Daily Hindu Editorials

In the wake of the Punjab National Bank scam, some old arguments have once again resurfaced. The first one is that unless wages and compensation are improved drastically in public sector banks (PSBs), incidents like these will continue to recur. The second argument, which Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian also endorsed, is that the only lasting solution to stop this seemingly endless cycle of fraud in PSBs is to cut the Gordian knot of ownership — privatise banks, and let the private sector’s better management, controls, ability to pay for superior talent and market-driven efficiency deal with the perennial PSB problems of lack of skills, absence of proper accountability and cronyism. These are seductively logical arguments. After all, it is a fact that compared to their private sector counterparts, public sector managers (in banking and elsewhere) are vastly lower paid, particularly at the top, where the risks are far greater but the rewards starkly lower. And it i...

Soon after 49-year-old Niranjan Sakhare, a Mumbai resident, was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago, he saw television advertisements for an Ayurvedic diabetes pill called IME-9, or Insulin Management Expert. A combination of five plant extracts, the drug was developed by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS) — an autonomous body of the Ministry of AYUSH — and based on a formulation called Ayush-82. It was licensed to the Delhi-based Kudos Laboratories for marketing and had the government’s stamp of approval. Mr. Sakhare began taking it alongside Gluconorm-G, a powerful combination of the anti-diabetic agents glimepiride and metformin, prescribed by his doctor. Some days later, he began feeling anxious and jittery — symptoms of low blood sugar. He visited his doctor, who admonished him and asked him to stop IME-9 immediately. Mr. Sakhare has been careful ever since. Like Mr. Sakhare, thousands of Indians have bought into the aggressi...

There is a renewed sense of urgency the world over to tackle the TB epidemic. Last year, the Global Ministerial Conference (GMC) on Ending TB in the Sustainable Development Era brought together nearly 80 health ministers in support of TB elimination efforts. The momentum created there will be taken forward this year, in New York, at the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting on TB. It will be attended by the heads of state. 🔹Focus on research The key takeaway from the GMC was the thrust on research and development (R&D), to develop new and safer drug regimens, point-of-care diagnostics, and an effective vaccine. It is well known that TB research has been neglected which has resulted in the disease becoming one of the leading infectious killers in the world. Despite the World Health Organisation’s End TB Strategy listing R&D as key to eliminating the disease, TB research remains severely underfunded. According to estimates in the Global Plan to Stop TB...

In MODY, a defect in a single gene causes a rare form of the metabolic disease that is often misdiagnosed as Type 1-diabetes A team led by researchers in Chennai has isolated a gene that causes a rare form of diabetes, called Maturity-Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY). This adds to the 14 known gene variants that cause MODY and could advance the emerging field of precision diabetes, by helping personalise diabetes care. Diabetes involves a disruption of how blood sugar is kept in check by the hormone insulin. In Type-2 diabetes, which is the most common form of the disorder, many genes and environmental factors combine to cause this disruption. In MODY, any one of the 14 genes, if defective, can hamper the body’s insulin usage and trigger Type-2 diabetes. Some forms treatable Many times non-obese children, with elevated blood sugars, are often misdiagnosed to have Type 1 diabetes and treated with insulin, leading to poor or no control of the blood sugar. “Some forms of ...

To understand the history of the modern Indian mind is to learn how Indians understand historical memory On December 1, 1881, the British governor of Bombay, James Fergusson, informed the residents of that city that from that day onwards, “Madras time shall be kept in all offices under the control of Government and shall be held to be the official time for all purposes.” Madras time was about 40 minutes ahead of Bombay’s local time. What followed that decision was great acrimony, letter-writing campaigns, and newspaper editorials that bemoaned the rise of confusion over which time to follow where. Meanwhile, the Bombay Chamber of Commerce convinced the Bombay university to hold a referendum on whether the clock tower should display Madras or Bombay time. Predictably, there was no surprise. The vote was to show Bombay time and, like petty bureaucrats, the Fergusson administration cut off funds to light the clock at night for displaying “unofficial time”. It...