The distance to disarmament

The 1966 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remains on date the only agreement to prevent the spread of these weapons outside the original five nuclear weapons states.

The commemoration of the first International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on September 26 was a moment for introspection. The Cold War is behind us and it is nearly 70 years since the catastrophe in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet, why are nuclear arms the most contentious of all Weapons of Mass Destruction, and nuclear disarmament as distant as ever? The answers are not far to seek. The 1966 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remains on date the only agreement to prevent the spread of these weapons outside the original five nuclear weapons states. But then, there are more countries today that flaunt these terrible weapons as a symbol of military might and many more that are perhaps perilously close to their acquisition. This bleak history is a commentary on the discrimination inherent in the NPT. The treaty privileges the status quo; it obliges non-nuclear weapons states not to acquire nuclear weapons, without concomitant guarantees on disarmament from the Nuclear Weapons States (NWSs). The 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty aims to prohibit all tests and explosions. A potentially crucial deal, it has yet to come into force because not all of the 44 countries with nuclear power reactors would ratify it. The big players in Asia’s geopolitics including India have kept out of it, as has Washington.

Formal negotiations to finalise a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty have not commenced in all these decades. At issue has been the question whether such a deal should cover existing or future stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium needed to produce nuclear weapons. The refusal of many non-aligned countries to sign up to a deal that would exclude current stocks from its purview, in effect preserving the hegemony of the NWSs, seem unexceptionable. The 2010 New START (strategic arms reduction treaty) limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads deployed on 700 strategic delivery systems. This is the most current legally binding and verifiable bilateral arms control accord between Washington and Moscow. Meanwhile, the five nuclear weapons free zones in different regions across the globe have not been backed by unconditional assurances by the original five NWSs not to use force. Against this overall backdrop, the recent global ban on chemical and biological weapons — other categories of WMDs — offers the hope of securing a similar abolition in relation to nuclear weapons at some time in the future. Efforts at the UN Conference on Disarmament towards the conclusion of a treaty may be long-drawn. But the stakes for world peace were never greater than they are today.

Coverage of antenatal care in India has to be increased: WHO

''Antenatal care is very important for health workers to detect mothers with obesity or diabetes... both specific risks during pregnancy," says Dr. Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director General at WHO.

In 2013, globally, preterm birth complications were responsible for 15 per cent (0.96 million) of deaths in children under five years of age. It is a leading cause of death in neonates (0-27 days after birth). According to WHO, about 15 million babies are born preterm (before 37 completed weeks of gestation) every year. Such births are seen both in the developed and developing countries.

India ranks first in the list of 10 countries that account for 60 per cent of all preterm births; the U.S. is ranked sixth in the list.

“India has little more than 50 per cent of antenatal care coverage. So in order to face the issue of premature births, low birth weight babies and stillbirths, the first aspect is to increase the coverage of antenatal care,” Dr. Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director General at WHO told this Correspondent. “During antenatal care, health workers can detect whether progress of foetal growth is happening normally, pregnant mother’s nutrition is good or look out for any other complications.”

What is evident in the latest data is that across the world, nearly 30 per cent of maternal deaths are linked to indirect causes like gestational diabetes and obesity — especially among young mothers, and the influence of communicable diseases on maternal deaths.

“So antenatal care is very important as health workers can detect mothers who are obese or have diabetes. These are specific risks during pregnancy and should be given particular care,” Dr. Bustreo said. “This is not happening in India. India has to particularly care for mothers for what we call as pre-existing conditions.”

Pregnant mothers who have diabetes, are obese or have preeclampsia (high blood pressure) are less likely to complete full term and babies will be born with low birth weight. Therefore, antenatal care becomes all the more important.

Of course, babies who are born before full term can still survive as simple interventions and treatments are available. For instance, corticosteroid given to mothers before delivery can greatly facilitate the development of the babies’ lungs. It can also be given to babies soon after their birth in cases when delivery takes place even before the steroid can be given to pregnant mothers. The steroid greatly reduce the possibility of neonatal deaths. Similarly, kangaroo mother care can go a long way in keeping babies warm and improve their chances of survival.

More to do

“India has to still progress. What is available as special care facilities for babies that are low birth weight and premature are not sufficient in number. What I have seen happening is that some of the facilities in private hospitals have moved very fast especially in the cities. But when you come to rural areas in North India, this is something that is still missing,” Dr. Bustreo said. “So this leads to loss of babies who are born too early or born too small. This is part of India’s challenge.”

Within reach

While being critical of the shortcoming of the Indian government, she is still very optimistic. “Our latest data show that India is just an inch away from reaching the MDG4 (child morality) and MDG5 (maternal mortality) targets. [The current under-five mortality rate is 56 and should reach 42 before December 2015. The MMR is 190 and should drop to 140 before the end of next year.] It’s just a matter of the curve accelerating a little bit. I am hopeful that if the new government concentrates constructively on the challenges and focuses on the strengths of immunisation programme then India can achieve the MDG4 target,” she stressed.

