (built after the 1962 war), I see that efforts are on to build a wider, concrete bridge. Work seems to be moving a lot slower than the traffic. They have been at it for the past four years...

This just about sums up Guwahati for you - a sprawling, shabby town with a municipality that seems pretty much dysfunctional.

This is, of course, not the city I expected to see. Impressions gathered from conversations, satellite maps and history notes had created a picture in my mind of a great city on the banks of the Brahmaputra river. A metropolis, a hub, a gateway to the seven colorful states of India's North-East.

All my expectations began to crumble as soon as we drove out of the airport, towards the city. Empty, uncertain plots of land line both sides of the road. As darkness sets in we drive past the old, crumbling buildings of Guwahati University.

There were hardly any street lights, pavements or place-boards anywhere. Lights from hundreds of little shops lit the roadsides where people parked their bicycles and cars wherever randomly. Despite the apparent greenery and availability of water, there were no grand trees to be seen. Instead, the byepass was lined with famished, scrawny Ashoka trees, planted just two feet from each other...

Is this the city which sent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the Rajya Sabha? Is this the state that has had a "stable" government for the past 13 years??

Parasites Controlling Host Behavior

An amazing window into the influence wielded by parasites in the animal kingdom:

A tapeworm infection on Artemia (brine shrimp) turns them into red-colored swarms that are easier for the Greater Flamingo to spot and devour. The flamingo, in turn, helps in spreading the tapeworm eggs across a much wider range.

The Gordian worm (horsehair worm) infection makes a type of cricket suicidal. It changes their brain circuitry so that whenever they are close to a pool of water, the crickets just dive in, and die. Once in water, the worm emerges...

Ampulex compressa (emerald wasp) stings its venom into two specific neuron clusters in a cockroach's brain. Now this allows the little wasp to lead the big roach, with its antennae, like a doggie, to a nest where it can lay eggs on it. The larvae that emerge eat up the docile cockroach alive, and the cycle continues...

A single-cell   parasite, Toxiplasma gondii makes mice run towards cats!

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LINKS:

* Transcript of the TED Talk -- https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_yong_suicidal_wasps_zombie_roaches_and_other_tales_of_parasites/transcript

Soldiers Old & New

In early 2002, I was stepping out of my hotel room in Mumbai when I noticed an elderly, carefully dressed, hunched gentleman in the foyer. "Hello, boy!", he said, in response to my greeting, "stepping out for the day's business?".  It was Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw.

The first thing that struck me was how different he looked in civilian clothes. The old black-and-white photos always showed him in a certain understated grandeur. Handlebar mustache, light eyes and ready repartee ("If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying , or he is a Gurkha!").

Almost the same thought crossed my mind yesterday when we went to see the Change of Guards at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. A few days ago, the Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry (JAKLI) Regiment had replaced 28 Madras as the Presidential Guards and this was the first time JAKLI was doing the formal, weekly change-over on their own. 

Once the ceremony of over, the mounted guards rode away into a dusty, reddish haze. As everybody was stepping out to take photos, an army officer called out to his guests. "This is Subedar Major Bana Singh", he said, standing next to an avuncular Sikh gentleman with a dyed beard. 

The Bana Singh?? I looked carefully at the man, trying hard to imagine him leading a small team in 1987, scaling an ice cliff  6500m up in the Himalayan Saltoro Ranges, in the face of stinging winds at minus 45C, to capture a ridge held by Pakistani commandos. Somehow, my imagination failed me.

Just as it was difficult to think of the elderly Sam standing in a hotel foyer, as the General who won the Bangladesh War, it was impossible to think of Bana anything other than a friendly, cheerful shopkeeper who had just driven down from Khan Market.

Now, this was something to think about:  Does this not show that behind almost every unremarkable face we see around us, there lurks a will power, capable of the most incredible acts of heroism?

Major S. Rathore of 8 JAK LI inspects the Guards

The President's Bodyguards trot back to the barracks

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LINKS

* YouTube - Indian Army on Siachen Glacier (1/3) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvtgAM_l54g
* Siachen Hero - Bana Singh -- http://www.scribd.com/doc/2213913/Siachen-Hero-Bana-Singh
*  The Fight for Siachen -- http://tribune.com.pk/story/368394/the-fight-for-siachen/

Guha on Import Dependence

"Almost all elected members of GRC are SSB prize winners...an entry into this club means that you have arrived"

In the world of Indian sci-tech GRC and SSB are acronyms even a novice would know. The former stands for Guha Research Conference set up in the name of B. C. Guha, and the latter, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize.

