Sunday 25 November 2012

Concentration Camp In India!



It may be fifty years since the infamous 1962 border conflict with China, but everything even now seems very opaque. The Henderson Brooks report inquiring into the debacle got completed in 1963 itself, but looks like it may never see the light of the day. During every anniversary, columns by retired Generals appear in newspaper and they concentrate mainly on strategic issues and government apathy in preparing for war. Not much is said about how it affected civilians.

But this year what really caught my eye was the plight of people of Chinese origin during the war. Prior to 1962. the country had a small Chinese community mainly confined to Kolkata and some Northeastern towns. Some had migrated way back in the 18th century and when the border conflict happened, majority of them were well into the second or even third generation of their lineage in India.

The 1962 war suddenly made their loyalty suspect and their distinct facial features and appearance proved dead giveaways. They were seen as spies, fifth columnists and started figuring in various conspiracy theories. They faced harassment, both from the public as well as the state. Many migrated to places such as Canada, England to escape police harassment. All this was more or less on the public domain, but what came as news to me was the presence of a concentration camp (yeah you heard it right) in India to round up all Chinese-origin people. It was tucked away at Deoli, a nondescript village in Rajasthan. A chance reading of SNM Abdi's piece in Outlook magazine on this issue really startled me.

It stated that most of these families were bundled into trains and taken to Kota, the nearest railhead to Deoli. Some were even told that it was being done for their own safety. The saddest part is that it happened after the conflict got over. The government's line of thinking was that the Chinese may attack again and the native Chinese will act as fifth columnists.

Deoli was formerly a PoW camp for axis soldiers during the second world war. Though there was no torture or hard physical labour as in the Nazi concentration camps, the conditions at Deoli were quite primitive and the desert heat of Rajasthan only added to their misery, as they were used to living in far more cooler climes. For some the detention lasted till 1967.

Later another article on same issue by Dilip D'Souza in Caravan stated that after the detention they had to restart their lives right from scratch. No compensation or even an apology was given by the Indian establishment. In fact, most of them found that their erstwhile house and property were seized and sealed off as ‘enemy property’. Some of the top official whom Abdi spoke to even drew parallel from United States' detention of people of Japanese origin, after attack on Pearl Harbour. 

It really amazes me how this issue remained hidden for so long. Granted that in the sixties the media penetration to far flung areas was non-existent. But even after the boom in regional press and 24/7 television news channels, it bafflingly continued to elude the media’s radar.

One reason could be that Indian Chinese people formed only minuscule minority and that too after this detention most of them migrated to Europe and America, rather than pursue their case. The security establishment would anyway say that it was done to deal with the threat perception of those times; as Abdi had remarked, “ethno-phobia is triggered more often by hallucination than facts.” 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Four Walls Do Not a Toilet Make

I had an unusual mail in my inbox a couple of days back. It was from UNICEF stating that it was organising a photo contest for observing World Toilet Day (which falls on November 19). It said, "All you need to do is take a picture of yourself or your family and friends with your toilet, upload it (in their site), and show how happy and proud you are of using your toilet."
 

The UNICEF was in fact promoting the World Toilet Organization, an initiative taken up by a Singaporean businessman Jack Sim in 2001, to highlight lack of sanitation in developing countries.
 

Quite predictably, the mail had some depressing statistics regarding the world in general and India in particular. Though we are aware of the seriousness of the problem, the actual numbers will still make us wince in disgust - 600 million of our countrymen still defecate in the open. That is close to 60% of the population.
 

Apart from the government's monumental failure, which is very apparent; it has also to do with skewed priorities of our citizens. According to census 2011, the country has more cell phones than toilets!! Clean sanitation somehow is never considered a priority. The residents will keep their houses clean, also take care of personal hygiene, but defecate in open without any hesitation. No wonder diseases such as diarrhea, dysentry are so rampant.
 

The problem may seem very in your face as you approach any major city by train, as areas near railway tracks have become the unofficial open-air restroom of the country. However, its origins lie in villages, where these practices evoke not even a shrug. Maybe because they have the luxury of sparsely populated areas and  secluded spaces.

These very villagers often migrate to cities to escape poverty and other adversities and end up in slums. They bring along their sanitation habits too. The general congestion in cities and high real estate prices leaves them with little choice.
 

The problem has been a long standing one and despite Mahatma Gandhi's valiant efforts - he had in fact declared that 'sanitation was more important than independence', the hideous practice outlived him.

There are in fact many jokes connected with this. A very popular one is set in Jawaharlal Nehru era. The then US President John F Kennedy visited India and felt  disgusted by the sight of rampant open defecation and complained to Nehru. A hurt Nehru decided to pay back in same coin. During his visit to US he went around looking for persons relieving in the open, but tough luck. Finally, much to his delight, he did manage to find one. But he turned out to be an Indian embassy staff!
 

When V S Naipaul came to India and wrote about this eyesore of a practice in An Area of Darkness and India a Wounded Civilization, it did raise the hackles of many in the country. But instead of working towards eradicating this social evil, they just banned his latter book. Sanitation was always considered a dirty word a taboo topic, a low caste activity. Due to such primitive sanitation methods the practice of carrying nightsoil is still prevalent in many parts of the country.
 

In independent India, with the sole exception of Sulabh movement, no social or political organisation tried to squarely face the issue until Jairam Ramesh came along. At least he brought the issue back to spotlight and made it a talking point, notwithstanding the controversy over his remark that the country had more temples than toilets. I hope it does not die down after the recently concluded Nirmal Bharat Yatra. Some recent incidents of newly-wed women refusing to stay in husband's house due to lack of toilet is indeed holds out some hope.


Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Reminiscences of an Aedes (Dengue) Mosquito



Scientists trace the origin of our species to somewhere in Africa, but I am more than content with my stay in India, where I was born and brought up. This country has a glorious tradition of accepting persecuted migrants such as Parsis, Jews and Bahais with open arms and this love is not merely confined to humans. It extends to mosquitoes, locusts, numerous types of viruses and the like, escaping from other countries due to inhospitable weather or stricter hygiene standards.

Like my cousin Anopheles mosquito (which spreads malaria), I too thrive in water, however, our similarities end there. I have far better hygiene standards. I do not stay in dirty smelly puddles or open drains. I prefer much more cleaner, homely surroundings and fresh water sources. I feel more at home in money plant bottles, damp room coolers, uncovered overhead tanks. For outdoors I prefer to lounge in water accumulated in abandoned tyres, coconut shells and at construction sites.

When we first landed in India, our clan was mainly confined to its capital, hence the dengue virus we promoted through our widow-to-window 'sting' operation was often known as 'Delhi dengue'. That way this country is very strange, it has city and region names associated with various diseases. Thus we have Madras eye (conjunctivitis), the same disease is also known as Jai Bangla in eastern parts of the country. Then there is the good old Delhi belly (diarrhea or dysentery caused after eating Indian food), and according to Urban Dictionary it is also known as Karachi crouch - probably to assuage the feelings of our hurt neighbour, who is no way inferior in inflicting such below-the-belt googlies.

Coming back to dengue, our promotion was so successful that it soon outgrew from being sporadic and self-contained outbreaks in certain pockets of the country. It acquired a pan-India presence with the status of a general epidemic that peaks between August and January. Terms like 'platelet count', hitherto associated with obscure diseases like hemophilia, acquired wider currency among aam aadmi or 'mango men'. Blood test laboratories made a killing because doctors began sending every second case of fever to them. It also boosted the sales of mosquito coils and mats, even though we can vouch they are as effective as government schemes aimed at fighting poverty.
It was indeed flattering to hear anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal claiming, "I am worse than dengue" to show how lethal he can be. It made us feel we have really arrived.

We received lot of bad press after Yash Chopra's death. Actually Yashji was not our target. The chick (in our clan only females carry out stings, the males are wastrels who live on fruits and mate with us) who carried out the operation was new to Mumbai and Film City. As a punishment we have transferred her to a more low-profile chikungunya project, which we carry out in the hotter climes of south India.

However, when Ajmal Kasab had dengue-like fever, we started trending on Twitter with congratulatory messages pouring in. Some even promised that if he conks off, then as a mark of respect towards us they will stop using mosquito mats for a week. Sadly it turned out to be a false alarm, and we were denied a windfall.


(A work of low platelet imagination)

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Sunday 11 November 2012

Dubious Drug Trials



Some six years ago my wife had a serious neck pain and we consulted a doctor at a fairly popular hospital in Indiranagar, an upscale suburb in Bangalore. The doctor examined and asked whether it was the first time. Wife replied she keeps having them. Then he said, "You can have an injection one of these days. It is very effective for this kind of pain. However, you need to fill up a form and have a bystander."

Smelling something fishy, we told him we will think about it and took leave. We were at loss to understand why a form needed to be filled or a bystander was required for something as innocuous as having an injection. I felt the doctor had some sinister motive. The news of drug companies enticing people in India to undergo trial was there at the back of my mind. Hence we decided not to go back to him. Wife's pain subsided after a few days of rest and thanks to good old Iodex.

However, for many there are no such happy endings, as they get tricked into undergoing such trials, without even knowing about it. A recent report in a BBC site revealed how deeply entrenched the drug trial racket is in our country. The oft repeated lament that 'life is cheap in India' rings very painfully true.

It revealed that new medicines were being tested on some of the poorest people in India without their knowledge. The report is replete with cases of surreptitious drug trials carried out on Dalits in Madhya Pradesh - ironically one of the BIMARU states. But I am sure that in our country it can happen anywhere, even in economically and socially advanced states and cities.

Being used to cavalier treatment by doctors, these patients and their family members were pleasantly surprised when they were offered expensive imported drugs. They were told that charity organisations were footing the bill. They were never informed about the drug trial, nor was their consent sought. In some cases they were asked to sign forms written in English, which they could not follow.

Hence, little did they know about the disaster in waiting. After the trials many died or ended up with serious medical complications. In case of deaths, no autopsies were carried out to ascertain the cause, nor was any compensation paid.

The report states that Indore's Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital had conducted 73 clinical trials on 3,300 patients - 1,833 of whom were children and many have died. It adds that in the past seven years, nearly 2,000 trials have taken place in India and the number of deaths increased from 288 in 2008 to 637 in 2009 to 668 in 2010, before falling to 438 deaths in 2011, the latest figures available.

"Since India relaxed its laws governing drugs trials in 2005, foreign drug companies have been keen to take advantage of the country's pool of educated, English-speaking doctors and the huge population from which to choose trial subjects," the report added.

The doctors who carry out these trials get rewarded by drug companies with illegal payments and foreign trips. One such doctor whom BBC correspondent Sue Lloyd-Roberts tried to interview called up security and marched her out. Another guy interviewed told the reporter, "The way you talk, medicines would never be developed." It's about time that the country's anti-corruption activists trained their focus on this issue and such doctors.

The drug companies have perfected the art of evading any responsibility of these dubious trials. They delegate the actual work of the trial to Clinical Research Outsourcing Organisations. If there are charges of malpractice, drug companies blame it on them. Hence for those seeking redressal its a wild-goose chase.

All this leaves to one final question. How reliable are these trials? A report by the Indian Parliamentary Committee on Health and Family Welfare said, "There is adequate documentary evidence to come to the conclusion that many opinions [during the drug trials] were actually written by the invisible hand of drug manufacturers and experts [the doctors] merely obliged by putting their signatures." 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat