The Call of the Wild by Jack London is one of his better known books

Aloha Oe is a short story by Jack London, an American author. The story is set in the wharf of a Hawaiian Island, where a ship is just departing with the coterie of a Senator who is just winding up a junketing trip to the island. The senator is accompanied by his daughter, Dorothy. The entire story is set among the festivities surrounding the departing ship on one hand and Dorothy’s reminiscences of her brief yet memorable time she spent with a hapa-haole, Stephen. Dorothy, Stephen and the senator Jeremy Sambrooke make up the characters in this story.

The author begins with a vivid narrative of the setting at the wharf. He portrays a noisy wharf bustling with music and mayhem surrounding the departure of the Senator and his group. The author brings out the music and noise by the use of such words and phrases that almost reproduce the feel of sounds – diapason, hubbub, “…singer’s voice rising birdlike…”. There is a lot of attention to detail; the movements on the promenade, the music playing, the kind of people around who the story is about and even those that the story is not about. However, the story is neither about the festivities nor about any of the people who are described. These are merely the context for the main theme of the story.

The author also dwells on the wave of emotions that are ebbing through Dorothy’s mind as she is readying herself to wave goodbye to the island. She is only coming to terms with the fact that she is soon not going to see Stephen only as the ship is setting sail. The author seems to portray this as Dorothy’s early days of entering womanhood from being a young girl, who looked on Stephen as her playmate. In spite of going to great lengths in describing their brief romantic interlude, the author does not develop this further, nor does he give the reader an indication who will or will not happen about these two. The entire point of view presented is that of Dorothy, who is unable to understand what she is going through. On one hand, she is faced with a wave of emotions drawing her towards Stephen, and on the other, she is faced with the hopelessness of the situation, given that Stephen is of a different social and racial class.

The story is clearly about the young daughter’s (perhaps) first brief affair and her coming to terms with understanding her own attraction towards Stephen, the underlying theme of the story is the divide between social classes. The author introduces this divide when the daughter recollects an incident at Mrs. Stanton’s tea party, where a an apparently derisive reference is made to someone of mixed blood as a “half-caste” and how the others have to be cautious about this. The story portrays the subtle yet tangible undercurrents of race and class in the society through the recollections of conversations at this party as well as a “test” that the daughter conducts through asking her father if Stephen could stay with them, if and when he comes to the mainland, to which her father answers “”Certainly not…Stephen Knight is a hapa-haole and you know what that means.” The story uses the premise of a brief romantic involvement to portray an underlying theme of social class and race. In a brief description of the farewell ceremony to a junketing senator, the author has been able to communicate the subtle racial and social class theme.

In summary, the story is about social class and racism presented through the eyes of a young Dorothy, daughter of a rich senator who has had a brief romantic encounter with Stephen, a Hawaiian youth of mixed racial ethnicity.

Indian red scorpion on BMJ Jan 2011 cover

I was quite puzzled by the general lack of information and clarity over treatment of scorpion stings. A phone call from a friend requesting urgent help from a remote forested area triggered me to put together this blog on scorpion sting response.

Medical school text books are quite confusing. The ones that we hold holy are mostly US or European in origin. Although many of them are quite globalised, the specific information on “local” conditions say tick-borne fevers or insect/animal bites/stings or injuries is quite lacking. In the case of scorpion stings, what I recollect from medical school is that Indian scorpions stings are never fatal. I vaguely recollect some discussion that the venomous scorpions are from Latin America or Australia. This was not an expected question for the exams and such precision in answering this question (at that time) was not so important. Later, when I was working as a doctor in a forest area, I had to know the implications of a scorpion sting.

Scorpions are quite ancient – having been on earth around the time of the dinosaurs. They are also one of the first terrestrial predators adapting mainly to prey on insects and sometimes even small vertebrates like lizards. Of all the 20-odd lethal scorpions, the Indian red scorpion is supposed to be the most lethal. All scorpions have various types of venom which is basically a cocktail of several envymes that immobilise their prey. The venom is selected to be fast-acting. Of the few species of scorpions that are lethal to human beings, the Buthids are prominent. Buthidae is the largest family of scorpions. The Indian red scorpion is one of the Buthidae. For those who are familiar with scorpions, the red scorpion is the smaller one that is more often seen around habitation rather than the larger (greenish-blackish) Heterometrus.

Scorpions are quite well distributed across India. However, information at the species level about scorpions seems quite scares on the internet. Perhaps the only good resource on Indian scorpions is this blog maintained by Aamod Zambre. The blog gives several links and resources to scorpion biologists and a key to identification of scorpions in Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh. Although showing many dangerous-looking scorpions, the ones that often sting humans are perhaps not these; that distinction belonging to the Indian red scorpion. For those interested in the species, its biology and taxonomy, this issue of Euscorpius may be useful.

The 1700-odd species are global in distribution are not found only in Antarctica (see this effort at developing an illustrated catalog of scorpions, of which 10 selected pages of part 1 is available for download). Of all the spceis of scorpions, only about 25 species are supposed to be venomous enough to kill human beings. Most of the others, we are told cause pain, irritation, local inflammation and some minor-major cardio-respiratory symptoms. Most scorpions being nocturnal, and preferring crevices and dark corners are likely to go unnoticed. The warm and damp surroundings in houses or the shaded crevice in a dry area are ideal places for the scorpions. Scorpion stings are quite a public health problem. Like many of the other health problems, scorpion sting victims in most rural and tribal areas usually approach the local doctor who is invariably not trained formally in medicine. Herbal and traditional remedies for stings and bites about. While serving an important role in calming the victim and allaying his fears, a little more than a placebo role may be attributed to these – especially in the case of snakebites.

Scorpion stings are very painful causing local inflammation and redness. All scorpion stings are capable of penetrating the skin. The venom spreads very fast and hence the role of scorpion anti venom has been questioned widely in international and Indian literature. The intravenous anti venom may take several hours to reach reasonable concentrations in the tissue where the scorpion sting is already acting. Milder symptoms include vomitting and sweating in addition to local pain. In more severe cases, there may be breathlessness and pink frothy sputum (because of fluid collection in the lungs), variation in blood pressure, shock and even unconsciousness. Most of these symptoms are due to massive release of chemicals called catecholamines (which play a key role as neurotransmitters as well as regulate important autonomic body functions like heart rate, blood pressure etc.) – a phenomenon termed autonomic storm.

Clinical management of Scorpion stings - Bawaskar and Bawaskar (2012)

In spite of all these dangerous sounding words, the stinging is relatively rare. Scorpions are quite shy and even when they sting, the dose of venom injected is often very small, and sometimes even dry. Contrary to the fairly bold advise by the good folks at Auroville to “sweat it out for a few hours”, medical attention to scorpion sting is important. Reducing pain using painkillers and reducing anxiety using anxiolytics is of importance, especially since the victim will be suffering from shock both due to the venom as well as his anxiety. Antivenom is manufactured by Haffkine Institute, named after Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian student of Louis Pastuer who came to India to fight Cholera with a vaccine he developed in Paris. Although the role of the anti venom has been questioned, the importance of keeping the victim under observation cannot be underscored. Monitoring of his blood pressure and watching out for pulmonary edema if any is important. A place with facility to provide intravenous fluids, BP monitoring and if needed positive pressure ventilation may be needed to avert any rare cardio-respiratory colapse or multi-organ failure due to shock. The role of a drug called Prazosin, which reverses several effects of the venom has been widely reported by HS Bawaskar and PH Bawaskar from their decades of experience treating hundreds of scorpion stings in rural Maharashtra. Admirably, they have kept detailed notes and records of these treatments that is periodically analysed and reported in medical literature. In fact, nearly all of what we know about scorpion sting follow-up from India is from this duo. With the availability of medical support and administration of prazosin wherever necessary, a mortality rate of less than 1% has been reported by them. From a case report in Nepal, Bhadani and colleagues report that adequate information about these lethal complications in scorpion stings is not present among health workers – a reason for very late referral or neglect of stings. The Bawaskars report the onset of pulmonary edema anywhere between 5 to 15 hours after the sting and suggest early initiation of treatment with Prazosin – an observation seconded by the Nepal study. In fact, it is now well accepted that the time lapse between sting and prazosin administration determines the outcome of the patient. In an article recently in January 2012 in the Journal of the Association of Physicians of India, the Bawaskars present a nice overview of what is known about the epidemiology of scorpion stings, pharmacology of its venom, local and clinical manifestations of stings, clinical findings and notes on management with details on when to administer prazosin. In addition, a brief note on prevention of scorpion stings is given.

From my experience, I find that scorpion stings are very rarely the problem of people walking or working in forest areas. It is often reported from homes where people “ambush” the scorpion in its hideout rather than in an open jungle where people walking even carelessly, give enough time for the scorpion to move away. However, awareness on the potential lethality of scorpion sting and ensuring transport to a place with the basic facilities to deal with the complications (if any) is important among people living in rural/tribal areas as well as people working there.

A disguised truck during the Battle of El Alamein. Disguise and camouflage supposedly played a major role, and so did artists, naturalists and biologists

Some of these people are very well-known, at least to biologists. The correspondence between Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace and their journey together and apart in the Amazons, and their pre-occupation with trying to explain why among such a diversity of butterflies (over 700 species), there were uncanny similarities between apparently unrelated species of butterflies makes for interesting reading.

The Viceroy butterfly (above) which is non-poisonous and "bland tasting" and potentially a prey is also avoided because it is similar to the toxic and bitter tasting Monarch butterfly (below) - one of the best known examples of Batesian mimicry

Here begins an interesting question that fascinated biologists on one side and inspired artists on the other. Many such models of mimicry are found in nature and our own Kallima is perhaps the best example, often unspottable among the leaf litter. Darwin and Bates had hypothesised based on their observations that the “odourless and palatable” Leptalis might be mimicking the boldly patterned and brightly coloured Heliconius, which advertises its bad taste with bright colours and patterns. Much before genes were known of, or even named such, the explanations and experiments to understand the evolution of mimicry progressed fast. Tempers ran high in those days – biologists even tasted a few Heliconius to prove their point, with a bitter taste in their mouth(!). One of these was Thayer, to whom Forbes dedicates at least two chapters to. Apparently, Thayer is the only(?) artist to have a law named after him – Thayer’s law of countershading. Thayer turns out to be a very interesting character. Suffering from what he himself called “Abbott’s pendulum”, he had terrible mood swings (because of his bipolar disorder) and the fact that these moods often caught him in the middle of passionate wartime advocacy did not help matters. His passion for countershading became so severe that he was publicly rubbished by (among others) Theodore Roosevelt. Here’s one such response to Roosevelt by Thayer.

The underside of the Orange Oakleaf, found in many parts of India is a superb example of disguise

 For my assertion that white on objects’ upper slopes, under an open starry sky without the moon or any artificial light far or near, is an absolute match for the sky, Col. Roosevelt can hardly find words to express his contempt, saying many things which must some day look very funny to him when he finds out his error.

It turns out that Thayer was extremely convinced that white upper coloration is one of the best camouflages to provide to anything in the sun. Roosevelt brought to this debate, his own hunting experience from African trips and indeed was invoking sexual selection arguments in days when it was out of fashion – as summarised by Norman Johnson here.

The countershaded bird on the right is not seen, as opposed to the "comouflaged" left one that is visible - From Thayer's experiments to prove countercolouration

The two world wars provided plenty of opportunity for biologists and artists to cross swords at war offices, where they invoked various laws and rules of nature to help hide ships or disguise buildings. A British artist, Norman Wilkinson has been credited with being the first to show how to hide ships using dazzle camouflage, although he had to win this recognition after a legal battle. His painting Plymouth harbour sank with the Titanic. Initially, devised to decrease ship damage from torpedo attacks from German U-boats, the coloration was inspired by the sort of patterns seen on zebras. Apparently, the discuption caused by the lines and patterns which breaks the shape of the object makes it very difficult to even predict which direction the object is moving making it difficult to target during wars. See this boat from Arnhem for example.  More recent work by marine biologists has confirmed similar observations in cuttlefish and other marine fauna.

The book has so many other colourful descriptions of colourful characters – people included. Peter Scott, John Cott, Jonathan Kerr and of course the “other” mimicry scientist (other than Bates), Fritz Muller, of the Mullerian mimicry fame. Interesting accounts of Vladamir Nabokov and his early history are also provided, as are the details of letter exchanges between Bates and Darwin. Hugh Bamford Cott is credited with coining the term “arms race” to denote the adaptations and counter adaptations such as in predator-prey who are engaged in a continuous shruggle of “bettering” the other. Cott’s explanation of mimicry and camouflage is indeed simple and elegant. He saw three main categories – concealment, disguise and advertisement. His application of these categories to explain a lot of observations across diverse species is apparently still the best available book on the topic – Adaptive cooluration in animals. The work of Miriam Rothschild, a code breaker for the top secret German Enigma code, based out of Bletchley Park, in unravelling the origin of the toxicity of many of the butterflies through exploring which plants they got it from in the first place. She found that the imperviousness of butterflies to the toxins they imbibe from plants, is species-specific; she found this through rather difficult experiments of feeding some plant substances to unsuspecting starlings. Madam Rothschild’s contributions are many – finding out the mechanism of jumping among flies, setting up Schizophrenia research fund, and campaigning for the legalisation of homosexuality – and in the meanwhile writing 350 papers on entomology and zoology!

All in all, an amazing book that sends the reader in multiple directions – there are many I did not pursue – the cubists and their role in this discourse for example. Amazing research and scholarship and no surprises in the book bagging many awards and good reviews. Peter Forbes’ Warwick memorial lecture “Science morphing into Art” is a good teaser if you are considering the book.

And on a lighter note, if you want to try some dazzle for your scooter, here’s how it will look. As one of the comments says, this could be one perhaps to “confuse the navel artillery”. :p

Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens died two days back fighting oesophageal cancer for over a year now. How many people wished that he would in the last days of his life renounce the acerbity with which he attacked religion of any sort. With the three other horsemen – Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris (cf the four horsemen of the apocalypse), the public debates they had with several religious leaders, evangelists and others as well as the discussions they had together were deeply illuminating. His debates were lessons in logic and reason. Never shying away from using demagoguery as an art of public speaking, Hitchens for me was one of the most amazing public speaker, polemic, thinker and writer I knew.

Not because I agreed with everything he said (his unforgivable mistake as John Cook characterises it), neither for the condescension with which he characterised

Christopher Hitchens in 2010

believers (often entertaining!). He was a courageous man, never afraid of his vices, never hiding his talents and unhindered by ignorance of the topics he spoke on. His debates kept me company on cold Belgian winters and set off month-long reflections on fundamental fixed convictions that we can get off our backs in a jiffy…if only we knew we carry them. His books, talks and articles pushed boundaries – never taking the missionary position on topics of religion, nor sparing poor arguments when he came across one, he will be remembered not for the entire content of his views but the way he put them across.

One person who (tried to) overcome the slavery of reason to emotion, which perhaps explains his hitchhiking along the long-winding road from the political left to the political right and somewhere in between. Who could have faced the inimitable George Galloway on US turf when the war on Iraq felt like egg on the faces of those who advocated it? If there was reason, he never feared the consequences of standing in for it. If there was anybody who could expose the farce of portraying the divine origins of morals and ethics, it was he – see this debate with the Rev. Al Sharpton for example, where Sharpton was introduced (to a smattering of applause) as being ordained a minister when you are 9; much to Hitchens’ glee for he remarked “What does it say about the seriousness of religion if you can be ordained a minister when you are 9?” – an exchange used for the “religious slap” by Bill Maher in Religiulous to much amusement and some theatrics.

For those who are not yet introduced to him, I would much recommend “God is not great” or for shorter introduction to his literary style, his review “Newtopia”, expectedly a scathing critique of a book by Newt Gingrich. Or the God debate with Dinesh D’Souza, one of his more peaceful ones or perhaps for his debate with the mathematician Alister McGrath, or his more animated one with Rabi Boteach. And among the numerous well-written remembrances on his life, the unmissable ones are the ones by Graydon Carter in Vanity Fair and by Ian McEwan on ‘the consummate writer, the brilliant friend’. And not to miss Dawkins’ interview of Hitchens quite recently and here’s the preview.

And here is an entertaining debate he had with Turek (would encourage scrolling directly to 70 minutes for to avoid permanent damage to your sense of sensibility). Definitely not one of the best adversaries that Hitchens has met in a debate, but clearly one of the more entertaining ones.

Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist? from Andrew Ketchum on Vimeo.

Frank Turek, co-author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist,” and Christopher Hitchens, author of “god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” met at VCU in Richmond, VA to debate the subject, “Does God Exist?”

Superb novel, but perhaps needs at least some understanding of global politicking and/or African politics and neo-colonial narratives – at least if the reader is informed a bit on these, s/he will love the book. Intense and like many of le carres, fast-paced. Yet differs from most of his other spy thrillers in the fact that it delves much more into few characters and their personal lives.

