Columns

By D.C. Pathak
There is a debate - set off, among other things, by the review of school textbooks in India - revolving around questions like whether young minds should be exposed to divisive and violent phases of the nation's past when the entire account of history was made available to the researchers and students of socio-political evolution, in any case.


On the sides was also a comparison between Western Knowledge attributed to Scientific Temper and Eastern Thought rooted in Traditional Wisdom and the implicit suggestion that they represented the 'new' and the 'old' ways of looking at things.

The debate creates geographical and cultural divides in knowledge which are irrational in themselves because knowledge - unlike 'information' - is an integral concept applicable to humanity at large.

It is not difficult to imagine that universal knowledge would unite and not divide humanity. 'Knowledge' was always meant to be 'spread' - unless it fell in the category of secrets that were maintained for the cause of national security or information that had to be kept confidential till such time as was needed for declaring its ownership under the law of Patents in the interest of economic security of the country.

The advent of the IT revolution - with instant communication as its outcome - has enabled a complete bridging of the geographical divide of information and the globalisation of business has further put a stamp on the universalisation of knowledge.

Knowledge enforces transparency. The cultural values of India promoted respect for thinkers, adherence to human welfare and sharing of knowledge for the good of all.

With India's rise on the world stage as a major influencer on issues of war and peace, the importance of 'history for history's sake' - beyond its use for drawing lessons for improving a lot of humanity in the future - needs to be examined further in the national context.

It goes to the credit of the Narendra Modi government that India is referring back to its civilisational moorings to bolster its claim as a major power in the world - fully prepared to opt for mutually beneficial bilateral relationships as the base of its foreign policy.

India maintains its freedom from 'alignments' and supports the cause of sanity in situations of international conflict like the one created by the military confrontation between Ukraine and Russia.

India's stand was that the security concerns of both warring nations should have been understood and peace between the two neighbours should have been worked out before NATO's strength was pledged to Ukraine reviving the Cold War environment.

India abstained from voting on anti-Russia resolutions at the UN on one hand but it also pledged its total commitment to Indo-US strategic friendship, on the other. Prime Minister Modi's emergence as a world counsel acceptable to all on this conflict of global impact, speaks of the importance India has attained by showing the political will to invoke its civilisational strength in pursuing a path that was deemed to be morally right.

The confidence with which India under Prime Minister Modi coined the motto 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' (the whole world is one family) for its G20 Presidency is truly extraordinary and is rightly indicative of the need for the nation to reinvent its glorious past that was marked by the primacy of democratic outlook, the pursuit of knowledge and transparency in public life and also known for the rulers taking care of their people, practising frugality and attaching importance to public morality.

Unfortunately, the political opposition today shuns the word 'nationalism', projects rule by the majority as a sign of 'majoritarianism' - disregarding the merit of 'one man one vote' - and upholds the divisive minority politics that had exposed the country to the shock of Partition and its aftermath.

India has been a land of sages and that is why despite the violence of Muslim invaders it readily accepted the Sufi philosophy that attached importance to Muslim 'saints' and Pirs and did not succumb to extremism in the name of Islam.

Today there is 'supremacism' of faith being projected by politically motivated groups - hopefully, this will not stand before the civilisational might of India that always propounded that 'God is one, the ways of worshipping Him could be many'.

Faith-based conflict and extremist violence have to be put down as India in terms of its civilisational past never subscribed to it. India has always followed the mandate that the rulers must look at all subjects with the same 'paternal and nurtural' outlook.

A notion still widely prevalent in developing societies is that 'modernisation' meant 'Westernisation' and this was strengthened by the narrative that the progress of the West was mainly on account of the scientific temper of its people.

It is true that the West gained from Industrial Revolution but this happened also because the independent countries there could practise the economic ideology of a free and competitive market and had a start over the countries less developed economically.

The point is proved clearly by the advent of the Information Technology revolution at the beginning of the Nineties by which time a free India had acquired the wherewithal to take a lead over the developed world of the West in this technology and emerge as a leader in IT at the global stage.

It was not a lack of scientific temperament but the lack of opportunity that held India back earlier. The enormous incentive generated in India for carrying the country economically forward, has flown top down right from Prime Minister Modi himself whose personal drive to push ahead with digitisation, has yielded unprecedented success.

The growth of entrepreneurship, brisk pace of launch of start-ups and a sharp reduction in the seepage of funds of public schemes are new developments and they all reaffirm the fact that India as a nation could lay its own path of growth and 'modernisation' given a certain elevation of the standard of governance and a conscious effort to shun political compromise with fiscal discipline. If invoking the civilisational virtues of India helps this up-gradation of national output, this is welcome.

It is a fact of India's ancient past that this country was the land of sage thinkers who were so close to nature that they could reach empirical deductions without the benefit of later-day scientific experiments and lab research.

The conceptualisation of the Solar System, the belief that what existed in the physical plane could disappear into energy and the mandate that life was the product of five elements of nature combining at some point in time, were the ideas that proved to be the forerunners of discovery of atomic structure, scientific equation of conversion of matter into energy and the theory of evolution itself.

No less than the greatest scientist of all times - Albert Einstein- famously said that 'imagination is more important than knowledge' thereby emphasising how the human mind had the capacity to look beyond the facts in front and get an insight into what lay ahead.

The thinking sages of India precisely did that and created a civilisational legacy that looked at all humanity as one entity and laid down the universally applicable philosophy of 'Karma', the pursuit of the Right Path and redemption without waiting for Rebirth.

The ascendancy of India on the world stage is substantially aided by the cultural values that it upholds - rising above distinctions of group identity, region and mode of worship. It is not wrong to describe India as the 'mother of democracy' since the universalisation and 'openness' of its civilisational approach transcends any parochial thoughts.

It is worth noting that President Xi Jinping of China who has risen to become a leader of the class of Mao Zedong - his guidelines are now incorporated in the Party Book and he is now deemed to be the President for life - has been carrying out 'Sinicization' of Marxism and as a part of that highlighting the 5000-year old civilisation of China as a great source of pride for the country.

A Marxist dictatorship glorifying civilisational legacy reaffirms the fact that the process of nation-building has to be rooted in the positive aspects of the country's ancient past. It also proves that whatever stood for the larger good of humanity as against an ideology that divides, would have to be adopted by any country that was seeking to increase its influence in the international community.

India is truly capable of bridging the East-West divide of knowledge, the North-South gulf of the economy and universally existing distinctions of colour and creed. India works for assimilation, peace and human compassion for this comes naturally to it because of its timeless cultural tradition.

The debate on what represented the true history of India need not become a political distraction - education of young minds should aim at freeing them from thoughts of a divided nation, unnecessary recall of violent periods of history and exclusivist orientation.

The Modi government is rightly engaged in looking at India's large population - which has exceeded that of China - as a source of demographic dividend. Its national mission should be to achieve economic growth large enough to take care of fundamental requirements of health, education and purposeful employment so that this advantage was retained for the future.

Prime Minister Modi gives the impression of being fully aware of this larger objective - his calls of 'vocal for local', 'aatmanirbharta' and clean public life are timely and appropriate.

Indian democracy must rise above religious and regional divides and focus on uplifting the common man economically, enhancing pride in the civilisational inheritance and keeping issues of national security above party politics. This will be the idea of India in the years ahead.

National resilience is built on the adoption of all that was good in the civilisational past, acceptance of the learnings of history for the sake of a better future and adherence to the principle that while pushing ahead with national interests, the cause of humanity at large should not be lost sight of.

(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views expressed are personal)

--IANS
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By Vikas Datta
The defining trait of humanity, language is the bedrock of all its achievements, from social relations to culture to technology, due to its ability to convey meaning, reference objects, events, and ideas across time and space, and enable the propagation of knowledge.



However, in their diverse development and spread, languages can have complex challenges, especially for people seeking to ascertain their use, learn a new one, and or even understand how their language differs from another one, even when these are part of the same "language family".

Take Indo-European -- the world's most expansive though with around 450-odd languages, it is far behind the Niger-Congo/Atlantic-Congo (1,400-1,500 odd languages across most of sub-Saharan Africa) and Austronesian (1,200-odd across Pacific Ocean islands and even Madagascar). However, even the Indo-European name is misleading -- it is found on all continents, beyond Europe, and even in India, there are two other prominent language families that span a considerable area.

But in diversity, it is stunning -- spanning from Icelandic to Sinhalese, and from Portuguese to Nepali, and containing at least six with the most speakers (Spanish, English, Portuguese, Hindi, Bengali, Russian). Yet, the differences between most of its members, which, centuries back, was just one language -- Proto-Indo-European, is downright perplexing -- especially for those of us attuned to English.

Russian and Latin, along with some other non-Indo-European languages like Chinese and Japanese, lack articles such as a, an, or the, while Irish and Icelandic -- and non-IE Arabic -- have definite articles but no indefinite articles, while Scandinavian languages and Romanian have indefinite articles, but use suffixes for definite forms.

Then, while English -- and Armenian and Bengali -- have lost their noun genders, French, Swedish, Lithuanian, and Hindi still have them but reduced from three to two, while the Slavic sub-family (Russian, Czech, Polish, etc.) still has a complicated gender system by imposing on the inherited distinctions contrasts of animate vs inanimate or personal vs nonpersonal.

Take the case system governing nouns and noun modifiers like determiners, adjectives, numerals, etc. -- English has only three and for pronouns -- subjective (he/she), objective (him/her), and possessive (his/hers) or nominative, accusative and genitive as earlier known, while Hindi-Urdu has three for nouns (nominative, oblique, and vocative) and five for pronouns (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and oblique).

Proto-Indo-European, however, had eight, and so IE languages Marathi, Sanskrit, and Assamese -- and Mongolian (Monglic family), as well as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu (Dravidian family), while Armenian, Czech, Georgian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian and Ukrainian (all IE) have seven, Bengali, Latin, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian at least six, Romanian and Ancient Greek five, German, Icelandic, Modern Greek, and Irish four, Arabic three, and Persian two.

Compare it with IE's neighbouring Finno-Ugric family whose members like Hungarian have at least 18 cases and Finnish has 15.

There are so many other differences in the declension of verbs (remember memorising the different ends for I, you, they, and the plurals thereof), the syntax (the placing of subject, verb, object), and so many more aspects to bewilder the senses.

You have to be an expert linguist to make sense out of all this but even linguistics is a very specialised field and presupposes knowledge of differentiating between a voiceless alveolar trill and a voiced epiglottal affricate in consonants, or case of vowels, between close central unrounded and open-mid front compressed and the like. This is just words and it climbs up from there.

However, there are a number of accessible books for those who seek to understand how languages develop and diverge. Let's see some half dozen of them

An engaging overview is offered in British classicist Simon Pulleyn's "The Secret Life of Language" (2018), which features a wealth of information but with simplicity, clarity, and wit.

He starts with the difference between communication and language and the changes in the human anatomy that made speech possible. Next up are various constituents/features of a language. The various language families -- and their prominent members, and then the writing systems, the language ecology, covering dialects and language death.

A deeper, but still lucid, look is offered by American linguist John McWhorter, who, in "What Language Is (And What It Isn't and What It Could Be)" (2011) questions common assumptions about language, especially about its purity, provenance, and propriety -- and why written forms are not superior to spoken ones. Slightly dated but still incisive, Laurie Baker and Peter Trudgill's 'Language Myths' (1998), offers a gamut of scholars examining issues like comparison of languages on aesthetic or ease, whether media is ruining English, and do women really talk too much?

For an idiosyncratic look at various European languages, Dutch scholar Gaston Dorren's "Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe" (2014) offers 60 vignettes on various languages, including 'exotic' ones like Breton, Sami, and Gagauz as well as their families. It, however, stresses it should not be taken as an encyclopaedic as short portraits of some languages are interspersed with others focusing on some quirk or personality attached to it. From these, we find which present language is closest to Proto-Indo-European, why the 'mature' French has a mother fixation, why Spanish sounds like a machine gun, and why Norwegian is most democratic in nature.