One big challenge that stares the country in the face is the reach of antenatal care. According to the 2014 data, antenatal care in rural areas is about 50 per cent for more than one visit and about 10 per cent for more than four visits. The availability of skilled attendant at the time of delivery is only about 20 per cent in rural areas.

Yet, Dr. Bustreo remains confident. “These data are retrospect. We don’t measure them in real time. I can tell you some countries that have seen huge progress when they applied themselves to the task. For example, in the case of child mortality, we have seen annual rate of reduction of seven per cent, nine per cent and even 10 per cent in the case of Ethiopia, Rwanda and Malawi,” she said. “So if India applies specific measures, I am quite confident that it would really come close to meeting the goals and it would surprise everybody.”

Talking about the huge number of adolescent marriages and women’s role in the society and education, she noted that positive results can be obtained despite certain determinants that impact on maternal and child mortality taking a long time to change.

“What we are arguing at this juncture is that India can strengthen the provision of care so even if you have a young adolescent pregnant mother or if a pregnant mother is affected by gestational diabetes or is biologically not matured and delivers a preterm baby, she and the baby can be saved,” she noted. “Some determinants will take a generation to change but providing critical care will not take a generation.”

Nobel-winning physicist Martin Perl dies at 87

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Stanford University discovered a subatomic particle known as the tau lepton

Martin Perl, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Stanford University who discovered a subatomic particle known as the tau lepton, has died at age 87.

The university said the retired professor, one of two American scientists who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1995, died at Stanford Hospital on Tuesday.

At the time Perl discovered the tau lepton, many physicists doubted the particle that would turn out to be a heavyweight cousin of the electron existed. He eventually proved them wrong using a new kind of accelerator in which electrons and positrons course in opposite directions and collide.

“People wanted me to be cautious,” Mr. Perl recalled in a 2013 interview with Stanford staff. “We kept taking data, and the evidence kept coming in. Every month or so we would get another handful 10 to 20 of these funny events. I gave a lot of talks. There would be all sorts of objections. ... We eventually eliminated every other explanation.”

In a 1995 interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Perl acknowledged that while his research defied easy explanation, he hoped that understanding the building blocks of matter would lead to advancements in fields such as alternative energy.

“We’re trying to get to simplest ideas of matter and energy. That could lead in the end to things that would help all sorts of fields,” he said. “If you don’t do basic research, in the end you won’t have a foundation for other discoveries.”

Born in New York City to Polish-immigrant parents in 1927, Perl earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University while studying under Nobel-winning physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi. He worked at the University of Michigan until he came to Stanford in 1963 as its linear accelerator was being construction.

One of his four children, Joseph Perl, works as a software developer and researcher at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre. He said his father kept coming to work in the lab and to trade ideas with colleagues for years after his official retirement.

“It was the one place in the whole world to be, to do what he wanted to do,” Joseph Perl said. “He always advocated that you should look at what the crowd is doing and go in a different direction.”

Money in black

Corruption in India has undergone a qualitative shift from the days of licence Raj to the era of liberalisation. Opportunities for making money have come in handy for politicians, who were also dealing with a new political situation of fragmentation and instability.

In the days leading to the 2008 Assembly election in Karnataka, slum-dwellers in Bangalore were startled to see small bundles flying in through their windows at night. The rolls of currency, covered with polling slips, marked a new low in political corruption. Distributing cash to voters began around 2005, according to some accounts, starting with municipal elections in parts of the country, but by 2009, it became brazen in several Lok Sabha constituencies, particularly in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

T.M. Selvaganapathy, former Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP, who was disqualified in April after being convicted in a scam that dates back to 1995 when he was Rural Development Minister in the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government, said: “In Tamil Nadu, an established model of bribing voters has been established in which whoever pays more will win ... The remedy is that that the Election Commission needs to take over the enforcement of the model code by its own staff rather than leave it to the district administration.”

Corruption underwent a qualitative shift with the advent of liberalisation in the early 1990s — from “retail to wholesale,” as the former Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal put it. Earlier, doling out licences and awarding government contracts were the primary sources of corruption, done on a piecemeal basis; post-liberalisation, formulating policies that benefit select players and discretionary distribution of natural resources created an abundance of rent-seeking opportunities for politicians. A politician in a north Indian State is said to have changed his nameplate from “Notary and real estate agent” to “Minister and real estate agent.”

New opportunities for making money came in handy for politicians, who were also dealing with a new political situation of fragmentation and instability. Money was needed in huge quantities to keep the “system” stable and functional — demonstrated by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case in which the former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was accused of bribing MPs for winning a parliamentary vote. In several States, the chief ministers sent suitcases to MLAs regularly to keep them happy.

Beyond generating resources to service the vested interests within the system, politicians also began to dabble in industry, resulting in the emergence of a new class of politician-entrepreneurs. Ministers and lawmakers sat on top of immense wealth created by magical enterprises they built overnight, in a blatant display of their ability to use political power for personal profiteering. The voters were watching all these, and in some ways, the splurge of freebies and subsequently, the distribution of cash to voters were attempts to keep their anger in check.

Alongside the march of corruption, several counterbalancing forces were taking shape. Judicial and civil society activism and assertive roles of institutions such as the Election Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor-General quickly flagged corruption as a matter of serious public concern. New legislation such as the Right to Information Act enabled the fight against corruption. Sometimes, articulation of presumptive loss due to corruption created such revulsion among the public that display of ill-gotten wealth suddenly appeared an unattractive idea. For instance, former CAG Vinod Rai estimated losses in 2G spectrum allocation in 2008 at Rs. 1.76 lakh crore and windfall gains to those who got coal blocks allocated from 2004 to 2009 at Rs. 1.85 lakh crore. The Anna Hazare movement turned the fight against corruption shriller.

Mr. Rai, whose biography was released recently, told The Hindu: “I sincerely believe that anyone who has something to narrate and want to contribute to ethical governance must write. Even if 10,000 copies [of the book] are sold, it shows that people are interested in knowing more about how their government functions.”

The Election Commission’s strict enforcement of the curbs on electoral spending and coordination with multiple enforcement agencies to check the flow of liquor and money has reduced the advantage prosperous candidates had.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) is one civil society organisation that has been at the forefront of several campaigns that checked political corruption. Last year, the Delhi High Court directed the Election Commission to collect data on the criminal records of candidates. This data, along with candidates’ educational qualifications and wealth of their dependents, was made public and mandatory. Another petition by the ADR under the Right to Information Act (2005) led the Chief Information Commissioner to order political parties in 2008 to disclose the sources of their contributions of more than Rs. 20,000, which has led to a curious situation of “crowd-funding” by some parties that account for most of their income in individual contributions less than the threshold.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that convicted legislators sentenced to more than two years in prison would be disqualified from Assemblies and Parliament, even if their appeals in higher courts were pending. Former Railway Minister Lalu Prasad and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa thus lost membership of the respective Houses they were elected to. In Tamil Nadu, this caused widespread protests in support of the convicted leader. Electoral reforms can further improve the situation, but election funding is no longer the sole or the most important cause of corruption. More transparency in the engagement between the industry and politics is called for.

Conviction and resultant removal from public office of two prominent political figures within a short interval has signalled that corruption can have unpleasant consequences for the corrupt. But the road ahead is long and uneasy. “Politicians retain an amount of deference due to their position despite being convicted. Ms. Jayalalithaa’s case took 18 years. Application of laws during the investigation is improper and despite stringent laws politicians manage to get away,” ADR founder Jagdeep Chhokar told The Hindu

The liberated soul

“If you really want to judge the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another, watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man”. ~ Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga

Every important personality in history runs the risk of being misinterpreted and misunderstood. Mahatma Gandhi is no exception. In his lifetime he was criticised rather than worshiped. After his death, he has been worshiped more often without being followed, and dismissed or misinterpreted without being read. He was an enigma to his compatriots due to his inconsistencies. In his words, “I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent.   When anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the latter of the two on the same subject”.

The thoughts of Gandhi are based on his instinct. He had once advised that anyone who wished to follow him after his death should simply look at what he did and how he did it, rather than look for any doctrine.  He was once asked by a western reporter to convey a message to the people of India. He quickly took a scrap of paper and wrote a sentence which read: ‘My life is my message’.

The Mahatma was a completely integrated personality. He believed that life cannot be lived in compartments and tried to weave insights, derived from different disciplines. Truly, he was a practical idealist. He never did or said anything that he had not practised, and he also never expected another person to do anything which that man did not believe in.  He was introspective as well as self-critical. He wrote his deeply moving autobiography titled, The Story of My Experiments with Truth ~ an authentic account of his self-introspection and experiences expressed with courage, simplicity and candour, rarely found in such books on personal history. Experiments are interactions between the self and the objective world. Indeed, his Experiments with Truth are mankind’s treasure.

The Mahatma’s personal life was a shining example of ‘simple living and high thinking’. He moulded his way of life to that of the deprived, the exploited, the poor, the hungry, the ignorant, and the daridranarayana who constituted the large majority in the country. When he on his way to attend the Round Table Conference in London in 1931, a customs official at Marseilles had asked him whether he had anything to declare. He replied: ‘I am a poor mendicant. My earthly possession consists of six spinning wheels, prison dishes, a can of goat’s milk, six homespun pieces of loin cloth and towels and my reputation which cannot be much’. He once declared, ‘If I have to be reborn, I should be born an untouchable so that I may share their sorrows and suffering and the affronts leveled at them, in order that my endeavour to free myself and them from that miserable condition’.

