PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

New Delhi, 17 March 2006

Sick Social Matrix

INDIA’S  ‘MISSING’ GIRLS

By Radhakrishna Rao

A well-documented study carried in the prestigious British medical journal “Lancet” makes the startling revelation that around ten million female foetuses may have been aborted in India over the last two decades .Lancet traced this unhealthy trend to the rapid proliferation of clinics and nursing homes offering foetus screening services all over the country and the excessive craving for the male progeny which is deep rooted in the Indian psyche. The researchers from India and Canada who carried out this path breaking study found that in cases where the preceding child was a girl, the gender ratio for a second birth was just 759 girls for 1000 boys.

Further the study drives home the point that when the two previous children were girls, the ratio fell even further to 719 girls to 1000 boys. According to Prabhat Jha of St .Michael’s  Hospital at the University of Toronto in Canada, who was one of the researchers’  associated. “We conservatively estimated that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion account for 0.5-million missing girls yearly. If this practice has been common, for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound technology became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable”.

For long, Punjab has stood out conspicuously for its alarmingly high  female foeticide  rate in the country .Surprisingly, the  educated and affluent have been described as the worst culprits in so far as the trend of female foeticide is concerned .No wonder, Punjab tops the list of Indian States known for their worst  child sex ratio. It has a sex ratio of 874 girls for 1000 boys against the national average of 933. In the long run, this trend would lead to a kind of social disaster from which Punjab might find it difficult to extricate.

Punjab is known to lose one fourth all girls who would be born. Appalled by growing and inexorable trend of female foeticide, villages in some parts of the State have launched a social crusade against this modern day evil. In fact, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, expressing his disapproval  of the ongoing female foeticide in the State had sometime back observed,  “I was shocked to  discover that  there has been a sharp increase in female foeticide in Punjab .This is a blot on the name  of the valiant and gallant people”

Sociologists are clear in their perception that a huge dowry associated with marrying of a girl is a major factor pushing the people of Punjab into the clutches of “female foeticide”. Moreover, as per the Hindu tradition, only a male could lit the pyre of his dead father or mother. Added to that, a male child is considered a safety net in the evening of one’s life.

Significantly, even the edict issued by the religious leaders against female foeticide have failed to reverse the trend of female foeticide in Punjab. Of course, there are both Central and State legislations to prevent the misuse of  foetus scanning technology for sex determination,  followed by female foeticide. But unfortunately so far only a handful of medical practitioners offering “female foeticide” services in the pretext of prenatal screening have been brought to book by the law enforcing agencies in the country.

According to sociologists, the growing number of  abortions consequent to  the foetal scanning  showing the foetus to be female shows the complicity of private medical practitioners  in perpetuating this high tech atrocities on the women. Emergence of more advanced technologies that could be exploited to identify the sex of the foetus, can play havocs in the Indian social setting, which has an explosive mix of advanced medical technologies and an impoverished population group with a fanatic bias for the male progeny.

In fact, a favourite justification for supporting the practice of female feoticide  is that it serves as an effective tool of family planning .But many   field surveys have gone to show that  sex determination tests can only ensure multiple abortions with perilous consequences for the well being of a female .As it is, the lack of food, clean drinking water, economic security and safe clinical facilities  could lead to a situation where women has to have over six children to ensure one surviving male child. Indeed, as one research study points out, Any further reduction in the sex ratio in North India would signify a continuing decline  in the relative status of women and it would be unlikely to offer any benefit to the women.”

In India, where religious texts and epics glorify woman as the Mother  Goddess, sociologists and  historians perceive deep in the Indian psyche an extreme dislike for the supposed weaker sex. Not surprisingly then certain communities in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are known for indulging in female infanticide though of late due to the honest and vigorous efforts by the government sponsored agencies and voluntary organizations, such heinous practice is fast disappearing. In fact, the evil of female infanticide in India was sustained by the forces of illiteracy, social backwardness, poverty and economic deprivation and social discrimination as well as the regressive dowry system.

In the villages of Rajasthan where the time stands still, one will not be surprised to find an abnormally large number of little boys. Rajput women in the remote rural pockets used to put their female infants into death with stunning professional efficiency. “We either put a wet sand bag on her face so that she chokes to death or give her double dose of opium” quips an elderly Rajput woman.

Down south in Tamila Nadu, a state known for its excellent track record in curbing infant mortality rate, population growth, illiteracy as well as malnutrition in women and children was not long back in limelight for female infanticide indulged in certain communities in the state. However, following the vigorous intervention by various agencies of the State Government this practice is  slowly becoming a thing of the past. However, it would take some time and effort to eliminate this social evil in toto from the map of the State.

In the Kallar-dominated Usilampatti,Alikadam and Kallatheer hamlets in Madurai, female infanticide was till sometime back an accepted norm. In fact, a survey carried out by the Indian Council of Child Welfare(ICCW)in early 1990s, of the 400 infant deaths reported from the villages around the temple town of Madurai, 181 were traceable to the female infanticide. Other pockets where female infanticide used to be reported during 1990s are Dhrampuri, Salem and North Arcot.

“We have lived a miserable life. Why bring more girls in the world to face a similar fate” said a woman working as a farm hand in the remote village of the water scarce Dharmapuri district. In variably, the women who killed their infants revealed that the dowry system, grinding poverty  and the harassment  from inebriated  spouses have prompted them to send their  female  child to the abode of Yama (the God of death in the Hindu mythology).

In the ultimate analysis both the female foeticide and female infanticide reflect a diseased state of the Indian social matrix and only a concerted educational drive supported by a solid ground level action aimed at improving the socio economic conditions of the masses along with making available health and educational facilities to the poorest of the poor alone can help end these social evils.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

New Delhi, 11 March 2006

Manipulations Of The West

MOVE TO MONOPOLISE RICE TRADE

By Radhakrishna Rao

 Thanks to the indifference of the major rice growing countries in Asia, western agro-business multinationals are trying to further their monopoly control over rice which is a major staple food of the majority of the population in Asia. After the failed attempt of the US-based Ricetec to monopolize aromatic, long grained Basmati rice, the Swiss biotech giant Syngneta, which in association with the Myriad Genomics Inc of USA, has mapped the genetic sequence of the rice, has been making subtle attempts to monopolize the cultivation and trade in rice which happens to be the staple food of nearly half the global population.

Rice is also the staple food of the three most populous nations on the earth—China, India and Indonesia. Clearly and apparently, rice has intimately been associated with the culture, lifestyle, food habit and sociology of the sprawling Asian continent.

Nearer home, western multinationals are keen on taking control of the well endowed rice bank at the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University at Raipur. This unique rice bank, which has a collection of around 170,00 strains for rice was set up  by the brilliant and renowned agricultural scientist R.H.Richaria who all through his life fought against the machinations of the western seed companies. It was   a well conceived campaign by Dr.Vandana Shiva, well known eco activist and scientist which thwarted the efforts by multinationals to take over this unique biological legacy. As pointed out by Vandana Shiva the only agenda of the western multinationals is monopolize the cultivation and trading in important food crops including rice and wheat.

With the genetic structure of the rice having been mapped out in great detail, researchers are now in a position to zero in on the beneficial genes accurately and precisely and engineer rice varieties that combine advantageous features from different strains of rice. “This is a breakthrough of inestimable significance not only for science and agriculture but also for all those people who depend on rice as their dietary staple’ says Joachim Messing of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The Las Banos-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) continues to be a pioneer in developing high yielding and disease   resistant varieties of rice. Interestingly, wild strains of rice have been found to be a rich source of genes having resistance to insects or diseases. According to Darshan Brar, a rice breeder at IRRI, wild rice strains tolerate a wide range of extreme conditions including arid environment, acidic soils and high altitudes. Says Gurudev Kush, a former IRRI principle plant breeder, “because wild germplasm is not fully exploited, there is still great potential to develop new rice varieties”.

According to IRRI sources, hybrid rice can yield upto 20% more grains than the inbred, local varieties. As it is, to produce hybrid rice, one needs distinct male and female parents .However, the condition is that one of the parents must possess a trait known as Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS).”When you grow rice by direct seeding, the weeds may overpower it and strongly affect the rice productivity and yield “says Brar and adds, “If we can transfer weed competitive ability into cultivated rice, then the rice grown by direct seeding will automatically suppress the weeds and reduce the need for herbicides”.

Of course, there are more than one lakh known varieties of rice. But then just two varieties—japonica and Indica—provide one fifth of the world’s calories, feeding around 2-billion people in the  Asian countries alone. The japonica strain is known to contain more than 37,000 genes packed in about 72 chromosomes. According to Takoji Sasoki, Vice President of the National Institute of Agro-biological Sciences at Tsukuba in Japan, the genetic sequencing or rice is a vital step towards boosting the rice yield. Incidentally, the importance of rice stems from the fact that it is the staple food of more than 3-billion people around the world, who depend on it as much as 80 per cent of their calorie need.

As a matter of fact, rice cultivation is believed to be  in vogue  for 10,000 years. In India, down the centuries rice has been considered a symbol of wealth, prosperity and auspiciousness .In the religious texts of India, rice has been glorified as “prana” or the vital life force.

Even as the worldwide efforts are on to push up the level of rice yield, research projects have gone to show that rice yield could be adversely affected by the changing global climatic regimen .In particular researches are worried over the negative impact of the ongoing process of global warming It has been estimated that the world rice output should go up by 1% per year to meet the burgeoning demand of a fast growing population.

But then as things stand now the much of the increased production should come from the existing crop land .For it is not longer possible to bring fresh land under rice cultivation. According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) all through the last decade global rice production increased at rates marginally higher than those of the population growth. Currently, China and India account for more than half of the total global rice production. Because rice holds the key to food security, it continues to remain subject to governmental control in most Asian countries.

“As rice continues to be one of the most traded commodities, under protection, it presents considerable scope for further liberlization. However, due to its importance in income generation and political stability .Governments are often reluctant to lower their control over the rice sector” says a farm expert.

In India, the productivity of rice has now touched 2,500-kg per hectare and the country continues to occupy second position in rice export, next only to Thailand As things stand now, there is a realization in the country that rice output should be boosted without brining in additional land under rice crop.

Against such a scenario the focus of the agricultural research institutions in India has been on breaking the genetic yield barriers, improving input yield efficiency and developing environmentally acceptable strategies for decreasing the losses inherent in pest attacks and outbreak of epidemics. There is also a growing realization of the potentials of the several native strains of rice in withstanding pest attacks and extremes of climatic conditions .Efforts are also known to develop salt resistant strains of rice so that areas with saline land pockets could be used to grow rice. In the ultimate analysis, researchers are keen on developing a wide range of high performance rice varieties suited to grow under varied topographical and climatic conditions.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

New Delhi, 3 March 3, 2006

A Human Tragedy

Fighting the sand Dragon

By Radhakrishna Rao

The rapidly advancing sand stretches gobbling up vast areas of fertile land with a serious consequence to the strategy aimed at boosting the food output continues to haunt a major part of the world. In fact, in the context of a fast expanding global population, the need to increase the food yield has become all the more pronounced.

Desertification brought about by drastic environmental changes accentuated by the human interference into the domain of nature, continues to trigger off devastating droughts and human suffering in many parts of Asia and Africa. The Thar desert in India and Kalahari desert in Africa are by all means a mute testimony to man’s failure to check the process of eco degradation leading to the formation of the arid zone. Far from being lifeless entities, deserts are dynamic and teem with a variety of life forms.

Significantly, it has been estimated that each year the world loses on an average US$45-billion on account of the process of desertification. In fact, the problem of desertification is quite acute in poorer areas and is today threatening one third of the global area. An unhealthy product of a vicious mix of economic, environmental and political as well as technological forces, desertification is a slow process which land productivity deteriorates over a period of time. Millions of environmental refuges uprooted by the inhospitable and unproductive land stretches have now become a part of an unfolding human tragedy.

Against this backdrop, it is but appropriate that the United Nations has declared 2006 as the year of desert and desertification. The objective behind this move is to rise global public awareness  of the advancing deserts, ways and means to safeguard the biological  diversity of arid lands covering one third of the global surface and promoting the knowledge and tradition of around two-billion people affected by  the inexorable and relentless march of desertification.

Meanwhile, the UN Secretariat on the Convention to Combat desertification stresses the importance of recognizing that in addition to the human and environmental cost of the degradation that   contributes to the problem, the dry lands deserts are located amidst  some of the most magnificent eco systems of the world. Clearly and apparently, desertification causes a huge loss to agricultural productivity, contributes to food  insecurity, famine and poverty and can give rise to social, economic and political tensions that can further contribute to impoverishment and land degradation.

“It is widely recognized that environmental degradation could affect national security as well as international stability. Therefore, desertification is seen as a threat to human security”, says a UN spokesman. The UN Secretariat on the Convention to combat desertification says that these natural habitats (desert) with their incredibly diverse fauna   are home to the world’s oldest civilizations.

Some of the factors responsible for causing desertification include overgrazing, explosive growth of cattle population, deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices. Added to that human population growth and severe pressure on the land resources too go a long way in causing desertification. Increasing stress on cultivation of cash crops with a view to net more foreign exchange—which is quite evident in Africa—also contributes to desertification.

India which has around 12 per cent of its land are under hot deserts is also facing the unpleasant prospect of its one third of the arable land being threatened by the forces of desertification. For long there has been an apprehension that the frightening desert stretches of Thar sprawling over an area of 2,30,000 sq.km  across the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan  is spreading eastwards by encroaching into Aravallis. Interestingly, Thar desert boasts of the highest human and livestock population for any desert stretch in the world. The high pressure on the grazing lands of Thar—against the low carrying capacity—has led to a situation of worsening aridity in Thar. Analysis of pictures transmitted by satellites show that Thar has the potential to gobble up fertile farm lands.

Even Aravalli mountain ranges are fast losing their vegetation due to the process of aridity. As it is, the Aravalli mountain ranges spread over an area of about 5,00,000 sq.km  acts  as a natural barrier checking the advance of the Thar  desert  towards  eastern  Rajas. The Jodphur-based Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI) has developed a range of cost effective techniques for stabilizing sand dunes, pasture and range land management, horticultural expansion, water management and wind energy utilization.

As part of the strategy to support horticulture and agriculture in the poor soil conditions of the Thar desert, the CAZRI scientists have successfully introduced versatile fruit earning Ber trees and oil yielding jojoba plants   in the hostile environs of Thar. The researchers have also perfected a technology to overcome the complex problem of mining muck being heaped up haphazardly by mine operators in the desert stretches of India.

Though the Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojana (IGNP) has brought greenery to the vast stretches of the Thar desert, it has also brought in wake problems of salinization and water logging resulting in the creation of wasteland.

It is now around three decades since the first UN Conference on desertification was held in Nairobi to evolve a package of strategies to end the menace of desertification .But then the problem of desertification continues to haunt the mankind with undimmed vigour. Of course, now there is a growing realization that the slow and faltering progress achieved in controlling desertification is mainly due to the non-involvement of the local communities in the war against sand dunes.

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

New Delhi, 24 February 2006

Cure For Chronic Disorders

BOOSTING STEM CELL RESEARCH

By Radhakrishna Rao

India has made spectacular strides in space research and nuclear power generation. It is now preparing the ground to find a niche in stem cell research to find a cure to  many of the hitherto incurable diseases. Along with countries like Australia, China, Japan and South Korea, India is now looking at stem cell research as a way to get ahead in biotech. With the Christian fundamentalists in the US succeeding  in influencing the Bush Administration into putting  many restrictions of stem cell research on “ethical grounds” countries in the Asia Pacific  region are all set to emerge in the forefront of the stem cell research.

As pointed out by  D.Balasubramanian, Chairman of the Stem cell Task Force of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT),”India is especially interested in clinical applications of stem cells in ophthalmology, cardiology and spinal  cord repair” .In particular, he stated that  a key objective is to promote  stem cell city clusters  across Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune. These clusters, observes Balasubramanian, would link all publicly and privately-funded  research groups within a city, enabling them to share  facilities, ideas and research and business opportunities. Right at the moment, around 200 scientists are actively involved in various aspects of stem cell research in India.

The Mumbai-based Reliance Life Sciences is planning to focus on research programme aimed at developing the use of bone marrow stem cells for treating cardiac disorders. Similarly, the Bangalore-based National Centre for Biological Sciences and  the Pune-   based National Centre of Cell Sciences are actively engaged in stem cell research with a particular stress on finding a cure for other wise incurable ailments.

