The Conspiracy of SUPERBUG NDM-1.

It is shocking to read the stories about the making of India as a home of bugs by some mentally bankrupt intellectuals of the western countries, who come to India on a tourist visa to see the Taj;  however smuggle micro-organisms to conduct researches under the sponsorship from the Companies which make antibiotics for these bugs which is later to be named after some of the Indian cities to earn cheap publicity like the recent propaganda of naming a hospital born bacteria found globally after the nations capital – New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase-1 or NDM-1.

However the fact is that the Nation receives more then 100,000 foreign patients (mostly from US, UK and Europe) in a year which makes the countries Medical Tourism sector’s value more than $400 million, which is expected to grow to $3 billion by the year 2012 and it is solely because “Indians have proven our clinical excellence” meeting the very infection control protocol comparable to the National Healthcare Safety Network of Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the US government public health agency.

Will someone answer this simple question – Why the researchers failed to mention the NDM-1 is not the first super-bug to be discovered? The MSRA (Methicllin-resistant-Staphylococcus-Aureus) super-bug which is the most prominent and takes more then 20,000 lives in the US every single year has not been named after any Western Country or City. Similarly the HIV which was identified in the US was not named after any American city?

Ragging in educagtional institutions.

The Hon'ble Supreme Court of India has defined Ragging in a judgement (UNIVERSITY OF KERALA VERSUS COUNCIL,PRINCIPALS,COLLEGES,KERALA & ORS) as actions that "adversely affect the physique or psyche of a fresher or a junior student.

Following are the measures suggested to the Hon'ble Supreme Court by the Committee headed by Dr.R.K. Raghavan. According to the Committee, the following factors need to be focused to tackle with the problem:
a. Primary responsibility for curbing ragging rests with academic institutions themselves.

b. Ragging adversely impacts the standards of higher education.

c. Incentives should be available to institutions for curbing the menace and there should be disincentives for failure to do so.

d. Enrolment in academic pursuits or a campus life should not immunize any adult citizen from penal provisions of the laws of the land.

e. Ragging needs to be perceived as failure to inculcate human values from the schooling stage.

f. Behavioural patterns among students, particularly potential 'raggers', need to be identified.

g. Measures against ragging must deter its recurrence.

h. Concerted action is required at the level of the school, higher educational institution, district administration, university, State and Central Governments to make any curb effective.

i. Media and the Civil Society should be involved in this exercise.

The Committee has made several recommendations and the Hon'ble Court was pleased to direct the implementation of the following (amongst other) without any further lapse of time-

1. The punishment to be meted out has to be exemplary and justifiably harsh to act as a deterrent against recurrence of such incidents.

2. Every single incident of ragging where the victim or his parent/guardian or the Head of institution is not satisfied with the institutional arrangement for action, a First Information Report (F.I.R) must be filed without exception by the institutional authorities with the local police authorities. Any failure on the part of the institutional authority or negligence or deliberate delay in lodging the FIR with the local police shall be construed to be an act of culpable negligence on the part of the institutional authority. If any victim or his parent/guardian of ragging intends to file FIR directly with the police, that will not absolve the institutional authority from the requirement of filing the FIR.

3. It shall be the collective responsibility of the authorities and functionaries of the concerned institution and their role shall also be open to scrutiny for the purpose of finding out whether they have taken effective steps for preventing ragging and in case of their failure, action can be taken; for example, denial of any grant-in-aid or assistance from the State Governments.

Now the obvious question is whether the educational institutions are responsible enough to take necessary steps for curbing menace of ragging or are they involved in settling down the grievances of the poor victims  without any redressal?