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

CDRI & Drug Discovery in India

India is currently a world leader in the manufacture of generic drugs. These are generally off-patent medicines marketed under their original chemical name, without advertising.

Since these drugs are usually produced and sold in bulk, profit margins are wafer thin. The real meat in the pharmaceutical business lies in the branded block-buster drugs that have taken years to develop.

How many new drugs have been developed or discovered in India, since 1947?

According to the Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI, Lucknow), the answer is 16. Nearly 70% of these have been developed in CDRI itself.  They are --

• Centchroman - world's first non-steroidal oral contraceptive  - marketed by Hindustan Latex Ltd under the trade name, Saheli and as Centron by Torrent Pharma.
• Arteether: antimalarial, from the plant Artemisia annua. Marketed by Themis Chemicals Ltd. under the trade name E-Mal. 
• Standardised Herbal Remedy (can this be called a drug?):  memory enhancer derived from the plant Bacopa monniera. Marketed as Memory Sure
• Consap (spermicidal cream) derived from soapnut
• Bulaquin, an antirelapse antimalarial, comparable to primaquine. Marketed by Nicholas Piramal as a combination therapy along with chloroquine under the trade name Aablaquin. 
• Gugulipid, a hypolipidaemic, is a standardised fraction of the plant Commiphora mukul. Cipla is marketing it under the trade name Guglip.
• Chandoniun Iodide - ??
• Cent bufinodole - ??
• Centpropazine (antidepressant) - ??
• Centbucridine, a local anaesthetic mktd by Themis Chemicals Ltd. as Centoblok. 
• Centimizon -??

The CDRI list seems to be in descending order to oblivion. The further you're down the list, the URLs too go wonky, linking you to completely unrelated pages.

In any case, the only one that remembered seeing at a medical store, was Saheli, and Memory Sure.

If this is what we get after spending public money for 64 years at CDRI?

Which are the other five drugs discovered in India? Do they - hopefully - fare better than CDRI's star-performers?

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LINKS
* "New drugs" from CDRI -- http://www.cdriindia.org/newdrugs.htm
* Centchroman / Saheli -- http://www.cdriindia.org/centchroman.htm
* (ToI, 18 Feb 2012) -- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/CDRI-underlines-its-2011-progress-on-61st-annual-day/articleshow/11932436.cms

The Tastiest Fish

An excellent TED talk starring the stand-up comedian + chef + scholar, Dan Barber.



...and this is the 'fish-farm' he talked about - Faro, Southern Spain

Fracking Away

Everybody knows the importance of technology & innovation. But when it comes to turning theory into practice, very few countries have been able to actually create an enabling environment that encourages real innovation.

In recent times, nothing illustrates this better than Fracking.

Geological surveys had revealed decades ago that vast reserves of energy lay hidden beneath impermeable layers of rocks. It took a geologist named George Mitchell nearly 50 years of persistence to find a cost-effective way of extracting shale gas and oil from these rocks.

Today, nearly 40% of USA's natural gas comes from fracking. It has not only made the country a net gas exporter but also changed international power-politics by reducing the bargaining strength of Russia and the Gulf states.

The interesting part here - one that is often sidelined - is that Mitchell's technology would not have been a success without the support of various government agencies. Three key inputs that he got were -- mapping and confirmation of large volumes of gas reserves available underground; development of diamond-studded drill bits and a tax credit (part Jimmy Carter's 1980s law to tax 'windfall profits'), for drilling out unconventional natural gas.

On the sidelines of this revolution, there have been some unexpected success stories in India. Farmers who cultivate Guar (cluser beans), have seen their profits shoot up. Last year (2012-13) 90% of India's production - 406,000MT of guar-gum, worth Rs. 21,000 Cr (~US$ 5 billion) - was exported to USA, China and Australia.

What is the connection between a legume grown as cattle-feed in arid Rajasthan and Gujarat, and the newfangled oil-drilling technology?

Well, somebody found out long ago that guar-gum is a pretty strong water-soluble lubricant. In 1998, when Goerge Mitchell was in his 80s, his team started using guar-gum with water instead of expensive foams and drilling gels. The rest, of course, is history.

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LINKS

• The Economist - Schumpeter - The Father of Fracking -- http://www.economist.com/news/business/21582482-few-businesspeople-have-done-much-change-world-george-mitchell-father
• Interview (Aug, 2013) -- http://www.economist.com/node/21582461
• NYT Obituary on George Mitchell -- He Fracked Until It Paid Off -- http://www.nytimes.com/news/the-lives-they-lived/2013/12/21/george-mitchell/
• Why Guar Beans Matter -- http://www.pri.org/stories/2012-06-15/why-guar-beans-matter
• APEDA on Guar Gum Exports -- http://www.apeda.gov.in/apedawebsite/SubHead_Products/Guargum.htm
• 
  

Africa!

If there is one image that screws-up your world view at a very early age, it must be the Mercator Projection.

About five hundred years ago, the Flemish cartographer did a brilliant job for the seafarers by projecting the globe on a flat surface. But for the rest of us, it continues to be a distortion of epic prroportions - especially for continents further away from the equator. Greenland, for instance, look four times the size of Australia when it is actually it is just the opposite!

Africa, however, takes the cake. It takes a map like this to show how things really stand -

You can fit 18 large countries, including India, China and USA into Africa, and still have plenty of room to spare.

'The True Size of Africa' is really an eye-opener.

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LINKS

* 8 Maps that will change the way you look at Africa -- http://www.one.org/us/2014/03/13/8-maps-that-will-change-the-way-you-look-at-africa/