It reads almost like a biography of Bruno Salvador, half Congolese boy (other half Irish) who “somehow” ends up in London. His early life in war-torn Kivu in Eastern Congo, his later life in a mission school and still later as an interpretor employed by various services in London presents interesting details of growing up African-British in London. His apparently “superficial” metro marriage and his later passionate affair with a Congolese nurse and of course the central theme of the story – key political actors from international organisations, governments and Congolese politicians and the facade of development that they weave through politicking and his role as an “interpretor” weaved into intricate details of the lives of these global actors makes for a superb insights into these aspects.

It’s amazing as to how imperceptibly, at least three independent stories are interwoven into one novel – almost like a good slow-cooked meal with the ingredients coming together nearly inseparable to their original character!

Above review based on my review on goodreads.

Beginning from early Egyptian references of tumours in the breast that are choicelessly left untouched to the golden era of surgery when the scalpel was wieleded as a panacea for any bodily growth, the book presents a few thousand years of journey towards our romance with the miracles of modern medicine and the eventual disappointment that was to come after.

Doctors often do not write, canning their life experiences into a pressure cooker that is often let off on their wives or their families. If and when they choose to let the steam out as literature (and assuming that they have what it takes), the product is often wonderful. Highly recommended for doctors, highly recommended for patients (past, present and future) and the only reason not to read it would be if it is not published in a language you can read.

I was myself reminded of a photo I took from Crossword, where his oft-quoted book on famines “Everybody loves a good drought” was (perhaps?) inadvertantly placed under “Indian Fiction”, when he spoke about the time when he was invited to talk on “Indian fiction” on one of his foreign trips which he accepted for he was an authority on the Government documents.

Sainath started in earnest with the rise in petrol prices and deftly manoevered that to a paragraph he read out from a few sheets of scribbled stuff he had brought to the podium. He reassured us that this is not what he often does – read a prepared text. It was from the budget speech of 24th July 1991, when the present prime minister, Manmohan Singh was the finance minister. We got to know this only later though because the context around which “liberalisation” was brought in still exists today….at least for most of rural India. Sainath reminded us that line “…Budgetary subsidies, with questionable social and economic impact, have been allowed to grow to an alarming extent”. Since then, how many such “subsides” have had great impacts?

It appears that such “subsidies” are available for all to see as an inconspicuous annexure to all budgets – “Statement of Revenue foregone” – here it is for 2009-10. This document lists the special tax exemptions and concessions given to individuals and corporates and calculates the revenue ‘lost’ or foregone by the central government as a result of these. The figure is somewhere near 35,000 crore rupees – Sainath reminded us that this is around the money it takes to run the entire NREGA programme for a year – yes, that is what was “foregone” – the new word for corporate subsidy which has now replaced those budgetary subsidies of pre-90s days which had questionable social impact! This foregone revenue is climbing year after year and one of its greatest components has been the custom subsidies. And for those of us who were wondering if our good government was keeping the interests of many of us in mind while it was perhaps waiving off taxes on essential drugs, here is  the list – precious stones and jewellery, mineral fuels and oils, animal or vegetable fats, machinery and electrical machinery. The first one in this list – a Rs 48,798 crore exemption on customs duty for imported jewellery in one year alone – nearly the size of our entire annual food subsidy all for the great drain robbery.

Indian has more billionaires than all Scandinavian countries put together! And this is not merely from the richest cities, we were told. Sainath described those nice weddings in rural India particularly those of Gadkari’s son held in Vidarbha – that place where farmers are killing themselves for debt. Seems a bit exaggerated right – why would farmers kill themselves in a place where 2,00,000 people attended the wedding and aircrafts replaced the usual tractors and trucks for ferrying wedding guests. And who says a village cannot get 24-hour power. No load shedding during gadkari wedding! And no party-specificity with such rich rural weddings – so is the case, Sainath reminded us of the weddings of several others from all parties. India was so shining in these areas, that it was mostly blinding for many who didnt catch the irony. So much so that mass weddings with food were understandably the best social programme in Vidarbha for a long time.

The next 45 minutes was a series of anecdoetes from the 80s and 90s. The wisdom and experience of covering real India for decades was showing – he discussed the problem of “footloose migration” – those people for example from Orissa and Jharkhand who work for a few months in Hyderabad and later in Mumbai who do not get picked up by any census. We heard about that wonderful scheme that was pooh-poohed when launched – the midday meal scheme. The farmers rally or the strike at Maruthi’s Manesar plant for better working conditions that mainstream media took so late to cover. And of course, how many “luminaries” have rubbished all this tripe about farmers’ suicides and have proven it to us by legally deleting famine from their vocabulary through a parliamentary act! More followed on the food security bill.

All in all, it was a brilliant display of wisdom, erudition, spontaneity and a sense of conscience that Sainath demonstrates. He stands today as a conscience for several self-aggrandised and charismatic civil society who forget that it takes more than values and integrity to build a country. Describing himself as a member of the “un”civil society, Sainath repeated his thoughts on the Jan Lokpal Bill from that Berkeley lecture and gave tips on feeding our billionaires. 

And for those who would rather listen to Sainath himself and trust me the talk was one of his best  (the recording is not!) – see http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2047439/sainath/data-2011-9-16-19-05-15.3gp and http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2047439/sainath/data-2011-9-16-19-59-12.3gp (Thanks to Anush)

See also

• Indian media – politically free, prisoners of profit
• Three weddings and a funeral
• Reception after reception for Gadkari’s son
• Revenue foregone, but not forgiven
• Corporate socialism’s 2G orgy and all his other articles archived on India Together

Alfred Alcock, the physician-naturalist who was instrumental in the creation of the Zoological Survey of India

and research leading to the advancement in our knowledge of various aspects of exceptionally rich life of the erstwhile British Indian Empire” (Emphasis mine). Alfred William Alcock was a British physician-naturalist, a common breed in those colonial days when doctors were still excited about working in “difficult” and remote areas and doubled as explorers, naturalists and prolific writers without any of those “rural area incentives” under the present-day National Rural Health Mission that miserably fail to entice doctors to work even in small towns, let alone remote areas. Those were days when being a doctor in the service of the “empire” was still a reputed member of the “civil service” – a cadre of the service was designated the Indian Medical Service with illustrious doctors such as Ronald Ross; a cadre undone ever since. Alcock turned out to be a prolific writer, traveller, doctor and a scientist. He worked in many parts of the country ranging from the North-west Frontier Province in today’s Af-Pak region and as a Surgeon-naturalist on the Indian Marine Survey. His survey results are in 17 volumes and he also wrote an 8 volume narrative of his experience in Indian seas as “A naturalist in Indian seas”. 

Like many other doctors who left their medicine behind to pursue natural history, Alcock in the course of time found himself superintending the Indian Museum in Calcutta when one day in 1903 he was ordered by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon to “to vacate the gallery of Fishes at a moment’s notice.” His protestations and support from trustees of the museum prevented the damage to the fish and other collections. Considering such experiences and the wealth of knowledge to be gained by his and future generations, in a letter that was apparently taken seriously by the British administration, he urged for the creation of the Zoological Survey of India. He wrote “…zoology is…a branch of pure science pregnant with human interest, important to the state in matters of education, in matters agricultural and veterinary, and in the vital matter of public health. He suggested the establishment of an Indian Zoological Survey with a museum and laboratory administered by zoologists along the lines of the Geological and Botanical Surveys.”

I can’t but miss the irony. Today the website of ZSI boldly proclaims that it “..has maintained its primary objectives unchanged from its inception”. Apparently, this is true – for none of their collections are accessible to researchers, let alone lay people. While the 5-odd million specimens sitting at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian) far away at Washington DC are indexed and searchable online through a simple search our own “premier organisation” wrote to me in bold letters in their RTI response that the details of the 41,291 bird specimens that they hold cannot be shared with me

because “..some of the registers are old and fragile”.

The ZSI holds some very important and heritage collections – the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and the erstwhile Indian Museum were inherited by them. In addition to this, several other type specimens of extinct and extant species are held at ZSI – albeit in secret. The sheer apathy of the institution in making information available is evident in its website – a type-specimen of terrible design conspiring with lack of information to make the user experience as unproductive as an application under RTI.

And reform does not come easy either. When our maverick minister with the coolest haircut in the cabinet tried to shave off a bit of the apathy through structural reform of the ZSI, the bureaucratic machinery swung into action to scuttle all such moves. Although thorough evaluations have proposed specific suggestions and new organisation structures and mandates, nothing has come even two years after the most recent task force report. Shyamal captures this wonderfully in his essay “Tax-payer funded science in India” – where the mere apathy and lack of access to public collections and repositories hinders research. It is not for lack of a secure job, poor infrastructure, lacking mandate or unavailable data that organisations like ZSI are not producing. It appears to be sheer apathy that our premier institutions can get away with such responses under Right to Information Act. It is another matter that I never needed to establish that I have a right as a citizen to ask for such basic details of heritage collections for which this nearly 100-year old body has been established!

This is of course merely a rant before I send off the first appeal. I am not the one to accept “old and fragile records” as an excuse for not making available details of our heritage collections on the internet or through RTI. Perhaps, a letter also to the “Panel on scientific data of public interest”?

—

* Update: Another RTI filed with yet another premier institute, the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. Lot more data will be out in the open if this works.

* Thanks to Shyamal and Kullu.

* Download my RTI application and the response from ZSI. RTI filed with ease through RTI nation

The first of its kind event, the First Global Symposium on health systems research organized by WHO sought to focus on "science to accelerate universal health coverage"

The setting? The official dinner of the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research organized at the Montreux Casino. A photo of the dying TB patient formed the background for 20 minutes of a talk on “Why Health Systems Fail” by Atul Gawande, a surgeon and writer, to an audience obviously more interested in the wining and dining and, of course, the party that followed.

November 16 to 19 of 2010 saw the global public health giants gather in Montreux, Switzerland, for the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research under the auspices of the World Health Organization and partners. Some of us Emerging Voices from the Global South (52 of us from 29 countries) got a unique chance to be a part of this experience by getting selected through an essay competition organized by the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp.

However, for us it was a stark lesson in the “dichotomy” in practice. On the one hand, we hear all the time about “gross injustices in the way globalization takes place” and 20-40 percent inefficiencies and waste; on the other hand, we clearly have “wasteful spending” and a “culture of entitlements” to these perks and privileges among international health technocrats themselves. We talk about the need to send the right message and then hold such global events far away from the settings being discussed, with fee structures that exclude many of the very people affected. How can well-meaning people in global health maintain that we need to organize structural solidarity and transfers for health via multilateral mechanisms, when many of these organizations waste resources at the same time?

What Message Are We Sending?

We are by no means shifting blame. A portion of it rests squarely and surely on our shoulders as well, for we were very much a part of this particular event. However, one has to agree that there is something odd in talking about “reaching the marginalized” and “those who cannot afford health care” at an “official” symposium dinner in a casino. After all, an official event organized by WHO and partners sends a strong message. What message did this particular event convey? Is it an echo of this timeless verse from ‘The Development Set’ penned by Ross Coggins?

We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with open mouth.

Perhaps, we should revisit the purposes of a conference:  sharing knowledge, networking and building collaborations. Of course the setting, dinners and gala events are all important to achieve these goals, but at what costs? Lot of networking at venues like these happens for reasons of fundraising. Sometimes, fundraising for research and pet projects becomes more important than the proclaimed overall goal: “Universal Coverage.” From that point of view, the casino event was certainly very appropriate, more along the lines of “meet the President” fund-raising dinners in the United States.

This also brought into stark contrast the World Health Report 2010, which for the first time stressed that, for decades to come, many low-income countries from Sub-Saharan Africa will need external financing support to help them on the path towards universal coverage (as they can’t do it themselves). We are essentially talking about 150 million victims of catastrophic health expenditure. Do we have the right to dishonor them or our cause by acting so callously?

As far as the WHO is concerned, we have to admit that this event was probably a bit atypical, but this double culture we are referring to seems all too obvious in many international organizations. “The Lords of Poverty,” whether multilateral or bilateral, transfer very large sums of money, which should ideally make them more accountable to the public and transparent in their dealings. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The allocation of official aid follows a set agenda and its rationale has been likened to the need for champagne: “In success you deserve it, in failure you need it.”

Are Cutbacks Only For Common People?

Incidentally, a similar paradox exists with respect to the climate challenge: there are still far too many “happy fliers” among the global health big shots, in spite of the fact that climate change could turn out to be the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. Cost cutting and limiting carbon footprints have become international buzz words, but in practice the responsibility seems to rest solely on the shoulders of common people.

Maybe, it is time to stop being such hypocrites. No matter the reality, many look up to the WHO as the face of global health and the institution that should play a key role in global health governance. Lead by example, even in the face of current adversities. That is the least we expect.

Wonderful biographical details of Omar Torrijos and incidental mentions of Graham Greene during his Panamanian romance. Drawing me now to Greene’s The story of an involvement.