After this, Dorren spreads his sights across the world. In 'Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages' (2019), he gives an account of those with whom you can converse with three-quarters of the global population, but also how they reached their status and why they stand out. Starting with Vietnamese -- in fact, 14 of the 20 are Asian tongues (Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, and Arabic but also Javanese, Punjabi, Bengali, and Tamil -- all three trans-border), and one is African, each chapter starts with some facts about the language, how its alphabet or characters look like, how are its words formed, its grammar, the history of the language, and the people who speak it.

If you are interested in why languages rise to prominence -- regional or even global -- and then decline, British scholar Nicholas Ostler in 'The Last Lingua Franca: The Rise and Fall of World Languages' (2011) offers some engaging history in profiling the cases of Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian, some others, and finally English. Provocatively prophesying the fall of English too, he contends nothing will take its place with the rise of appropriate technology, especially machine translation (MT) technology.

ChatGPT and some other AI innovations now throw up more questions about humans and languages -- let's wait for experts to provide clarity.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) The final opinion poll for the Karnataka Assembly elections conducted by C-Voter for ABP News indicates that the Congress is still in the pole position though the BJP seems to have closed the earlier gap in the last leg of campaigning.

A detailed analysis of the poll data across demographics and other categories in the major regions of the state suggests that the Congress is likely to win between 110 and 122 seats in the May 10 elections. The Karnataka Assembly has 224 members and a tally of 113 is required to form a simple majority government.

The party is projected to get 40.2 per cent of the vote share, up 2.2 per cent from what it managed in the previous Assembly elections in 2018. The BJP, which currently has a government in the state, is projected to win between 73 and 85 seats. In 2018, the saffron party had won 104 seats.

Interestingly, BJP's vote share is projected to remain the same at 36 per cent. Compared to the earlier rounds of the C-Voter poll, this is an improvement both in terms of seats and vote share.

The JD(S) is projected to win between 21 and 29 seats. In 2018, it had won 37 seats. The projected vote share for the JD(S) in 16.1 per cent, down almost 2 per cent compared to the 2018 elections.

Barring the Greater Bengaluru region, which sends 32 MLAs to the Karnataka Assembly, the Congress is projected to win more seats than the BJP in all the other regions of the state.

Interestingly, the BJP is projected to substantially increase its vote share in the Old Mysuru region, a stronghold of the JD(S), from 17 per cent in 2018 to more than 25 per cent this time.

But this seems to be resulting in a triangular fight which is helping the Congress.

Elections are scheduled in a single phase on May 10 and the results will be declared on May 13.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) The Nifty, after a weak run in the last four months, bounced back in April with 4.1 per cent MoM gain, Motilal Oswal Financial Services said in a report.

Notably, the index was extremely volatile and swung around 776 points before closing 705 points higher. Nifty50 has been underperforming the emerging markets and the world indices in CY23YTD amid varied global macro headwinds viz., inflation, interest rates, and currency, the report said.

While most of the global equity markets are rising 5-20 per cent in CY23YTD, India is flat in local currency, the report said.

The Nifty Midcap 100 (+5.9 per cent MoM) and Nifty Smallcap 100 (+7.5 per cent) outperformed the Nifty50 during the month.

FIIs recorded inflows for the second consecutive month.

FIIs remained net buyers for the second straight month at $1.9 billion in Apr'23, after recording inflows of $1.8 billion in Mar'23; YTD outflows stood at $0.6 billion. DII inflows ebbed in Apr'23 at $0.3 billion, and stood at $10.4 billion YTD.

All major sectors end higher in Apr'23: Real Estate (+15 per cent), PSU Banks (+12 per cent), Automobiles (+8 per cent), Capital Goods (+7 per cent), and Telecom (+7 per cent) were the top gainers, while Technology (-3 per cent) was the only laggard, the report said.

India was among the top-performing markets in Apr'23.

Among the key global markets, Russia (+9 per cent), India (+4 per cent), the UK (+3 per cent), Japan (+3 per cent), Brazil (+3 per cent), Indonesia (+2 per cent), China (+2 per cent), the US (+1 per cent), and Korea (+1 per cent) closed higher in Apr'23, while Taiwan (-2 per cent), and MSCI EM (-1 per cent) ended lower in local currency terms.

Over the last 12 months, the MSCI India index (-1 per cent) has outperformed the MSCI EM index (-9 per cent). Over the last 10 years, the MSCI India index has outperformed the MSCI EM index by 167 per cent, the report said.

Corporate earnings so far have been in line with the performance of heavyweights, such as Reliance Industries, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and TCS, driving the aggregate.

The spread of earnings has been decent with 79 per cent of universe either meeting or exceeding profit expectations.

However, the growth is being led by BFSI, Technology, and O&G, while Metals, Healthcare, and Telecom recorded a YoY earnings decline for the quarter, the report said.

--IANS
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By Arul Louis
United Nations, May 3 (IANS) Rana Ayyub, a controversial Indian journalist writing for US media, has called for shifting global attention to media freedom in India as she spoke at a Unesco-sponsored event at the world body.


"It is important for the world to shift its attention to India because we do not really talk about India as much and I really hope you do that in the days to come," she said on Tuesday questioning New Delhi's democratic credentials and its press freedom at the conference held on the eve of the World Press Freedom Day in the General Assembly chamber.

"When we talk about attacks in the press, we normally never look at India as much because India is seen as this place of democracy, you know, syncretic values and cultural pluralism."

Earlier at the 30th Anniversary of the World Press Freedom Day Global Conference, New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger got the criticism of India rolling, saying that "in India, authorities have raided newsrooms and treated journalists essentially as terrorists".

"In countries where press freedoms were strong, including the United States, journalists now face systematic campaigns to undermine their credibility, followed by attacks on the legal protections that safeguard their work," he said.

Samantha Power, the administrator of the US government's Agency for International Development (USAID), announced the launch of Reporters Shield, a programme to offer investigative journalists around the world insurance from defamation lawsuits and legal threats meant to "silence critical voices".

Ayyub, who works for The Washington Post, said while seated at the General Assembly dais: "I have normally seen world leaders talk about democratic values right here at this podium (and) some of us journalists watching it on TV look at them and like, 'Hey, you are anything but democratic."

While detailing what she said were attacks on press freedom, she said: "I come from India, the land of democracy, which prides itself on, about democratic values. I love my country more than I love any other entity in the world, but which is why it is more important for me."

She claimed that she was facing "legal warfare" through charges of money laundering and tax evasion and cases of defamation for her work as a journalist going back to an undercover assignment where she said she wore "eight cameras on my body" posing as a "Hindu nationalist".

She referred to the killing in 2017 of journalist Gauri Lankeshwar, who had translated her book into Kannada and who she said had dismissed threats as "paper tigers".

She said that she has been receiving threats of death and physical attacks on social media and at her house.

Mumbai Police, she asserted, were indifferent saying that the threats were only online.

Ayyub, who stressed her Muslim identity, claimed that "there is a sustained attack on the 200 million Muslim minorities on the lower caste in India systematically even as the country gears up to hold the G20 Summit in India, where world leaders are coming to India and (will be) talking about the virtues of democracy".

Notably, the published list of speakers at the conference did not include anyone from China, either working there, or a dissident abroad.

--IANS
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By Arul Louis
United Nations, May 2 (IANS) United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday that the international community is concerned about the presence of terrorists in Afghanistan, which has repercussions for the region and beyond.


After a meeting of special envoys on Afghanistan that he convened in Doha, Guterres said that the participants were worried about the stability of that country and expressed serious concerns about "the persistent presence of terrorist organisations -- a risk for the country, the region, and further afield".

Drug trafficking is another area of serious concern about Afghanistan, he said.

India was one of the 21 countries as well as the European Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that participated in the meeting.

Guterres said that the meeting was not about recognising the Taliban regime and as for meeting with them, he said that this "is not the right moment to do so".

The meeting was "about developing a common international approach" to Afghanistan and the "participants agreed on the need for not only a strategy of engagement that allows for the stabilisation of Afghanistan, but also allows for addressing important concerns", he said.

He added, "While different countries placed different priorities on these concerns, according to their own situation, there is a general recognition that they are intertwined."

Guterres also condemned the "grave violation of human rights" under the Taliban, in particular, the restrictions on women.

"Let me be crystal clear: We will never be silent in the face of unprecedented, systemic attacks on women and girls' rights," he declared.

Guterres described the situation in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today" with six million Afghans "one step away from famine-like conditions", while 28 million "will need humanitarian assistance this year to survive".

There was a serious shortfall in the $4.6 billion appeal for the Humanitarian Response Plan, having received only $294 million, he said.

The restrictions on women working outside their homes are impacting the humanitarian operation of the UN because women Afghan employees of the UN are being prevented from providing relief, Guterres said.

In protest, the UN asked all its employees -- about 2,700 Afghan men and 600 international workers, including 200 women who are exempt from the ban -- to stay home till the end of this week.

In a rare show of immunity, the UN Security Council last week demanded that the Taliban "swiftly reverse" the restrictions placed on them.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) The Delhi High Court has observed that the passport of a minor child can be issued without the biological father's name under varying circumstances and that such a relief depends upon the "facts of each case."

In a plea moved by a minor son and his mother seeking deletion of the father's name from his passport and for re-issuance of a fresh passport without mentioning the father's name, Justice Pratibha M. Singh said that the Passport Manual of 2020 and the official memorandum issued by Union Ministry of External Affairs on February 28 last year recognise that passports can be issued under different circumstances without father's name.

No hard and fast rule can be applied in such cases, the judge remarked.

"Such a relief ought to be considered, depending upon the factual position emerging in each case. No hard and fast rule can be applied. There are myriad situations in the case of matrimonial discord between parents, where the child's passport application may have to be considered by the authorities," the court added.

In peculiar cases where there is no contact of the father with the mother or child, his name need not be included in the child's passport, Justice Singh said perusing the Office Memorandum (OM).

The court said: "Irrespective of the fact that the applicable clauses in the Manual may be different, the spirit behind the said decisions is clear, i.e., that under certain circumstances the name of the biological father can be deleted and the surname can also be changed."

It was further said that the Passport Manual merely contemplates some of the situations in matrimonial discord cases where a child's passport application may have to be considered by the authorities.

Depending on the fact of the situation, however, the need for flexibility exists and a thorough examination and understanding of court orders may also be required.

Directing a new passport be issued in favour of the minor without his father's name who left his mother when she was pregnant, the court emphasised that the order "shall not be treated as a precedent."

The Union of India's submission, which said that the OM would only apply to "single unwed parents," was also dismissed by the court.

"Wherever the term 'single unwed parent' is to be mentioned, the same has specifically been mentioned by the Passport Authorities. In other clauses the term 'single parent' is used. However, the mere furnishing of the name does not result in the conclusion that the name of the father has to be compulsorily mentioned. It would depend on the circumstances of each case," the court said.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) More than 80 per cent asthma cases in India are undiagnosed, which if left untreated can worsen over time, said experts here on Tuesday.

World Asthma Day is an annual event observed on the first Tuesday of May, aimed at raising awareness about asthma, a chronic respiratory disease affecting millions worldwide.

Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease that affects 339 million people globally. It causes airways in the lungs to become inflamed and narrow, and produce excess mucus, leading to breathing difficulties, chest tightness, wheezing, and coughing.

Speaking to IANS, Manisha Mendiratta, HOD & Senior Consultant - Pulmonology, at Sarvodaya Hospital, Faridabad said, "The prevalence of asthma in India is around 3 per cent, though more than 80 per cent of patients remain undiagnosed" in the country.

Lack of proper resources, infrastructure, acceptance and ignorance about the disease are the major reasons, the doctor said.

Moreover, "about 70 per cent of patients with severe asthma are also not properly diagnosed as suffering from a severe form of the disease. The reason is lack of awareness among patients, unwillingness to seek medical help, and many doctors, especially in smaller towns, lacking the diagnostic tools for asthma," Mendiratta said.

There is currently no cure for asthma, advances in medical research show promise for effectively managing the condition. But smart inhalers, immunotherapy, biologic medications, bronchial thermoplasty, and virtual reality therapy are some innovative treatments that can help manage and control the symptoms of asthma.

