Thursday, December 27, 2007

Against Traditional Medicine..

(This article appeared in Malayalam Weekly dated December 10, 2004)

Our democratic government (of Kerala) has decreed that the famous “Vaidyamadom Family” which has rendered yeomen service in Ayurvedic medical treatment for the past few centuries need not, hereinafter bother to continue that. There are enough number of multinationals like those who invented thalidomide and endosulfan, and converted the poor people of third world countries into their Guinea pigs who are competent do this. Medical treatment is, after all the fundamental right of their agents and servants. They can, with impunity, treat the poor of this country with their medicines and methods banned elsewhere. Official recognition shall, hereafter be granted only to this brand of treatment. Globalization will be complete and effective only when the traditions of every country, every people, are rooted out. The fiat against Vaidyamadom and other traditional practitioners is but a small step towards this cherished goal.

Two incidents are presented here. One of them happened more than fifty years ago. My three-year-old little brother had an attack of some unknown disease. Nearby doctors and physicians treated him with no avail. After the child was almost written off, my mother sent for the tribal physician, “Malayan Panicker”. The “untouchable” Adivasi Physician (Doctors had no untouchability even fifty years ago!!!), with his single-minded attention treated him for a couple of days with his herbal medicines until the child woke up and started playing. For a month the “doctor” would regularly visit to enquire about his little patient. Our family was ready to give him half the kingdom; but he replied, “If I accept remuneration my treatment will no longer be effective”. This is traditional medicine. Traces of this tradition are still vibrant in remote villages in this country even today.

The second picture is very recent: In fifty years we all forgot “Malayan Panicker”. Those who didn’t forget ridiculed him and his tribe. Untouchability somehow shifted from his person to profession. All of us learnt Science and Technology, traveled and worked abroad, drank Coke and Pepsi and returned home to find that our mother was already in her deathbed. According to the prevailing fashion we got her admitted to a five star hospital apparently to prevent her death. A doctor each specialized in the respective organ from head to toe examined her and prescribed various kinds of treatments. One of them performed an operation, another an endoscopy while a third administered blood and plasma. We, the near and dear had no entry to the “intensive care unit”. You may watch through the keyhole if the security men permitted. When her breathing pattern changed, indicating her final moments we tried to wet her dry lips with a drop of water, which the young lady in white coat tried her best to prevent. When the heartbeat slowed down she injected medicines, brought it to 150 a minute, checked the blood pressure and smiled in satisfaction. Our mother of course breathed her last despite this drama of “treatment against death” that repeated a few times. We got the dead body released after showing them the cash receipt for the performance. This is the modern, globalized medicine- Medicine that has shunned the tradition of wetting the dying person’s dry lips- Medicine that has lost its soul.

According to a WHO report, India is a county with one of the lowest per capita expenditure on medical treatment. It is also stated (of course, in small print) that the reason for this low spending is that a good percentage of Indians depend upon inexpensive systems like homoeopathy and traditional medicines. Powerful drug manufacturers and multinationals were able to wipe out homoeopathy from the United States where it was popular a few decades ago. This effort of eradicating inexpensive treatment successfully continues in other countries with the tacit connivance of puppet regimes. In the case of countries like India, there are no short cut methods; one has to limit the definitions of freedom in infinitesimal and incomprehensible steps. As it is difficult to curtail our freedom to approach any physician, the only recourse open is to eradicate every kind of traditional medicine.

Hundreds of intellectuals, rationalists, doctors and ordinary people are knowingly and unknowingly party to this global conspiracy. The general contention that everything outside the framework of Western Science is wrong stems from a lack of understanding of Science itself. Science is only a tentative description of the laws of nature as observed and understood from time to time. The essential feature of Science is its honesty to admit its own mistakes in the light of new evidences. “Truth” and “Science” are not one and the same. The popular notion of the two being the same is a modern superstition. The inextricably intertwined relationship between the human body and mind is still outside the purview of modern medical science. Ignorance in certain domains is millions of times more than Knowledge itself. It is preposterous to insist that all traditional knowledge that falls beyond the framework of modern science should be discarded.

It is clear that those who swear by Science to stamp out traditional medicine are not motivated by any lofty understanding of science, but by some baser instinct akin to religious fanaticism. It is true that there are many cases of fraudulent activities in the name of traditional medicine; but it is equally true of biotechnology and computer science. That certainly cannot be held against the branch of knowledge!!

