Contents page

Aug 1-15, 2014

Cover Story

Hatching Superbugs

At a time when chicken consumption is at an all time high in India, a study by Delhi non-profit Centre for Science and Environment shows poultry meat could be churning out robust microbes that can render all antibiotics ineffective

Lab study Ramakant Sahu & Poornima Saxena, Research Amit Khurana & Mouna Nagaraju reporting Ankur Paliwal & Jyotsna Singh

Editor's page

How smart is a smart city?

Smart is as smart does. The NDA government’s proposal to build 100 “smart” cities will work only if it can reinvent the very idea of urban growth in a country like India. Smart thinking will require the government to not only copy the model cities of the already developed Western world, but also find a new measure of liveability that will work for Indian situation, where the cost of growth is unaffordable for most.

News

News Briefs

Interview

`Many doctors are simply businessmen'

Samiran Nundy, chairperson of the department of surgical gastroenterology and organ transplantation at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and editor-in-chief of the jou...

`Irresponsible reportage can harm business'

Vishal Nath, director, National Research Centre for Litchi (NRCL), says there is no scientific evidence to prove that acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) in child...

`Eating chicken is like taking a course of antibiotics'

Devi Shetty, cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Health, has seen increasing cases of antibiotic resistance at his hospital. Even those who had never taken antibiotics are r...

Patently Absurd

Jugaad of Indian innovation

Patting ourselves for our ability to arrive at makeshift solutions will not take us far

Science & Technology

Science & Technology - Briefs

Fruit scare

Encephalitis is not only threatening lives in Bihar, but also the livelihood of litchi farmers as unconfirmed reports link the disease to the fruit

Solar push for Railways

Indian Railways can reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 239 tonnes per year per train by fixing solar panels atop coaches

Special Report

Budget can't bring change

The finance minister pleased the growth brigade with three letters "PPP" but failed to bring change where it was most needed. Down To Earth lists five such key development areas

An order of chaos

National Green Tribunal's decision to declare an area of 10 km radius around Okhla Bird Sanctuary as ecologically sensitive has put the future of 74,000 home buyers in NCR at stake

Beetles high on coffee

Erratic weather is fuelling the growth of a pest which destroys Arabica coffee. In the absence of effective pest management, India's coffee production is at stake

Signal, interrupted

By allowing high-rises around an advanced weather radar in Mumbai, IMD sets a bad example for the rest of the country

Feature

How to cure corruption in healthcare

Rx: Only an effective governing body, which includes medical and non-medical members, can stop the culture of kickbacks

Rice from dry river

Farmers in an arid Andhra Pradesh district revive traditional irrigation system to tide over drought

Bead's eye view

Glass beads reveal ancient Indian Ocean trade networks

Brief history of a line

The official definition of poverty keeps changing. A look at how the concept evolved
Illustrations: Sorit

Security threat to hornbill

Armed with a feather and a memory, Vivek Ramachandran pitches for saving the last 300 Narcondam hornbills from radar station

Food

Ferment food for the gut

Almost all communities in India have festivals that revolve around stale food high on probiotics

Media

Dangerous funds

Rancid cake

Against all odds

Letters

Letters - August 1-15, 2014

Where to walk is the question

Economic & Political Weekly: Table of Content

EditorialsVol - XLIX No. 31, August 02, 2014  Juvenile Public Rage The law should not be changed to pander to mediatised public panics. Read more	Margin Speak Saffron Neo-liberalism Anand Teltumbde An aggressive drive towards neo-liberal economic reforms alongside consolidation of the Bharatiya Janata Party's political constituency with the spread of hegemonic Hindutva through sociocultural channels is on the cards. Read more
Commentary An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove Draft Juvenile Justice Bill Dhvani Mehta Laudable amendments regarding adoption and the state of children's homes sit uncomfortably alongside an alarming proposal permitting juveniles to be tried by regular courts for serious offences in the proposed re-enactment of the Juvenile... Read more	Commentary Fatwas and Muslim Women Irfan Engineer The Supreme Court's ruling that clarifi es that though it is not unconstitutional to issue fatwas, they are merely opinions of the issuer and not binding on anyone must be welcomed. The Court has, however, taken a balanced view in not... Read more
Commentary Sex Ratio, Khaps and Marriage Reform Ravinder Kaur The move by the Satrol khap of Haryana to relax some restrictive marriage norms and induct women and youth into the khap is perhaps a response to demographic and market economy challenges. Patriarchal structures get challenged when material... Read more	Commentary Forward Guidance in Retreat K Subramanian One among the many ingredients of the verbal soup dished out by United States Federal Reserve to help the economy regain its health in the years after the 2008 crisis was FG (forward guidance), linked closely to QE (quantitative easing). But the... Read more
Commentary Which Way for Public Libraries in India? Chitralekha The public library has a significant role to play in the development of intellectual and political well-being of a democracy, but is poorly equipped to play a transformative role as it has been neglected by the state governments. Now that there... Read more	Commentary Sukumari Bhattacharji's World Kumkum Roy Sukumari Bhattacharji - Sanskritist, historian, writer, educationist - with a passionate commitment to social and political change, passed away on 24 May 2014 at the age of 92. Excerpts from an interview the author conducted with her. Read more
Budget 2014-15 / Special Issues Agriculture: Intentions and Actions Ramesh Chand, Raka Saxena The agriculture sector has grown rapidly in the past decade but this has been on the back of rising real prices and not productivity growth. Budget 2014 made a large number of announcements on new schemes and new policies to address the immediate... Read more	Budget 2014-15 / Special Issues New Macroeconomic Consensus Rules Budget 2014-15 Rohit A critique of the macroeconomic framework that underlies the fiscal consolidation approach of the Union Budget for 2014-15 . Read more
Budget 2014-15 / Special Issues Revenue Mobilisation Assumptions of Buoyancy J Dennis Rajakumar, Deepa Vaidya In recent years, fiscal consolidation has been led by contraction in government spending. In the Union Budget for 2014-15 revenue mobilisation has received a major thrust, as buoyancies of all major taxes are expected to go up. This article... Read more	Budget 2014-15 / Special Issues Cracks in Budgetary Policies towards the Social Sectors Subrat Das The union budget for 2014-15 offers few changes in terms of policy priorities from the United Progressive Alliance government's interim budget for 2014-15, and it fails to recognise the cracks in the country's budgetary policies towards... Read more
Budget 2014-15 / Special Issues Union Budget and the 'Digital Divide' Old Wine in New Bottle Vipul Mudgal The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan... Read more	Book Reviews Politics of Memory Reclaiming ‘Out-of-Date’ East Pakistan Rita Manchanda Partition's Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971 and Modern South Asia by Ananya Jahanara Kabir (New Delhi: Women Unlimited) 2013; pp 216, Rs 400. Read more
Book Reviews The Challenge of Employment in Globalising India S Mahendra Dev India Labour and Employment Report 2014, principal author and editor, Alakh N Sharma (Institute for Human Development and Academic Foundation, New Delhi), 2014; pp 248, Rs 995. Read more	Perspectives Disappearance of the Study of 'Politics' Dhananjay Rai The eclipse of the discipline of political studies in India's new central universities exhibits a lack of disciplinary purpose. The purpose of the discipline of political studies is to inform us about a political community, while "applied... Read more
Special Articles Social Welfare and Household Consumption Expenditure in India - 2004-05 to 2011-12 Bhaskar Dutta, Manoj Panda This paper uses a modification of the well-known statistical concept of the Lorenz curve - the Generalised Lorenz curve - and its associated social welfare properties to measure changes in well-being of households in India during the last decade... Read more	Special Articles The Last Sahibs Governors in British India, March-August 1947 Rakesh Ankit Little has been written about the role of provincial governors in the closing period of British rule in India with all the emphasis being on the Viceroys. This article instead considers the sahibs in the provinces. When British India came to an... Read more
Special Articles Sheikh Abdullah and Land Reformsin Jammu and Kashmir Anirudh Kumar Prasad One of the reasons attributed to the poor agricultural situation in post-Independence India was its unequal land relationship. The Congress Party opted for land reforms as that would transform India into a progressive nation. As the 1949... Read more	Notes A Poet and a Landlord Swati Ganguly The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 included a prize money of £8,000. It is commonly assumed that Tagore spent this entire sum on the asrama school in Santiniketan, and later for setting up his dream... Read more
Discussion Fresh Thinking Needed Mukul Sanwal The promise of inclusive and sustainable development can only be achieved if key policy decisions are rethought with clear priorities – on urbanisation and economic growth – with the transformations kept within ecological limits. A... Read more

Aug 07 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

COMMITTEE TO ASSESS PUNE LANDSLIDES - Was It Deforestation?

URMI GOSWAMI

NEW DELHI





The government plans to assess if deforestation and reckless construction contributed to the devastating landslide Malin landslide that flattened 45 villages and killed 151 people in the Pune district.It will set up a three-member committee to study the causes of the disaster.
Environment minister Prakash Javadekar has assured the local Shiv Sena MP Shivaji Patil that the central government will send a team to “see and study“ the causes of the landslide.
Sources said that the ministry is expected to constitute the team on Thursday, and is likely to comprise two experts and a government official.
“We will be sending a team (to the site) to see and study whether environmental factors (also caused the land slide,“ Javadekar assured Patil. The minister also said that the state government has been asked to submit a report on the last week's landslide that claimed 151 lives besides and flattened about 45 villages, virtually wiping some of them off the map. The state government's report will also look into the role of environmental factors in the tragedy.
Javadekar, who hails from the Pune district, said given his familiarity with the area, he was aware of certain environmental conditions that contributed to the landslide. According to the Madhav Gadgil panel report, the road and windmill construction in the area have led to high levels of erosion and construction have contributed to the rising threat of landslides in the area.The report doesn't specifically refer to Malin, instead focuses on nearby and surrounding area.

Aug 07 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

1 lakh children go missing in India every year: MHA

Deeptiman.Tiwary@timesgroup.com

New Delhi





Neighbours Pakistan And China Lose Only 3,000 & 10,000

On February 5, 2013, a Supreme Court bench, angry over 1.7 lakh missing children and the government's apathy, had remarked: “Nobody seems to care about missing children.
This is the irony .“One and a half years later, government data show over 1.5 lakh more children have gone missing, and the situation remains the same with an average of 45% of them remaining untraced.
Data on missing children put out by the home ministry last month in Parliament show that over 3.25 lakh children went missing between 2011 and 2014 (till June) at an average of nearly 1 lakh kids going missing every year.
Compare this to our trouble-torn neighbour Pakistan where according to official figures around 3,000 children go missing every year. If population is an issue, then one could look at China, the most populous nation, where official figures put the number of missing children at around 10,000 every year.
National Crime Records Bureau, in fact, deciphers missing children figures in India in terms of one child going missing in the country every eight minutes.
More worryingly , 55% of those missing are girls and 45% of all missing children have remained untraceable, raising fears of them having been either killed or pushed into begging or prostitution rackets.
Maharashtra is one of the worst states in terms of missing children with over 50,000 having disappeared in the past three and half years.
Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh are distant competitors with all recording less than 25,000 missing children for the period.
Worryingly , however, all these states have more missing girls than boys. In Maharashtra, 10,000 more girls went missing than boys. In Andhra Pradesh, the number of girls missing (11,625) is almost double of boys (6,915). Similarly , Madhya Pradesh has over 15,000 girls missing compared to 9,000 boys. Delhi, too, has more girls (10,581) missing compared to boys (9,367).
Experts say several children run out of home due to poverty or physical abuse.
Once on the street, without protection, they could be pushed into any racket or abused.
What's worse is that in the law and order machinery there is no special focus on tracing children. In fact, in the states with a missing persons' bureau in their police department, good officers are seldom posted as it's not considered a coveted division.

Aug 07 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

UGC bans dissection in all colleges

Ekatha.Ann@timesgroup.com

Chennai





UGC has banned dissection of animals for academic purposes either by students or teachers at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels on college and varsity campuses.UGC's decision, which comes following sustained pressure from activists and an observation that many of the animals used for dissection were caught from their natural habitat, is an improvement on the partial ban on dissection it had issued in 2011 -when it allowed teachers to perform dissection as students watched, while postgraduate students were allowed to dissect unprotected species.

Aug 06 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

Ants show the way to new antifungal drugs

Pune Mirror Bureau punemirror.feedback@gm TWEET @ThePuneMirror





Researchers are collecting samples of antifungal bacteria found on various species of Brazilian ants that could fight off everything ­ fungal and viral infections to cancer and Chagas disease

In the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, leaf-cutter ants carry fresh foliage back to their home colony. There, the partially digested leaves nourish a “garden“ of white fungus that the ants cultivate to feed their larvae, their queen and other ants that never leave the nest.Like human gardeners, the fungus-farming ants must protect their crop from invaders. The parasitic fungus Escovopsis poses a constant threat. Fortunately, the ants have an ally: Pseudonocardia bacteria. During more than 45 million years of symbiosis with the ants, the bacteria have evolved to produce specific antifungal compounds that kill invading Escovopsis while sparing the good fungus. The ants, meanwhile, have evolved special pockets and glands in their bodies to house and feed their bacterial partners.
A team of scientists from the US and Brazil hopes that studying the compounds these bacteria produce will lead to new drugs that combat invasive fungal infections in people, as well as new treatments for cancer and parasitic diseases.
The idea is rooted in history. Pseudonocardia belongs to a group of actinobacteria that has already provided most of the world's antibiotics as well as antifungals, antivirals, anti-clotting drugs and more. And the fungus they fight for the ants is related to fungi that cause life-threatening human disease. To date, no one has gone hunting for natural compounds in the fungusfarming ant ecosystems.
“I'm very excited. I think this project has a good chance of success, and I think it aligns ecology and drug discovery in a way that we haven't tried before,“ said Jon Clardy from the Harvard Medical School, who will co-lead the team with Monica Pupo of the University of Sao Paulo.
INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY
More than 200 kinds of fungus-farming ants live in South and Central America. Many of them make their homes in the diverse biomes of Brazil. Each colony may host a slightly different strain of bacteria that makes slightly different compounds to fight a slightly different invader. “We have an incredible opportunity to rigorously evaluate biodiversity in the context of therapeutic discovery and ecology,“ said Clardy.
The team's main focus will be discovering antifungal agents. The world is in desperate need of new antifungal medicines. Invasive fungal infections ­ those that spread inside the body, as opposed to superficial infections of the skin and nails ­ are on the rise, new strains are emerging and infections are getting resistant to drugs.
“Worldwide, more people die of invasive fungal diseases than die of malaria or tuberculosis,“ said Clardy. “What's scary is it's not widely appreciated how dangerous these diseases are because the incidence is quite low, but the mortality is typically very high.“
Aspergillosis, for example, may only affect about 2,00,000 people worldwide, but it has a mortality rate between 30 to 95 per cent. Fungal infections are a top cause of infection-related death in cancer and transplant patients.
In addition to antifungals, the team will look for natural products that could become anticancer drugs. Many chemotherapeutics act in a similar way to antifungals: They spare slowergrowing cells (like those of ants, beneficial fungi and humans) while killing faster-growing cells (like those of invading fungi and tumours). In fact, many chemotherapy drugs were originally developed as antifungals, including the immune suppressor rapamycin, which was found in soil-dwelling actinobacteria on Easter Island.
The team's third goal involves searching for antiparasitics to help treat Chagas disease, also known as the New World version of African sleeping sickness, and leishmaniasis, both of which the World Health Organisation has named neglected tropical diseases. Chagas disease is a particular burden in Brazil, where it kills as many each year as tuberculosis.