"With every attack of asthma, the condition of the lung deteriorates, making the next attack of asthma more dangerous. Untreated asthma will over time worsen and lead to respiratory disability, poor quality of life and lack of adequate oxygen in the body, which can harm other organs and even lead to heart failure," Dr. Mendiratta told IANS.

Even among people undergoing treatment for the respiratory condition, less than 1 per cent of patients have properly controlled asthma.

"It is because most of the patients don't take asthma medications for long. In addition to the stigma attached to inhalers, there are also several misconceptions, such as that inhalers are addiction-forming and can lead to side effects. This prevents patients from seeking proper treatment," the doctor said.

--IANS
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Kohima, April 15 (IANS) Two days after its meeting with Government of India envoy A.K. Mishra, the dominant Naga outfit NSCN-IM on Saturday urged the Centre to "honor and implement in letter and spirit the Framework Agreement (FA) and recognise the Naga national flag and constitution".

The NSCN-IM said that the Naga flag is the identity of Naga nationhood and doesn't have different meanings as mentioned by the Naga-American Council's recent statement.

"Such bewildering understanding of the flag with respect to the Naga flag is highly regretted. We understand that the Naga-American Council must have given their interpretation of the flag from an American context, and not from the Naga context," the NSCN-IM said in a statement.

It said that the Washington-based Naga-American Council is one such organisation that has shown keen interest in Naga political settlement affairs.

The Framework Agreement, signed on August 3, 2015, between the Central government and the NSCN-IM, recognises the Indo-Naga conflict as political.

It also acknowledges the unique history and position of the Nagas and the FA is signed on the cornerstone of sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Centre's representative Mishra, a retired Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer, held separate meetings with a high-level 20-member delegation of the NSCN-IM led by its Secretary General Thuingaleng Muivah and the Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs) on April 13 at the Chumoukedima police complex in Dimapur.

NSCN-IM leader Rh Raising Thangkul had said after the meeting that they have reiterated to solve the Naga political issue on the basis of the Framework Agreement.

In the Dimapur meetings, Mishra was accompanied by Intelligence Bureau joint director Mandeep Singh Tulli and Nagaland's intelligence officer Don Jose.

The Centre has been in talks with the NNPGs since 2017.

Four influential Naga organisations, including the powerful Naga Hoho and the Naga Mothers' Association, had last week urged the Centre to honour its word in the Ceasefire Agreement (1997) and Framework Agreement (2015) and "resolve the Naga political impasse accordingly".

The Centre has been holding separate negotiations with the dominant Naga outfit NSCN-IM since 1997 as well as the the NNPGs, comprising at least seven groups, since 2017.

A Framework Agreement was signed with the NSCN-IM in 2015 and an Agreed Position with the NNPGs in 2017.

The stalemate continued as the NSCN-IM remained firm on its demand for a separate flag and constitution for the Nagas.

--IANS
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New Delhi, April 15 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Saturday that it recently carried out a search operation at a fintech company which resulted in the identification and freezing of 150 bank accounts in a case related to an illegal betting racket involving a person named Rakesh R. Rajdev and others.

The ED said that these accounts were involved in the layering of funds received from individual persons, who placed bets through the website www.wolf777.com.

"Subsequent to the searches, an amount of Rs 3.05 crore lying in 10 bank accounts was freezed under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA)," said an ED official.

The ED said that the bank statements of rest of the entities whose accounts were freezed during the course of search were called for from the banks and analysed by the probe agency.

"In the account analysis, we found that funds amounting to Rs 46.10 crore are lying in these accounts, which were routed through various dummy entities. Thus, a total amount of Rs 49.15 crore has been seized by the ED in this case till date," the official said.

The ED initiated the investigation after recording an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) based on an FIR lodged by the DCB police station in Ahmedabad.

During investigation, proceeds of crime, i.e., the money generated through the betting app www.wolf777.com, were traced and it was found that bank accounts in the names of various fictitious entities were opened for routing and layering of money which was then sent abroad through bogus entities in the guise of import.

--IANS
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