This makes it all the more strange that a Google search on GRC would only get you a long list of Indian scientists who are proud to call themselves "elected members" without any publicly accessible information on how this club functions. There was no Wikipedia page on Guha Research Conference, until today.

According to Parthasarathi Banerjee, affiliation to GRC, "acts as the token, assuring easier access to prizes of several sorts."  The SSB Prize is one of them.

As far as institutions go, GRC presents an interesting case to all those who are curious to know why India's output is so sad when it comes to applied S&T. The organization is named after Prof. Bires Chandra Guha (1904-1962) who is referred to as the 'father of modern Indian biochemistry'.

Guha was, no doubt, a person of many interesting dimensions. He was a freedom fighter, an artist and a scientist who worked closely with many Nobel laureates in UK and USA. After independence, he returned to India and helps establish many a national institution like CFTRI, Mysore.

Way back in 1956, he made a sharp observation - "It is undesirable that practically all fine instruments of measurements should have to be imported. Biochemical researches in these days are greatly dependent on such instruments and biochemists in this country should make a special plea for the manufacture of these instruments".

Half-a-century later our labs continue to be helplessly dependent on foreign manufacturers for nearly all their equipment and reagents.

It would be interesting to know that the eminent members of GRC have been doing to solve this long-standing problem..


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LINKS

* Wiki on GRC  (created 7 April 2014) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guha_Research_Conference

* Biresh Chandra Guha: Father of Modern Biochemistry in India -- http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/sep252004/823.pdf

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=dLT2PMgI7MsC&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=guha+GRC+india&source=bl&ots=m4w1gtdCe3&sig=u_wgXWGeeEzfG30l4tW4aOfLFNU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=s1JCU5ulGsWFrAeC3oDIDw&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=guha%20GRC%20india&f=false

Mangrove Puzzles

"Pettah" or "Pettai" is a village or suburb located outside a fort in South India or Ceylon.

About thirty kilometers east of Chidambaram, the ancient temple-town in South India, is a village called Parangi-pettai. Located on the mouth of the Kaveri river delta, it was, no doubt a strategic location for the European Franks (Ferenghi / Parangi) who once established trading stations all along the Indian coastline.

The unusual thing about this Pettai is that it sits next to Pichavaram, one of the largest mangrove forests in peninsular India. The place is big - and beautiful!



According to the Puranas, it is in these mangrove forests (Thillai Vanam) that Shiva acquired many of the accessories depicted in popular iconography -- serpents as necklaces and waistbands, a tiger-skin shawl and the little demon, Muyalakan, on whose back he dances the Ananda Tandava.

Thillai specifically refers to a species of mangrove trees -  Exocoeria agallocha. It also goes by a more sinister name: Blind-your-eye mangrove. The plant has a milky latex so toxic that it can turn you blind.

Oddly, the particular mangrove species is native to only Tamil Nadu coastline and in North-West Australia...why is that?  And why is it that mangroves are widely seen along India's eastern coastline and not on the western side, along the Malabar-Konkan estuaries?

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LINKS

* TNAU - Mangroves of India - http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/forestry/forest_mangrove_index.html
* Kerala Forest Department - http://www.forest.kerala.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73&Itemid=199
* Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_mythology

Along the Mughal Road

11 March, 2014

"Head-Lights Off; Body Lights On" 

We are in the domain of the Ace of Spades, the 25th Infantry Division of the Indian Army.  It is a three hour drive from Jammu to Rajouri, and this perhaps in the most prominent roadside sign you will see along the highway. Words painted in terse block letters mark the iron gates guarding military camps, all along a route that has long been known as the Mughal Road.

A drive like this would have been a breeze in any other Himalayan river valley, but this is J&K, a magnet to assorted, armed fanatics from across the border. If you happen to arrive at one of these gates at night with the wrong lights on, chances are that you will be shot first and asked questions later.

Having been warned not to travel after sunset,  we had  out in pre-dawn darkness, driving through un-seasonal rains, along the Akhnoor plains and the Chenab river-valley, and over hills overlooking an endless chain of sodium vapor lamps that mark the Indo-Pak border.

