PANCHAAMRITAM 19

ONE

1. Two villagers lost their lives due to severe diarrhoea on November 30, 2002 in village Kalleri near Veraiyur in Tiruvannamalai district, Tamilnadu, Bharat. Ten more were in a serious condition and they grew anxious, as there was no vehicle to transport them to the Government hospital in Tiruvannamalai. Inspector of Police, Veraiyur, Shri. Nurul Ameen, learnt of this. Accompanied by sub-inspector Shri. Satyamoorthy, he put them all in a police van and quickly drove to Tiruvannamalai. Villagers were all praise for the cops for playing the role of drivers, to save precious lives (DINAMANI December 1, 2002). 2. On November 4, 2001, Shri. Ramachandran, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Srivilliputtur, was returning in a jeep after a survey of flood-hit villages. As the jeep crossed the Vathirayiruppu bridge, he saw an old woman of 65 about to drown in the flood. He at once jumped into the river and struggled for nearly three hours to save the woman. He did succeeed at last. A few youths joined him in this endeavour. (DINAMANI Novenber 5, 2001). 3. Shri. Alexander, Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), in charge of the camp for Srilankan refugees in Mandapam, Ramanathapuram district, was seen teaching algebra and English to 60 children of refugees daily from 6.30 PM to 9.30 PM in front of the local church (He had served as an English lecturer early in his career). In addition, he has appointed, at his expense, three teachers. He guided the refugees in getting rid of 20,000 kilograms of plastic waste in the camp premises and beatifying it by planting 200 saplings (DINAMANI, December 12, 2001). 4. Former DGP Shri. Vaikunth has adopted Paranur, a most backward hamlet in Chengalput district. He is busy in works to fulfill basic needs such as drinking water, roads, education and healthcare for the hamlet with a population of 2,500. He has also donated furniture worth Rs.1,20,000 for the benefit of 250 students of the nearby Kattangolathur Panchayat Union Middle School (BHARATAMANI, Gandhian Tamil Monthly, November, 2002).

TWO

1. K. Sowmya and V. Vishwadhara Meenakshi, fourth year Electronics and Communications students at St. Joseph Engineering College, Chennai, have designed a gadget that can tell you what smell it is. They call it ESTER (Experiencing Smell Through Electronic Reality). It is a computer-aided application involving languages ‘C’ and Visual Basic. They have developed software as well, for this application. The smell signal is conveyed via ESTER to the software installed in the computer, which in turn, finds out the exact smell. The girls say that ESTER will be useful in monitering the dosages of medicines to be administered to patients (DINAMANI July 8, 2003). 2. The smear test used to determine cervical cancer, most common among women of the lower socio-economic group, is not feasible in India as the population is high. But the Cancer Institute in Adyar, Chennai, has a low cost alternative. It is CITRON (CI stands for Cancer Institute), an indigenous machine that can be installed at primary health centres and in district hospitals, according to Shri. D.Rajkumar, Director, Research Wing. Introduced in year 2000, the machine costs Rs. 10 lakhs. The cost per patient is Rs. 1,000 for eight sittings (THE HINDU, January 24, 2003). 3. The author of the book, Unofficial Guide To Ethical Hacking, Shri. Ankit Phadia is just 15 years old. Lakhs of copies of this book, written by this class XII student of the Delhi Public School, R.K.Puram, have sold out across the globe already. His website that tells you all about computer hacking is visited by one lakh persons every day. It has a membership of 15 lakhs. The second book by Ankit, Network Security – A Hacker’s Perspective, has also been released. With an alarming increase in cyber crimes and cyber terrorism, this book becomes all the more relevent as it gives details of the way hackers operate and the methods to steer clear of them (SANGH MARG, Hindi monthly, Rohtak, November, 2002). 4. Deep is the name of the new method to generate cooking gas and electricity from farm ‘waste’ like cowdung, dry stalks of plants, etc. Haryana’s young scientist Dr. Shivdarshan Mallik and Shri. Jagram Singh of Hanumangarh, Rajastan have evolved this method after ten years of intensive research. The Deep cooking gas will cost just Rs. six and the Deep electricity will be available at just 50 Paise per unit, claim the two researchers (PATH SANKET, Lucknow, July 8, 2003).

THREE

Here is yet another, but not-so-well-known, method of raising subsoil water level. Along the bed of a river or canal, pits are dug. The depth varies from 2 metres to 10 metres depending upon the volume of flow. On the base of the pits, tubes measuring upto 60 metres are driven. When the flood comes, the water arrested in the pits is taken deep down into the earth. It seeps into the earth down below and thus helps raise the water table. The Central Ground Water Board calls it the ‘Injection Technique’ and plans to implement it in full swing in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh so that the fast depletion of subsoil water there could be arrested and further falling of water level could be prevented. Already ‘Injection Technique’ is harnessed in Sangroor, Patiala, Ropar, Moga, Jallundhar and Amritsar districts in Punjab and Mahendragarh, Kurukshetra and Panipat in Haryana. Shri. D.S.Saini, senior scientist with the Ground Water Board, says that agriculturists from places where this scheme is implemented have reported a rise in water table (SANGH MARG, Rohtak, June 28, 2003).

FOUR

During the third week of June, 2003, Chairman of the National Minorities Commission, Shri. Tarlochan Singh was touring north Gujarat, to hear complaints from minority communities regarding so-called survey of the Christian and Muslim populations. He agreed to act on a few of their demands. But he pulled up the Christian and Muslim leaders for their behaviour. Reacting sharply to the complaint that Narendra Modi government was dragging its feet in the matter of rebuilding the Durgahs damaged in last year’s riots in the state, Shri. Singh cited a parallel. He said, “Why should you wait for the government to rebuild your Durgahs? They damaged Akal Takht and then they renovated it. But we (the Sikhs) pulled it down, and on own, built it up all over again” (SANGH MARG, June 28, 2003).

FIVE

Shri. Vincent Moreau has never met the Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani. Nor is he possibly aware that it was Advani’s initiative that enabled his reunion with his family in his hometown. But if there is one single person who is responsible for this French national’s release from the Tihar (Delhi) jail, it is none other than this senior BJP leader. Moreau was arrested under the Narcotics Act some years ago and sentenced to a ten-year imprisonment. When he was serving the sentence, he was found suffering from AIDS. Efforts by the French embassy to secure his release failed to move the jail authorities; they maintained that he was getting adequate treatment at the jail hospital. The matter was brought to the DPM’s notice during his visit to France in February 2003. Advani promised to recommend Presidential pardon for the AIDS patient. He was as good as his word. President A.P.J.Abdul Kalam responded positively to the suggestion and granted pardon on humanitarian grounds (ORGANISER, March 2, 2003).

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