He never subscribed to the principle that the end justifies the means. To him, the means are as important as the end. “There is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the ends as there is between the seed and the tree”.

To quote Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson: “If Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had an addiction, it was to the same universe of written communication. Few have written letters as prodigiously as Gandhi, fewer with this thrift, cogency and clarity, his letters remaining, mostly, straight-laced and serious, but sometimes bursting into a laugh. There were days when Gandhi did not eat, when he did not speak. Scarce was the day when he did not write a letter” When he got tired of writing with his right hand, he used his left hand to write. He believed, “I do not feel like signing letters written by somebody else. My personal touch is lost, and a worker will not feel satisfied unless he receives the letter in my handwriting!”

Once an American journalist had the cheek to ask the Mahatma, “Mr Gandhi, do you have a sense of humour?” He looked at him for a while and replied; “If I had no sense of humour I would have committed suicide a long time ago!” In fact, his sense of humour always cheered others without hurting their feelings. In June 1942, Louis Fischer, the well-known American journalist, had to travel from Wardha railway station in a rickety tonga to meet the Mahatma at Sevegram. As soon as he entered the kutir, Gandhi sensed his discomfort and smilingly remarked: “Well, you must have travelled from the railway station in an air-conditioned coach!” Fischer was immediately able to laugh at his discomfort. One day an Italian bishop visited Sevagram to take a photograph of the Mahatma who was sitting in a corner of his cottage with a mud-pack on his shaven head to beat the intense summer heat.   Gandhi greeted him with a smile ~”Why waste your film, father? People will ask you whether Gandhiji had broken his skull!”

In 1931, Gandhi visited the King at Buckingham Palace. He wore a loincloth, sandals, a shawl and his dangling watch. When a journalist made a somewhat snide remark he responded: “The king had enough on for both of us”. When a year later Winston Churchill called him a “half-naked fakir”, the Father of the Nation thanked him for the “compliment” and wrote that “he would love to be a fakir but was yet to be one”. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “His is a liberated soul, if anyone strangles him, I am sure he would not cry. He may laugh at his strangler, and if he has to die, he will die smiling”.  Bernard Shaw had once remarked that though Gandhi could commit any number of tactical errors, his essential strategy continued to be right.

India’s dominant impulse during British rule was marked by fear.  He had raised his determined voice against this all-pervasive fear ~ “Be not afraid.” The essence of his teaching was fearlessness.   “Cowardice is violence double distilled”.

Mahatma Gandhi did not belong to India alone. He stood for the fundamental principles that are ever so essential for the welfare of humanity as a whole. His life, his thoughts and his methods are relevant to this day.  The Gandhian philosophy can be ignored only at our peril.  In his tribute to the Father of the Nation on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1939, Albert Einstein wrote, “Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”.

India signs off 8th in Asiad medals tally

India on Saturday ended its 17th Asian Games campaign at the eighth spot on the medals tally, a drop of two positions from the previous edition of the mega-event which drew to a close here.
India signed off with 57 medals -- 11 gold, 10 silver and 36 bronze. The tally dipped considerably compared to the 2010 edition in Guangzhou, China.
In 2010, the country had ended sixth with 65 medals -- 14 gold, 17 silver and 34 bronze.
As expected China ended their campaign on top claiming 342 medals. The Chinese contingent walked away with 151 gold, 108 silver and 83 bronze medals.
Hosts South Korea finished a distant second with 234 medals -- 79 gold, 71 silver and 77 bronze. They were followed by the Japanese, who notched up 200 medals, including 47 gold, 76 silver and 77 bronze.
Thus, the line-up of top-three remained the same as the previous edition.

First rechargeable solar battery

Integrating the function of a solar panel that captures light, and a cheap battery that stores energy into one hybrid device, researchers has successfully invented the world’s first solar battery.
The device will help bring down the costs of renewable energy by 25 percent, the researchers said.
The key to the innovation is a mesh solar panel that allows air to enter the battery, and a special process for transferring electrons between the solar panel and the battery electrode.
Inside the device, light and oxygen enable different parts of the chemical reactions that charge the battery.
“The state of the art is to use a solar panel to capture the light, and then use a cheap battery to store the energy,” said Yiying Wu, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University in the US.
“We have integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost,” he added.
The invention also solves a longstanding problem in solar energy efficiency, by eliminating the loss of electricity that normally occurs when electrons have to travel between a solar cell and an external battery.
Typically, only 80 percent of electrons emerging from a solar cell make it into a battery.
“With this new design, light is converted to electrons inside the battery, so nearly 100 percent of the electrons are saved,” the researchers said.
The study appeared in the journal Nature Communications.