Don't abuse the E-word

A three month old kid loses father. By "mistake".

"Dibrugarh, May 6: ..The 6 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles shot dead 24-year-old Budheswar Moran “on suspicion” of being a hardcore Ulfa militant. It said the “encounter” occurred at Laopatty in Assam’s Tinsukia district.

Budheswar’s family and those who knew him, however, insisted he was a watchman at a tea estate.

The resident of Kordoiguri village, under Doomdooma police station, was married with two children, the younger barely three months old.." (The Telegraph, Monday May 7, 2007)

And today's paper says: "..“The killing of Budheswar Moran was an unfortunate incident and my heart goes out to the innocent family members of the victim. Let me assure you that all those found guilty will face strict and exemplary punishment,” the general-officer-commanding of the Dinjan-based 2 Mountain Division, Maj. Gen. N.C. Marwah, said at a hurriedly organised media conference at Tinsukia Circuit House.." (Killing was a mistake: army).

Why do we continue to abuse the E-word? Especially in the north-eastern states where army has the power to kill anyone on mere suspicion and get away with it?


[Earlier post: Conflicts]

* * *

Follow-up (added on May 13): Army apology cuts no ice - Tinsukia to Lower Assam, highways under siege (The Telegraph, May 11)
"Dibrugarh, May 10: The army’s apology for mistakenly killing Budheswar Moran may have prompted his family to finally accept and cremate the body today, but it did little to stem the tide of protests over the incident.


[Image: Moran's widow with younger child.]

A 5,000-strong crowd blocked National Highway 37 at Doomdooma even as Moran’s family, relatives and friends accepted his body, which had been lying in a Tinsukia morgue since Sunday.."

Govt kills husband, then wife, and admits it in court..!

You thought that was some joke? I did, even after reading this news in all leading newspapers (to make sure I did not read it wrong).. I still can't believe many who are ruling us are not only unjust and mindless but also shameless!

* * *

"In a shocking revelation, the Gujarat Government on Monday admitted before the Supreme Court that Kausar Bi, wife of fake encounter victim Sohrabuddin Sheikh, has been killed and her body burnt.

"She has been killed," Gujarat Government counsel K T S Tulsi and Hemantika Wahi told a Bench headed by Justice Tarun Chatterjee during the mentioning hours.."
(Cops killed Kausar Bi, admits Gujarat, The Indian Express)

* * *

"The Gujarat government on Monday told the Supreme Court that Kauser Bi, wife of fake encounter victim Sohrabuddin Sheikh, has been killed.."
(Gujarat confirms Kauser Bi's death to SC, The Times of India)

* * *

"The Gujarat Government on Monday admitted in the Supreme Court that Kausar Bi, wife of Sohrabuddin, was murdered a few days after he was killed in a fake encounter.."
(`Kausar Bi was killed, burnt', The Hindu)

Water in / RDB out

Feeling some excitement with the Academy Awards after a long long time. Thanks to a "generation" that swears by RDB and a nation that disowned Water.

This time there was a short-list of nine films that came out a few days back. RDB didn't find a place in that list, whereas Water did. And now, the nominations are out, and Water, Canadian entry at the awards in the best foreign language film category, is among the top five contenders for the title.

I have not seen Water but my friends who have seen it (In India, at some festival) say it is a well-made film and the director has got even John Abraham to act. I hope they are right.

I also hope and pray that the film wins at the Oscars. Despite having no great respect for the way these awards by, for and of Hollywood are given away every year. (The two titles "Best Film" and "Best Foreign Langage film", and the restriction that a "foreign" country can send at most one entry are racist in itself. Even within Hollywood, it is often reserved for the feel-good, "American" variety, and a Pulp Fiction would not make it. An Exception to this was American Beauty that won in 1999.)

As a defeat of the forces that keep trying to shut the mouths up whenever someone tries to say something that does not please them. As a mark of shame on a nation where a film gets censored on its sets itself. And as a victory over a generation that "awakens" to illusions.


[Earlier post: Rang De Basanti Salaam!] [Image courtesy: Academy Awards page]

Blasts

The news of blasts in Guwahati city leaves us shocked. We were at one of the blast sites a couple of days back. What do these blasts achieve? Is this the only way to get noticed or to raise one's stakes in a bargain? Can't we even dream of a day when we can walk free in this part of India without being afraid of an uncertain blast or a certain armyman?

Alitalia knows who they want on board

A letter to editor on Tuesday September 5 Chennai Edition of Deccan Chronicle read: "..one is indeed puzzled to report regarding the refusal of Alitalia to fly a Delhi passenger, even when he had very clear travel documents and a confirmed ticket.." and the letter refered to DC, Sept 4. I found a copy, and the lead story on the front page went: "Alitalia tells man he's unfit to fly: Delhi ragpicker had a ticket, but didn't fit `profile' ".

"New Delhi, Sept.3: In a startling and clear case of class bias, the Italian national airline Alitalia refused to allow a Delhi resident to fly business class to Milan, on his way to Brazil to attend an international conference, despite the fact that the passenger had a valid ticket and all his travel documents were in order.

The reason: Santraj Maurya, who made a living out of collecting waste on Delhi's streets, and whose streetsmart leadership skills had attracted the attention of an NGO which was sending him to attend a conference on the impact of privatization of waste pickers worldwide, did not-- in the airline's view-- fit the profile of a businessman or an international traveller.."

Ok, "puzzled" and "strartling" are subjective. And this is about two months late news. But not necessarily stale, as much of the media avoided it. (It did not stay on the online version of the newspaper for long). We had had a related topic about this airline here on this diary once so I thought it makes sense to have this here for record.

Rang De Basanti Salaam!

That was the name of a programme aired along with RDB on Gandhi Jayanti day on STAR GOLD. It was supposed to talk not about the making of the film that has been chosen India's official entry for Oscars, but about those who are keeping the spirit of the film alive.

It sounded funny, if not ridiculous. To have a film like Rang De Basanti on the (only?) day we are supposed to get high on non-violence. Going by the film, I tried to guess who were those people the programme would try to showcase. Naxalites? Less likely. The film's spirit lied not only in taking law in one's hands or in violent means of action. Like many other films that claim to address the "real" issues that concern the nation, this one also echoed the urban middle class sentiment that the corrupt politicians were THE problem we faced.

Worse, the people who swore by RDB in the real world were the foot-soldiers of the anti-reservation army. You mean, them?

I wanted to check it out but was terribly tired. TV was on, I was off. Yet shots of a singer from Punjab caught my attention. His name was Bant Singh.

He was lying with both his hands and a leg cut off. Apparently his daughter was raped by the "upper" caste Jat Sikh landlords, and his fight for justice earned him this.

He was singing a song with a flash of smile on his face.

A few days later I got a mail from my friend-- the subject line read "Urgent: Bant Singh's rehabilitation". "Bant Singh's courage will be a source of inspiration to all but we need not be mere spectators to the tragedy unleashed on him. We can express our solidarity by helping him access the best possible medical rehabilitation, so that he is back on his feet. Doctors have pointed out that with the current developments in medical technology, it would not be impossible to fix artificial limbs, both arms and legs, for him..", said the mail.

A link in the mail led to an article A Torso Flaming With Spirit that appeared in Tehelka.

Jithe khun hain meren veeriyan da Vishiya sadkan te haqan di luk banke Buchar khaneyan chon jithe lok mere Nittar rahe itihas di thuk banke Maa dhartiye sada suhagne ni Mere yaaran nu janam tu deyin uthe… [from another Tehelka article on Bant Singh].

So what if he can't hold Jagmeet in his hands again, the dalit singer has not given up his fight.

For once I thanked RDB for helping me know this man. And his daughter.

Is Sharmila Irom real?

Last week one my friend told me he was in a campaign to gather support for Sharmila Irom's hunger strike in Delhi. He also gave a few links.

I didn't have any idea who she was and what the issue was. Going through some of the links, I learnt that she has been on a fast unto death at Jantar Mantar, Delhi. Next day I noticed the name on the newspaper, it said she was arrested by Delhi Police and was taken to AIIMS.

Last few days I have been trying to figure out who's Sharmila Irom, why was she on a fast. With the help of the web I figured out she started her hunger strike in November 2000 (you read it right) against Armed Forces Special Powers Act and she has been on a fast unto death since then. For almost SIX years! She is now being force-fed through a pipe in her nose on the orders of the state administration.

"How is she alive now then" was one (natural) response I got from a friend when I shared what I learnt. The only conclusion I could reach was that it is not only food that keeps one going.

Another response was a more concerned one. Concerned about me, not the lady. That I'm in Assam, I better stay away from such delicate issues.. Life is precious.

Yes, my life is precious. What about many other lives that hang on this particular act? And if this is so much delicate an issue, what is this act all about?

Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 (AFSPA) grants special powers to the Indian armed forces to arrest, detain, interrogate or even kill any person on mere suspicion with impunity. Manipur (where Sharmila hails from) and her neighbouring states of north-east India have been reeling under this act for almost half a century.

Following widespread protests against the law, the Centre set up the expert panel headed by former Justice Jeevan Reddy to review the legislation in 2004. The panel last year submitted its report to the Centre, which is yet to act on its recommendations. Apparently the commission had recommended the law should be repealed ("The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, should be repealed," it notes in its recommendations. "The Act is too sketchy, too bald and quite inadequate in several particulars"..)

“My fast is on behalf of the people of Manipur. This is not a personal battle – this is symbolic. It is a symbol of truth, love and peace”, says Irom Sharmila Charu.

More on her and about the act can be found at http://manipurfreedom.org (the site is being updated regularly with news on her and on the law against which people in Manipur and elsewhere in the North-East have been agitating for several years).

Farmer and her land

"A farmer wants a loan from the bank to dig a well in her land."

"Every citizen has the right to express her thoughts, cast her vote or contest elections."

These sentences may shock some, and it seems some are even finding them outrageous. After growing up learning the boring lessons on how mother washed me and combed my hair, and how father worked in the farm all day, this is indeed a refreshing change.

"A number of new NCERT textbooks for class I to class XII have been designed to encourage children to question social prejudices, discrimination and inequalities. This is a conscious reversal of the earlier trend where textbooks reinforced prevailing stereotypes", notes Deepti Priya Mehrotra in India Together (article dated 5 October 2006).

Polio outbreak: Do bundein zindagi ki?

It seems there's a Polio outbreak in the country. The number of Polio cases reported this year is around 300, whereas it was 66 last year.

I got to know about this outbreak late. Mainly because I have been traveling over the last two-three weeks and have not been following news regularly (thats also the reason there wasn't any new post on the blog for so many days). I first read about it in the leading front-page story of "The Telegraph" yesterday. But after that I noticed one mail from my friend in my mailbox that gave a link to an Indian Express report on the government's explanation of the rise in Polio cases. Coming from the Government spokespersons, it naturally attributes it to kids who give polio drive a miss. It does not stop there, it goes on to target the Muslim community in particular: "Another problem that the government has to deal with is that UP's large Muslim minority are reluctant to get their children immunized because of rumours that polio drops are part of a Western conspiracy to make their children sterile. Nearly 70% of the cases are from minority communities.."

My friend can't hide his anger:

"Those who do these based on pseudo-scientific reasoning are doing unpardonable crime and
irreversible damage to their children."

"The Telegraph" story is a twist in the tale, and suggests that the Government is desparately trying to hide the ineffectiveness of the Pulse Polio drive.

"India’s health bureaucracy ignored scientific advice about flaws in the polio immunisation programme for nearly 20 years and suppressed research that might have led to faster eradication, doctors have said.." [Polio botch-up blame at Delhi door, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060924/asp/frontpage/story_6786709.asp]



"The doctors have challenged assertions by health officials that the surge in polio in western Uttar Pradesh this year -- and the resulting setback in eradication efforts -- was only due to poor immunisation there last year.

In scientific papers and interviews to The Telegraph, they said India's failure to eradicate polio also stems from wrong decisions on dosage and choice of vaccine..." the report continues.

"The number of polio cases in India has surged this year to 297 after a steady decline for years and a record low of 66 last year."

"Children who got as many as 10 doses have still got polio in Uttar Pradesh this year."

"John believes policy-makers displayed an unscientific bias towards OPV over the inactivated injectible polio vaccine (IPV) that has been shown through studies as superior in many ways."

"In a paper three years ago in the Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy, John suggested there might have been an effort to suppress findings about IPV's advantages. His own studies comparing IPV with OPV in Tamil Nadu were approved by the Centre on the condition that he would not publish the results."

"Another pediatrician in a government medical college in New Delhi told The Telegraph that he was discouraged from studying IPV."

[Images from The Telegraph report]

Now we'll try to check the science and "pseudo-science" in the claims and counter-claims. Last month when we talked about not vaccinating Aadil, I had promised to come back with the arguments against the Oral Polio Vaccines, popularly known as "Pulse Polio" (Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar come on the mini screen often to coax us to give our children the two drops of life).

One of the main arguments of the anti-OPV drive in Kerala was that OPV is discontinued in most developed countries. In USA, the Oral Vaccine was banned in 1999 following a case of "Vaccine caused Parallysis". (Read about one such case at http://www.ryar.org/news/07-28-05.html. The campaigns have documented similar cases reported in India/Kerala as well).

A "Science Daily" report admits that OPV runs such a risk, but says that it can be overcome by "proper coverage" (A 2004 outbreak of polio in China traced back to live attenuated oral polio vaccine (OPV), which is widely used in global eradication efforts, highlights the small but significant risk to eradication posed by the use of OPV at suboptimal rates of coverage.., http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060815160951.htm)
When this became a debate in India, the Government's stand was that if all the children in the country are given the vaccine at the same time (yes-- same time, not the same day), it was safe. Can one get any more unrealistic?

Oral Polio Vaccine is no longer recommended, says one US health brochure (pdf).

And now, check this:

Despite the figues showing the Polio cases on the decline in the countries that are on the OPV drive now (India, Pakistan, China, some African countries), the figures (the official ones itself) of Non-Polio AFPs (Accute Flaccid Parallysis, cases of polio-like diseases), is showing an exponential rise in all these countries.

In India, The number of cases of non-Polio AFPs rose from 772 in 1996 to 27,000 in 2004 (the polio figures dropped from 1105 to 136 in the same period).

The activists claim there is a chance that many of these cases are actually that of Polio and are not reported as Polio, because there are parties who benefit from the OPV drive and they are influential enough. I find it a serious concern. But can we ever expect honest research to happen in such areas, and even if research happens, what is the guarantee that the real results reach us? Chances seem grim:-(

Who is Grisha Perelman?

I first heard this name about a week back. I got a mail which carried a Newyork Times article dated August 15, that started with a question "Grisha Perelman, where are you?"

I didn't know who he was, but the first few lines caught my attention so I didn't delete it. It went thus:

"Three years ago, a Russian mathematician by the name of Grigory Perelman, a k a Grisha, in St. Petersburg, announced that he had solved a famous and intractable mathematical problem, known as the Poincaré conjecture, about the nature of space.

After posting a few short papers on the Internet and making a whirlwind lecture tour of the United States, Dr. Perelman disappeared back into the Russian woods in the spring of 2003, leaving the world's mathematicians to pick up the pieces and decide if he was right.."

The article goes on:

"Now they say they have finished his work, and the evidence is circulating among scholars in the form of three book-length papers with about 1,000 pages of dense mathematics and prose between them.

As a result there is a growing feeling, a cautious optimism that they have finally achieved a landmark not just of mathematics, but of human thought.."

....

"But at the moment of his putative triumph, Dr. Perelman is nowhere in sight. He is an odds-on favorite to win a Fields Medal, math's version of the Nobel Prize, when the International Mathematics Union convenes in Madrid next Tuesday. But there is no indication whether he will show up.

Also left hanging, for now, is $1 million offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., for the first published proof of the conjecture, one of seven outstanding questions for which they offered a ransom back at the beginning of the millennium.."

The Fields Medal (it is awarded once in four years to mathematicians under 40, see Mathworld and wikipedia entries) was announced day before, and Perelman did win it. As expected, he declined to accept the award or appear at the congress (International Congress of the International Mathematical Union, where the award ceremony is held).

It seems to have become an added motivation for the "investigative" journos to come up with more masala and more drama. Latest gossip that is making rounds is that the guy was fired from the Institute he was working at, and he now lives with his mother's pension money, and also that he does not want to talk about Mathematics. (Could be true.)

All this would have made mathematitians happy. It is not every day that mathematics is in news! [Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman].