Obama Disappoints

What a disappointment Obama is !! Just a year ago the World watched every move of this man and prayed for his victory in the belief that he had the capacity to judge things from a global perspective and provide leadership to the World leaders. CHANGE and WE CAN were his slogans and like any other political slogans , they proved to be just that—a mere political catchy words that have no meaning once in power.
Nothing has changed, domestically or internationally. May be I should say no effort has been made to change anything even though circumstances provided the opportunity on a platter to Obama. The US banking and financial sector continues to rot in spite of gobbling up a trillion dollars of tax payers money, the greed of the CXOs continues to be obnoxious, yet nothing has changed. Except for sound bytes to the media on the salaries and bonuses of CXOs, nothing has changed. Even the much talked about health reforms seem to have taken a back seat. The Obama administration is clearly buckling under the pressure of these big corporations.
And now the last blow to all the believers in Obama. Obama has become the first US President in two decades not to welcome the Nobel peace prize winner to the White House since the Dalai Lama began visiting Washington. And this coming from the person who claims that Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violent approach has influenced him to a large extent. Yet he refuses to meet the Buddhist monk and the spiritual leader of Tibet whose only demand is greater autonomy ( not separation ) and preservation of Tibetan culture, which China is systematically destroying. And why this refusal. Because of the pressure from China. So economic considerations outweigh all other factors.
The US President will meet with corrupt, murderous dictators, military junta heads, even embrace them, laugh with them, accept gifts from them, but NOT meet the Dalai Lama? The ultimate failure in honoring human rights and international relationships. And the ultimate disappointment for people like me world over.
Just a year ago during the primaries, Obama urged George W Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in protest against the bloody repression of a popular uprising in Tibet. “If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in Darfur and to respect the dignity, security, and human rights of the Tibetan people, then the President should boycott the opening ceremonies,” Obama said.
What a CHANGE !!
What a fall !!
What a disappointment Obama has turned out to be !!

The Acid Test For Indian Society

A week back three youngsters in their budding twenties poured acid on two unsuspecting girls causing serious third degree burns in Warangal in Andhra Pradesh, India. The reason for this heinous crime was one of the girls had spurned the overtures of one of the culprits. Both the girls are battling for life with one girl, doctors say may lose vision permanently and both the girls, if survive, will need multiple plastic surgeries. It is no wonder that the entire town came out in rallies and expressed sympathy for the girls. However, what was surprising was every section of the society, including the students, demanding the police to catch the suspects and encounter them which meant shooting them to death. Instant justice in this instant world ! A day later the three suspects were caught, interrogated, confession extracted, paraded before the media in the late evening and Lo and behold ! all the three suspects end up dead in the middle of the night on the outskirts of the town. The official version was police had taken them to a location where the suspects said they hid a stolen motorcycle but when they reached the spot, the suspects tried to attack the police and so were promptly shot to death. This usually is the standard official version for most of the deaths in the police shootouts. As news spread, there were celebrations in the town, people praising the police for swift action and awed college students pestering the police officers for autographs. Even in state capital, the educated elite were openly praising the police for this instant justice delivered. To my horror, even the state government released a statement that indirectly meant that any such acts will invite similar response. A few sane voices and their feeble protest at this form of delivering instant justice were drowned out in the cacophony of jubilation. We have been witnessing similar jubilation and approval across the country whenever such incidents take place. In the wake of sympathy on the plight of the girls and the hatred on the perpetrators of the crime, we seem to have forgotten that we are in a civil society governed by the laws of the land and judiciary. While it is true that many of our laws do not reflect the modern realities and need to be comprehensively changed, it is as reprehensible as the crime itself to eulogize custodial deaths. Instead of bringing pressure on the governments to amend the laws to make the punishments more stringent and revamp the judicial process for quick trials, we seem to have taken the easier option of condoning and even demanding instant justice. We should not for a moment forget that this makes every individual policeman, the investigator, the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner. Is any one person or a group capable of playing all these roles without bias.
Have we as a part of the civil society forgotten the brutal Bhagalpur blindings in 1980, where the police blinded about 30 undertrials with cycle spokes and then poured acid into the eyes. Most of them were petty thieves, waiting for the trial to commence. Can we condone the act in the name of instant justice since the case would have taken a long time to conclude in the usual process? Or for that matter, the police shooting of a business man to death last year in Delhi due to mistaken identity. It could be you and me tomorrow in the place of the businessman.
I ask those of you who have openly come out in support of the police shooting to death the three suspects, shall we as a society dispense with the judicial system altogether and give rights to the police to deliver instant justice. A thief can have his hands amputated, a person accused of murder can be hung to a lamp post and eve teasers stoned to death in public. There are societies where such forms of public punishments are in vogue. We call those states barbaric.
Despite the passing of the Protection of Human Rights Act in 1993 and establishing a National Human Rights Commission, incidents of police brutality continue to take place in various parts of the country. This is because of the silent approval of the public.
The acid test for the Indian society is whether in the near future it opts to pressurize governments to amend the laws and make punishments more stringent, revamp the judicial process for speedy trials, demand better policing methods and respect the Human Rights or continue to encourage models of instant justice. There will lie the answer to where as a nation we are headed.

The Vampire Companies

It was an innocuous small news item buried in the local pages of the Hyderabad based newspapers a few days back. The news was that a person undergoing drug trials complained of chest pain and died before he was shifted to a corporate hospital. Hardly any news, when in our country only double digit deaths find space on the front page. However, this is no ordinary death. The death is due to the plague that is the hallmark of a majority of Indian entrepreneurs. The plague of greed for money at any cost. At the cost of the lives of thousands of poor citizens of this country through clinical trials, which are outsourced by the giant global pharma and bio technology companies. A city based bio company has been conducting drug trials on this person, which the company spokesperson accepted and added he was a “Volunteer” who was administered a dose one day earlier, was put under observation for 24 hours and released. So he argued the reasons for the death of this “Volunteer” cannot be attributed to the drug trials. Shockingly, he also added that this “Volunteer” was also undergoing a drug trial for another company. As a spin doctor of the bio company, he should have known that the rules of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization clearly forbid clinical trials of more than one drug in a span of 90 days on the same person. But that is only the Law and in this country it is the least respected, especially by the money-making class.

So what in essence are these drug trials, called as clinical trials? When a new drug is formulated in the research labs of the pharma companies, it needs to be extensively used on human beings to determine dosage, efficacy and after affects. In the US and Europe, trials for one drug costs anywhere from 100 to 150 million dollars because of the stringent conditions and high hospital costs. To save such a huge spending, these corporations have started outsourcing to Indian companies at one –tenth of the cost. Where on Earth can one find a nation with a deadly cocktail of half a billion people mired in rampant poverty and illiteracy, a plethora of diseases, two million private hospital beds , completely unethical and greedy entrepreneurs, lack of proper regulation, blatant corruption and a slipshod state machinery to enforce whatever little regulations are in force. So almost all the giant pharma . corporations have zeroed in on India. According to a Confederation of Indian Industry study, clinical trials in India in 2002 generated $70 million in revenues and reached $200 million by 2007. McKinsey estimates that by 2010, global pharma majors would spend around $1 billion for drug trials in the country.
How do the Indian clinical trial companies which grab the outsourcing deals conduct the clinical trials? The modus operandi is simple. Middle men sift through the records at the government hospitals to identify those with a particular disease or a combination of diseases. They are then filtered as per the need of the age / gender group. Since most of the visitors to the government hospitals are poorest of the poor, it becomes a cake walk for the middle men to cut a deal. For as little as 100 to 150 rupees a day!! The “Volunteers” are regularly monitored with changes in dosage. At prior defined periods, the “Volunteers” are examined for any symptoms of side effects and the progress of the disease. If there are indeed side effects, sometimes fatal, they are disposed off with a few thousand rupees. Since the law stipulates that drug trials can be conducted only on “Volunteers”, the illiterate “Volunteers” are made to sign /put thumb impressions on the declaration of volunteerism absolving the companies from any legal consequences. The poor “Volunteers” get a few thousand rupees each in a year and in most cases life time misery with side effects, the middlemen get a few lakhs each for supplying the “Volunteers” and the company profits by a few million dollars. The entire process or the findings need not be registered with or divulged to any regulatory body. Perfect, isn’t it?

What has happened as a stray incident in 2000 has become rampant today across India. In 2000, the use of a banned drug on unsuspecting poor cancer patients by the prestigious U.S. John Hopkins’ Hospital in collaboration with the Regional Cancer Treatment Centre in Kerala was exposed by the centre’s radiology head. Two patients died as a result of the drug trial. Bowing to the public demand, the Kerala Government requested Dr Parikh of the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai to probe the incident. Dr Parikh collected documentary evidence of JHU releasing funds for the drug trials with the conscious knowledge of that drug having been banned by the US Food and Drug Administration. The drug was developed by a team of researchers of JHU's department of biology. This has forced the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to inquire into the trials. As usual, the results are still not public and no action has been taken against those responsible, where as the Johns Hopkins University barred the principal investigator from heading future research with human subjects. NGOs estimate that at any given point of time, clinical trials are being conducted for more than 100 new drugs in India involving thousands of “Volunteers” across multiple cities. They fear several of these drugs are either banned in the developed countries or new experimental component mixtures derived from the banned drugs.
Recently, India has made some regulatory attempts, amending its Drugs and Cosmetics Act to require compliance by trial conductors with a set of good clinical practices / guidelines along with the ethics committee that the ICMR formulated. But this is clearly not enough. The government should make registration of every drug trial compulsory, the findings to be divulged, mandatory compensation payment for those affected and strong penalties against the defaulting companies.

Till then, like vampires sucking blood out of the living, companies will continue to suck out profits from the misery of the Poor.

Banner Anger

The anger against politicians for not taking the November 26th terrorists attack on Mumbai seriously was uniform across the country. Here are some of the banners giving a glimpse of the anger, mailed to me by one of my friends, Kali Krishna.

India's Heart Broken, But Not The Spirit

We Indians have faced several terrorist attacks in the past, some brutal as 1993 Mumbai blasts. We have had live coverage of the attack on our Parliament building itself. But the images of November 26th 2008 attack on Mumbai will stay etched in the memory of Indians for a long time. The images of indiscriminate firing from a van into thick crowds, the bodies strewn all over the street after an explosion, the injured at VT railway station dazed and bleeding profusely being helped by people, the funeral of the three top cops who were killed in action and the imposing red coloured dome of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel spewing out fire and smoke will stay with us for a long time. The terrorists have chosen the places of attack to have maximum death toll and coverage. While the taking over of Oberoi Trident Hotel and Nariman Point were to take hostage of maximum foreign nationals, it is evident that the taking over of Taj hotel and causing explosions in it, was no doubt to hurt the national pride of Indians.
It is now part of the Legend of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the patriarch of the Tata industrial Group, who has commissioned the Taj Palace Hotel building in 1900 after being refused entry to the now-defunct Apollo Hotel, which had a strict Europeans-only policy. The hotel was deliberately built with its rear to the harbour in an apparent snub to the British Monarchy, who entered through the harbor. Now the terrorists have snubbed all Indians by causing massive destruction to the hotel.

As the first pictures of the live coverage of events at Taj and Trident were beamed across a nation, it was a shock to watch the complete chaos. There was no unified command and policemen were simply running helter skelter, with everyone talking on mobile phones. On Mobile phones !! It was apparent that there was not even a unified communication system in place. As usual the combined forces of the Army and Navy along with NSG commandoes brought order to the chaos and fought hand to hand to kill the terrorists. But by then the damage was done. Over 200 dead and 500 injured.


As details emerged slowly, more shocks were in place. After getting information on a shootout at CST by terrorists, the top three cops of Mumbai together went in a van. Together !! And became sitting ducks. With all due respect to the dead, this singular act of travelling together to face the terrorists shows the lack of processes and professionalism. More shocking was the news that the NSG commandoes had flown all the way from Delhi but had to cool their heels at the airport for hours together as there were no further instructions. Detailed plans of the Trident and Taj hotels were found with the terrorists but the commandoes did not have one. We saw the Taj burning for hours on without any sight of a fire truck. One came in after three hours. It took our Prime Minister 20 hours after the attacks to convene a cabinet meeting. It took 60 hours to eliminate all the terrorists.

The worst shock was allowing the visual media to beam the live images of the commando action. Someone has forgotten that the terrorists too might be watching TV and alter their plans accordingly. Even the helicopter dropping off commandoes on the roof top of Nariman Point was also beamed live.

No sooner than the operation ended, the blame game started. The central intelligence agencies say they have forewarned the state which neglected the warning. The warnings usually are something like this, “ Terrorists belonging to X, Y or Z group are planning to launch an attack from land, sea or air on important landmarks and busy public places in the next three months.” Which state will heed to such warnings, when on an average, small or big, a dozen terrorist attacks take place every month in some state or the other in the country.

Revolting it was to watch the politicians give sound bytes, blaming the ruling party and the ruling party defending itself and pointing out similar attacks in previous government. With crass insensitivity, even before the dead were laid to rest, our politicians jumped in to take political advantage of the incident. We Indians act like Ostriches, burying our heads in the sand so as to not see the obvious. Ringed all around with six countries – Pakistan, China, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- whose animosity and in some cases blind hatred towards India is open and whose support to several terrorist groups in India is an established fact, terror is here to stay for a long time. What we need is not statistics to determine under which party’s rule more were dead. What India needs is a strategy at the highest level to tackle terrorism. It might evolve this time, because the attacks on 26th were also directed at the mighty and powerful, who have been insulated from terror all along, as the terrorists always hit only the general public travelling in suburban trains, or shopping in crowded bazaars. There will be enormous pressure from this group on the governments to act decisively and plan thoroughly for the future.

For the time being Indians are heart-broken but strong in spirit as evident from the reopening of the Leopold café as a defiance within two days after the deadly attack on it. As news of its reopening spread, thousands descended on the café to show solidarity. Unable to manage the crowds, it had to shut down after two hours. Incidentally, the café is owned by a Muslim.
I pray to God to give strength in their hour of grief to those families who have lost their near and dear in the carnage. I salute the armed forces for their bravery and sacrifice.

Gals, Guys, Gays, Biceps & Buttocks

When does one realize that one has aged and out of touch with the world around. Well, when one doesn’t know how to react to a situation that appears normal to everyone around, but extra-ordinary to you, it is then you have aged. This revelation dawned upon me rather forcibly a couple of weeks back and reaffirmed a few days back. A couple of weeks back, I got into the office lift on a fine morning. A twenty-some girl also got into the lift and as the doors were about to close there was a flurry of activity outside and the door opened again. Another twenty-some girl came breezing in and in the same breath asked the other girl “ Did you get it done”. This girl started giggling and to my thorough panic and embarrassment lifted her shirt a few inches up to reveal a gold ring on the navel. Both of them immediately fell into an animated conversation and stepped out at their floor. I was completely flummoxed. Not with the act of showing off one’s navel’s accessory but for the fact that both these girls cared two hoots for my presence and didn’t even give a glance. I was thoroughly embarrassed for having invaded their private space—the office lift.
A couple of days back, another set of two girls and a guy in the twenties were having a chirpy conversation with a torrential non-stop flow with an equal mix of Hindi and English, which this younger generation seemed to have mastered. I was just a pace behind them waiting for the lift and tried to claw out some meaning. They were talking about a movie Dostana and “how John and Abhi pretended to be gays , locked their lips in a passionate kiss and how one of their mothers accepted it and John is sooooo cuuuute with his exposed butt”. What ? Butt ?!! Buttocks !! cannot be, I must have heard it wrong, I thought. At that moment, the guy turned his back to the girls, pulled the trouser down a good length to reveal his upper half of the butt. I was incredulous and could not grasp what he said and nearly got a fit when one of the girls gave a friendly whack at his butt and said, “ John’s is better.” As they were getting out of the lift, one girl turned halfway to me and gave that half smile may be indicating that all these Pats on Butts were common in their group and I was simply out of place. With an effort that would have got accolades from the very best poker players, with a dead pan face I smiled back in the same reassuring measure as if I witnessed these PoBs every day of my life. None of the others even glanced at me while walking out of the lift. I realized then that my aging was official.
As I mulled over this incident, I realized that the movie is the same whose poster I gawk at everyday while driving to the office to have my eyes full of the perfectly lipped ( no, no not a spelling mistake ) Oomph oozing, bikini clad Priyanka. My vision was so focused that I barely realized the two hunks on either side of her. I was in wonderment that two leading actors did not hesitate to act out as gays and even locked the lips. Amazing! More amazing is how causally these youngsters took to the movie and the concept. And above all butt bearing on the screen ! Over the years, I have watched the progression of the screen heroes move from biceps to triceps to six packs and flaunt the body sculpting in a song or a fight. But imagine someone going with a trouser half falling off, flaunting his butt. From now on, the screen hunks may also do all sorts of workouts to have a butt that is better shaped than his competitor. We may see a new breed of physical trainers and gyms with special equipment even for general Janatha. Anything is possible with these youngsters.
Same is the case with the latest Airtel mobile phone commercial with Sharukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan. With “I miss you so much”, groans by Saif boring deeply into the sockets of Shah Rukh’s eyes in the bath room and bed room, they give a gay touch. Actually, SRK is helping Saif to record a voice message to Kareena with a deep painful resonance , which he finally extracts from Saif with a blow at a strategic place. How times change ! And how much of change from Generation to Generation.
Sometime in mid 80’s, a Bombay Journalist has come out openly in an interview about his sexual preference which has created quite a stir. At that time even the elegant word Gay ( actual meaning is carefree / happy ) was not widely used and even the Press used to stick to the cruder version of Homosexual. Well, one evening I was nursing my drink in Hyderabad Press Club along with a friend when suddenly one of our common acquaintances walked to our table with a stranger. I got up, shook hands with the acquaintance and as he was introducing the stranger I began shaking hands with him. At the very moment his name and city were mentioned, I had this irrational urge to pull my hand back, rub the palm on to the trousers and just somehow not be there. However, with supreme effort and with a normal face, I completed the hand shake and indulged in polite conversation for a couple of minutes. Both of them noticed that they were not being invited to join the table even for a cursory drink and left. And that was me then, the liberal of the liberal belonging to Gen X. Any guy from this Gen Y would not have flinched and might have even hugged and kissed him.
I am astonished at this Gen Y gals, guys, gays for their obsession with biceps and buttocks and their amazing ability to convert instantaneously any space into their own private space.

Comedian-in-Chief of the USA

Recently when I was talking to one of my friends Radhe, he mentioned that he watched a few days back the deadly one-liners of Bush on YouTube and he almost split into half laughing. While it is such a disgrace to America for having elected someone like Bush for two terms, on hind sight one may feel it is a historical necessity for future generations for centuries together to take this as an example of whom to never elect. Coming back to the one-liners, I just searched on the net and compiled a score of them to commemorate and commiserate his two terms. Here they are. Straight from the mouth of the Comedian-in-Chief of the United States of America

Health Hazard caution: Some may cause you to be sick to the last bone.

• This is an impressive crowd—the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite, but I call you my base.
  


• For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it.


• I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them.


• I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.


• I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.


• I think war is a dangerous place.


• I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here.


• If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - so long as I'm the dictator.


• It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber.


• This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating.


• I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being President.


• Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we.


• Do you have blacks, too? (To Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso)


• When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.


• You're free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order - order out of chaos. But we will.


• It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.


• I think we agree, the past is over.


• And there's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail.


• We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.


• I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.