As the rains eased and darkness gives way to dawn, army trucks lumbered along the highway, dropping ROPs - Road Opening Parties - soldiers in parkas and assault rifles trudge up and down the roads. Places with evocative names keep coming up -- Sundarbani, Kalighan, Naushera and  Bafliaz.

The Ace of Spades is only the most recent in the long list of army divisions that had passed through these mountains and valleys.  In 1587 Jalaluddin Akbar went down this road to conquer Kashmir. He left behind large gardens and new townships. The Mughal army that accompanied his son, Jehangir, made its mark in a different way – it built a fortified Serai, and named it after the emperor’s royal intestines!

The story goes that that in the early 1600's, Jehangir, was on his way back from the Kashmir valley to Delhi when he suddenly passed away. Years of being an opium addict and an alcoholic had finally caught up with him. In any case the power behind the throne was his 13^th wife, Empress Noor Jehan. Given the precarious state of Mughal succession planning, this lady decided that the only way to survive the inevitable power struggle was to act as though her husband were still alive until they reached safer areas. So on the banks of the Rajauri Nullah, she had the body eviscerated, buried the emperor's decaying innards at Chingus Fort, propped his body on a caparisoned elephant, and carried on in royal splendor, until they reached Lahore. 

Today, big changes are afoot in a region that has been racked by an insurgency spread across two decades. Despite the heavy army presence, or perhaps because of it, new institutions are slowly coming up to match the rising expectations of a new generation. Prominent among them is the Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University.

The university is eight kilometers off the Mughal road, and a leap of faith in more ways than one. Named after a local Sufi saint, this seat of learning seems to rise from the middle of nowhere, at the foothills of the snowcapped Pir Panjal mountain range. It was started a decade ago by a retired Kashmiri police officer with a Rs.20 crore donation from local shrines. With additional public donations and government grants that followed, the university has been able to set up labs, hostels, classrooms and libraries.

The infrastructure and facilities does bring in local students in large numbers. Hostel food is not bad and cheering at cricket matches here does not attract sedition charges. However, in a state where parents are wary of sending their children to universities in distant parts of India, the biggest challenge is to attract – and retain – good professors. Local employment prospects continue to be grim.

On our way back to Jammu, a pink mini-bus zips past a hairpin bend. In hills and valley that have seen more guns and bullets than books or pencils, Simran Coach has a big banner quite different from those outside the army camps. It simply says, "O God Help Me".

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LINKS:

Mughal Road -- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Ancient-Mughal-road-is-a-new-big-tourist-site-in-JK/articleshow/22188250.cms?referral=PM

Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Road

Chingus Fort -- http://explorejk.com/heritage/chingus-fort/

Life-Saving Drugs - The Great Game

"Just as you cannot blame a dog for barking, companies cannot be blamed for seeking profits. The real villains here are governments and public servants who have betrayed public trust."

"Fire in the Blood" is one of the most thought-provoking documentaries I've seen in a long, long time.

It makes you question so many things that you always considered as self-evident truths: R&D costs big money; companies spend billions sifting through thousands of molecules to discover one that can be converted into a medicine or vaccine; Indian companies produce illegal, ineffective copies of patented drugs....and in 87 minutes you realize that all this while, you've been a naive, gullible idiot.

The award winning documentary is about the battle against the HIV-AIDS epidemic in Africa. It is about the role of small individuals and small third-world companies taking on the might of global pharma MNCs. Consider these timelines:

• The first anti-retro viral (ARV) drug, AZT came out in 1963. It was released 1985, with a patent cover up to 2005. Just as the patent was expiring, Glaxo claimed that the drug was effective only in combination with another drug, and had the patent cover extended patent till 2017. In effect, patent protection for the same drug was stretched and "ever-greened" to 54 years!
• 1996 - discovery of the triple ARV combo against HIV-AIDS. The drug cost $15,000 /patient/ year.
• 2000 - Yusuf Hamied of Cipla offered to sell a generic of the triple-combo ARV for $800/year/patient; He offered free know-how to manufacturers in Third World Countries and offered the drug offered free to infected mothers. In response the pharma MNCs launched a massive publicity campaign maligning drugs from developing countries in general, and Cipla in particular.
• In 2004, Cipla brought down the cost to $360/p/y and finally once country - Uganda - decided to take up the offer to save its people. By then over 10 million more people had died of AIDS.

 Fire in the Blood is also quite instructive about USA's amazing hypocrisy and double-standards when it comes to public access to life-saving drugs..

ICMR: Undue Pecuniary Advantage

According to the WHO, more than 2.3 million children below five years of age die in India annually. Of these, about 334,000 die from diarrhoea-related diseases.

If there is one organization that is responsible for the country's abysmal Infant Mortality Rates (IMR) it must be the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). It calls itself one of the oldest medical research organizations in the world. What has ICMR been doing all these years?

Like most other government research agencies in India, ICMR too has a web-page with a long list of achievements, much of which does not amount to much when it comes to brass-tacks.  However, having worked closely with the organization during 1998-2009, I knew for sure that they did have a large Japanese-funded project at NICED-Kolkata, specially for controlling diarrheal diseases.

The main cast of this project were Dr. Takeda of the International Medical Centre of Japan, his old friend, Dr. N.K. Ganguly of ICMR and Dr. S.K. Bhattacharya of NICED. The project had moved from 'technical cooperation' to a major grant-aid project.

Now it turns out that most of these senior S&T administrators were also using their position for "undue pecuniary advantage". According to a CBI charge-sheet filed against a number of senior ICMR officers including Ganguly and Bhattacharya, they had been using their position to help themselves with real estate worth Rs. 135 million. In June 2013, the Supreme Court granted Ganguly some interim relief, and spared him from being jailed.

What are the actual facts of the case? What does this say about S&T research in India? What happened to the original objective of creating an anti-cholera/diarrhea vaccines?

It is rather ironical that in the midst of all this ICMR continues to set up newer institutions all over the place. Once of them is actually named Desert Medicine Research Center.

I guess they deserted medical research long-long ago.


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Update (23 Nov., 2015)
According to a recent news report in the New Indian Express , the Supreme Court has "quashed criminal proceedings against former Director and others in an alleged corruption case on the ground that CBI had not taken prior sanction of the competent authority to prosecute them".
While highlighting CBI's technical lapse, the report is unclear on what actually transpired. Was there a real estate scam worth ₹ 135 million?
Wonder where this case stand on the Indian Scale of Scams and Scandals -  the ISRO Spy Case, the Robert Vadra land deals, the Adarsh Society Housing Scam (Mumbai), or the Commonwealth Games Scam ? Who knows?

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LINKS

* http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-has-highest-incidence-of-diarrhoeal-deaths-Study/articleshow/20040356.cms

* http://www.jica.go.jp/english/publications/reports/network/vol26/vol_26_5.html

* http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/sc-grants-relief-to-exicmr-chief-in-land-transfer-case/1128416/

* http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Ex-ICMR-chief-others-face-arrest-in-land-scam/articleshow/18551204.cms

* Timelines -- http://www.dayafterindia.com/detail.php?headline=content&catid=4912

* ICMR Achievements -- http://www.icmr.nic.in/highlights.htm

* CAG Report -- http://www.cag.gov.in/html/reports/civil/2009_16SD_CA/chap_10.pdf

* http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/warrants-against-exicmr-chief/article4464381.ece

Shutdown in Japan

Three years ago this month, we were huddled in an evacuation center in Western Japan, bracing for the next aftershock.

A television flickered to life, and a newsreader wearing a bright yellow helmet, announced that there had been explosions at a nuclear power plant a 100 miles away.  In the days and weeks that followed there were extended power outages. People in the Kanto area were advised not to waste electricity. Escalators stopped working at metro stations, lighting in public buildings was reduced to a bare minimum.

Japan's power situation then turned from bad to worse as all its nuclear plants were shut down one-by-one. Import of fossil fuel shot up.

What is the situation now?

The loss of nuclear capacity resulted in a shift in Japan's energy mix toward oil and natural gas. Japan is now the third largest oil consumer and importer in the world behind the United States and China. It also ranks as the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and second largest importer of coal behind China.

(source - EIA, 2013)

The import comes to about 18 quadrillion (10^15) BTU every year.

How long can this be sustained?



LINKS

- EIA on Japan - http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=13711
- EIA on India -- http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=IN
- Japan - Rising Trade Deficit -- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-26/japan-record-annual-trade-deficit-shows-import-drag-on-recovery.html
- Difference between CNG / LPG / LNG -- http://www.afsglobal.com/faq/gas-comparisons.html