The price of indiscretion

Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami’s removal from office will help keep the Central Bureau of Investigation autonomous and independent

Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami’s removal from office is a bold move by the government and will be welcomed by all those who stand for an independent Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) — one that is allowed to discharge its functions freely and fearlessly. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh deserve to be complimented for their swift decision. From all accounts, the act was not capricious; they chose to probe deeply into allegations that were swirling around in the New Delhi circles over the past few days before sacking Mr. Goswami. It is believed that the CBI Director produced enough material evidence to prove the impropriety of the Home Secretary in trying to stall the arrest of former Union Minister Matang Sinh in connection with the Saradha Scam. Mr. Sinh was widely known to be influential, even after the United Progressive Alliance government lost power at the Centre. This time, however, he ran out of luck while trying to intimidate the CBI. Mr. Goswami and Mr. Sinh are said to have known each other for several years. Obviously Mr. Sinh had called the Home Secretary to save himself the embarrassment of an arrest by the CBI, and it is likely that their conversation was recorded.

Unmitigated impropriety

Thereafter the facts become slightly fuzzy. The rumours on the grapevine are that Mr. Goswami called some senior CBI officers (probably not the Director himself) to plead his friend’s case. The officers spoken to by the Home Secretary thereafter conveyed this to the Director, who in turn promptly brought the whole episode to the notice of the Home Minister and the Prime Minister. It is still not known whether the Home Secretary acted on his own after knowing that his friend was in distress or he was a mere conduit through which some political bigwig — now not in power — was trying to save Mr. Sinh. The truth may never come out. In any case this was unmitigated impropriety on the part of a very senior civil servant who is culpable to the core.

“The CBI has become stronger with the knowledge that no one will dare to dictate terms to it in future”

Mind you, the charges against Mr. Sinh were not ordinary. He was being probed for serious criminal misconduct which merited an arrest and a custodial interrogation. It was for the CBI to make up its mind on this, and whatever it did was to be reviewed only by the courts and not by anyone else, including the executive. I am happy that the government lost no time in acting as it did.

In my view, Mr. Goswami’s indiscretion (to put it mildly) was both artless and unethical. He has justifiably paid a heavy price. The episode sends the right signal to both senior officers and non-officials in high places that they will come to grief if they ever try to deflect serious criminal investigations undertaken by the country’s highest law enforcement agency. I laud the current CBI Director for having brought the facts to the government’s notice. The normal tendency would have been to suppress such interference in CBI matters, especially when the person meddling is either a Minister or a senior civil servant.

Not many may know that the Home Secretary is a powerful entity in the capital and can play with the careers of senior police officers. Many senior officers genuflect before him for routine favours. It is true that many in Mr. Goswami’s position in the past had been great leaders and men of the highest integrity. But it is equally true that there have been a few aberrations — there have been erratic and egoistic officers who have abused their proximity to centres of power only to promote the cause of some favoured unscrupulous policemen, while at the same time destroying the careers of the not-so-unbending.

My own experience was not very pleasant; I had to deal with someone who chose to flout even what the Home Minister had granted the CBI by way of infrastructure support. I presumed he had a hang-up as far as the CBI was concerned, and he had to constantly settle scores with the organisation by denying it the support it required. We need a powerful Home Minister, both knowledgeable and plodding, and who will hold the Home Secretary to account, as Mr. Singh has done.

Not many know that the CBI is part of the Department of Personnel and Training which works under the Prime Minister. The Home Ministry is mainly a facilitator which lends support to the CBI in the form of manpower, especially by providing Indian Police Service officers borrowed from various States. Otherwise it has no authority over the CBI, especially in matters of anti-corruption work. (With respect to conventional crimes, the Ministry transfers cases received at the instance of States to the CBI or the National Investigation Agency for investigation.)

The CBI Director’s administrative head is the Prime Minister and no one else. (This is a legacy of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who brought the agency under her control after moving it out of the Home Ministry. The objective was not exactly honourable.) That the Prime Minister is the controller deters many Ministers and civil servants from interfering in the agency’s investigations. If the CBI Director keeps the Home Minster informed of certain broad developments, it is purely as a matter of courtesy and certainly not as mandated by business rules. In my opinion, this is how it should be to avoid differing signals from being sent to the CBI.

Need for introspection
The CBI undoubtedly emerges credible from the unseemly episode. It has also become stronger with the knowledge that no one will dare to dictate terms to it in future. It is exactly this situation that calls for serious introspection on the part of the CBI leadership as to whether it deserves this majesty in the bureaucracy. CBI critics — there are far too many — would say that the organisation does not merit this kind of power or influence. The CBI Director and his top leadership have, therefore, a huge responsibility to ensure that their investigators do not run amuck. This is especially with regard to arrests of accused or suspects. The authority is enormous. It has to be exercised humanely, and with great care and caution. A hasty and unjustified arrest brings in more ignominy to an agency, especially at a time when it has suffered a leadership crisis. Two of its chiefs are under a cloud, and it is not known how the government is going to deal with them.

The cliché “Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion’ comes readily to my mind. Internal vigilance should be the watchword. Any failure on the part of the Director or his lieutenants to insist on the highest standards of integrity for themselves and for their ranks will be unpardonable. The loser from the CBI’s sloth and connivance with the corrupt will ultimately be the aam aadmi.

Women need freedom, not protection

The underlying image of the woman as ‘victim’ in the Delhi election campaigns has led to parties competing over who will push for a more policed and disciplined city

If the Freudian question “what women want?” were posed to the parties contesting the Delhi polls, their responses would be: “more police, more surveillance, more suspicion and control.” The underlying representation of women in Delhi’s electoral campaigns, election manifestos and the news is dominated by a talk of victimisation and helplessness. It is this underlying image of the ‘victim’ that has spurred campaigns where parties compete over who will push for a more policed Delhi, a more oppressively disciplined Delhi, a city perpetually threatened by and suspicious of crime. Following Professor Ratna Kapur, let us call this representation the “victim subject.”

Similar solutions
On issues of gender and sexuality, the Delhi voter does not, in fact, have a genuine choice at all. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) offer very similar solutions in their visions and manifestos to the gender question. A quick perusal of the AAP manifesto and the BJP’s public statements reveals their exclusive reliance on this victim rhetoric, which can ultimately be debilitating and limiting. Yet the parties are busy competing, not about who can promote more freedom but, rather, who can be more protective. The metonym of the latter is of speedy trials, security forces and CCTVs while the former is as simple as being able to take a peaceful midnight stroll in the streets of the city. One may argue that a policed society will eventually lead to a freer city but this is far from true. A protectionist imagination is entirely based on a perception of masculine superiority, and only breeds more fear, threat and alienation in society.

Political visions and manifestos

All the references to women in the 70-point AAP manifesto are based on this above-mentioned protectionist-victim rhetoric. The controversial Mohalla Sabha replaced by the Delhi Dialogue will now decide the action plan for a city “safe for women.” Because “unlit streets become scenes of crimes, particularly against women,” the AAP promises adequate street lighting. The AAP and the BJP are competing about who will install more CCTV cameras and the number is now in lakhs. They promise to set up fast-track courts dedicated to handling cases of sexual assault and other crimes against women, with courts “running in two shifts” and a special Women’s Security Force (“Mahila Suraksha Dal”) consisting of a 10,000 strong Home Guard and 5,000 bus marshals. Even Wi-Fi in Delhi is meant to “tie in with women’s safety initiatives.”

“A protectionist imagination is entirely based on a perception of masculine superiority, and only breeds more fear, threat and alienation in society”

Similarly, with regard to the BJP’s candidate, you can take Kiran Bedi out of the police, but not the police out of Kiran Bedi. She seems to lack any sense of imagination that goes beyond disciplining, policing and militarising the environment. Her 25-point blueprint promises community policing, increased patrolling, CCTVs, home guards, civil defence escorts on buses and ladies’ special buses. Not to forget self-defence training, safety kits with sprays and whistles, “widely publicised” punishments, quick FIRs, Special Women’s Security Force… the list just goes on. She then tweeted, “I look fwd2 [forward to] working w/[with] each of u [you] to make this 25-point program successful in keeping our women safe.”

Freedom and positive liberties

Of course, one can genuinely appreciate the fact that these campaigns have at least been gender-centric in their approach as compared to the blatantly violent campaigns in other parts of the country. But beyond appreciation, a more nuanced public debate is much needed. Our discussions must include a politics of freedom rather than a repressive politics that is threatened by any expression of desire and sexuality in the public sphere. A politics of freedom would not be obsessed with Ms Bedi’s 6-P’s (prisons, prosecution, outreach to people, parents, improving policing, including community policing, and the press.) or with C’s (crime, controls, CCTVs and courts). Such an imagination of a city can be suffocating and repressive. We need to discuss not protectionist measures or even negative liberties, but positive liberties. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting in autonomous ways and taking control of one’s life, as opposed to negative liberties, which is more about absence of constraints.

Approaching a politics of positive liberties will require a move away from a subjectivity that is exclusively of the “victim subject” into an alternative one. Following several prominent queer theorists, this alternative subjectivity needs to be a subject that can appreciate and accommodate a strong notion of desire. One finds an instance of this subjectivity, grounded in freedom and desire, in the prescient and progressive judgment of the Supreme Court in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India & Ors. (2014).

The judges in this case suggested that “gender identity refers to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body which may involve a freely chosen, medication of bodily appearances or functions by medical, surgical or other means and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms.” As per the Supreme Court, gender identity therefore refers to “an individual’s self-identification as a man, woman, transgender or other identified category.”

Sexual violence is not an expression of desire, but an expression of power. Desire is a far more layered, ontological category that the logo-centric liberalism does not adequately understand. A politics grounded in such a ‘desiring subjectivity’ based on a notion of positive liberty will be far more fruitful than that of the ‘victim subject’ forever seeking protection and paternal oversight. Only a truly democratic and plural city will allow for the discourse to shift from the latter to the former.

Ground-breaking MRT procedure gets Parliamentary approval

Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy, a ground-breaking technique that uses genetic material from three different people to prevent certain inherited -- and hitherto untreatable -- genetic diseases from passing from the mother to her offspring, received a resounding mandate on Tursday in the House of Commons.

Parliament voted 382 to 128 for an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, 2008, which will clear the path for licenses to be given to clinics to perform the procedure.

First country to approve this

Britain thus becomes the first country in the world to approve such a procedure, considered the only hope for women who carry defective mitochondria to have healthy children. It puts to rest a controversy that was opposed by the Church and faith groups for its potential to create three-parent designer babies.

The issue was sharply debated in the House, on grounds of ethics, medical safety, and regulatory parametres. Members voted according to conscience. The motion was moved by Jane Ellison, health minister, who said that the technique allows women with mitochondrial disorder to avert the “devastating and often fatal consequences” of the disease when passed on to their children.

The technique involves an IVF procedure in which the egg's defective mitochondrial DNA is replaced with healthy DNA from a female donor.

Countering criticism of the technique as a form of genetic modification and a leap into the unknown, the Minister said that mitochondrial DNA is made up of 0.054 per cent of a person’s overall DNA and had none of the nuclear DNA that determined personal characteristics and traits.

Professor Doug Turnbull, who led the team that developed the technique at the University of Newcastle said he was “delighted” with the vote, adding “I’m told it’s unusual to hear a genuine spontaneous whoop of joy from the public gallery when something’s voted through. That reflects how much this means for the patients.” (EOM)

NASA spacecraft sends historic Pluto images

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent its first stunning images of Pluto as the probe closes in on the dwarf planet.

New Horizons was more than 203 million km away from Pluto when it began taking images, the US space agancy said in a statement.

Although still just a dot along with its largest moon, Charon, the images come on the 109th birthday of Clyde Tombaugh who discovered the distant icy world in 1930.

“My dad would be thrilled with New Horizons,” said Clyde Tombaugh’s daughter Annette Tombaugh, of Las Cruces, New Mexico.

“To actually see the planet that he had discovered, and find out more about it — to get to see the moons of Pluto — he would have been astounded. I am sure it would have meant so much to him if he were still alive today,” she added.

The new images, taken with New Horizons’ telescopic Long—Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), are the first acquired during the spacecraft’s 2015 approach to the Pluto system which culminates with a close flyby of Pluto and its moons July 14.

Over the next few months, LORRI will take hundreds of pictures of Pluto, against a starry backdrop, to refine the team’s estimates of New Horizons’ distance to Pluto.

As in these first images, the Pluto system will resemble little more than bright dots in the camera’s view until late spring.

“Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light,” said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

“The dwarf planet will continue to grow larger and larger in the images as New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward its targets. The new LORRI images also demonstrate that the camera’s performance is unchanged since it was launched more than nine years ago,” Weaver said.

A smartphone dongle to diagnose HIV, syphilis

Sensitivity, specificity for both infections are comparable to ELISA

A palm-sized dongle connected to a smartphone will soon be able to diagnose HIV and syphilis with good accuracy. The device, which was recently field-tested on 96 patients in Rwanda, had high sensitivity and specificity for both HIV and syphilis. The results are published today (February 5) in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Sensitivity and specificity for both the infections are comparable to the lab-based ELISA. In the case of HIV, the sensitivity was 100 per cent and specificity was 87 per cent. For syphilis, the sensitivity was 92-100 per cent and specificity was 79-92 per cent. “Two types of syphilis antibodies are looked for to confirm infection and prevent over-treatment,” Dr. Tiffany W. Guo of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University said in an email to this Correspondent. He is one of the authors of the paper.

“By increasing detection of syphilis infections, we might be able to reduce deaths by 10-fold. And for large-scale screening where the dongle's high sensitivity with few false negatives is critical, we might be able to scale up HIV testing at the community level with immediate antiretroviral therapy that could nearly stop HIV transmissions and approach elimination of this devastating disease,” Dr. Tassaneewan Laksanasopin of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University and the corresponding author noted in a release.

The device has several highlights. For instance, both HIV and syphilis can be diagnosed in about 15 minutes and at a fraction of the cost of a lab-based ELISA test. The dongle cost under $34 compared with an astronomical $18,450 for ELISA equipment. Also, the material and reagent required for testing HIV and syphilis cost no more than $1.44; in the case of conventional lab-based equipment the cost for testing these infections is $8.50.

What makes the device particularly interesting is the very low power consumed to run it. This would be of immense value when the device is used in the field where power may not be available 24x7.

This became possible as the device does not use a power-consuming electrical pump to generate vacuum but a rubber bulb (as in the case of the manual blood pressure measuring instrument — sphygmomanometer) which when pressed creates a negative pressure. The negative pressure, in turn, moves a sequence of reagents that are already stored in a cassette. Other electrical components used consume very little power.

The total power consumed by the device for a test is 1.6 mW. By comparison, a smartphone uses 751 mW on a 3G network; even in a standby mode, a smartphone consumes as much as 17.5 mW.

The researchers came out with a second innovation to power the device using a smartphone. The audio jack of iPhone sends a 19-kHz audio signal that is converted into a stable DC 3 volt. This innovation made the use of a battery redundant. Since audio jacks are standardized among smartphones, the dongle can be attached to any compatible smart device.

“We designed our device to minimize power consumption (e.g. get rid of the electrical pump) and the only component that requires power (which is very little) is the optics. So the power converted from the audio signal is sufficient to run the device,”said Dr. Guo.

It is very easy to operate the dongle. Health workers needed all of 30 minutes of training before they started using the device.

Fingerprick whole-blood specimen was sufficient to diagnose both the infections. During the trial, the freshly collected whole-blood was diluted before testing the sample. “This field testing was a first time performance on freshly collected whole blood, which our cassettes [where the reagents are preloaded] were not best optimised for. Subsequent to the trial, we changed the amount of antigens coated on plastic cassettes which can detect undiluted whole blood,” Dr. Guo said.

There are five detection zones on the microfluidic cassette. Each zone is coated with antigens/antibodies specific to diseases plus internal negative and positive controls. Blood sample is flowed through the microfluidic channel, passing through each detection zone in sequence.

The dongle detects the presence of antibodies against HIV and syphilis from blood samples by capturing these antibodies using specific antigens in the microfluidic channel.

“The dongle is used as an analyser to quantify the amount of antibodies from blood samples and display results as positive or negative,” said Dr. Guo.

New findings on cellular functions of cancer-linked gene

New findings on cellular functions of Mixed Lineage Leukaemia (MLL) protein, which is closely associated with leukaemia in children and adults, could provide insight into what might be going wrong in the cancerous cell.

MLL or MLL1 protein was first identified for its involvement in chromosomal translocations associated with acute leukaemia in infants and adults. While most researchers focused on how the translocations might lead to cancer, there was hardly any investigation into other essential cellular functions of this protein, according to Dr. Shweta Tyagi of Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), who looked into the role of MLL in cell cycle regulation, a process intimately linked with cancer.

MLL also plays a critical role in proper regulation of Hox genes which give proper symmetry. “MLL gene is so vital for a living organism that if you remove it from mouse, the animal will die”, she added. Describing it as a huge protein of 400 kilodaltons, she said what has been intriguing was most of the focus was on its transcriptional activity. “The region which does transcription is a very small portion of the protein”.

Using RNAi-mediated knockdown, the team at CDFD led by Dr. Shweta showed that MLL was involved in regulating crucial functions like proper chromosome segregation and cytokinesis during mitosis. They found that absence of MLL causes errors in cell division and the process of cytokinesis does not occur. The absence of the protein could play a role in cancer, Dr. Shweta said.

Observing that she was excited about the finding, she said that by understanding what MLL does in mitosis might give a greater insight into what went wrong in MLL-linked leukaemia cell. Not only translocation of the protein, but even its absence could cause problems was a significant highlight of the finding.

The scientists at CDFD will now look in greater detail to find out what exactly went wrong in mitosis. Aamir Ali and Sailaja Naga Veeranki are the other members of the team.

Beneficial algal species discovered

Two new bloom-forming algal species were discovered recently off the west coast of India. These two species have excellent carbon capture properties — ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce global warming — and are also promising candidates for use as bio fuels.

Currently, a number of research groups are working on using algae as a potential candidate for carbon sequestration because they grow at very high rates and can absorb atmospheric CO.

Both of the newly discovered species are endemic and bloom-forming.

As they are endemic, their cultivation is not going to cause any environmental harm; had it been a species of Atlantic or Mediterranean origin, it might overgrow local flora and might wreak havoc on the local habitats — the so-called bio invasion.

Bloom forming indicates spontaneous growth. There is no need for fertilizers/pesticides or any expensive cultivation systems such as photobioreactors for their cultivation. These can grow sporadically at shorelines and can sequester CO.

The algae species named Ulva paschima Bast, and Cladophora goensis Bast were discovered by Dr. Felix Bast and two research students working with him, Mr. Satej Bhushan and Mr. Aijaz Ahmad John, from the Central University of Punjab, Bhatinda. The findings were reported in the journals PLoS ONE and Indian Journal of Marine Sciences.

The main criteria used for determining these species as newly discovered is a mix of morphological as well as molecular characteristics. Molecular evidence is especially strong; as nearest match is less than 90 per cent sequence identity.

For example, Cladophora goensis Vs. Cladophora glomerata — its nearest match — is 17.7 per cent differences.

“Compare it with human Vs. chimp. Our sequence identity is 98 per cent and 2 per cent difference makes us what we are. These newly discovered algae have profound sequence differences from previously discovered algae. Morphology is not reliable; as algae can change its morphology to suit its environment. Ours is the first molecular study on Indian algae, and first algal species discovery for last 40 years,” notes Dr. Bast in an email to this correspondent.

Pharmaceutical products from algae are under the realms of another project by Dr. Bast.

A number of active substances are isolated from algae including some algae of genera Cladophora andUlva. Probably most famous is Kahalalide-F, which is now being used in clinical trials against prostate and breast cancers.

Kahalalide-F is isolated from Bryopsis — a closely related green algae to Cladophora as well as Ulvaand it is very probable that same or related chemical is present in newly discovered endemic algae.

He intends to work on this. Cladophora goensis and Ulva paschima — recently discovered species — have had no chemical/pharmaceutical studies conducted on them yet.