I Mourn the Sad Demise of David Shepherd

David Shepherd, one of the most loved umpires in International Cricket, passed away after a long battle with cancer, at the age of 68. The English man officiated in 92 tests and 172 ODIs, including three consecutive World Cup Finals - 1996, 1999, 2003. Known for his dislike for Nelson figures, (111, 222,333 etc.) where he used to hop between deliveries when the Nelson figure came as the score, ‘Shep’, as he was widely known, was a congenial umpire who always had a smile on his face. He played first class cricket for Gloucestershire from 1965 to 1979 and made 10,672 runs. His final test as an umpire was the test between Pakistan and West Indies in 2005 in Jamaica. May his soul rest in peace.

Worsening India-China Relationship

For last couple of decades the trade relationship between India and China is on the rise and now China is India’s biggest trade partner. But since the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the relationship between the governments of the two countries is far from being cordial. The relationship has been marked by a superficial engagement with an underlying sense of mutual distrust and suspicion. Chinese government’s recent protest on Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh has worsened the relationship between the two countries.

China has been adamant in not acknowledging the de facto boundary between India and China demarcated by the British and claims that the entirety of Arunachal Pradesh is part of China and calls it South Tibet. The refuge provided by India to the Tibetan religious leader Dalai Lama and his ‘Government in exile’ has always been a thorn in the relationship between the two countries. Yet in the recent years there had been a sort of softening of rhetoric from the Chinese side on the border issue; but suddenly they have come up with an official stand against India’s long held position on the issue of Arunachal Pradesh being a part of the Indian republic. Analysts believe that the sudden change in the China’s attitude towards India is perhaps because of their increasing military and economic prowess vis-à-vis India.

It is not only the Arunachal Pradesh issue that is causing damage to the Sino-India relationship. India is also miffed at China’s offer to Pakistan on building a dam in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir territory. Last month, Pakistan and China signed a memorandum of understanding to build the US $ 12.6 billion Diamir-Bhasha dam on the Indus river in Pak occupied Kashmir, PoK. China has been a great ally of Pakistan and has been supplying investment and technology know-how to Pakistan including missile technology and weapons. Since the 1962 Sino-Indian war, China has been aligning themselves more and more to Pakistan in a bid to confront their ‘common enemy’, India.

It is not only to Pakistan that China is expanding their influence, but also to Nepal. China and Nepal find common ground in being nations leaning towards Communism. But India can passively watch growing influence of China in Nepal only at its on peril. The outrageous geopolitical ambition that China has on India’s neighbours should be countered effectively otherwise there is every chance that India would lose its position as a major economic power in the Indian subcontinent. Growing Chinese influence on Nepal would be a security threat to India in the long run.

India needs to aggressively pursue its foreign policy if it has to sustain any ambition of becoming one of the major economic power houses of the world. It must be noted that such an aggressive pursuance of foreign policy looks bleak from the present Indian Foreign Minister, SM Krishna. He is rather reactive than proactive, a characteristic feature not desirable for a Foreign Minister. As of now, it seems that the Indian foreign affairs machinery is rather obsessed with its relationship with the United States. There is less importance given to other countries, especially our neighbours like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar and China. Pakistan is enhancing its foothold on Sri Lanka and is leaving no stone unturned to improve their traditional relationship with China. India has almost forgotten Nepal and Myanmar and its engagement in Afghanistan is only because of the US interest in having India’s involvement in that country. These are all ominous signs for a country of India’s stature.

The border issue is not the only subject on which China has shown its inclination towards countering India. In colluding with Pakistan, China has been lodging its protest against the India-US nuclear deal, especially after Barack Obama came to power in the US. Moreover China has been working against India’s bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). China also tried to block the Asian Development Bank loan to build a dam in Arunachal Pradesh. What has agitated India recently was China’s act of providing visa to people from Kashmir in a separated sheet of paper, saying that Kashmir is a disputed territory. China recently denied providing visa to people from Arunachal Pradesh and said that those people don’t need visa to come to China as they are Chinese.

Media on both sides of the border has got a great say in the present condition of India-China relationship. The media in the Chinese side, particularly the official media, has been highly critical of India. In one of the recent articles in Chinese Communist party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, there had been an article criticising India and its global ambitions. (Find that article here at http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/91343/6783357.html) There is a sort of diatribe against India, its colonial past and its alleged ambition to become a super power thwarting the aspirations of its other neighbours. At the same time, when Indian media alleged that China has increased its incursions in the eastern border of India, the Indian government accused the media of blowing things out of proportion and warned legal actions against the media. The official governmental stance was that there had been no “significant increase” in the Chinese incursions as reported by the media. That would certainly mean that the government is accepting that there have been continuous Chinese incursions along the eastern border of India all these years.

One of the most remarkable things about the recent India-China spat was the absence of any remarks from any of the CPI (M) leaders in India. Normally known for their rhetoric on any thing related to Indian foreign policy, may it be the Indo-US nuclear deal, the ASEAN pact or the climate change policy, they have been conspicuous with their absence in making remarks. And again that is not a surprise because the CPI (M) in India has always been a self-proclaimed supporter of Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government. Even the split in the Communist Party of India in 1964 was basically because of the party’s support for China during the Sino-Indian war of 1962. (Find more about Indian Communist Party's controversial stand on India-China war of 1962 at Wikipedia)

It is in the common interest of both India and China to bridge the divide as soon as possible. Both countries have to find areas where they can work together and try to solve all outstanding issues, including border disputes, through dialogue and abstain from making outrageous remarks that would further worsen the already diminished cordial relationship between the two countries.

Nobel Prize for Peace, Literature and Economics

Nobel Prize for Peace for the year of 2009 has been conferred to the President of the United States, Barack Obama. He is the third incumbent US President after Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919 to bag the Nobel Peace Prize. (Former US President Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002) According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee the prize has been given to him for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The Nobel Committee gave great importance to his nuclear weapons free world view. He was honoured for his role in creating a new climate for international politics where conflict resolution is predominantly expected to be done using dialogues and negotiations. The Nobel Committee also lauded Obama’s initiatives towards climate change whereby the United States has vowed to take more active steps towards reducing green house gas emissions. The audacity of hope that Obama brings to the world has been instrumental in him gaining the most coveted prize for peace. Obama’s famous speech at Cairo, made to jettison the lack of faith that the Muslim world has for the intentions and actions of the United States, was also counted. Nobel Committee’s decision to award Barack Obama the peace prize should be seen as a call to action and an encouragement for his activities in the realm of international diplomacy.

Romanian-born, German novelist, essayist and poet Herta Muller bagged the Noble Prize for Literature. According to the Nobel Committee, the prize is given to Muller “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." Her writings depicted the harsh living conditions of Communist Romania under the tyrannical Nicolae Ceauşescu regime. She faced death threats at her native Romania as she refused to cooperate and become an informant to the Romanian secret police when she was working as a teacher. Muller immigrated to Germany in 1987 and since then has been involved in the international literary field. Her novel Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger, published in English as The Passport, has been a runaway success and has received great critical acclaim. She is also a recipient of Germany's most prestigious, the Kleist prize.

The Nobel Prize for Economics for the year 2009 has been shared by Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University and Oliver E. Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley for their individual studies on economic governance. According to the Nobel Committee, Elinor Ostrom is awarded "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons" and Oliver Williamson "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm." Elinor Ostrom is the first lady to receive the Nobel Prize for Economics since the prize was established in 1969. Economics predominantly studies how economic transactions happen in market place. But economic activities happen in other place like associations, households, within firms etc. Though economic theories have always given great importance to virtues and vices of market places, they gave less importance to other institutional arrangements. The individual studies done by Ostrom and Williamson show that economic analysis can shed light on almost all social organisations. By awarding Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, the Nobel Committee seems to be placing forward the idea that economic theories and researches should go beyond the conventional studies on market mechanics and should try to answer more complex sociological questions of human life.

(Information courtesy: Press release available at www.nobelprize.org)

Nobel Prize 2009 for Science for People Who Worked for the Mankind

I have been away from blogging for some days as I was a bit pre-occupied with some domestic works. But what a great way it would be to mark a come back to blogging by writing about some great people who used science to the larger benefit of the mankind. Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Physics and Chemistry for the year 2009 have been announced and I would like to take a look at the works of those eminent scientists that earned them the Noble Prize.

Nobel Prize for Medicine has been shared by Drs. Elizabeth H. Blackburn of University of California, San Francisco, Carol W. Greider of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore and Jack W. Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. They received the Nobel for the study of chromosome; about how they are copied in a complete way and how they are protected against degradation. With their studies the Nobel Laureates have found out that the reason for the phenomenon can be found out at the ends of the chromosomes – telomeres and by an enzyme named telomerase that creates the telomeres. From their findings it was understood that when telomeres are shortened, the cells age and if the telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained and cell death will be delayed. The eternal life of cancer cells is because the telomerase activity is high and hence the cells keep on growing. At the same time, some inherited diseases are because of defected and shortened telomeres that result in damaging of cells. This discovery has major impact in the future studies on finding medicines for cancer treatment and on the treatment of some of the inherited diseases found in human beings.

Charles K. Kao of Chinese University of Hong Kong, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, both of Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, US have shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for their inventions that tapped the potential of light. Charles Kao was awarded for his studies of optical fibres that are now used in the field of communication. The digital age and the Internet owe a great deal to the invention of Charles Kao. According to the Kao a ray of light that is directed into a fibre, bounces against the glass walls and will move forward since the refractive index of glass is higher than that of the surrounding air. Today telephone and data communication flows through network of optical glass fibre all around the world that would account to about 1 billion km. The information revolution that we see around us is largely due to this contribution of Charles Kao in the field of Physics. Willard Boyle and George Smith are awarded for their invention of digital image sensor – the Charged Coupled Device or the CCD. It is the technology with which we use the digital cameras for capturing high quality images and in the digital transfer of images. This technology is widely used in images taken in the space using space telescopes and in the transfer of images from distant objects.

The Nobel Laureates for Chemistry include Ada E. Yonath of Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University, New Haven and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of MRC Laboratory, Cambridge, and they are rewarded for mapping the ribosome, the cell’s own protein factory. Every living organism, from bacteria to human beings has ribosome in them and no living creature can live without them. Hence they are perfect targets for drugs and antibiotics mainly attack the ribosomes of bacteria and leave alone those of human beings. Therefore the studies of the Nobel Laureates, of mapping the ribosomes at the atomic level, will give a great impetus to the discovery of new drugs. Many bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics and this provides a great challenge to the medical field. The mapping of the ribosomes will therefore help in the creation of antibiotics that would surpass the resistance of the bacteria. The studies done by the Noble Laureates will go a long way in understanding how life’s core processes function and in finding new antibiotics against various diseases that afflict mankind.

(Information courtesy: Press release available at www.nobelprize.org)