The Hyderabad-based L.V.Prasad Eye Institute is among a few medical centres in the world that have been putting the fruits of stem cell research  to good use. Here doctors take about one millimeter  limbal tissue from the healthy eye  of the patient .culture them  on an appropriate medium and graft it on into the diseased eye. Such limbal stem cell  treatment is available only in a handful of countries. On the other hand, Christian Medical College (CMC),Vellore, plans to use the stem cells derived from the bone marrow to treat chronic liver failure and to regenerate  tissue to treat heart diseases and traumatic brain injuries.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences(AIIMS)in New Delhi, which is working to treat cardiac disorders using stem cells has subjected more than 30 patients suffering from heart related ailments to stem cell treatment and found  in majority of the cases the dead heart tissues stood revived. The AIIMS is now planning to use stem cell therapy for treating  diabetes, which in recent years has assumed epidemic proportion.

Meanwhile, the DBT has mooted a proposal to set up a national registry of mysenchymal stem cells derived from the bone marrow of an adult that can be used for a variety of clinical trials. The mesenchymal stem cells  are endowed with the potential to  develop into mature cells that produce fat, cartilege, bone tendons and muscles. As pointed out by Satish Totey, Research Director of the Bangalore-based  Manipal Stem Cell Research Centre, the mesenchymal  stem cells have a tendency to differentiate  into skeletal and  fibrous tissues, more easily. Totey says that they are also more easily accepted by the body and have a far fewer chances of getting rejected. As it is, clinical trials have shown that mesenchymal stem cells injected into the heart could replace scarce tissues that development after heart attacks with healthy new tissue.

As things stand now, the researchers are quite optimistic about treating lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, liver disorders and heart ailments. Right at the moment, research is proceeding apace to cure juvenile diabetes with stem cells. Essentially, stem cells are akin to “nature’s blank slates” capable of developing into any of more than 200 cells types that make up the human body. As such, the stem cell research offer the possibility of replacing the “faulty” and “malfunctioning” tissues and pave the way for curing hitherto incurable ailments.

Stem cells grow into virtually any kind of tissue in the human body when nurtured properly. The new stem cell lines, researchers hope, can replace the old and worn out cells  within the human body, increasing longevity and serving as a miracle cure  for degenerative diseases .But then researchers need  to cover much ground and go long way before they succeeded in perfecting the stem cell therapy for treating human ailments. Clearly and apparently, the cord blood collected from the umbilical cord is an excellent repository of stem cells and is considered a better alternative than anything else for us in transplants for people suffering from leukemia and other immune related disease.

Normally, cord blood is collected before the placenta is delivered. A bay’s umbilical cord blood, which is otherwise discarded, is a rich sources of stem cells endowed with the ability to regenerate and replace a variety of tissues, in recent years, the concept of cord  banking is catching on  in India. Interestingly, the cord blood bank which store baby’s cord blood in liquid nitrogen for a period 21 years for a fee of around Rs.60,000 is considered a “biological insurance” since the child from whose umbilical cord the blood was collected can stand to benefit from it at any stage of his life. The Chennai-based Cryocell has set up facilities to preserve cord blood .Similarly, Life cell, yet another  private stem cell bank in Chennai says  that about 1,000 expectant parents have enrolled to bank the cord blood stem cells.

The recently-set up Bangalore-based Cryostem Karnataka Pvt Ltd is a cord blood stem cell bank as well as research centre. As pointed out by its Director Dr.S.G.A.Rao,  “Cryostem Karnataka  is both a service oriented and research based company involved in stem cell banking’ He also drove home the point that the company is involved in embryonic stem  cell research   for developing  novel therapeutic clinical applications. Going further, Dr.Rao observed, “We are looking forward to establishing a specialized stem cell based transplant therapy and related clinical research.”

In a related development, Dr. P.Srinivasna, Director of the Jeevan Blood Bank in Chennai has  unveiled a plan to  launch a public cord blood bank to be run on a “no loss, no profit basis”. The concept of a   public  cord blood bank, to be run on a no-loss- no- profit basis, centres round the idea that parents donate the cord blood  of heir baby to a central banking facility  for use by anybody who needs it. By all means, the therapeutic potentials of the cord blood stem cells is considered as one of the path-breaking  discoveries of the 21^st century. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)