When different branches of medicine compete among themselves, the mighty would try to annihilate the weak and meek. In India, the organized sector of big hospitals, and drug manufacturers can capture an enormous market if the traditional and cheaper medicines and practices are banned. Everything appears to be fair in a market economy. The CEO of Coca Cola once made a statement that Coke’s real competitor in India is not Pepsi, but the drinking water. Thirsty Indians drink water instead of soft drinks. This bad habit has to change. This will certainly change if drinking water is privatized by acquiring Plachimada and Narmada Valley. There is a lot of underlying similarity between the two cases.

Medical history of the West is not very ancient compared to those of China or India. Many well developed and proven modes of treatment were prevalent in both these countries, Ayurveda and Acupuncture being two well-known systems. These branches of study needed long years of intense training through stable teacher-student relationships and devoted learning. These traditional training methods are different from the present day classes from ten-to four where the lectures fall in deaf ears of the uninitiated sons and daughters of fortune-seekers. What our governments and universities believe is that any process of learning that does not go through this ten-to-four-drama is no leaning at all. That is why the traditional medical practitioners do not get the “official” recognition. (If the carpenters trained in ITI are unable to persuade he government to banish all traditional carpentry, it is only because they do not have the money and political support to pull the necessary strings)

In the health care system prevalent in the West you cannot buy an analgesic tablet from the store without a doctor’s prescription. You cannot even meet a doctor of your choice. You are allowed to consult only the specific doctor named by your insurance company, because they pay the doctor’s fee and the cost of drugs. If there is any deficiency of service there are attorney organizations to file cases on your behalf and get you huge compensations. An ordinary citizen is just a helpless creature surrounded by multinational drug manufacturers, hospitals, doctors’ organizations, attorney groups and others. This is the American way of life.(Into that Heaven of Freedom let my country awake!!!) Bringing the whole world under this lifestyle is called globalization. Bombing of Iraq is just one step in this holy endeavour.

Ayurveda, Naturopathy, Yoga, Kalarippayattu, Marmachikitsa and a host of other systems form part of our tradition. They are our intellectual properties. The health, mutual trust and stability of our society are delicately related to these traditions and traditional knowledge. Our attempt to transplant “American Way of Life” as a panacea to all our ills, without appreciating the localized and ephemeral nature of many western findings is, in mildest terms, retrograde and ridiculous. The Organized sector and government should resist this temptation and withdraw from this perilous path.

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Tail end: It looks very appropriate that the Excise Department is vested with powers to judge whether Vaidyamadom is competent to treat patients, and to pull out traditional medicine by its roots. After all, they are the guardian angels of new traditions of Hyrunneesa and Manichan.


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Monday, October 22, 2007

Bishops, Communists and Sacraments

It is really painful to watch and listen to the controversy between the Clergy and Marxist Party surrounding the truth or otherwise of the “last sacrament” claimed to have been administered to late Sri. Mathai Chacko, MLA. I am particularly annoyed because Mathai Chacko was my personal friend whose rise in Kerala Politics was of great interest to me. Religion and politics apart, he was a fine individual who practiced what he preached. The attempt on the part of the clergy to depict him otherwise was what irked most people.

Mathai Chacko did not believe in Heaven and Hell, nor did he recognize the need for prayers. I had met him in his hospital room a couple of months before he went unconscious. We did not talk much, but his firm resolve to fight the disease with available medical tools and weapons had not diminished in the least. It is unimaginable that such a person buries his convictions and calls the priest for getting anointed. Now it is fairly clear from the written statement of the Bishop that no such sacrament was administered to Chacko in his consciousness. We all know that it is the practice of Religion to make such claims; and even Einstein was not spared from such propaganda. The present confusion does not stem from facts or sequence of events, but from the rivalry between two great religions of the world, Christianity and Communism.

People are usually “born-into” a religion, not of their own accord. Every child, immediately after birth is counted in, as a Hindu, Muslim, Christian or any other permitted sect. Such head-count is useful in designating electoral constituencies as “belonging” to a specific religion or community. Thus, in a geographical sense (see Bertrand Russell) Mathai Chacko could be counted as a Catholic, although it may not entitle him to heavenly bliss available to real practicing Catholics. It is in the interest of the Church and its constituents that everyone is given all sacraments, including the last one. This interest of the Church is logical and praiseworthy because someone who dies without the last sacrament might end up in Hell. It is this lofty ideal of securing for everyone a seat in the Heaven that prompts priests to go out of the way to administer this piece of ritual even on unconscious patients in deathbeds. Those who remember history would recall that Spaniards used to baptize every South American (pagan) child before squashing its head and throwing in the disposal pit. The Spanish clergymen sincerely believed this was an admirable thing to do, as the innocent pagan children would otherwise languish in Hell.

Pinarayi Vijayan, as the High Priest of Communism obviously does not admit of sacraments. Of course they too have rituals like throwing up the fist (vertically or horizontally as the occasion demands) and saying Lal Salaam (Lal is Hindi, meaning Red and Salaam Arabic, meaning submission; but that is beside the point) which have no objective like securing a heavenly abode for its practitioners. It is only natural that he doesn’t tolerate one of his men being designated as a Lamb of the Bishop. He fails to recognize the Church’s lofty ideal behind appropriating a Soul after the man’s death. Pinarayi is worried about the loss of reputation of a party member exposed to such tricks by the scheming clergymen. His point is that the Bishop initially said that the deceased himself had requested anointing, and later reversed it in a second statement. These statements read with other circumstantial evidence, point to the Bishop’s violation of ninth commandment (Thou Shalt Not Lie) at least on one occasion, either the first or second. Does it justify Pinarayi’s insinuation that a Bishop who spreads such a blatant lie is a “detestable creature”? Certainly not. It is part of the Faith that Bishops make holy statements and the question of lie does not arise at all. This blasphemy by a communist who has scant regard for the infallibility of the Church (and Bishops) deserves condemnation that he be consigned to Hellfire.

This is an ideal point at which the entire issue gets viewed topsy-turvy. Now the Church is no more worried about Mathai Chacko’s religious beliefs, the right and wrong of sacraments on the unwilling, and whether anointing was done at all. Now the only point discussed is that Pinarayi called the High Priest of a minority religion (it was pardonable had it been a majority religion) a detestable creature, which, in reality, he is not. He now reiterates that he uttered words to that effect, and justifies having said so. All the Bishop’s men including Oommen Chandy and K M Mani are now up in arms, chanting in chorus that Pinarayi committed blasphemy and should retract. I don’t think he is in a mood to retract, because these Communists have no fear of divine retribution against blasphemy.

Pinarayi Vijayan, although a great leader and political luminary, doesn’t seem to be well up in Scripture knowledge. Instead of using a phrase like “detestable creature” he should have reminded the diocese that His Holiness violated two Commandments, not just one as we all thought. By trying to poach a Soul (albeit unsuccessfully) from Pinarayi’s camp the Bishop violated the Tenth Commandment also (Thou Shalt not Covet). Violation of two Commandments may not put him to any great inconvenience in this world, but what about the next, I mean the Purgatory?

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Science and Superstition


In my childhood I lived in a village without electricity and transport. We went to school walking up the slope of a hill and a couple of miles along a flat treeless plateau. On the near-slope of the hill we had our cremation ground, identified by a lone peepal tree in its centre. On the southeast edge of the plateau there were remnants of an old fort, abandoned a few hundred years ago by an earlier dynasty that preceded the recent one overthrown by the British in nineteenth century. Our elementary school was where the plateau joined the main road.
Children never ventured along this route except in large groups in broad daylight, due to a lingering fear associated with this route. Just before the monsoon rains, an occasional leopard would descend from the hills and kill a few cows and calves. I distinctly remember to have seen once, the crimson carcass of a cow on our way to school. When the leopard announces its arrival by an initial kill, the village elders would fetch a well-known marksman from the nearby town and get the animal shot in a week’s time if it stayed that long. The gunman returned empty handed if the leopard smelt the danger, and decided to quit. At least in certain seasons we were genuinely terrified by the possible presence of the leopard. Later, when I went to High School in the town, nobody would buy our story and we were, en masse, branded superstitious. Those days newspapers were rare and readers few. People in the town firmly believed that leopards never stirred out of the forest to take away cows and calves. Even the teachers smiled away our leopard as hallucinations of a bunch of superstitious villagers.
There was a temple at the far end of the plateau with an adjoining “lake on the rock” in which water was plenty even in dry seasons. Although the presiding Goddess was in an angry mood (presumably after killing a demon) and desired to be propitiated preferably with chicken and a dash of alcoholic drink, everyone heaved a sigh of relief at the shelter offered by the temple. After all, the leopard could do little if the Goddess decided to protect you. There were also supporting legends, stories, and anecdotes of elders to reinforce our trust in the Goddess. The village, the plateau, the cremation ground, fort, Kali temple and occasional visits of leopards made it an ideal fertile ground to breed a credulous generation of superstitious people. The setting was ideal to instill fear of God in children at an early age. Surprisingly it never happened. On the contrary, most of the children in this village became rationalists, atheists and even communists after they went to high school and grew up further. As no one had demanded any kind of faith in any deity, we could freely discuss religion, god(s) and beliefs and engage in verbal fights even in the temple premises. In the freedom of mind we enjoyed, the leopard and goddess did not matter any further. The country was passing through a period of enlightenment, immediately after freedom, with Nehru at the top and Science education gaining a new impetus. All those who went to college studied science instead of history, language or law preferred by the earlier generation. I think, science education had, in those days had an over-compensating effect on traditional beliefs, and it became fashionable to dub everything beyond our ken as a superstition.
Some old men (not women) in our village often described an animal they named “Kooli”, usually seen on cremation grounds in the night. Most of them were invariably people who used to deal with ghosts and other spirits, and professed courage out of immunity derived from their knowledge and techniques to tackle supernatural forces and beings. Kooli was supposed to represent evil spirits, obviously because it preferred to hang about cremation grounds. The described animal had no skin or hair, only scales all around its body. The moment you disturb it with a stick or stone the creature would fold itself into a ball, roll down the slope and disappear in the bush. A friend told me once that the great grand uncle of a friend of his friend had actually tied one to a tree, but the animal escaped before he could call anyone. There was no way to check the existence or otherwise of Kooli because none of the science educated modern youngsters had the courage to look for Kooli in the cremation ground at midnight. The educated younger generation rejected the very existence of this peculiar animal because they had no method (or courage?) to locate its whereabouts and verify. Of course it took some nerve to wait for the weird creature in a cremation ground at the dead of night. They decided not to believe any of the stories related to this animal. All the rest of us joined this bandwagon of rationalists and strongly believed that there was no such thing called Kooli.
Fifty years later, I was glancing through the exhibits of Natural History Museum in London where I found the embalmed body of a small animal exactly fitting the description of Kooli. (See Photo). The animal’s name is “Three-banded Armadillo” with a zoological name Tolypeutes Tricinctus belonging to Dasypodidae family and found in northeast and central Brazil. Voila!!!! My childhood riddle stands solved right in front of me.
Tolypeutes Tricinctus:Natural History Museum,London.Photo: MPC

I felt great jubilation and shame at the same time. Kooli is after all a poor little creature that did not relish human interference with its life and habitat. Choice of lonely places like cremation grounds and the defensive folding of itself into a ball are perfectly natural and acceptable behavior that did not deserve the insinuation of evil spirit-association. Our science education ought to have enabled us to reject the evil spirit theory, instead of denying the very existence of the poor creature.
Post-colonial science education in India acquired the character of a rebellion against age-old beliefs and traditions. This had, in the early decades of independence brought about a desirable social transformation that affected even the elders in the family who never went to college. Mothers and grand mothers were proud of their English-speaking, college-going children who could tell them a lot of sensible things they were ignorant or unaware of. In this euphoria they were often ready to condone their children’s diminished reverence to traditional godheads and deities. Christian Missionaries who ran a considerable number of colleges were able to influence many Hindu students and wean them away from traditional Hindu gods, as “superstitious” beliefs. A natural consequence was that one had to take it for granted that Monotheistic beliefs were true and polytheistic ones false. Christianity could gain a great deal of respectability among the educated, although conversions took place mainly among the poor and downtrodden, mostly by offers of material benefits such as powder milk and American butter. Hindu religion and traditions were ridiculed as superstitious, while monotheistic traditions were left out of criticism. In this background rationalists and atheists in India even now train their guns usually on Hindu gods, beliefs and traditions while granting a great deal of respectability to superstitious beliefs of other (organized) religions. No one in India questions or ridicules creationism, baptism, circumcision, heaven, hell, Satan or even the nonsense of Purgatory. This behaviour of rationalists is understandable, because it affords them the satisfaction of intellectual courage (though not honesty) without dangers of physical violence.
Science education in India had other characteristics too. It was widely believed that printed material (particularly those from the West) contained irrefutable truths. Cartesian-Newtonian Science that made a late entry to Indian curricula was often mistaken as the final word of truth, even after Nuclear Physics had gone a long way beyond reductionism. One area that suffered most from Cartesian reductionism was Medical Science. Today, you have a specialist doctor for every one of your organs from head to toe, but none for yourself. This degradation has led to three widespread superstitions: (1) Reductionist medicine cures all diseases (2) All other schools of medicine like Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Acupuncture, etc. are placebos and hence unscientific. (3) All theories and practices not corroborated and justified by the currently accepted tools and methods are spurious and ineffective. As a result, signals and numbers churned out by “electrical squiggles” (this term was used by Dr. Christian Bernard to describe the much revered ECG) soon gained primacy over doctors’ intelligence and intuition. Holistic systems of medicine that listen to the patient’s description of the problem rather than computer outputs were marginalized even by laws relating to medical treatment.
“Scientific Approach”, by science’s own standards demands that any hypothesis should be approached by understanding all variables, parameters and claims through unbiased verification using appropriate tools. Those (scientists, allopathic doctors, pharmaceutical companies, mercenary lawyers and other vested interests) who dub homoeopathy as unscientific never care to read the abundant literature available on the subject. Some of them subject the medicine to chemical tests, draw a blank and declare that it contains nothing and hence useless. It is like looking at Saturn with naked eye and declaring that Saturn has no rings. The only thing one can say is that Science has not cared to delve deep enough into these therapeutics to understand how they work. It is obviously not scientific to deny that it works on the face of so much evidence on its efficacy. Such a religious denial is no better than our denial of Kooli’s existence. One should consider “how homoeopathic medicine works” as a gap in scientific knowledge and try to figure it out. Testing methods used to disprove homoeopathy are often those specified by its detractors. This system of medicine does not try to “name” diseases and establish a one-to-one correspondence between the medicine and disease of a particular “name” (There are notable exceptions). It needs much more information like modalities, generalities, and concomitants of a “condition” of the body that will not be printed out by electronic gadgets. Employing the “scientific” method of double blind placebo tests apparently fails because it is not the right kind of testing tool. It is just like tying to find the room temperature with a weighing machine. Such beliefs certainly fall in the category of superstitions of the third kind listed above.
This leads me to what I generally call “Scientific Superstition” which is a kind of religiosity found among adherents of Cartesian Science. Sometimes their dogmatic stance is similar to that of religious people. Origins of this malady can be traced to our education systems and styles. Absence of rigour in discussing scientific principles and mathematical theorems is one of the common roots of the problem.
Once I asked an undergraduate student during a viva voce examination why the internal combustion engines were cooled. He said that the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated unless we cool the engine. Even if you grant a margin for linguistic inability the flaw in his understanding was quite appalling. It appeared that the whole idea of cooling the engine was to “obey” Second Law of Thermodynamics!! Later I found that use of the word “Law” was the real culprit. People often do not realize that there is no similarity between a man-made Law and a Law of Nature. While man-made laws are prescriptions of how we should conduct ourselves, Natural Laws are only descriptions of how nature behaves. (Bertrand Russell had made these points immensely clear in his writings). Unfortunately, use of the word “Law” to indicate these descriptions gives the impression of a law-maker lurking somewhere behind, probably up in the sky. It was possibly intended so, because philosophy, religion and science were inextricably intertwined in the Middle Ages.
Influence of religion on educational systems even today causes a drag on science teaching all over the world. Faith and belief systems demanded by various religions from early years enter the psyche of the individual and stay there even after he/she “switches over” to science. If you treat Laws of thermodynamics like the Ten Commandments it is only fair that you should “abide by” them. Religious people may not realize this fallacy at all. For them there is no difference between the two types of Law, except that natural laws came into force by divine fiat and the other kind by legislative act. For instance if God decides to annul Second Law of Thermodynamics we could do away with cooling systems in engines because all heat can then be converted to work.
It should be possible if you pray hard.
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Saturday, May 12, 2007

Nation Forgets a Patriot

The Hindu weekly magazine of Sunday 29th April 2007 carried an article on V K Krishna Menon, “An Unusual Life”. With his unusual writing craft the author, Shashi Tharoor sketches a subjective picture of the legendary statesman of yesteryears. The article, obviously meant for the Sunday reader, does not discuss the intricacies of politics of those days, but shows a profile of Menon from the view point of a twelve year old boy watching his father’s illustrious friend. I felt happy to read the article for one reason: Shashi is at last making amends for his calculated obliteration of the legendary Son of India. This towering mountain was missing in the landscape he had painted in his “From Midnight to Millennium”. Now that Shashi is not in the fray for UN Secretary General’s post, the selective amnesia in history is not of use to him any more. He can now feel at ease and have a fresh look at recent Indian history and think of rewriting his book without the fear of annoying the West.

Krishna Menon’s abrasive character is well known. In fact it is immaterial to us, the general public. The awe and wonder of watching the Himalayas do not diminish because it is bitterly cold out there. Bitter cold is no reason to deny its existence either. See what R.Venkitaraman, former President of India says about Menon’s abrasiveness: “Menon was arrogant, but only to those who tried to denigrate his country. His words were acid and bitter but only when he tore the mask of hypocrisy and laid bare the truth. He was harsh because he could not suffer mediocrity. Intellectually he was a giant and had the best in an argument, and it is the habit of the world to compensate for the loss with abuse”.

In the Indian subcontinent patriotism has been a subject of laudatory songs and not a quality widely practiced. Many patriots suffered from their own countrymen; Gandhiji was shot not by the British, but after India gained freedom. Sheik Mujibur Rahman of Bengala Desh, Liaqat Ali Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan had laid down their lives for their patriotism. The process of gaining freedom of the country and the sacrifices made for freedom are quickly forgotten when the former oppressors begin placating the newborn government with crumbs of bread. Basic principles are swept under the carpet in the name of expediency and patriots are looked upon with suspicion. Patriots and their ideals become a nuisance and hindrance to those who wish to reap the monetary benefits of freedom.

When Krishna Menon insisted that defense production should be indigenous and started an array of massive public sector units like Ordnance factories, HAL, BEL, DRDO, Avadi Tank factory and laid the entire foundation of indigenous defense production he was faced with opposition from the top brass of the Forces who wanted expensive foreign equipment. Opposition from his own cabinet colleagues like Morarji and S K Patil was impelled by the private business lobby. Morarji as Finance Minister could withhold defence money despite parliamentary decisions, to a point of suffocating the indigenous production units at crucial times. Yet, Menon took the entire blame of non-performance of the armed forces. It was easy for this lobby to malign Menon because they controlled the print media. R.K Karanjia, editor of Blitz used to call it the Jute (Jhoot) press for two reasons: one, the money came from jute market; two, the lies (Jhoot) they were capable of spreading were horrendous. They used the age-old Nazi technique of repeating a lie until it became Truth. Menon’s ill health, medicines, tea drinking and frugal living were held against him as unpardonable vices by the Press, while chain smoking of “India Kings” and urine drinking of others were benevolently condoned. Those who raised hue and cry on his “corruption” but could not explain what he would do with the money meekly said he used it for his India-League activities. Is it not ridiculous to collect one rupee per month as salary and resort to corruption to find money for philanthropy? The MI5 papers released by UK on March 2, 2007 bear adequate testimony to what went on behind the curtain.

The lies manufactured and spread by the Jhoot Press in those days of tension and war with China, were swallowed by many innocent citizens of the country. Menon was too proud a man to defend himself personally. He did not create a faction of Congress Party to follow him to bargain for cabinet positions. He had always maintained that he wanted a principle in power rather than a clique in office. He couldn’t care even about himself being in power. It is hard in the modern times to discern such a state of mind. No wonder most people fail to understand him.

Post Script: Krishna Menon never got the recognition he deserved. There was a “Krishna Menon Square” in his home town (Calicut) where his statue adorned a vantage point in the city center. This statue was covered by a wall and surrounded by trees in the name of beautification. No one can see him unless one goes deliberately into the remote corner of the park. There he stands, turning the other way!! This appeared symbolically similar to what Shashi Tharoor did in his book. Instead of admiring or hating Krishna Menon just ignore him, with the hope that he would gradually go into oblivion.

