No super power's stooge

By R K Bhatnagar

Indira Gandhi, the two time Prime Minister of India and the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru was born on November 19, eightyeight years ago in Allahabad in 1917. In 1924, her mother Kamala gave birth to a son. It was premature birth and the male boy lived only a few days.

Young Indira had excellent grooming as a child from her grandfather, Motilal Nehru, who engaged best of English Governness and tutors and also sent her to some of the exclusive Schools. She had education from her father, who wrote to her regularly letters. One incident is very important. In one of the first letters to Indiraji, Jawaharlal ensured whether she was using the Spinning Wheel (Charkha) given to her. He also wanted to tell him if she joined her mother in morning prayers everyday. Soon, she organised a Bal Charkha Sangh in Allahabad where children were trained to spin and weave. At the age of 25, she married Feroze Gandhi on March 26,1942. In her own words, "Although Feroze was proposing to me since the age of 16, in Paris we dcided to marry."

At the Nagpur Session of the Congress in 1959, Indirajee was called upon to shoulder onerous responsibility of the Presidentship of the party. In the words of a former President, she was transformed from a shy and withdrawn person to an active field worker, meeting people, discussing party, matters addressing public meetings and mixing with the masses.

In 1962, when our borders were violated in the North Eastern region, Indira Gandhi tarried to Tezpur, despite appeals to her to leave, displaying extraordinary courage in the face of crises. But it was as Prime Minister during the Bangladesh liberation action in 1971 that her image and image of India soared to heights hitherto unknown. The influx of refugees from East Pakistan threatened our own existence. The action initiated then was a master-stroke in conception, preparation and execution. Even in the face of the Seventh Fleet of United States moving into the Indian Ocean, when the air was thick with rumours of American intervention, Indira Gandhi stood undaunted and in her memorable speech at Ramlila Grounds said "We will not yield" we will not retreat a single step."

The Indo-Pak war ended after 21 days and both sides claimed victory. In January 1966, Alexei Kosygin, the Prime Minister of USSR invited Shastriji and Ayub Khan for peace Settlement at Tashkent. Immediately after signing the agreement Lal Bahadur Shastri died in the early hours of 11 January 1966.

After Shastriji death at Tashkent, the question of leadership cropped up. Within a few days, people realized that Indira Gandhi was the only choice, as a result of the involvement of all others in the struggle for power and thus cancelling each other's chances. She was requested by K Kamaraj to contest for Prime Ministership and reluctantly she agreed. She was elected Leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party on 19th January 1966. Five days later, on 24th January she was sworn in as Prime Minister of India.

Two months after assuming office as Prime Minister, she went on a tour of foreign countries to explain to them that there would be no change in India's Foreign Policy. She visited Paris, London, Moscow and Washington. In America, she was an object of curosity for they could hardly believe that a women could run a nation of 500 million. Hurbert Humphery, Vice President of USA commented that Indira Gandhi: - was quite a politician.. a Politician of considerable means. President Johnson also discovered that, "behind the sophisticated look, there was also a sophisticated mind, which had been trained over the years to deal with political problems and political situations.

It is a part of recorded history now that only thirteen days after the war began; Lt Gen A A K Niazi laid down arms to the Indian army and surrendered Dacca without a fight. On 17th December 1971, Pakistan accepted India's offer of a casefire. In 14 days, Bangladesh was liberated. It was a tremendous achievement for India. Indiraji continued to follow the foreign policy evolved by her father - The Policy is Peaceful Existence. She loved peace but was not afraid of war. When, in December 1971, war was forced on India by Pakistan. She was not caught napping. This scribe who covered Indo-Pak war in the East Pakistan are Army PRO in uniform was among the first to reach Dhaka on December 18, 1971 and brought the War Book of Pakistan.

On 26 January, 1972, India's highest honour, the Bharat Ratna,was conferred on Indirajee after the defeat of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. Members of Parliament belonging to different political parties felicitated her. It was indeed their acknowledgement of her statesman-like qualities, which had transformed India into a leading power in South Asia. Having already signed a treaty of friendship with Bangladesh, Indirajee invited Pakistan Prime Minister Z A Bhutto for talks to Simla, where the two countries pledged themselves in a joint declaration to eschew the use of force against each other and to settle their disputes through bilateral talks. The Simla Agreement was signed on 3 July 1972. As a part of agreement, 92000 POWs were sent back to Pakistan from Wagah border. Indirajee's magnificent life came to an abrupt end on Oct 31, 1984 when she was shot dead by two of her own security guards.

Raj Mohan Gandhi, author and political pundit, grandson of the Mahatma, writing in the Washington Post of 1 November 1984, immediately after the assassination, commented, "No unprejudiced chronicler will fail to note her ability to make the tough choice, take the hard gamble and stand unmoved before a hostile crowd. Her charm and astonishing stamina, her 1980 comeback, her fortitude when she tragically lost a son, Sanjay - these too will be recorded. And her independence. She was no one's and no superpower's stooge.

Cheaper diagnosis

By Jyotsna Pandit

Since at least the time of Hippocrates, physicians have recognised that the smell of their patients’ breath can provide clues to what is ailing them. The rotting apple odour of acetone can signal diabetes. A sulphurous smell can mean cirrhosis of the liver. Other odours can hint at lung infection, kidney disease or simple dental decay.

The potential for using breath as a way to peer into the body increased vastly with the rise of modern chemistry. In the 18th century, the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier proved that the body produces carbon dioxide, emitted with each exhalation of breath. And in the early 1970s, Linus Pauling demonstrated that breath is a complex gas, containing well over 100 different organic compounds.

Still, only recently have researchers begun to mine the elaborate chemical signature of breath to explore whether shifting patterns might be used diagnostically - to detect conditions like lung cancer or tuberculosis. The most advanced test so far is one that can suggest whether heart transplant patients are rejecting their new organs.

The technique, called the Hearts breath test, was developed recently by Dr. Michael Phillips, a professor of internal medicine at the New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, and the founder of Menssana Research, a for-profit company. The test received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

It bears a superficial resemblance to the breathalyzer tests used by the police to test drivers for drunkenness, but it is "a billion times more sensitive," Phillips said.

In the test, a patient breathes through the mouth into a long, stainless steel tube for two minutes. A breath sample is collected and later analysed chemically, using techniques called gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy. A sample is also collected from room air, for purposes of comparison.

If a patient’s breath test is negative, he may be able to skip his next one or possibly two biopsies, although no protocol has yet been developed. But even a small reduction in the number of heart biopsies - which are generally performed more than a dozen times in the first year after a transplant - would hold appeal for patients.

"You’re not tickling the heart. You’re not making it quiver," said Mark Blackowski, 47, who underwent a heart transplant at Newark Beth Israel Medical Centre in 2003, and tried the breath test on two occasions. "You walk in, they clamp your nose, you breathe into a tube for two minutes, and you’re done."

A heart biopsy can also cost thousands of dollars, while a Hearts breath test will probably cost only a few hundred. (Medicare and other insurers are still working out details of reimbursements - one reason the test is not yet widely available).

Dr. Mark Zucker, director of the Heart Failure Treatment and Transplant Centre at Newark Beth Israel, noted that the Hearts breath test was currently less sensitive than a biopsy, meaning that it may not pick up on organ rejection until the condition is slightly more advanced.

However, since doctors generally monitor but do not treat the mildest forms of rejection, this is not an issue clinically, he said. (Zucker participated in clinical trials for the Hearts breath test, financed by the National Institutes of Health, but he said he had no financial interest in the device).

The Hearts breath test is also less specific than a biopsy, meaning that it is more likely to yield a positive result, even if the patient’s immune system is not reacting against the transplanted organ - one reason the FDA approved the test as an adjunct to a biopsy but not a replacement for it.

Phillips and others are also exploring breath tests for the early diagnosis of lung cancer - another arena in which a non-invasive and relatively inexpensive screening technique would be welcome. Lung cancer can now be detected using CT scans, which expose patients to small doses of radiation. Positive results are followed up with biopsies, in which tissue is removed from the lung for analysis.

Phillips has received a grant to study whether breath testing may have forensic applications: to detect, for example, whether a person has handled any of a wide variety of explosives.

Clinical trials of breath tests for tuberculosis are being financed by the NIH. Dr. Antonino Catanzaro, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who is involved in this research, called traditional tests for TB slow and sometimes unreliable. Breath testing, he said, "takes a very different approach and may overcome these problems."

Such a test may be of particular value for children and for patients also infected with HIV, he added. Breath testing seems to be aligned with a general trend in medicine toward more non-invasive testing, said Zucker of Newark. Terence Risby, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, agreed that breath analysis held great allure and that it was likely to prove popular with patients, especially children. Breath samples, unlike blood samples, he noted, do not need to be refrigerated and so may someday be valuable in developing countries. INAV