Someone’s got flu!

Yes, you guessed it right. This concerns the H1N1 virus outbreak in India and the rest of the world and the hullabaloo it has shown as side-effects mainly in India as not so much in the rest of the world. It's not rare a sight people stepping out of their homes wearing masks or eyeing everyone who sneezes with suspicion, while instantly using their handkerchiefs to cover their nose and mouth. Neither is it rare to hit upon a discussion in hostels regarding the massive spread of the disease. It's actually funny to hear when people don't actually remember their GPA last semester but will describe to you, with marvelous accuracy, all the statistics, with the exact numbers, the mortality rate in percentage, the changes in the daily figures of deaths caused by swine flu, correlation parameters with other kinds of flu, the standard deviation comparison of all other countries affected and what not. Sometimes it just gets onto the nerves.

And the flu-patronizing people have some more reason to give no excuse to that mouth from blabbering. And once again, you guessed it right! A guy from our college has contracted the disease- the reports are now confirmed and official. Panic has struck people on campus and no one is leaving any chance to talk upon the subject and chip in with their expert comments. A sneeze as expected, now, draws a lot of expectations and a lot of actions which, does nothing more, gives a false sense of security. People have left no arena untouched to let people know that the first case of swine flu in the state started from our college. On second thoughts, isn't it great?! Our college will be in news for some days to come till the media doesn't get some other hot news- like Pervez Musharaff getting detained or Mayawati making more statues of her own. Make hay while the sun shines. Gtalk status messages, orkut taglines, tweets all carry the same message: "Swine flu in NIT Rourkela."

But should swine flu really attract so much of attention and panic. For a country like India, yes, it does. The situation, here, in India is different from that in US. Health-care facilities in India are not as good as it is in the US. That means the number of deaths per 10 people who have contracted the disease may be significantly more. And this fact does not go without reason. Taking examples from the home, the guy who has contracted the disease had, reportedly, been showing symptoms for a few days and had been to the hospital as well for checkup. Although, the doctor admitted that he was showing symptoms of the hyped flu let him off after taking his swab to send for tests. Later, it was confirmed yesterday that he had the flu when the test reports came back. The thing that is really baffling is that the hospital, instead of keeping the guy, who has been showing symptoms, let off and not kept under supervision. Secondly, newspaper reports say that hygiene and cleanliness is the way to avoid contracting the disease. If so, then the flu can have serious impacts in our country keeping in mind that the hygiene levels in our nation is far worse than that in western countries. This gives the virus easy means to spread further instead of getting contained. Now, no one can deny that global hygiene standards can be met anytime soon, if we ever meet it. Thirdly, in a country where the population is so great, it is next to inevitable to avoid large gatherings, more so in the case of a residential college. So, the probability graph of people coming in contact with the virus is somewhat skewed.

And thus, we are running out of N95 masks and all the panic results. But many of the precautions we are taking are unfounded and based on self beliefs which give a false sense of security. N95 masks cannot prevent the flu virus from getting in as their size is lesser than 3 microns, which is the size for which the masks are designed. So that implies that not everyone needs to wear the masks. Flu victims must compulsorily use it to avoid their mucous from getting into the air and the virus settling on hard surfaces where it can live for the maximum time. Those who want to avoid the virus should wash hands frequently and avoid large groups where someone might have been infected. And, according to the TOI article, the chances of the virus actually showing catastrophic results are not very high, but not very low as well, and in many cases the flu gets unnoticed and gets cured by itself.

So, there is no reason to panic to the levels of Mount Everest but at the same time take precautions. Hoping that the virus gets contained at NIT Rourkela and does not spread further. And the same for the rest of the nation and the world. Though one regret remains- the director has announced that no holidays will be given because of swine flu. And I had stared making plans!

The fight against Progress

Ours is a funny country. Funnier are the people of this country, like you and me. But the funniest of all are the people who rule this nation - elected officials who are elected by people like you and me. Everyday we hear about innumerable policies being framed or being put forward by somebody in the House or Assembly for consideration to merge them into the current state of laws and guidelines. But what we encounter is something, which on even vague scrutiny, does not quite conform to what one should normally expect from a nation who is always super zealous for the introduction of new laws for better governance.

Take, for example, the recent spat over the Bundelkhand issue. Bundelkhand, which consists of districts of Jhansi, