Vinod Dua get a pass

The Sedition law is clear: The Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code states: “Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Government established by law in India shall be punished…” Did the Journalist’s several outbursts on the air and in print attracts the IPC 124A? He did, for sure! But the Supreme Court Bench of Justices UU Lalit and Vineet Saran (who are the final authority, not infallible angels!) rules now that “every journalist is entitled to the protection under the Kedar Nath Singh judgment(which defined the ambit of the offense of sedition under Section 124A IPC, quoting an earlier (1962) judgment of the SC -Kedar Nath Singh vs the State of Bihar) which read down Section 124A IPC and held that the application of the provision should be limited to "acts involving intention or tendency to create disorder or disturbance of law and order; or incitement to violence." How would their Lordships measure the “intension” or “tendency”? I suppose they would wait for the results when the executive will find it difficult, as well as expensive to contain the disorder, rebellion or riots!

I think these days one can notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in the Courtroom; certain judicial arrogance to thwart the executive for the fun of it, encroaching on even the legislative prerogative of people’s representatives without going into the Constitutional provisions of judicial powers and the separation of powers between the legislature, executive, and the judiciary!

Free Speech, works only if nobody gets a waiver. The Courts have often sided with the Left-liberal ecosystem stretching their definition of FoE to sedition have no moral standing in denying others the freedom to express their patriotic feelings!

The Supreme Court’s attitude n Vinod Dua case shows that it would rather jeopardize the safety of and security of India than the liberty of those of the wo/men who continuously spread canards against the legally established Government of India and the sneering disrespect for legal authority and democratic processes. The Judges of the highest Court ignores the fact that newspapers and news tv channels are the most important sources of news for the public. If they resort to freely disbursing fake news and disruptive ideologies to attack the elected government spread disaffection, and destroy the unity and integrity of the government, eventually the peace of the realm is destroyed, and the people suffer; the nation suffers!

The case also exhibits the limitless judicial arrogance in rejecting the plea to direct the State Governments to constitute preliminary inquiry before FIRs are registered against “senior journalists” (hierarchy!) observing that it “would amount to encroachment upon the field reserved for the legislature”. Look who’s talking! Precisely in this context, I would like to introduce that strange phenomenon, a former Supreme Court Judge and former Chairman for the Press Council of India, Justice Markandey Katju! He has announced that he would depose as a witness for absconding diamond merchant Nirav Modi, prime accused along with his uncle Mehul Choksi in the INR 14,000 crores ($2 billion) Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam. This paragon of all judicial knowledge and human virtues of head and hear hs emphatically said that he would not be commenting on the merits of the case; but   would only say that his client ‘Nirav’ would not get JUSTICE in India. I dare say if Vinod Dua gets a pass, Nirav Modi also should! He only stole some money. Corrupting the minds of people with pathetically negative, inaccurate, and unreliable, and fake stories in an orgy of schadenfreude and hypocrisy, belying the trust in ‘independent’ media, is far worse than that!  

 

 

 

 

Who wants to save Lakshadweep?

I was initially amused to see a campaign to ‘save Lakshadweep’! It came to my notice when a young and popular actor in Malayalam movies gave the first shot with a letter on Facebook and on Twitter. He was against the new developments planned by the Lakshadweep administration because it would “destroy the local culture”! I knew that one of his movies was shot there and when the Island’s 96% Muslim population’s ‘leaders’ opposed it, he approached the Minister of State in MEA who is from Kerala, and sought help to have the movie shot there. Afterward, he gave a Television interview, regretting the state of affairs in that heavenly place- lack of any decent infrastructure in a beautiful place with such a great tourism potential, lack of hotels, lack of restaurants, not a single movie theatre there...

My amusement became consternation when the entire House of People’s Representatives in Kerala passed a Resolution seeking recall of Lakshadweep Administrator Praful Khoda Patel and requesting the immediate intervention of the Centre “to protect the lives and the livelihood of the islanders”! That was indeed a long leap from the interest in protecting “local culture”! Not that I am alarmed by the possibility of a Kerala Assembly Resolution doing anything significant enough to hurt Lakshadeep or its administrator engaged in a lot of significant work for the Holistic Development of Islands Program under the Island Development Agency constituted by the Union Government on 1st June 2017 for the development of islands. (The history of Kerala Assembly Resolutions  tell us what wasteful exercises they have been in the past – in 2008 against George W Bush; in 2009 asking for the release of terror-accused Madhani; in 2013 against Iaraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; in 2016 against Demonetisation; and in 2019 demanding scrapping of an Act of Parliament – the CAA!)

For the first time in the country, under the guidance of IDA, an initiative of sustainable development in the identified Islands within scientifically assessed carrying capacity has been taken up. These development plans have a focus on the creation of jobs for the islanders through tourism promotion as well as the export of seafood and coconut-based products made in the Islands. They have been prepared for 16 islands in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and 10 in Lakshadweep aiming at sustainable development in the identified Islands within scientifically assessed carrying capacity. The first phase has taken up five islands of Lakshadweep and in four islands of Andaman & Nicobar. The second phase of IDA programs will focus on suitable areas in 12 more islands of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and 5 islands in Lakshadweep have been covered.

Some of these development programs have brought about administrative reforms involving changes from the past ways ‘of doing things'. It had obviously hurt certain vested interests in landholding and business operations. They have raised the issue of ‘culture’ first, and now are expanding the concern to other areas such as “life and livelihood”! The Lakshadweep Collector Asker Ali IAS had given a press conference in Cochin a few days back explaining how the administrative reforms and unprecedented development efforts led by the Administrator Praful Khoda Patel were subjected to a ‘misleading campaign’. Though some 500Km from the shores of Kerla, many of us have contacts with the people of the Islands where they have 4G mobile connections of BSNL and AIRTEL. We know there is no tension on the Islands, and that the entire campaign does not represent the sentiments of the people. The administration is proactively considering certain reforms for the larger public interest of the people of Lakshadweep. But since almost 95 percent of the 80000 or so Islanders belong to the Muslim Community, a communal color is being given to work up their sentiments.

For India, this group of Islands is like Macao for China, Bali for Indonesia, or Phuket for Thailand, an unbelievably beautiful place that can be made a tourism hub with better tourist inflow than the Maldives! More importantly, with the threat of China looming large over India, with our hostile neighbor’s activities in Sri Lanka, the geographic position of this island offers the Indian Navy a better outreach in terms of naval patrolling and surveillance across the Western Indian Ocean. The strategic location of Lakshadweep islands, an archipelago in the Arabian sea, 200 to 440 km off the southwestern Malabar coast of India has to be stressed. The Lakshadweep consists of 36 islands. But currently, there are 35 islands, as one island is submerged in water due to sea erosion. The islands form the smallest union territory of India and their total surface area is only 32 km. It is a Union Territory without its own legislature, but with a single Member of Parliament.

Strategically these islands are of immense importance to India. The spread of these islands has bestowed upon India 20,000 sq. km. of territorial waters and approximately 400,000 sq. km. of Exclusive Economic Zone. But what should be rattling the Indian Defence Ministry is the recent Chinese ingress into Sri Lanka. China has acquired a controlling stake in the Hambantota Port Project, and the Colombo Port City special economic zone. Historically China had conducted much of the trade with the Arabs using Calicut port as a base. The Chinese take pride in their History, except for the period of the Opium Wars, when the combined British-Indian forces devastated them using the might of the Opium poppy plant. The constantly expanding Chinese footprint in Sri Lanka and Maldives is deeply inspired by History. President Xi Jinping harbors grandiose ambitions of extending the Chinese territory far and wide, unopposed by any nation. He is known to be planning a big offensive naval arc, extending from the Bay of Bengal-Indian Ocean-Arabian sea. India has a lot of homework to do. But, what needs immediate attention is to trace the drug-recipient groups operating in Lakshadweep.

Dr G Shreekumar Menon, IRS, (Rtd) PhD (Narcotics) is Former Director-General, National Academy of Customs Indirect Taxes and Narcotics, & Multi-Disciplinary School Of Economic Intelligence India has revealed in detail how the drug trail fortunately established by Indian Coast Guards as well as Customs point to a well-planned strategy to destabilize India’s security using the Lakshadweep Archipelago. The value of the drugs seized just during the period November 2020 to March 31st 2021 is a whopping Rs.5000 crores! Compare this figure with the annual Budget allocation for 2021-22 for Lakshadweep which is Rs.1349.71 crores. Almost three times the annual budget is the value of drug trafficking for a period of just 5 months. Within a limited surface area of around 32 km, the drug trafficking turnover is around Rs.5000 crores. Add to this the value and quantum of firearms seized; everything adds up to an astronomical figure. With this kind of hush-hush money being generated, Hawala and money laundering should also be happening on a large scale.  The hitherto cocooned archipelago is suddenly in the spotlight, as its dark underbelly is exposed. No wonder that an orchestrated campaign has been quickly set in motion to ‘save Lakshadweep’. Twitter has also chipped in with ‘Let India Breathe’ campaign, critical about the development plans for the island. There is no problem if Maldives, Seychelles, Bali islands are developed to attract tourists, but Lakshadweep embarking on tourist development activities is to be vehemently opposed. Mercifully, speculation is also rife in some sections of the media that this instantly organized campaign is a red herring – meant to deflect attention from the sheer magnitude of the drugs and guns seizure.

The threatening, new Chinese presence is barely 290 km from the southernmost tip of the Indian peninsula – Kanya Kumari, and we hear the news of this massive drugs and guns trafficking into Lakshadw As such, it can be used to great advantage to enhance the IN's power-projection capabilities. There have been several instances of our Coast Guard capturing boats with contraband heroin. The latest was with 300Kg heroin worth Rs.3000 crore in the international market and 5 AK47 assault rifles and 1000 round live ammunition! In this context, the Lakshadweep Archipelago has become more important for the Government of India which is considering along with the Southern Naval Command in Kochi, could be converted into a Tri-Command facility.

Dr. Shreekumar Menon sees a clear geographical shift in the drug trafficking route into India. Sri Lankan boats ferrying drugs and guns into remote Lakshadweep is going to be a great challenge for Indian enforcement agencies. The greater challenge will be to trace how these drugs and guns have possibly found their way into the Indian mainland, and how much of this bounty has bee received by Organized Crime Groups, and how much the Drug Trafficking Organizations have participated in these scary deals. More importantly, how much money has been generated, and has been unobtrusively integrated into the nation’s financial system? According to Dr.Shreekumar Menon, to investigate and unravel this transnational crime, identify, disrupt, and dismantle the drug traffickers, arms traffickers, and money launderers, India will have to employ an intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Indian Coast Guard has become the front-line defense of our nation in this onerous task.

Those who have any misgivings about the fearful scenario painted above may look into what happened to a small archipelagic state in the Indian Ocean, comprising of 1192 islands endowed with similarly exquisite natural beauty, and a tourists' paradise in 1988 when coup d'état attempt was made by a group of Maldivians led by businessman Abdullah Luthufi and assisted by armed mercenaries of a Tamil secessionist organization from Sri Lanka PLOTE, the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam, to overthrow the government in the island republic ruled by then President Gayoom. At the request of President Gayoom, India militarily intervened in a swift ‘Operation Cactus’ with India Naval Ships also helping the Indian Army para brigade that landed at the airport on Hulule island, adjacent to Male Harbor. The cou leaders had taken hostages that included a Maldivian cabinet minister and his Swiss mother-in-law, in a hijacked ship. RajivG was the PM then and President Gayoom had personally requested that the rebels be captured and brought back to Male to face trial. Indian defense forces achieved that fairly difficult task and could report “Hostages rescued safely and rebels captured” almost 1000Km from Indian mainland! If the Government of India India waits long enough, it could be an operation against a mighty power, China which has a navy with a fleet strength of 777 with 2 aircraft carriers, 74 submarines, 36 destroyers, 52 frigates, 50 corvettes, 29 mine warfare ships and 220 coastal patrol ships, against India’s fleet strength of 285 including 1 aircraft carrier, 16 submarines, 10 destroyers, 13 frigates, 19 corvettes, 3 mine warfare ships and 139 coastal patrol ships. The Air Forces and Armies are equally mismatched.

The Government of India has for the first time since Independence showing greater interest in the overall development of Lakshadweep mainly for the reasons given above. Being a part of India it is also necessary not to keep this Archipelago as a museum-piece, but to bring into the mainstream of the national political, economic and cultural life as an integral part of India; offering its people better living standards, and a better future.

One criticism is about the proposal to bring change in panchayat regulation not allowing people with more than two children to participate in the election, - a move to push for family planning and to empower women in the Islands, offering them 50% seats. The ‘two children rule’ will not apply to people who already have more than two children!

Another contentious reform is the draft Lakshadweep Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Regulation 2021, which is opposed, questioning why such a law should be implemented in a place that is known for some of the lowest crime rates in the country! The Collector clarifies that such a law is being implemented considering the ‘future’ of Lakshadweep! “Till now, Lakshadweep is a peaceful place. But in the next 10 years, the situation may worsen, considering emerging conditions” clarified the Collector! It is worth remembering that there have been 40 drug-related cases on the islands during the last two years!

The move to ban beef in the islands through the draft law in the name of ‘animal preservation’ which will ban slaughter, transportation, and selling or buying beef products is taken up as a matter of life and death! This is a place where they had rejected the setting up of a statue of the Father of the Nation, and you expect his idea of anti-cow slaughter written into the Constitution of India as a Directive Principle to be accepted without any opposition? Fish is the staple food of the people in the Islands. The soil appears to be infertile for growing vegetables and fruits. Import of more vegetables and fruits from other Indian shores is considered more important than bringing beef. The government’s introduction of Amul milk and milk product sale outlets are also opposed God knows why!

I believe there are no liquor bars in Lakshadweep (illegal liquor is available for Rs.3000plus per bottle according to my information), and two bar-attached restaurants are considered in the interest of tourism. Yet another contentious draft proposal is the Lakshadweep Development Authority Act which aims to widen roads, map, and earmark zones for construction, mining, commercial or residential activity, among other things. It also allows for authorities to evict encroachers on the selected land. Vested interests are raising the issue of Lakshadweep being an ecologically sensitive area to oppose such developments.

There is an English expression: ”laying on with a trowel and piling up thick” the propagandists out to “Save Lakshadweep” are adding one more allegation, that the Covid-19 management in the Centrally administered territory is far from satisfactory. Those who raise this are from a state which is on top of the chart in infections, positivity, and death statistics and furious manipulations are on to bring them down! In the ‘first wave’ of the pandemic in 2020, Lakshadweep Islands had zero COVID-19 cases, which experts credited to strict quarantine measures and testing. Meanwhile, since the supplies come mostly from Kerala and Karnataka (Mangalore port) the pandemic traveled to the islands and 26 people have died of COVID-19, but 23 of them from co-morbidities. They have a strict Standard Operating Procedure that bars easy entry of people to the island now. As in the case of people with serious ailments, COVID-19 patients requiring emergency treatment are routinely air evacuated and admitted to INHS Sanjivani, the Naval hospital at Kochi. Navy ships under Southern Naval Command are operating mission ‘Oxygen Express’ rendering support to Lakshadweep Administration. The Centre is building two Oxygen plants in the Islands to make them self-sufficient.

The last point is the genesis of the entire campaign. The Opposition has been jumping from one non-issue to another - a surfeit of political posturing and scaremongering about the CAA, then the Farm Laws, and having exhausted their energies in the earlier ones, using the Muslim vote bank for a politics of hatred and division is back here in the far-off archipelago. Unable to defeat Modi fair and square at the ballot box, they are out to bullshit about him after having wound up far below the electoral threshold in most parts of the country. The important rallying point against Modi in the Lakshadweep is his former colleague in Gujarat as Home Minister of Gujarat when Modiji was the CM - Prafful Khoda Patel, calling him as "anti-people" and demanding an immediate withdrawal of the "draconian and authoritarian" orders drafted by him! His offense? Trying to destroy (!) Lakshadweep’s pristine natural beauty and its unique confluence of cultures… Who makes the allegation, an intellectually-challenged person whose family had spent 10 days there with pork, and a variety of other meat and liquor flowing, when his father then Prime Minister of India spent a vacation there with 1700 servants and other retinues, 20 private guests including unknown foreign nationals other than his wife’s family, and an Indian Navy’s only Aircraft Carrier, 7 escort ships, aircraft, boats spending hundreds of crores per day at the cost of the country! The Island's were blocked for other people, including its occupants considering their security!

Accusations that Modi Government has been working against the “indigenous culture” of Lakshadweep have flown freely, from Islamic fundamentalists,  seasoned Congress and Left politicians and Kerala ministers to people wading into the issue for the first time on social media. I would argue that the views expressed by a cabal of tuppenny actors, sundry politicians with their own axes to grind, the front organizations led by Leftist “intellectuals”, and the ‘performing artists’ of a sold media are least important, and relevant in the context of all I have described above. In fact, their views are cringe-worthy. I feel irrepressible anger remembering the fact that these conscientiously awakened intelligent persons who got worked up over the ‘culture” of Lakshadweep islanders never passed any resolution or wrote any articles or poems about the 500000 Hindu Pundits were driven away from Kashmir just for being Hindus and not fitting in the cultural particularity of the Muslims majority there; or about the gruesome massacre of the 4000-plus Sikhs in 1984... These are the very same  people seen deliberately and publicly inciting Muslim Indians to violence over the CAA exploiting sensitive unwarranted Muslim sentiment about the authenticity of their citizenship! They had spawned vaccine hesitancy first by raising doubts regarding the efficacy of vaccines made in India calling it Modi Vaccine. They were also doing flip-flops on the vaccination drive, demanding autonomy for states when the vaccination drive was centralized and when the Centre decentralized the process, they demanded centralized procurement of vaccines! I am only worried about the divisive, polarizing tone of the rhetoric spewn out on this issue cleaving a widening gulf between Hindus and Muslims, not between the mainland and the islands...

 

THE OXYGEN IMBROGLIO

Shortages of Oxygen has been a hot topic in India during the last several weeks. It started with a few Opposition-run State Governments blaming that India had exported the largest quantity of Oxygen from the country when the requirement was mounting in the country due to the Covid-10 pandemic. The Government and Industry clarified that it was Industrial oxygen that was exported and not medical oxygen. The Union Government pointed out that earlier this year, the PM-CARES Fund had allocated Rs 201.58 crores for the installation of an additional 162 PSA Medical Oxygen Generation Plants inside public health facilities and many states had not done the job. This is the context of this blog.

The mainstay of treatment for patients with COVID-19 is ‘supportive care’. Rather than treating the underlying viral infection, supportive care aims to maintain the function of the body’s vital organs to keep the individual alive while the disease progresses and eventually resolves. Severe bilateral pneumonia is the main feature of severe COVID-19. Supplemental oxygen is a first essential step for the treatment of severe COVID-19 patients with hypoxemia and should be a primary focus. Infected and damaged lungs are less effective at allowing oxygen to pass from the environment to the bloodstream.

The main reason for being admitted to a hospital with COVID-19 is to receive supplemental oxygen, to increase the amount of oxygen in the lungs and blood, which will be sufficient treatment before recovery in most cases. This can be administered in a number of ways, including into the nose using plastic tubing, or via a loose-fitting face mask: 1) Nasal cannula-based oxygen therapy for those with 2-5 litre requirement of oxygen per minute. 2) Mask-based for those with 6-15 litre requirement. 3) High-frequency nasal cannula oxygen therapy for those with 15-50 litres and ventilator support above that. AIIMS director Randeep Guleria said that ’20 percent of the patients need oxygen therapy and five percent need ventilation.

Medical experts were increasingly preferring non-invasive oxygen therapy over ventilation as doubts over the effectiveness of ventilator increased after an overwhelming majority of Covid-19 patients on the ventilator were dying in India and abroad. It was thought that ventilators were worsening the lung damage caused by Covid-19. Doctors have stopped using ventilators for management of COVID-19 (except very late) as early ventilation was said to increase the chances of death. Many people stay at home till late and approach hospitals for admission at a stage when oxygen demand is pretty high (five-six fold) as compared to the low flow stage. Late presentation (low presentation baseline oxygen saturation) can exponentially increase the risk of death. Hence medical community suggests early care and therapy (oxygen/steroid/heparin) in the pulmonary phase (90-95 percent saturation).

Cryogenic separation is most effective when any of the three criteria need to be met: high purity oxygen is required (>99.5%), high volumes of oxygen are required (≥10to the power of 2  tons of oxygen/day), or high-pressure oxygen is required. Cryogenic air separators take more than an hour to start up. Additionally, since cryogenics can produce such a high purity of oxygen, the waste nitrogen stream is of usable quality.

Pressure swing adsorbers (PSA) are a much newer technology as compared to cryogenic ASU. PSA devices are best suited for processes that do not require extremely high purities of oxygen (<95%). While PSAs can achieve as high as 99.9%, the cost associated with going above 99.5% in a PSA device rises tremendously. Furthermore, PSA devices are best suited for small volumes of oxygen production, typically on the order of 10 to the power of 1 ton/day. Since the output of oxygen is largely controlled by the bed size in the PSA systems, costs rise linearly when higher volumes of oxygen are required. PSA devices take only a few minutes for start-up.

Membrane Technology: Conventional membrane technology involves passing air over a membrane filter. The filter will allow fast gasses to pass and slow gasses will stay. Oxygen is considered a fast gas and nitrogen and argon are considered slow gasses. Varying levels of purity can be achieved by varying the time that the gas spends undergoing filtration. Previous membrane technology could only produce purity levels of less than 50%. But the recent The ion transport membrane (ITM) was developed by Air Products and Chemicals, in conjunction with the United States Department of Energy and Ceramatec can produce greater than 99% purity and high volume (equivalent to volumetric flow of cryogenic separation systems) Oxygen at much lower costs than cryogenic separation!

MEDICAL OXYGEN: The air we breathe is a mix of several gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen. The term ‘medical oxygen’ means high-purity oxygen, which is used for medical treatments and developed for use in the human body. Oxygen is also used in industries for combustion, oxidation, cutting, and chemical reactions. The difference is that purity levels of industrial oxygen are not appropriate for human use. There can be impurities, which can make people ill. Medical oxygen cylinders should also be free of contaminants.

Years ago, gas supply vendors typically maintained two separate storage facilities for oxygen: "welding or industrial or technical" (a non-USP, or illegal to sell for human consumption label) variety and gas intended for human use in respirators or medical procedures (a USP label). Since most gas supply vendors have decided that it is simply not cost-effective to store separate grades of medical gases, almost all oxygen sold in the US is a USP grade- the United States Pharmacopoeia- (meets USP requirements for human consumption). However, there are distinct differences in how the cylinders are filled. Most vendors in the US are now filling all cylinders with USP gas. If the vendor fill station operator sees that a cylinder is labeled as a medical or emergency oxygen cylinder, or intended for human respiration, then the cylinder is evacuated and filled with USP/Medical oxygen. But most welding or Industrial grade oxygen cylinders are filled with USP oxygen without an evacuation-between-fills step. Grade 4.5 oxygen is USP oxygen that has a purity greater than 99.995 % oxygen Grade 5 (or "five nines") oxygen is USP oxygen that is certified 99.999 % pure. It is sometimes called research grade.  This is the highest purity of oxygen manufactured in the US and is typically found only in top-end chemical research facilities. Its non-research use is associated with specialty welding of titanium and titanium alloys for the nuclear or aerospace industry.

It is heartening to note that the Government of India has taken up the responsibility of supplying Oxygen to the states, and have requested/instructed industries to chip in producing medical oxygen stopping the production of industrial oxygen to the minimum. The Prime Minister's Office has approved funds for the installation of 551 dedicated Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) Medical Oxygen Generation Plants in public health facilities in the country.  The Indian Railways have done a great job of running Oxygen Expresses delivering as on today 9^th May 4500 MT oxygen across the country.

Countries like the United States, Russia, Ireland, Thailand, France, Italy, Germany, have been contributing to India’s medical requirement by building oxygen plants, sending ventilators, oxygen concentrators, rapid testing kits, and medicines. The Oxygen imbroglio has almost come to an end!

 

 

 

COVID  VACCINATION – FEARS and OBJECTIONS

It is a common fear more than an actual complaint that people  suffer common side effects of COVID-19 vaccinations like fever, experience fatigue (tiredness) and headache, feel nauseous, in addition to pain or swelling in the arm where the shot was administered. But statistically, in trials, most people didn’t have side effects. A little over 50% didn’t experience any side effects as monitored by hospitals after the vaccination drive began all over the world. I am 74, and I didn’t have any side effects after the first or the second dose. The nurse who administered the vaccine injection asked everyone to rotate their arms after the shots. I too did it, and the next morning did some digging in the garden without feeling any discomfort.

There are people who feel that the side effects mean the vaccine is doing its job. When the vaccine enters the muscles, the cells start making a spike protein, which makes our body think our muscle cells are infected with the coronavirus, and it tries to fight off the simulated infection in the cells, causing some inflammation that people experience.

The cells that have replicated the COVID-19 spike protein (RNA) generate antibodies specific for SARS-CoV2 When our innate immune system locates an infection and attacks it. That’s what can cause sore arms, fevers or muscle aches. These symptoms reveal that your immune system has been activated! Data from each clinical trial show younger patients tend to have more systemic reactions than older patients do. That is because, as a person ages, the ability of his/her immune system to recognize and quickly create antibodies and aggressively attack the intruder (infection), starts to get weaker. But those who are vaccinated are protected whether or not they have developed side effects. That is, you don’t have to feel terrible to prove that you’re protected from COVID-19!

In Johnson & Johnson’s clinical trial, more than 60% of younger patients had systemic reactions compared to about 45% of patients over age 60. Pfizer and Moderna’s studies show similar numbers, but not as large of a difference. The number of reactions increases with the second shot. Data also shows more women having a reaction to the shot than men. Details regarding COVISHIELD and Covaxin are not available at the moment.

Fear and anxiety about the vaccines can also create a reaction by making our body release adrenaline. Some might confuse that feeling with vaccine response. Adrenaline rush may increase the heart rate, and lead to a feeling of the heart racing, and redirect blood toward the muscles and a change in temperature as a result of the blood redirection, sweating as a reaction to stress, and feeling lightheaded due to changes in blood and oxygen supply. No harm in any or all these, it may be noted!

WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER IS THAT THE REACTIONS ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO ACTUALLY GETTING SICK WITH COVID!

Caste-based Reservations

(Reply to a friend)

I have serious objection to the Reservation policy which on the giver’s side is a sop or lollypop not to upset the vote bank already created in the pre-Independence period and on the taker’s side mere entitlement psychology welling from the power of the block-votes.

Now let us look at those “right questions” the learned judges of the Supreme Court were expected to ask:

“When will caste-based discrimination come to an end? Why are the backward classes not represented in the higher positions of state services, including the judiciary? Why is reservation not being implemented in its letter and spirit? Why backlog vacancies of these classes are not filled in? What is the sanctity of economically weaker sections reservation when economic backwardness was not accepted as a stand-alone ground for providing reservation in Indra Sawhney (1992)? How can the Union government recruit directly to higher positions in civil services through lateral entry, bypassing the constitutional provisions? Why are public enterprises being privatized on such a large scale? Why is there no reservation in the private sector?”

These are notable for their shrillness just as much for their shallowness. The proponents of the caste-based reservation cannot swallow the ground reality that the poor Brahmin is as deprived as the poor Dalit. Likewise, there are no special difficulties for the poor Muslim or the poor Christian which the poor Hindu does not suffer. This is my view even as I agree that India does need welfare policies such as Reservations and quotas as there are millions in the bottom of the pyramid for not much fault of theirs. As Warren Buffett put it, they just did not win the ovarian lottery. So, affirmative action policies are needed.

I think a deprivation-based system should be applied for all reservations and the upper limit should be 50% and affirmative action such as good schooling, scholarships, financial growth, and hostels should be stepped up and eventually reservation should be gradually tapered off.

Now, though the caste system which is prevalent to date has been a fundamental part of Indian culture for time immemorial, I maintain after going through the literature on Caste system that it was the 1881 Census conducted by the British India Government which for the first time enumerated castes and arranged them in a hierarchy. To my knowledge India does not record a single caste war in its written history of 2000 years, or in its literature!

The philosophy of caste system had actually disappeared following the preaching of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Dayananda Saraswathi among others and only the morphology remained. As that too was crumbling, when the modern movements apparently rooted in progressive ideals have brought back the castes, (particularly recasting ‘Harijans’ as the oppressed classes-Dalits) into political toys through an attractive and addictive reverse discrimination. We now see clans and communities aspiring for ‘backward’ tag for reservations and other short-term benefits. These benefits have brought a special sense of competitive entitlement into the social system, making caste animosities deeper and more aggressive! “Jaathichoadippin” (ask for the caste) has come up as a slogan in the identity politics of recent years as against oft-quoted words of Shree Narayana Guru “Ask not, say not, think not caste”!

Unfortunately among the various identities an individual caries in India, the caste identity is the most potent one. On the positive side it facilitates group identity and helps in group activities. Many ignore its influence in business relationships in the Indian economy which is still predominantly “relationship-based”, not a “contract” or “value” based. It secures jobs and in many parts of India facilitates initial capital formation and credit for doing business and also risk mitigation. Caste elders consider failure a part of the process of learning and don’t frown upon it.

Reservations for the SC/ST categories was a Constitutional provision that was "purposefully discriminatory". In law, it is a form of affirmative action whereby a percentage of seats are reserved in the public sector units, union, and state civil services, union, and state government departments and in all public and private educational institutions, except in the religious/ linguistic minority edu­cational institutions, for the socially and educationally backward communities and the Scheduled Castes and Tribes who are inadequately represented in these services and institutions. Parliament routinely extended reservation for SC/ST fixed at 10 years first, without any free and fair revisions. Later, reservations were introduced for other sections as well.

MISUSE OF 9^th SCHEDULE: The original intent behind creating the ninth schedule was to ensure that land reforms were not thwarted by judicial pronouncements in favor of the right to property, which would only have benefited landlords. But thanks to the desire of politicians to do everything without the judiciary having the right to review bad laws, governments have not only put land laws in this schedule, but an entire bunch of laws, including one to overturn a Supreme Court-mandated 49 percent limit on the reservation. Some states of the Union like Rajasthan have implemented a 68% reservation that includes a 14% reservation for forward castes in services and education, and Tamil Nadu made it 69%. These Reservations pose a systemic risk and they benefit more often the better-off among the lower strata!

In the modern context this unique institution – caste-  has been in use for political mobilization. Those social reformists and social engineers who argued for a “casteless society” fell on the wayside. They have perhaps been helpful in reforming the caste system, but not in abolishing it. Interestingly, the one-man-one-vote system of representative democracy has led to the integration of many sub-castes into a larger cast identity. The best example is Nairs! The caste system in its present form has become therefore a valuable social capital that gives a cushion from the shocks in dealing with the larger society, and more so in the interaction with the State for families and individuals! Everywhere else in the world, the individual is alone in the society with his constitutional/legal rights! 

RSS remains a Hindu Organization Part-2

The stubborn obduracy of Christians and Muslims that those who do not belong to those faiths no longer have a place in God’s plan for humanity added to their questionable behavior regarding territorial loyalty creates an atmosphere of disunity and distrust of the most ominous quality! So expecting Muslims and Christians with their exceptionalism and exclusivity cannot be expected to join the mainstream that RSS wanted to represent! Have you noticed, a bit queer, isn’t it, two years after Partition, Muslim members of Constituent Assembly, who represented the Muslims who preferred to stay back in secular India, could raise vehement demands for a separate electorate and could successfully stall the proposal for a common civil code, think of the Muslim leadership of India then! Six decades after Partition, we want dialogue with Muslims; we want co-existence; we want to build bridges!

Islam demands a black-and-white separation of believers and non-believers, and the Prophet too wanted Muslims to separate themselves from the rest after he fled Mecca for Medina. It is little surprise that this kind of mental partitioning makes all Muslims living as minorities anywhere think they must separate themselves from the rest to retain their identity. Muslim youth avoid certain attitudes, standard language, clothes and some behaviours because they consider them part of Hindu way of life. They fear that adopting Hindu ways would be detrimental to their collective racial identity and solidarity. The behaviours and attitudes to be avoided included, for example, striving for high grades, talking properly, hanging around too many Hindu students, and participating in extracurricular activities that were populated by Hindus. And Hindu parents tended to have higher academic expectations for their kids. Some teachers and education administrators expect less of the Muslim students in terms of performance, even going so far as to de-emphasize the importance of academic achievments. Eventually there is a “learning gap” and communal politicians and civil rights leaders encourage Muslims to see themselves as victims.

What is that the Hindu majority of India expected to do under the above circumstances? No people with a self-respectful notion of national identity can carry within a disillusioned history of themselves, and therefore some embellishments, some glorification of the past etc. are essential strategy. This is the essence of a new national identity called Hindutva. Hindus, unlike Xians and Muslims don’t divide humanity into those chosen by God and those eternally damned! Hindu dharma requires regarding all as brothers and sisters. Vedas declare "Ekam sat. Vipraa: bahuda vadanti" - "Truth is One. The learned speak of That in so many ways". While it's probably impossible to avoid ever offending anyone, Hindus really don't want to gratuitously offend deeply held non-Hindu belief systems. Tolerance, a virtue seeing other peoples’ point of view has been degenerating into if not exactly self-hatred, certainly a form of cultural relativism in which the unique achievements of the Hindu civilization are devalued. We can’t accept it! We believe that the acid test of secularism Muslims/Christians have to take is this: will they be tolerant to the extent they accept other religious beliefs on an equal footing with their own? 

In a land which had extended its hospitality over millennia to people of every faith, only Muslims saw themselves as a people apart refused to become assimilated and repaid India’s welcome by tearing the country in two. What did Dr.Ambedkar, not very pleased with the Hindu religion thanks to the bitter fruits of the caste system himself, think of the situation as an architect of the Democratic Republic of India? “...I felt that it was only by partition that Hindus would not only be independent but free. If India and Pakistan had remained united in one state, Hindus, though independent, would have been at the mercy of the Muslims....”(Ambedkar- Thoughts On Linguistic States, 1955)

Were Hindus conquered, subjected to hatred proselytization and persecution because we were different human beings, lesser mortals? Or is our Hindutva a meaningless the distinction that deserves no commendation and attracts animus and violence as an inferior faith? Shouldn’t we stand together to defend ourselves, and our rights as Hindus, recalling that we were subjected to a thousand years of subjugation, disdain, exploitation, conversions, divisions because of our disunity?

Is an unpleasant divisive politics preferable to the Hindutva which tries to hold together a large number of castes and communities under its umbrella? Is promoting an identity politics predicated on historical victimization and the equality of result more important than the principle of equality before the law? History is civilizational memory. It’s a way of seeing, understanding, and rendering the world as well as other forms of knowledge. Without it, “or the stories memories are suspended in, we cannot say who we are or what we are…we cannot…even dwell in society.” But to make sense of all the purportedly dry and boring facts and dates that relate who and what we are, we need some organizational narrative, a structure within which “facts arrange themselves and thereby take on significance.” Hindus have those stories, a great tapestry of mythology, great literature! Most of Hindu mythology is full of traditional humanizing myths. If and when they are removed from our lives, nothing much is left. Remember, cultures/civilizations die when they cease to believe in themselves! Myths, whether Indian or Roman, belonging to the Hindu culture of Christian, are the collective historical conscience of the respective communities; their instructions to the future generations. Preserving the memory of historical events, codifying religious rituals, and at times dramatizing contemporary social conflicts in aesthetic forms as poems or parables, they do forge a collective identity.

Hindus have very little recorded, verifiable, factual history, but there is another one: culturally constructed and embodied in popular memory, told, retold over and over again. Hinduism places time and history as of secondary importance in the realm of the phenomenal world. Thus Mahabharata, Ramayana, Vedas, Upanishads, and all our scriptures are messages permeating across time and generations. Mahabharata and Ramayana are the foundational texts of Indian civilization. They are not mere mythologies: they are Itihāsas. An Itihāsa is a history that has overcome historicism: a history that has become critical and self-conscious. They have transformed high abstract philosophies of the Upanishads into aesthetically appealing literary work which has touched the hearts of millions of Indians and has further manifested as performing arts which have been lived and experienced by common people throughout Indian history. The people who wrote the Mahābhārata were profound intellects. India has produced some of the greatest philosophical thinkers known to humankind. It has produced works we are still grappling with. If a nation is a historical continuity bound by such inheritance and also a shared culture, India is one of the oldest nations with a continuous history of several thousand years.

In his Discovery of India Jawaharlal Nehru shows his fascination with this mysterious unity of India that is Bharat through the ages: “the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities”, “some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization” The Indian republic generally completed the metamorphosis from the artifact of colonial unification to a nation-state. The Indian nationalism or ‘Hindu nationalism’ if you will, mobilized the frustrations, emotions, affinities, and hatreds too attending the cultural humiliation of the encounters first with Islam (the Moguls) and Western Imperialism which devalued the Indian heritage. An overarching layer of common culture composed of the richly diverse symbols of Hindu Cosmology and history would perhaps help wipe out the cleavages of caste and community; provide a common ideology and a binding passion needed to unite a civilization and inspire it for progress.

Those who refuse to share this passion forces themselves out of the civilizational State; but not the administrative state as citizens. You have to accept that Hindutva is a heterogeneous movement and that most members reject the more extreme positions.   Hindus resent the idea that all other groups may advance their rights while only we - only the Hindus - may not. The RSS believes that Indians are united not only by a common past, and common heritage, but by a common and burning support and reverence for liberty, for pluralism, our commitment to our common future, and our common values, of inquiry. Religious identities and differences are not straightforwardly objective facts. It is a prior belief in separateness that leads one to construct narratives that exaggerate points of difference. According to the RSS world view, the attitude "separation is necessary for distinctiveness" could fairly serve as the tagline of an anti-national or anti-social ideology! The RSS stands athwart the “Left-liberal” secular narrative. It vouches for representative democracy, respect for all religions in public life, a responsible ethic of nationalism, and a duty-centric form of citizenship that encourages individuals to put the nation before themselves! Citizens in a democratic republic live in three planes: personal, social, and political. Freedom of worship exists at the personal level. Social traditions have to conform to the code of dos and don’ts defined legally. And the political role of the citizen emerges out of the concept of all Indians being part of the same nationhood. A moral idea like secularism appears too weak to bond disparate peoples together in a political union. Something denser and more tangible, like cultural identity, must be the glue that holds a nation together... building a public sphere constituted by a shared — often internally contested — moral language. It does not mean RSS is consciously keeping non-Hindus out of it. There were attempts to embrace all Hindus according to the RSS’ definition of Hindus into RSS. But they cannot be yet considered as moderately successful. This is the story of RSS so far!

Why RSS is a ‘Hindu organisation’?

The idea that RSS is not inclusive in the sense it keeps Muslims and Christians out is either a misunderstanding or mere liberal “virtue signalling”! Those who have studied history will know that while Veer Savarkar’s Hindu Maha Sabha and RSS more inclusive while the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP Hindu-centric).

Savrkar’s social philosophy had identified  that the Hindu society was bound by seven shackles (bandi): 1) Restrictions on touch (sparshabandi) of certain castes.2) Restrictions on inter-dining. (rotibandi) 3) Restrictions on inter-marriages (betibandi) 4) Restrictions on pursuing certain occupations (vyavasayabandi) 5) Restrictions on crossing the sea (sindhubandi) 6) Restrictions on rites sanctioned by the Vedas (vedoktabandi) 7) Restrictions on re-conversion (shuddhibandi)!

Savarkar was more against Christianity (obviously because its association with the British who came here with “a Bible in pocket and a gun in the other”) and wanted Hindus and Muslims to join the fight against the British. The founding of the All India Muslim League in 1906 and the British India government's creation of separate Muslim electorate under the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 was a catalyst for Hindu leaders coming together to create an organisation to protect the rights of the Hindu community members to form a political entity called the Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar wrote that “the conception of a Hindu Nation is in no way inconsistent with the development of a common Indian Nation, a united Hindustani State in which all sects and sections, races and religions, castes and creeds, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Anglo-Indians, etc., could be harmoniously welded together into a political State on terms of perfect equality”! The Hindu Mahasabha joined hands with the Muslim League and other parties to form governments, in certain provinces after the 1937 elections. Such coalition governments were formed in Sindh, NWFP, and Bengal. He was dissuaded from trying to continue this alliance because the Muslim League started showing its fangs by then. They went closer to the British, unlike sections of the Hindu Community. Gandhiji tried to forge a Hindu-Muslim alliance against the British later, even supporting the Khilafat movement and failed! Though the Hindu Mahasabha identified India as "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation), it broadly supported the Indian National Congress in its efforts to attain national independence. But HM criticised the Congress commitment to non-violence and secularism, as well as its efforts to integrate Muslims and engage in dialogue with the separatist All India Muslim League,(having tried it earlier and failed!) which the Mahasabha thought as appeasement. So, as a Hindu Mahasabha leader, Savarkar was in politics, and CPM leader, and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s father Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, a  jurist served as president of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha and was Burdwan MP of the party which Somnath won when his father expired in 1971! As in the case of RSS, Hindu Mahasabha was not a watertight compartment in India politics; many of its leaders joined Congress. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee started the Jan Sangh, which after the Janata Part experiment in 1977 became the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)!

RSS was founded on cultural nationalism and its Hindu “agenda” was about holding together a civilisational state, and give it the glory it deserved after centuries of alien rule. It is significant that name given was Rashtriya (National) Swayam Sevak (Voluntary) Sangh (Corps), not  ‘Hindu Swayam Sevak Sangh’. A civilisational-state doesn’t just represent an ethnic or linguistic community or a single religious community, but a unique civilisation distinct from others. It was a very conscious decision that Sangh will not be just a Hindu outfit. But didn’t Vincent Smith (Indologist and historian) write that the “unity underlying the obvious diversity of India may be summed up in the word ‘Hindu’”? Hindutva came into existence as an anti-imperialist construct answering the challenge posed by the modern world built on the concept of a nation-state. Proponents of this worldview naturally saw India as a nation, and Hindutva provided the intellectual foundation for it. RSS Sarsangh Chalaks have repeatedly said that the Sangh defined Hindus as Savarrkar had: “Aasindhu sindhu paryantaa Yasya Bharata Bhoomika/Pitrubhu Punyabhuchaiva Tavai Hinduriti Smritah”(‘Those who regard this land of Bharat spread between river Sindhu (in the north) to the ocean Sindhu (Sindhu Sagar – Indian Ocean in the south) as their Pitrubhumi – Fatherland and Punyabhumi – Holy land are called as Hindus’.) Shri M.S. Golwalkar ‘Guruji’ told an Iranian scholar Saifuddin Jeelani in 1971 that: “According to our ways of religious belief and philosophy, a Muslim is as good as a Hindu. It is not the Hindu alone who will reach the ultimate Godhead. Everyone has the right to follow his path according to his own persuasion. That is our attitude.”Recently, the present Sarsangh Chalak, Dr.Mohan Bhagwat repeated it.

The British Home Department’s 1939-40 report on volunteer organisations shows RSS was 150000 strong then. The British government initiated a recruitment drive for the army, ARP and Civic Guards when World War II broke out. Please note, Nathuram Godse’s Hindu Rashtra Sena decided to join the British army to get military training. (24. The persistence of alleged responsibility for Gandhi murder and other tropes can be explained in part by confirmation bias, which is currency today than ever before thanks to the instant and widespread dissemination of personal opinions over social media.) The RSS refused to co-operate with the recruitment to British and had to suffer the wrath of the British rulers. In June 1939, the Home Department suggested the Central Provinces government use Section 16 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (XIV of 1908) to ban RSS in retaliation but the province’s chief secretary GM Trivedi wrote to the central government on May 22, 1940, that it was not feasible as it would lead to huge protests in the province! The Sangh’s decision to participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement erased the government’s delusion that it was a tail of the Hindu Mahasabha. CP & Berar police’s fortnightly report stated that RSS founder Hedgewar’s participation had invigorated the movement. He led thousands of sataygrahis and suffered a year’s rigorous imprisonment. The Sangh’s anti-British stance now invited suppression by an infuriated government. The Home Department report stated, “Of late, the Sangh has started taking interest in political movements of the country, as a result of which the CP government in their circular letter No 2352-2158 IV; dated 15/16 December 1932, was compelled to issue an order warning government servants of the communal and political nature of the Sangh, and forbidding their becoming members or participating in the organisation’s activities.”

There is nothing fanatical about India’s Hindu heritage Sangh Parivar swears by. To the contrary, being loyal to that heritage means not only that Indians of all walks of life, all religious creeds can feel at home in India, and all non-Hindu citizens can integrate into the mother society without having to surrender their unique cultural and religious identities. Anthropologist France Boss has written that “if we wish to take over the direction of a society we must either  guide it from within its cultural framework or else eradicate its culture and impose a new culture”. Hindutva forces prefer to operate from within the frame work of our ancient culture. Communists try to eradicate the past culture and create a new one. Did they succeed anywhere yet?

The contemporary reality is that Christianity and Islam are the world’s two major missionary religions, which between them claim half of humanity as their followers, with Christians numbering over two billion and Muslims over a billion of a global population of approximately six billion. These religions try to convert the followers of non-missionary religions to their own faith, thereby generating the phenomenon of religious conversion. Hindus are open towards other views, unlike ‘good’ Christians and Muslims who feel obligated to make everyone believe what they believe, if necessary by deceit or force. What is the logic behind conversions? It is, simply put, is “my religions is better than yours”. That is fine. But what if they say the Hindus are pagans and infidels, and need to be converted eventually so that they deserve God? Jesus said:”I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto Father but by me!” Christians, a minuscule 3 percent of India’s population, can put up with unrelenting and murderous persecution in Muslim countries but various Xian Churches in India worry about ‘hate speech’ as their focus is soul harvesting! Christian evangelists have been doing great harvest of souls for centuries and still they are no nearer now than they were in 52 AD, 190 AD or 1757 AD! A tolerant multi-religious society is the last thing supremacists of any evangelist faith want! We can see Christianity, even now, centuries after coming to India, as a new and uncertain graft upon the Indian trunk!

With respect to Islam, in India we do have a cultural baggage of alienation with it because India was under the subjugation of Islamic rulers who were passionately following the commands of Prophet Muhammed to convert Hindus, kill them or charge a tax jizya for allowing them to live as Hindus. The length and breadth of the two princely States of Malabar and Kochi are strewn with Temples vandalized by Tippu Sultan. Mughal empire, despite the whitewashing by Leftist historians, was known for its denial of basic human rights to the subjects belonging to the majority religion, denied them the right to practice their religion freely and destroyed their places of worship with continued brutality, some of the holiest of the holy ones being pulled down several times, their building material used in lavatories, or used in Mosques upside down, idols and carvings defaced and used as pavement stone and so on. Please remember, blaming RSS/BJP/and the demolition of Babari structure in Ayodhya for the Islamic terrorism in India is a hoary cliché these days!

The point of friction, not only in India but worldwide, has been the propensity of Christianity and Islam to proselytize. Remember, the Minorities subcommittee of the CAI altered the wording of Article 25 was modified to include the right to propagate!  As a wit has put it, “a seemingly equal right to peddle one’s religion becomes unequal and unfair, much like giving wolves and sheep the right to eat one another”. In India as elsewhere, the two Abrahamic faiths have been known to poach followers from each other besides targeting Hindus and indigenous tribes.