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Monday, January 29, 2007

Selective Amnesia in History

An enigma unraveled
Fifty years ago, on 23rd January 1957, V.K. Krishna Menon, the most forceful and fearless leader that any nation had sent to the United Nations delivered his 8hour speech on Kashmir, a fitting reply to Pakistan, “It must be planted effectively in your minds that the issue in Kashmir is aggression, that the issue is invasion…” Krishna Menon’s time was one in which India loomed large in international affairs not only in championing the cause of oppressed nations, but in rendering positive assistance in solving knotty issues like the Korean problem. His role in freedom fight is well documented as an unofficial ambassador of the Indian people in London, instilling confidence even in Prime Minister Clement Attlee. Through his mentor and guru Harold Lasky he worked out the plan to appoint Lord Mountbatten, an admirer and friend of Nehru as the last Viceroy to enable a smooth transfer of power from Britain to India ( Ref: Lappier and Collins: Freedom at midnight)
History never forgets such great milestones, but alas, historians do. Such selective amnesia proves handy for some of them who write history with a long term personal goal. This is perhaps what happened to Shashi Tharoor while writing his meticulous volume on independent India “From Midnight to Millennium”. His book decries Nehru’s ‘Socialist Pattern of Society’ as the root cause of all evils in independent India, but plays to the audience by romanticizing the uplift of the downtrodden to positions of power. The story of a village boy who could not enter his (Tharoor’s) house being an untouchable returning to the village as the District Collector and behaving benevolently to his tormentors has the beauty of a fairy tale, be it fact or fiction.
Tharoor’s book discusses a great array of significant persons in the country from statesmen to petty politicians, the feud between India and Pakistan over Kashmir in a cool-headed style, but carefully avoids mentioning the towering personality and patriot who dealt with the problem with an indomitable will and persistence. It is interesting to note that Shashi Tharoor had all UN records at his disposal to write an honest account of the battle fought in the UN and yet he was blind to this illustrious personality who virtually decided India’s foreign policy from ’47 to ’62.
Although every patriot admired Krishna Menon, there were others who understandably hated him. But ignoring him was impossible. The Westerners, US in particular hated him, but took notice of every word he uttered on international issues. He was also feared because of his sharp and witty quips. When the superpowers were piling up “nuclear warheads for world peace” his sarcastic remark was, “I have never heard of a vegetarian tiger”. He was virtually the voice of India.
One admires Shashi Tharoor’s style and remarkable ability to write beautifully no matter what the topic is, and no matter if there is a topic at all. This rare gift has given him many readers and admirers in India who wish well for him. After reading his “From Midnight to Millennium” more than a year ago his determined amnesia on Krishna Menon and his contributions haunted me as an enigma.
Everything fell in place, and the riddle was instantly solved as soon as Shashi Tharoor announced his candidature for UN Secretary General’s position. This august body, buckling under pressure from the US and its allies has deteriorated to a worse condition than the erstwhile League of Nations when Italy invaded Abyssinia (present Ethiopia). All recent UN Secretary Generals looked like scarecrows when Bush and Blair invaded Iraq with impunity, bombed schools and hospitals, and killed women and children in their war of greed for oil. He, as a career diplomat knew better than anyone that one’s political opinions should resonate with that of US even to get across the first round of the competition. In hindsight it is not difficult to fathom his intentions in obliterating a great patriot like Krishna Menon in order to curry favour with his masters who might get jittery at the very mention of that name, whom they had dubbed as a crypto-communist.
Carry on Shashi, no hard feelings. After all, collective memory of the masses is extremely poor.
Post Script: When AK Antony joined the Union Cabinet as Defence Minister most of the Malayalam channels, and newspapers did not remember that he was the second Malayalee occupying that position, Krishna Menon being the first. This collective amnesia can be pardoned because most of the young journalists and reporters have limited their domain of knowledge to irrelevant details on movie stars and cricket players. The slip was due to ignorance and not due to amnesia.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Sorry, Your Lordships !!!

Admission to professional colleges in Kerala and all the protection of social justice will be back to square one in 2007, thanks to the most recent order of the Hon. High Court of Kerala striking down all important clauses of Act 19 of 2006, leaving behind a skeleton of the original Act. This act was intended not only to bring about some amount of social justice in an environment of commercialization and exploitation but to make everyone accountable by following a transparent procedure. One is baffled by the Hon. Court’s dictum that the much lauded single window system is an infringement on the rights of managements. In ruling that the managements could conduct their own entrance tests the Hon. High Court has turned a blind eye to realities.

