27th August 2018
27th August 2018
Musings.......
"A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results". This quote I stumbled upon on twitter, made me thinking. How better the world will be if everyone thinks positive- we would have a socialist utopia.
Talking of utopia, the international scene is as utopian since my last literary outing.
In Venenzuela, Nicolas Maduro comes to power for a second time in an election boycotted by most right-wing parties at the instance of United States. The country is going through a huge economic crisis with even today's newspaper stating the price of coffee costing 1140 bolivar. In the month of June the inflation was 46,000 percent it seems!! All these events started in 2014 since the oil crisis and price drop. The newly reelected president, an ardent supporter of Hugo Chavez has his hands full. The newly launched cryptocurrency in the country, Petro shows promise. It is backed by the countries vast oil and mineral reserves. India has been offered a 30 percent discount if it deals in Petroleum, which can bring down the skyrocketing fuel prices in the country. It is yet to be seen if India will catch bait. Cryptocurrency will help Venenzuela to evade the draconian US sanctions.
Coming from South America to a country which itself is confused whether it is in Asia or Europe- Turkey seems to be an amalgamation of the west and east. With a Muslim majority population, it seems to an aberration. Living in the legacy of the old Ottoman Empire the once famed Ataturk, is a shadow of its past. However it is undergoing a political transformation. The President Recap Tayyip Erdorgan is reelected for the second time but this time with executive powers. It was no long ago that turkey voted in a referendum to narrowly pass the resolution changing the constitution from a Parliamentary democracy to one where most of the power is concentrated at the hands of the President. There will no longer be a Prime Minister, and Parliament will take a supervisory role. The President will appoint Vice President and senior judges. All these since the attempted coup to oust Erdorgan, the then Prime Minister in 2016. The newly elected President has a long haul ahead, however he has problems too including Syria, and the Kurdish problem. Erdorgan was an avid supporter of the Arab Spring and did not foresee the fall of Egypt. Then came Syria. However he has maintained good relations with Saudi Arabia which is trying to subvert the last Republic government in the region - Syria.
It is a year since Qatar was removed from the Gulf Cooperation Council and they still remain resilient. This would come as a bitter surprise to Saudi Arabia who do not want to recognise the failure of their plan at isolation and intimidation. The charges levied by Saudi, UAE and Baharain on Qatar including funding terrorism do not stand ground as all three countries have funded different terrorist groups. The demand for shutting down Al Jazeera which is an independent, professionally run agency is preposterous. The main reason for the blockade can be attributed to the growth of Qatar. From being a poor country when the GCC was constituted, Qatar has transformed itself into a powerhouse by selling natural gas to the US. It has had military and diplomatic relations with US with Americans maintaining a base in Qatar with 11,000 personnel. During the Arab Spring in 2011, the Saudi and Qatar supported different groups, Doha supporting the Muslim Brotherhood which the Saudis despised. Hence when Donald Trump took over the reigns, the Saudis went out of the way to befriend Trump to maintain its clout over the region. With Doha holding the 2022 FIFA World Cup, we can expect it to become a world centre stage giving it a boost economically. How the Saudis react to this is yet to be seen.
Coming to our own Kerala, the early detection of Nipah virus and prompt action taken by the government, with complete support of the opposition and the civil society led to containainment of the deadly outbreak and restricted it to two Districts in Northern Malabar. WHO says the Nipah viral encephalitis is an emerging infectious disease spread by secretions of infected bats. It can spread to humans through contaminated fruits, infected animals or close contact with infected humans. The fruit bats of Pteropodidae family are the natural hosts of the virus. The virus infection in humans causes wide range of clinical presentation from asymptomatic infection to acute respiratory infection and fatal encephalitis, which is infection to the brain. The fatality rate is up to 75%. The virus is highly virulent and lethal and there are no medicines or vaccines. Hospitals can only give supportive intensive care mostly to treat respiratory and neurological complications. Nipah and its closely related Hendra virus is listed in as "Category C biothreat agents" because they can be isolated from their natural reservoir, easily grown to large amounts in a laboratory and transmitted through easy means. Its incubation period is between 4-18 days.
The identified risky behaviour of the index cases in Bangladesh is the consumption of raw date palm sap which could be contaminated by virus shed by bats through saliva and urine. The virus was first isolated from a patient from Sungai Nipah in Malaysia and is therefore named after the Village. The take away message is Early Detection of the disease, to be in the lookout for the disease in cases of PUO,( Pyrexia of Unknown Origin) which is the most commonly encountered scenario in an OPD setup. The way the Kerala medical fraternity handled the outbreak is commendable. We have all seen the heart-wrenching scene of death of the Nurse who took care of the first family contracted by this disease. Her letter at her deathbed to her young husband and infant kids should be reminder to further medical professionals. Her sacrifice should not go in vain and with proper governmental support future outbreaks can be contained and mortality restricted if not completely eliminated.
I am consciously not writing on the present political situation in India. I have written many times on the issue and my views are clear. Much before Shashi Tharoor sir warned us Indian to vote responsibly in the next election or face the prospects of a "Hindu Pakistan" , I had through one of my Musings, mentioned of the possibility of the RSS filled government rewriting our constitution. Not taking anything away from the Thiruvananthapuram MP for his political acumen.
A fractured mandate in the next General Election could see us having a regional leader as our Next Prime Minister. However previous experiments with coalition governments formed with the only agenda to keep their enemy from power has failed miserably. Whether the highly anticipated Mahagadbandhan will take off and if at all it does who will lead such a combination of varied interests, and will it last it's tenure will be something which only time will tell. One this is for sure, whichever government comes into power, if they take the interest of the country and the people as its prime agenda, then no one will be able to stop them.
There has been a general trend in Kerala for a few years now wherein whoever takes a secular stand towards the Majority community to be branded as a Sanghi and the other way around where support to Minority community being considered as minority appeasement and anti- Hindu. This trend has started since the common public has taken to social media where there is no check to what amount of rubbish they can write. People who were very jovial and friendly to each other in person, neighbours for example, are turning against each other on social media leading to further deterioration of their friendly relation.
A general sense of hatred against each other is brewing for a few years now. This can be attributed to the highly divisive government that we have at the centre and the general mood of the public being right wing. Unless a secular counterforce is applied to our society things could take an ugly turn. If the situation in Kerala is such, I need not tell about other places of our country. The Indian National Congress which has a great past at creation of India and secular credentials should take over the responsibility of holding together society as a whole. Instead of relegating itself with soft Hindutva and rather than benign a B team to the right wing BJP, it should clear its ideology among the public. A crisp and clear ideology for the party rather than dilly dallying with confused rhetoric will help the party's prospects in short and the country future in general.
Food for Thought.......
RC
Musings.......
"A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results". This quote I stumbled upon on twitter, made me thinking. How better the world will be if everyone thinks positive- we would have a socialist utopia.
Talking of utopia, the international scene is as utopian since my last literary outing.
In Venenzuela, Nicolas Maduro comes to power for a second time in an election boycotted by most right-wing parties at the instance of United States. The country is going through a huge economic crisis with even today's newspaper stating the price of coffee costing 1140 bolivar. In the month of June the inflation was 46,000 percent it seems!! All these events started in 2014 since the oil crisis and price drop. The newly reelected president, an ardent supporter of Hugo Chavez has his hands full. The newly launched cryptocurrency in the country, Petro shows promise. It is backed by the countries vast oil and mineral reserves. India has been offered a 30 percent discount if it deals in Petroleum, which can bring down the skyrocketing fuel prices in the country. It is yet to be seen if India will catch bait. Cryptocurrency will help Venenzuela to evade the draconian US sanctions.
Coming from South America to a country which itself is confused whether it is in Asia or Europe- Turkey seems to be an amalgamation of the west and east. With a Muslim majority population, it seems to an aberration. Living in the legacy of the old Ottoman Empire the once famed Ataturk, is a shadow of its past. However it is undergoing a political transformation. The President Recap Tayyip Erdorgan is reelected for the second time but this time with executive powers. It was no long ago that turkey voted in a referendum to narrowly pass the resolution changing the constitution from a Parliamentary democracy to one where most of the power is concentrated at the hands of the President. There will no longer be a Prime Minister, and Parliament will take a supervisory role. The President will appoint Vice President and senior judges. All these since the attempted coup to oust Erdorgan, the then Prime Minister in 2016. The newly elected President has a long haul ahead, however he has problems too including Syria, and the Kurdish problem. Erdorgan was an avid supporter of the Arab Spring and did not foresee the fall of Egypt. Then came Syria. However he has maintained good relations with Saudi Arabia which is trying to subvert the last Republic government in the region - Syria.
It is a year since Qatar was removed from the Gulf Cooperation Council and they still remain resilient. This would come as a bitter surprise to Saudi Arabia who do not want to recognise the failure of their plan at isolation and intimidation. The charges levied by Saudi, UAE and Baharain on Qatar including funding terrorism do not stand ground as all three countries have funded different terrorist groups. The demand for shutting down Al Jazeera which is an independent, professionally run agency is preposterous. The main reason for the blockade can be attributed to the growth of Qatar. From being a poor country when the GCC was constituted, Qatar has transformed itself into a powerhouse by selling natural gas to the US. It has had military and diplomatic relations with US with Americans maintaining a base in Qatar with 11,000 personnel. During the Arab Spring in 2011, the Saudi and Qatar supported different groups, Doha supporting the Muslim Brotherhood which the Saudis despised. Hence when Donald Trump took over the reigns, the Saudis went out of the way to befriend Trump to maintain its clout over the region. With Doha holding the 2022 FIFA World Cup, we can expect it to become a world centre stage giving it a boost economically. How the Saudis react to this is yet to be seen.
Coming to our own Kerala, the early detection of Nipah virus and prompt action taken by the government, with complete support of the opposition and the civil society led to containainment of the deadly outbreak and restricted it to two Districts in Northern Malabar. WHO says the Nipah viral encephalitis is an emerging infectious disease spread by secretions of infected bats. It can spread to humans through contaminated fruits, infected animals or close contact with infected humans. The fruit bats of Pteropodidae family are the natural hosts of the virus. The virus infection in humans causes wide range of clinical presentation from asymptomatic infection to acute respiratory infection and fatal encephalitis, which is infection to the brain. The fatality rate is up to 75%. The virus is highly virulent and lethal and there are no medicines or vaccines. Hospitals can only give supportive intensive care mostly to treat respiratory and neurological complications. Nipah and its closely related Hendra virus is listed in as "Category C biothreat agents" because they can be isolated from their natural reservoir, easily grown to large amounts in a laboratory and transmitted through easy means. Its incubation period is between 4-18 days.
The identified risky behaviour of the index cases in Bangladesh is the consumption of raw date palm sap which could be contaminated by virus shed by bats through saliva and urine. The virus was first isolated from a patient from Sungai Nipah in Malaysia and is therefore named after the Village. The take away message is Early Detection of the disease, to be in the lookout for the disease in cases of PUO,( Pyrexia of Unknown Origin) which is the most commonly encountered scenario in an OPD setup. The way the Kerala medical fraternity handled the outbreak is commendable. We have all seen the heart-wrenching scene of death of the Nurse who took care of the first family contracted by this disease. Her letter at her deathbed to her young husband and infant kids should be reminder to further medical professionals. Her sacrifice should not go in vain and with proper governmental support future outbreaks can be contained and mortality restricted if not completely eliminated.
I am consciously not writing on the present political situation in India. I have written many times on the issue and my views are clear. Much before Shashi Tharoor sir warned us Indian to vote responsibly in the next election or face the prospects of a "Hindu Pakistan" , I had through one of my Musings, mentioned of the possibility of the RSS filled government rewriting our constitution. Not taking anything away from the Thiruvananthapuram MP for his political acumen.
A fractured mandate in the next General Election could see us having a regional leader as our Next Prime Minister. However previous experiments with coalition governments formed with the only agenda to keep their enemy from power has failed miserably. Whether the highly anticipated Mahagadbandhan will take off and if at all it does who will lead such a combination of varied interests, and will it last it's tenure will be something which only time will tell. One this is for sure, whichever government comes into power, if they take the interest of the country and the people as its prime agenda, then no one will be able to stop them.
There has been a general trend in Kerala for a few years now wherein whoever takes a secular stand towards the Majority community to be branded as a Sanghi and the other way around where support to Minority community being considered as minority appeasement and anti- Hindu. This trend has started since the common public has taken to social media where there is no check to what amount of rubbish they can write. People who were very jovial and friendly to each other in person, neighbours for example, are turning against each other on social media leading to further deterioration of their friendly relation.
A general sense of hatred against each other is brewing for a few years now. This can be attributed to the highly divisive government that we have at the centre and the general mood of the public being right wing. Unless a secular counterforce is applied to our society things could take an ugly turn. If the situation in Kerala is such, I need not tell about other places of our country. The Indian National Congress which has a great past at creation of India and secular credentials should take over the responsibility of holding together society as a whole. Instead of relegating itself with soft Hindutva and rather than benign a B team to the right wing BJP, it should clear its ideology among the public. A crisp and clear ideology for the party rather than dilly dallying with confused rhetoric will help the party's prospects in short and the country future in general.
Food for Thought.......
RC
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