Our Political leaders affirms that "We the people (are Dirty Indians)"

On Swatch Bharat Abhiyan 

Yet and other one! Among many abhiyans reflecting systematic governance failures!

Mars mission indeed brought a great pride and reassurance to capabilities of Indian as scientist who delivered, a government absolutely serious, political neutral united  on space research and citizens supporting it with wholehearted cheering (never to mention the taxes we pay).Space and Indian military missions are shining examples which clearly demonstrate the objectives met when Government is serious. So such success also exposes us to sharp contrasts and mockery.  Imagine when a European or American citizens watching these developments might visit India and will be thinking (with a grin).

“Hey you guys know how a rocket can reach on mars and moon but why don’t you guys don’t know how the shit of your toilets reach a sewer treatment plant as it often gets lost in open drains, roads or finds it way to our holy rivers “…….

BJP being a conventional party which thrives on same rotten system of (corruption laden governmental agencies) which it is projecting to clean. I dint expected much from this another rhetoric ! Yes its was a rhetoric, I am cynic on it and I have reason for it ... !

Lets separate 03 things:

1. The importance of this abhiyan of public sanitation and cleanliness

2. Political positioning and intent

3. Ground reality, contradictions and clearing the dirt: Making the horse drink water!

First, medical historians and public health experts have agreed that from last 19th and 20th century world population grew from 2 billion to 6 billion and this enormous increase in population and life expectancy from 50 years to 85 years , is attributed not to advances in medical care but to extreme progresses made in public health and sanitation alone. It’s strange that medical health care played a little role in increased life expectancy and in some case marginal role. Western world developed massive sewer and waste disposal system and took care of land , water, air and food and no wonder life expectancy of these countries touch 80- 82 years and developing countries like India its still 65 years.

So, importance of such an ambitious mission can no way be contraindicated and undermined. It is extremely serious socio-economic intervention requiring a resolve of steel.  All efforts in this direction are worth millions of rupees saved on medical health care.  It becomes even more important because if we have today the youngest population in world, then in just 02 decades we will have large army of aging population ridden with diseases demanding long term health care, which with current policies we will never be able to meet and will lead to mass social unrest. Why social unrest ? Because this population will not be a population which can easily be silenced or can be left unheard. This will be empowered generation drifting towards less energetic lives with reduced earnings and high expectations on governance unlike the past decades. Long term care is extremely prioritized research area in developed countries and we are far behind to address such issues. 

Apart from this such sanitation targets can save enormous productive hours and resources spent on seeking health care and thus contributing a lot to economy. This will also lead to safer water, air and land and lead us toward a sustainable existence with nature.

Political positioning and intent

BJP being a conventional party I don’t expect much than just a rhetoric. Because it is thrives on the same eco system which it is positioning to be against. PM's intent may be un-questionable, he is a wise and grounded leader but BJPs organizational intent is just to reap the benefit of opportunity without applying a logical road map and genuine seriousness of such missions. So Modi ji's real test is ahead. You can bring a horse (government and party) to water (power and abhiyan) but you cant make it drink (read as, motivate or inspire to execute).So I have a serious doubt that even if we leave rest of India, will Modi be even be able to make Municipal Corporation of Delhi ruled by his own party from last 07 years right under his nose will be able to respond to his call. But he is a clever politician and he knows the importance of being "larger than life image" of a political leader which he is trying (successfully) to build on lines of Jawahar Lal Nehru or may be Gandhi ji.

So if you see in history, that if you have to build that image or legacy, challenge and break the earlier one which was highest. In Independent India, Nehru was only one who was larger than life figure for politics of his times, and later nurtured and kept alive successfully by his political heirs. Here Modi seems to challenge that, dismantling planning commission philosophy, invoking Gandhi and Patel at timings suitable to him. Similar behavior could be noted when being a CM of Gujrat he never addressed his critiques in his state but always chose to speak against Delhi Sultanate which graduated him from a regional leader to a leader of national stature and importance. Same behavior could be noted when Arvind Kejriwal chose to challenge the legacy of Shiela Dixit and later Modi in Varanasi. Electorally, Delhi elections was success for Kejriwal and failure in Varanasi, but politically his both maneuvers catapulted him as national leader even without enough parliamentary and assembly strength. Today in all political spectrum and public perception, opposition had just one name and that is Arvind Kejriwal and you can see several instances where political parties and leaders doing course corrections and even copying what AAP was doing or preaching.

What next? Make in India is covertly edition of another Swadeshi Movement of Gandhi and Digital India is Next? Remember after Indian independence Nehru laid a lot stress on self-reliance and industrialization in heavy industries, investments in science and technology institutions. So here is another parallel. I remember that structures like Bhakra Dam and Large Fertilizer Industries like FCI, NFL were rightly called as Temple of resurgent Modern India by Nehru. So, on a larger political landscape Modi is just on that track i.e. information highways, waterways etc. It will be his legacy if they see the light of day. So if BJP and at least BJP ruled State and corporations doesn’t get serious of Mr Modi;s call then Swatch Bharat Abhiyaan will just be another ice bucket challenge asking how much garbage you can collect to throw no where ?

Ground reality, contradictions and clearing the dirt: Making the horse drink water !

Ground reality is that we will never be able to achieve it with current set up. Just and example that sewer lines laid 100 years back in Delhi by Britishers are the one which are still operating. In all cities made after independence we lay sever lines decades after the cities have settled and many cities it still don’t exist. Often those laid did not work many examples in Gurgaon. Sewerage treatment and solid waste disposal remains a rocket science for municipal corporations and councils. As I said earlier, we know how a rocket can reach on mars and moon but we don’t know how the shit of our toilets can reach a sewer treatment plant and it gets lost in open drains or finds it way to our holy rivers.

Town and country Planning, PWD and Pollution Control Boards and Forest Depts remains most coveted domains for conventional parties, beurocracy and political leaders/ministers to make fortunes at cost of public health. Kickback is awarding Public sanitation contracts in municipal corporates, pollution control board approval of errant polluting industries. Corruption is blood line of this phenomenon.

Just opposite to Delhi's largest Landfill and largest open sewers, there are large colonies and buildings coming up. Stink of landfill exists upto kilometers and Local Govt , Health authorities, MCD and Urban Development Min. are least bothered about the health of population living in those areas or being allowed to settled in these areas.

Dirty Indians? No, Indians or for that matter any human being don’t want to live in dirty environment. It is systematic governance failure which forces us to be live in dirty environments. So do you expect citizens to travel every morning to landfill after crossing Delhi to throw his garbage if the dustbin at his street corner have not been cleared for weeks. Do you expect him to travel back to home in Dwarka if you feel urge to piss while you are Connaught Place? Do you expect him to install air cleaning systems in homes so that kids and elderly people would not suffocate? Your corrupt system had already made him install water filters because you could not even supply clean water to these dirty Indians. Was it dirty Indians fault that you could not ensure the quality of water coming in his taps? System make him dirty and corrupt. Dysfunctional disposal systems make them throw dirt in the corner of street.  Absence of urinals or cleanliness of existing urinals make them piss in public corners. Dysfunctional and ineffective pollution controls boards allow conversion of holy rivers in to open sewers.  Ganga Yamuna Saga, 20,000 Crores spent and political mileages being earned on these issues! Dirty Ganga and Yamuna is life line of many industrialists and local Municipal Corporations which feed these conventional parties. So have little hope and you can be rightfully cynical on Clean Ganga Campaign. Uma Bharti say she will clean Ganga in 3 years, Modji before elections says he will  do it in 05 years and after winning election he says in Supreme Court that it may take 18 years. Truth is with this system it will be counterproductive to clean Ganga.

Corrupt and illogical town and country planning officials allow haphazard building, business complexes, malls and residential buildings leading to clogged roads with traffic causing jams and pollution of air. Rain water management remains a least of priority and is remembered only when few hundreds die of dengue or malaria that too necessarily in National Capital elsewhere it doesn’t makes a news. May be this will also happen for Ebola?

Conclusion

It’s not a question of who is in power or which party or leader makes benefits from abhiyans and initiatives. How ironic is that? BJP is in power at Centre, in Delhi state and MCD too. Still it has to launch a Swatch Bharat Abhiyan in New Delhi and that too in Parliament Street.

We all jumped to support PM campaign on this endeavor. Its reflects that we are not dirty Indians. We are ready do your (Govt, center, state and municipal) bit now! Voluntary work from citizens for larger societal good is long standing value of Indian society but can ever a volunteer effort replace the? Structured intervention of government in essential domains of public order. Similar logic also stands for education (primary secondary and higher), roads and hospitals. Public sanitation is not natural calamity where government structure and administration is demolished or incapacitated which calls for large scale voluntary support from general public by Government and political leadership. It is a systematic government intervention with a foresight and vison of increasing populations and country and town planning. Given our past experiences post-Independence, we as rational thinking citizens should necessarily look to all political initiatives with a bottom line questions of common sense,  whats the action plan and how to measure and how am I affected ? With this abhiyan what can be your possible questions when next time anyone from BJP comes to your door steps for votes?

1- Is a garbage collections container lying within 50 meters of walking distance from your home?

2- Is this garbage box cleared every night?

3- Are you able to drink the tap water coming from municipal supply with same surety with which you gulp the bottled water?

4- Proportion of time you lose in traffic jams while you travel to office or home or market

5- Are you able to walk safely to nearby market or office without any in - convenience?

6- Are your children and elders able to cross a road safely or can they walk or cycle on city roads?

7-Are the roads and footpaths so seamlessly aligned that even a handicapped or old person can navigate through without any help?

7- Is there a clean public park available in your vicinity?

Do you find any rocket science in this or you think that you don’t deserve this much? These all are just basic questions and many more need to answered like lives of workers, there wages and health issues by policy makers. But those in policy making and implementation power centers are the one who are one sustaining on this garbage and chaos!

Jai Hind !

Sherry Mann new song 2011 - Pind Udd Java

sherry mann new song pooja kive aa {By Aman Here}

THE TUSKEGEE EXPERIMENT! (The Killing of a Black man)

Human guinea pigs! Israel forces people to drink uranium?

Wemos Film on Clinical Drug Trials in Developing Countries

He gave hope to infertile couples

Prof Robert G. Edwards, a distinguished scientist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology, 2010, is the chief architect of the in vitro fertilisation technique. Two decades back, he found the answer to infertility and made it possible for 85 per cent of infertile couples to have a child. Unfortunately, as he has been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for the last two years, he does not even know that he has bagged the Nobel Prize. His wife and long-term scientific companion, Dr Ruth Fowler Edwards, received the prize on his behalf. In a personal tribute, Prof Pushpa M. Bhargava, noted scientist who worked with him at Cambridge University, recalls his association with Prof Edwards. 
He gave hope to infertile couples

JUST after 1980 when Bob Edwards had purchased the Bourn House near Cambridge, England, to set up the first “test-tube” baby clinic (the Bourn Clinic) to treat infertility cases requiring what we know today as IVF (in vitro fertilisation), the technique for which he received the Nobel Prize this year, he drove me to the then heavily guarded building, and chuckled. All around, he said, were TV cameras poised on the top of the adjoining buildings to record what was happening inside Bourn House, and I would become a marked man!
Bob had been a celebrity in Britain (and in many other parts of the world) for nearly three years, not only for having given IVF to the infertile couples but also ignoring the church-going crowd that felt that man had no right to interfere if God had made a couple infertile. He realised that if any organic malfunctioning could be considered a disease, infertility was the most widely prevalent disease around the world, affecting 10 to 15 per cent couples of child-bearing age, and he had given new hope to them. In fact, today, advances based on Bob Edwards’ work between 1970 and 1980 have made it possible for 85 per cent of infertile couples to have a child.

Innovators of IVF technique * Robert G. Edwards, British biologist, with Patrick Steptoe, developed techniques that led to the first “test tube baby”, Louise Brown, and millions of other births. Their contributions to the technology of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) have made more than four million couples parents. * Working with Steptoe, Edwards, now 85, developed the technique for removing mature eggs from a woman’s ovaries, fertilising them in test tubes and inducing them to begin dividing before implanting them back in the mother. * In 1960, Edwards started to study human fertilisation, and he continued his work at Cambridge, laying the groundwork for his later success. In 1968, he was able to achieve fertilisation of a human egg in the laboratory and started to collaborate with Steptoe, a gynaecologic surgeon from Oldham. Edwards developed human culture media to allow the fertilisation and early embryo culture, while Steptoe utilised laparoscopy to recover ovocytes from patients with tubal infertility. * Refinements in technology have increased pregnancy rates and it is estimated that in 2010 about four million children have been born by IVF with approximately 170,000 coming from donated oocyte and embryos. Their breakthrough laid the groundwork for further innovations such as intracytoplasmatic sperm injection (ICSI), embryo biopsy (PGD), and stem cell research. * Edwards, Professor Emeritus at Cambridge University, is in failing health. He has been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for the last two years and was unable to accept the call from Sweden’s Nobel Committee. z According to Dr Ruth Fowler Edwards, Edwards’ wife, “The success of this research has touched the lives of millions of people worldwide, and his dedication and single-minded determination despite opposition from many quarters has led to successful application of his pioneering research.” * Steptoe was not named as a recipient of the $1.5-million prize because Nobel rules require that an honoree be alive at the time of the award. He died in 1988, 13 years before New York’s Lasker Foundation awarded Edwards its top award, which is often viewed as a precursor to the Nobel. z Critics have questioned why it has taken so long to honour the pair’s achievements. It is said that it is due in part to the Vatican’s disapproval of the technique because it physically separates the conjugal act and conception. * Many other religious groups also initially expressed concerns about the ethics of IVF. Significantly, Britain’s Medical Research Council refused to fund the experiments, spurring Edwards and Steptoe to obtain private grants.

So he put all his money in the Bourn Clinic. It was a risk few would have taken, for the success rate of IVF at that time was less than 10 per cent. Louise Brown, the first so-called test-tube baby that he and the late Patrick Streptoe had delivered on July 25, 1978, was their first success after over 30 failures. But Bob Edwards recognised that nothing worthwhile in this world was ever accomplished without taking a risk, believing in oneself, and going that extra mile that others didn’t dare to walk.
Bourn Hall, in the village of Bourn, became a landmark, and the techniques that Bob had pioneered spawned a host of new, related technologies. Infertility clinics (good or bad) started sprouting around the corner everywhere, specially in India which even today has no regulation to control them, over the next three decades. This mushrooming was an anathema to the innate sense of ethics and morality in Bob. So when he started his second journal (the first being, now widely known, Human Reproduction, Reproductive BioMedicine (RBM) Online, he asked me to write an article on ethical issues in modern biological technologies which was published in September 2003 issue of this journal.
The IVF and related techniques were by then well accepted. The question was that of ethics in the practice of these techniques which became to be collectively known as assisted reproductive technologies (ART). As my article pointed out, the scope of unethical behaviour and practices on part of the practitioners of ART was immense, and it was being exploited fully to make easy money at the cost of ignorance of people.
In delivering Louise Brown after many failures, in setting up the Bourn Clinic, and in starting two highly successful journals, Bob showed that patience, self-confidence, and a real commitment to the legitimate interests of the people based on strong ethics and highly developed professionalism, pays in the long run. He was unfazed when, in 1971, the Medical Research Council of Britain (MRC), one of the most forward-looking scientific grant-giving organisations in the world), denied financial support to Bob Edwards for work which led to the Nobel Prize. He seemed always short of money. When in 2002, I persuaded him to come to Hyderabad for the Silver Jubilee of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, which he had visited earlier, he asked if in addition to his travel, board and lodging expenses, a few hundred pounds could be paid to him. I arranged for an ART clinic in Hyderabad to do so. As a courtesy, he then visited the clinic which, today, is doubly proud of that visit.
I have watched the modern biological revolution from close quarters since its beginning in 1953, and I believe that there are not many who have during this period succeeded on so many counts as Bob has. However, the fact remains that success is never the outcome of just one individual’s effort and no one is, I am sure, more aware of it than Bob Edwards.
The person he would be missing the most at this time is C.R. Austin (known to his friends as Bunny Austin), without whose support all through, Bob would not have got to where he did. An unsung hero of reproduction biology, Bunny was a gentleman par excellence in the traditional British sense, who left most of the talking to his very articulate wife, Patricia. I came to know them when I was working in the National Institute for Medical Research in London during 1956-57. In the later years, he was to become the world’s foremost authority on the mammalian egg. He discovered, independently with M.C. Chang of the Worcester Foundation in New England in the US, the phenomena of “capacitation” which Bob Edwards recognised as the single most important hurdle in developing the technique of IVF – that is, fertilising the human egg with human sperm in vitro (say, in a test tube!), allowing the fertilised egg to develop initially also in the laboratory, and then transferring the embryo thus generated outside the body, into the uterus of a woman for further normal development.
Mammalian sperm are infertile when ejaculated by man. They acquire the capacity (hence the term, “capacitation”) to fertilise an egg during passage through the female reproductive tract. Therefore, for successful fertilisation of human egg by human sperm in the lab, one would need to first capacitate the human sperm.
Bunny Austin moved to Cambridge as the Darwin Professor of Animal Morphology in the Physiological Laboratory of the University in the 1960s. Bob who was with Bunny at the National Institute for Medical Research, also joined him there. It was there on the fourth floor of the Physiological Laboratory that he developed the technique of capacitating the human sperm in vitro and then using the capacitated sperm to fertilise a human egg also in vitro what we know today as IVF.
When Bunny moved to Cambridge, he purchased the most prestigious building in the village of Toft near Cambridge, called the Manor House. It was listed in the Cambridgeshire Directory of Heritage Buildings, and was not the most comfortable one in the world. My wife and I stayed there as guests of the Austins more than once, in an upstairs room the floor of which was sloping and creaked at each step. But the overall beauty of the building had a magical effect even on visitors and I remember many delightful evenings spent there with Bob Edwards, and his wife, Ruth. It was there that I learnt about Bob’s fascination with fast cars and fast driving, violating every rule of the road, which very few Britishers do. He could persuade me to be driven by him, I think only once!
After retiring from Cambridge, Bunny and Pat migrated to a remote corner of eastern Australia, where he passed away, unknown and unsung, a few years ago. Both Bob and I lost an extremely dear friend. Bunny wasn’t even elected to The Royal Society, a grave omission on the part of the Society. Bob’s election to the Fellowship of The Royal Society, perhaps, partly made up for it.
Bob has been an unusual entrepreneur who expanded his entrepreneurship to areas that are generally considered taboo for scientists. For example, he stood for membership of the British Parliament, and failed. But that was probably his only major failure. In everything else he tried, he succeeded.
Bob has been a Fellow of Churchill College in Cambridge, and my wife and I remember dining at the College as Bob’s guests. There was never a dull moment when he was around, and he always livened the dinner table.
The Nobel Foundation did not do Bob a favour by awarding Nobel Prize for 2010 to him. Bob should have received the Prize 20 years ago, around 1990, by which time many with much lesser accomplishment to their credit had been given this honour.
As of now, he is sick. I spoke to him last nearly two years ago when I was in Cambridge. It was clear to me even then that he was very unwell. As he is not well, his wife received the Nobel Prize on his behalf.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time in recent years that the Nobel Foundation has slipped. It did so when it conferred the Nobel Prize on Luc Montagnier and a colleague of his for discovering HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It should have been shared with Robert Gallo of the US. In fact, the Nobel Prize may have been given (which would not have been right) only to Bob Gallo, but for the French government’s active and persistent intervention to protect the legitimate interest of Luc Montaignier, for Bob Gallo was far better known even for work on HIV and AIDS, and had already made several other major discoveries such as of interleukin-2 and of HTLV1 and HTLV2, the human leukaemia-causing viruses.
It is a thought that if Luc Montaignier had done his work in India, he would have been probably only ridiculed as happened to Subhas Mukherjee who delivered the first Indian test-tube baby, Kanupriya Agarwal, on October 3, 1978, just 69 days after Louise Brown was born.
In fact, soon after Louise Brown was born, Bunny Austin came to India at my invitation and gave a lecture in the then Regional Research Laboratory (now Indian Institute of Chemical Technology) at Hyderabad on the work of Bob Edwards. He then asked me about Subhas Mukherjee and said that if the Indian scientific community and the Government of India would certify to the brandied facts of Kanupriya’s birth, Bob Edwards would be happy to share the credit with Subhas Mukherjee. If that had happened, Mukherjee wouldn’t have committed suicide, and would have shared the Nobel Prize with Edwards. I wonder how many such opportunities we have missed and will continue to miss.
It is said that when a well-known exporter of crabs from India to the US was chastised by his American customers for sending them a consignment of crabs in containers that had no lids, he told the Americans not to worry as they were Indian crabs and as soon as any of them would try to climb up, all the others would pull it down. It is this Indian Crab Syndrome that has often prevented the emergence of Indian Nobel Prize winners.
The writer, a former Vice-Chairman, National Knowledge Commission, is a former Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad