WEEKEND LIGHTER: Science is a Great Giver
WEEKEND LIGHTER: Science is a Great Giver
(October 29/30, 2016, No.45/2016)
Weekend Lighter is posted every Saturday @mgwarrier.blogspot.in
WEEKEND LIGHTER WISHES ALL ITS
READERS HAPPY DIWALI
I
Opening Remarks
Coping with the technology outburst**
M G WARRIER
Media reports
say that 32 lakh debit cards issued by several banks including State Bank of
India, ICICI Bank, YES Bank, HDFC Bank and PNB are being replaced by new cards with more security features. The
National Payments Corporation of India has come out with a statement
quantifying the damage: “The complaints of fraudulent withdrawal is limited to
cards of 19 banks and 641 customers. The total amount involved is Rs1.3crore as
reported by various affected banks to NPCI.”
It is comforting
to see that quick corrective action is being initiated by authorities as and
when malpractices are noticed. The credibility of the system can be salvaged by
immediately compensating the losses suffered by the clientele. The wider issue
is the fast forward mode technology is accepting to compete in a market which
is not much worried about ethics and morals. The forced withdrawals of products
from the market by car manufacturers, food product giants and smart phone
producers incurring heavy losses are fresh in our memory. Something is wrong,
somewhere and earlier we fix it, the better for humanity. One also gets
disturbed about the safety systems in places where explosives from crackers to
nuclear devices are manufactured and stored. Yesterday (October 20, 2016) a
fire in a cracker shop in Sivakasi resulted in the death of 8 persons by
suffocation.
In 1964, when I
wrote a recruitment test for selection of auditors in the Thiruvananthapuram
Accountant General’s Office, the subject given for an essay was “Modern science
has stifled human values”. In the interview, the then Accountant General, T N
Kuriakos made it a point to ask candidates who had got better marks for the
essay the meaning of the word ‘stifle’. Being a Malayalam medium student up to
SSLC, I had to explain the meaning in several words. He was impressed, but. I
got selected. 52 years down the line, I am still struggling to convince others
that “Modern technology is stifling humanity”.
Allow me to
narrate three technology-related personal experiences in the recent past. I
will try to be factual in narration and leave it to the reader to come to
conclusions.
Mobile phone
In June this
year, when I landed in Mumbai airport, I switched on my mobile phone. It was
not working. I was using a Thiruvananthapuram-based connection with roaming
facility. Later the service provider told me that they had switched over to 4G
and earlier connections need to be ‘upgraded’ to become functional. I
approached their franchisee in Bhandup for help, who guided me to approach
someone in Kerala as the original connection was from Thiruvananthapuram. The
service provider’s Kerala representatives expressed helplessness as their shift
to 4G will take time. I got my connection disabled and had to go to another
service provider for a new mobile number.
Bank account
During the
initial days of ATM frauds (about a month back), I received a call from a bank
where I have an account and a debit card. The sweet voice at the other end
confirms my name and tells me that the bank is providing ‘insurance’ for ATM
Cards under a new scheme called “Card Protect”. Quickly I ask whether the
service is “fee based”. She answers in the affirmative and goes on explaining
that the umbrella insurance which comes for just Rs 1,700 per annum will cover
losses suffered by using ‘Other Bank ATM Cards’ also. I plead, I can’t decide
over the phone, but would like to get an email with details. No email came. I
still do not know about the genuineness of the scheme. This is the result of
outsourced call centres being used for selling products and services. Nothing
gets recorded, unless you are a tech-wizard.
Portability of mobile connection
My mobile
connection is just two month old. I get a call from an unknown number. This
time, a strong male voice at the other end confirms that mine was a new
connection. Then asks me what was the bill amount I paid last month. I give a
round figure, assuming that the call is from my own service provider. He asks
me to change the plan so that I will have to pay just the half of what I was
paying every month. I ask what I should do for that. He asks me to keep
identity and address proof ready and give my address, so that he can come and
meet me. I said I have given these documents for getting the connection and why
they are required again. Then he reveals, he represents another service
provider and he can arrange shifting of connection to his agency without change
in number. When I tell him I was not interested, he expressed his
disappointment for having ‘wasted’ his time. This is aggressive marketing.
Postscript
Your options
include:
(a)
Brush
aside the above as laments of a septuagenarian who is not tech-savvy.
(b)
Talk
about this in your circles and improve your preparedness to meet the
side-effects of the current Technology burst.
Make your choice
judiciously and avoid future regrets!
*******************
**Submitted version of
my article published in Open Page,The Hindu, October 25, 2016
II
Recent responses
October 26, 2016
Underestimating Tatas legacy
This refers to
Shreekant Sambani’s piece “Revenge of the angry, old men” (Business Standard, October
26). To say it politely, it was injustice by the writer to have mixed up Tatas
story with the Yadav family spars. The impression given by the writer that he
is privy to the goings on in Tatas Group from time unknown leaves one with a
doubt that the writer’s discomfort with the Tatas has pre-Mistry origin.
Tatas have a 150 year history behind and perhaps stands
alone as the single private sector group which strived to protect public
interest and participated in India’s economic growth through thick and thin,
working on trust principles. The opening paragraph of the Group’s profile on
the website explains the Tata approach to business. It inter alia says: 'To
improve the quality of life of the communities we serve globally, through
long-term stakeholder value creation based on Leadership with Trust'.
If
there is one real reason for the unceremonious exit of Cyrus Mistry on October
24, 2016, it is unlikely that anyone outside Tatas may come to know of it.
Probably, it may be the culmination of several events during the last few years
affecting the fortunes of Tata Group, for which Mistry might not be the only
person responsible. But, those outside need to concede to Ratan Tata, the right
to correct, through legally acceptable
means, if a succession plan he
implemented after considerable contemplation has gone wrong, in his own
assessment.
People
who thought Tatas can be broken into manageable pieces by using methods like
leaving the institutions topless or with weak CEOs (similar to those
successfully tried in PSUs like UTI and HMT), will, hopefully, be proved wrong here.
M G Warrier,
Mumbai
October 24, 2016
Let MPC evolve
Is refers to the story “Rate cut:
Economic panacea for all ills?” (The Hindu, October 24). It is not clear
whether the authors did access the minutes of the maiden two day(October 3/4)
meeting of the newly constituted Monetary Policy Committee, which, inter alia
said: “MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation
expectations, corporate sector performance,
credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, feedback from industry
associations and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee
reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, alternative scenarios around
various risks to the outlook and staff’s quarterly projection model.” Drawing
on these and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted
the resolution which set out the policy rates, including the policy repo rate
which now stands lower by 25 basis points at 6.25 per cent. The minutes also
carry the individual views of each of the MPC members.
The observations like, “…wonders if
the MPC felt a need to distance itself from the legacy of Dr Rajan.” and
alleging immaturity in MPC’s approach puts the writers in bad light and if
someone looks for motives, like the subject having been used to say something
they wanted to say about management of NPAs, defending will be difficult.
Monetary Policy
Committee was conceived by Financial Sector Legislative Reforms
Commission(FSLRC) as one of the many reforms that would finally help Finance
Ministry make RBI amenable. Though its brief was to recommend on financial
sector legislative reforms, FSLRC concentrated on truncating and weakening
Reserve Bank of India. It invented reasons even to change the designation of
the head of RBI. But, RBI is a lucky institution. Many things changed by the
time the recommendations of FSLRC were being taken up for implementation. They
just became reference points for further action on subjects covered in the
report. The two events, the presence of Dr Raghuram Rajan at Mint Road from
2013 to 2016 and the change of guard in New Delhi worked in RBI’s favour.
Thus the Monetary
Policy Committee got a makeover as an expert body unburdening the RBI Governor
from the individual responsibility to explain every policy decision. Since the time the constitution of MPC
was announced, a section of analysts has been apprehensive of MPC dividing itself
into Team A(RBI) and Team B (GOI) and voting for constituency interests, making
casting vote by Governor essential to take decisions. The professional way in
which MPC has conducted itself in its debut meeting as evidenced by the views
of each member on the policy stance, now
in public domain, has proved these doomsayers wrong. As it gains more
experience and a feel of RBI’s role, MPC will graduate into another strong
pillar supporting the central bank.
M G Warrier, Mumbai
October 24, 2016
Nobel idea
“Proximate
bottoms of shallow barrels” by TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan (Business Standard, Line
and Length, October 24), gives deep insight into the legacy and relevance of
Nobel prize as an instrument to promote academic work to excel for the benefit
of humanity. Let Nobel Committee consider the suggestions for making the prize
more efficient and relevant.
That the writer
missed the work of a Nobel prize awardee and was caught unawares when asked to
write about him cannot be a reason to make the economics Nobel award a
quinquennial affair. It is another matter, if Nobel Committee decides not to
award Nobel for economics or any other stream in a particular year for want of
qualifying nominations. We have been watching sharing of the prize by equally talented
scholars in some cases.
Back home, let us consider what can be done in
India to recognize talent and research in various fields. While public funds
out of budgetary provisions in India flow to higher education, incentives and
encouragement for extraordinary work in academia or contribution to research
and economic development are few and inadequate.
Some
organizations in public sector and large corporates do support institutions
like IITs and IIMs by funding or instituting chairs. But in many cases they do
not go beyond an ‘on-the-job vacation’ for incumbents. If some system is put in
place to evaluate and reward talents in different research streams, it will
motivate scholars to excel in their fields.
Even TV Channels
give away huge prizes to talented artists every year. Research is seen as a
qualification for a job or taking up teaching as a profession and therefore the
incentive to do better is lacking.
M G Warrier, Mumbai
III
SCIENCE
Science is the Great Giver*
BILL GATES
October 24, 2016
I’m traveling to the United Kingdom and France this
week to talk about how political leadership can accelerate innovation.
The first promise of any good politician is to make
people’s lives better, and scientific research leading to innovation is one of
the best ways to honor that promise. Until about 1700, there was basically no
development. Almost everybody was poor, many were sick. One of every four
children died. Average life expectancy was about 40 years, and 99 percent of
people were illiterate. But then science came along and we started
inventing—electricity, the steam engine, antibiotics, sanitation, vaccines,
microprocessors, genetic medicine.
Science is the great giver—and we’re just at the
beginning of what it can give.
The UK and France are natural homes for this message.
The world owes an ongoing debt to the discoveries from both countries,
including Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin and Charles Darwin’s
theory of evolution in Britain, and Louis Pasteur’s development of
pasteurization and Rene Laennec’s invention of the stethoscope in France.
The discoveries of these scientists weren’t just
breathtaking insights into the nature of the universe; they became fuel for
human progress. Progress is not a law of nature, like gravity. It takes work.
Progress comes from innovation, which comes from research, which comes from
investment, which comes in great part from government funding.
A powerful example is the story of penicillin. In
1928, when Alexander Fleming was doing research on antibacterial substances at
St. Mary’s Hospital in London, he saw that mold that had developed by accident
on a staphylococcus culture plate had created a bacteria-free circle around
itself.
It was a historic discovery, but more work had to be
done to determine the cause, isolate the active substance, and see if it could
kill germs in a human being without also killing the human being. Dr.
Howard Florey, Dr. Ernst Chain and other colleagues at Oxford were eager to
pursue the work and wrote to the Medical Research Council (the UK government
funding agency) requesting a research grant. They received £25, with the
possibility of more later.
With the additional help of a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation, the team was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of
the drug, which gained them the government support they needed to move to
large-scale production in partnership with the United States. These efforts
saved thousands of soldiers’ lives during World War II, where the number of
deaths from battlefield infections plunged with the use of penicillin.
This same pattern of government support for medical
research is underway in Britain today in many areas, including in malaria
research. Malaria takes more than 700,000 lives each year—mostly in Africa and
Southeast Asia. Its heaviest toll is on children. In 2003, the UK’s Department
for International Development (DfID) and other European funders came together
to fund a partnership between the Medicines for Malaria Venture and Novartis to
develop a medicine tailored especially for children. This new drug, Coartem
Dispersible, tastes sweet, is easy to take, is now available in 50 countries,
and is estimated to have cured over 68 million cases of malaria. An
analysis of the UK government research costs estimates that it has cost British
taxpayers £1.10—1.40 per life saved. That is an amazing return on investment.
This is just one aspect of the UK’s work on malaria.