Private professional colleges collect Capitation Fee (banned by many earlier orders of the Court) from every student. Managements usually do not call for applications through public notice, never specify a last date for application, do not maintain application registers, never prepare any rank list before admission because they simply do not need it. A person desirous of admission approaches the management (Principals are usually kept as scarecrows in the whole affair), bargains wherever possible, pays the capitation fee or donation or whatever else you may call it and secures an application form. Entrance test or no test, the candidate is assured of a seat in the specified branch. In Medical Colleges this amount runs to many lakhs while in Engineering the amount is lower, and depends on the branch, Electronics and Communication quoting the highest. Thus there will be exactly as many applicants as there are seats. They might even conduct an entrance test, but how does it matter if everyone passes? Unless he/she pays the capitation fee a meritorious candidate has no way of collecting an application form and getting enlisted as an applicant. There will be no evidence to show that his merit has been by-passed by money. In fact it was this "unfettered right” that the Act had curtailed and the Hon. Court order has now handed back to managements by dismantling the single window system. Who doesn’t know that their “management entrance test” is the biggest joke played on the public?

Hon. High Court has made an observation that private colleges give quality education that government colleges fail to do. Sorry Your Lordships, the facts tell a different story. Students and parents think that the government, Aided and Govt. Self financing colleges give them a better deal as testified by the rush of high rank holders to these colleges


Table below: 2005 Admission: Highest preferred colleges and the last rank of students admitted to Electronics and Communications Branch (First Round)

College, (Last rank in ECE Branch), Type

1. College of Engineering Trivandrum, (160) Govt.

2. Model Engg. College, Thrikkakkara (518) Govt. SF

3. TKM College Kollam (595) Aided

4. Govt.College of Engg. Trissur (697) Govt

5. M A College, Kothamangalam (787) Aided

6. RIT Kottayam (1505) Govt

7. Sree Chithra Trivandrum (1602) Govt. SF

8. Govt. Engineering College, Barton Hill, TVM (1613) Govt

9. NSS Engg College Palakkad (1766) Aided

10. College of Engg Chengannur (1958) Govt. SF

11. Rajagiri School of Engg & Tech., Ekm (2001) Private SF

12. Govt. Engg. College, Sreekrishnapuram, Palakkad (2357) Govt.

13 Govt. College of Engg. Kannur (2500) Govt.

14. University College of Engg, TVM (3154) Govt. SF

15. Institute of Technology for Women TVM (3191) Govt. SF

16. College of Engineering, Adoor (3474) Govt. SF

17. LBS College of Engineering, Kasaragod (4151) Govt. SF

18. Adi Sankara Inst. of Engg., EKM (4625) Private SF

19. College of Engineering, Munnar (4653) Govt. SF

In this list of 19 Engineering colleges which obviously were considered as top preference institutions, there are only Two Private Self-financing colleges. Somehow our lawyers failed to convince the court that Private self financing colleges do not enjoy the same credibility as the Government sector.

Any amount of data is available to prove that the entry of self financing colleges has caused a drop in the overall standards mainly due to the admission of undeserving candidates through money power. Although the total number of seats has increased many times the output of engineers in the state has increased only marginally, thanks to the enormous number of dropouts (35%) who would never complete their education. This wastage is mainly from the self financing sector.

Luckily Hon. High Court has not struck down the right of Government to maintain academic standards. The previous government, for reasons unknown to academics had reduced the minimum marks for entry (2006) from 50% to a mere pass in Plus Two. This, together with the “unfettered rights” of managements has brought in all kinds of young people to professional colleges. One need not wait until 2010 to know its consequences. Results of first year exams in various Universities will speak out eloquently.

Government is apparently contemplating an appeal in the Supreme Court. From the earlier verdicts it is clear that this would be a losing battle. Instead, a comprehensive law to be implemented in 2008 should be thought of. Meanwhile looking at the left over clauses of the Act the Government should immediately tighten up the academic requirements and ensure some amount of justice to aspiring candidates by doing the following:

  1. Ensure that all aspiring students are able to buy the application form and get enlisted as a candidate without paying capitation fee or any part thereof.
  2. All eligible applicants should be permitted to appear for the “Management Entrance Exam” and obtain a rank
  3. Valuation of papers should be done without the influence of managements
  4. A list of successful candidates should be published in the order of ranking.

Managements should be asked to publish the fee structure; any other underhand collection should be treated as a criminal offence. Whatever remains of the Act itself enables the Government to ensure this much.