DfID has also pledged an additional 25 million pounds to help develop a
one-dose cure for malaria that could be available in the next three years. And
GlaxoSmithKline is working with the Malaria Vaccine Initiative to develop the
most promising vaccine candidate in history, which will enter final
demonstration trials next year.
In another UK research initiative of historic
consequence, the UK Medical Research Council, with funding from the DfID,
launched a partnership to develop vaginal microbicides to protect women from
HIV. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death globally in women age 15-44—in part
because it is very difficult for a young woman to negotiate condom use with her
partner. A vaginal microbicide puts protection directly in the hands of a
woman, giving her an intervention she can use without her partner’s knowledge
or consent. Two clinical trials have showed that the monthly dapivirine ring
helped reduce new infections in women, with infection rates falling as much as
75 percent with near perfect use. This could avert millions of new infections
and leave the world again indebted to British research.
The UK has also led in the search for an Ebola
vaccine. The 2014 Ebola outbreak killed more than 11,000 people with an average
fatality rate of 50 percent. One of the most important steps in containing an
epidemic is to vaccinate around the outbreak, but in 2014, there was no Ebola
vaccine and vaccine candidates sat on the shelves because there were no
buyers. In 2015, late-stage studies conducted with funding by the UK’s
Department for International Development, the Wellcome Trust, the Jenner
Institute, and the Canadian government showed a vaccine candidate from Merck to
be highly effective against Ebola. The UK is also supporting promising vaccine
candidates from GSK and Johnson & Johnson. As a result, if there is a new
Ebola outbreak, the response is likely to be far more swift and
effective.
Every country on earth will benefit when we have an
Ebola vaccine, when microbicides are perfected, when malaria is eradicated—but
there is a special gain to the countries doing the research. First of all, when
a country funds innovations that make life better for people around the world,
it defines itself as a global leader. Second, research and development brings a
huge benefit to the countries doing the research because it creates high-paying
jobs, encourages the growth of talent, and builds up the scientific capacity of
the country that pays for it.
When a country builds its own scientific capacity, the
benefits it gets are far beyond what it can imagine. That’s because some of the
greatest discoveries of science are insights that came when looking for
something else. Scientists begin searching for the answer to one problem and
discover the answer to many others. And once a country builds scientific
talent, it can deploy it quickly to urgent areas.
In the midst of a pandemic, for example, a country
with great scientific resources can far more quickly track a disease, invent
diagnostic tests and develop treatments and vaccines. You can’t mobilize your
talent if you haven’t already built it.
The importance of scientific research also stretches
far beyond global health. Supplies of energy, water, food—which are central to
the fight against poverty and crucial for easing the scarcity that is a cause
of instability—are all problems that must be solved by science. And research
into information technology can improve productivity in ways that lead to new
jobs, economic growth and educational gains as well.
Whether the research is in global health or
agriculture or information technology or energy, the dynamic is the
same. Innovation comes from government spending on R&D plus the
creative genius of the private sector which takes the findings from lab to market.
Here too, Europe is helping to lead the way. In
the search for new energy sources, some of the most forward thinking companies
are in France. Total, an oil company, and Engie, an electricity provider,
have seen the need to transition from fossil fuels to clean-energy solutions.
They are thinking about how to take biofuels, solar energy and other new energy
innovations, many developed through government-sponsored R&D, and scale
them to meet the demands of their global customers. This formula has led to
the spread of so many great health interventions around the world. It has
also led to the success of Microsoft, Apple, Google and other tech companies
whose innovations built on the insights gained in government-funded
research.
That’s the message that I’m bringing with me to
Europe. I want to urge leaders here to take on our biggest problems
through dramatic increases in scientific research—because we know that
government-funded research can create jobs now, meet public needs soon, and
lead to economic growth far into the future.
At the start of this post, I cited the work of Charles
Darwin. It’s clear enough by now that the key adaptive trait in human beings is
our ability to discover and share new knowledge—to innovate. That’s why we’re
here and Neanderthals aren’t. Innovation is what helps us flourish. To
slow down on innovation now by missing the chance to boost research is to turn
our back on our greatest strength. It’s replacing thinking with hoping. That’s
not worthy of people who have big dreams for their children. We need to
invest in research as if billions of lives depended on it—because they do.
*This was originally published at
gatenotes.com
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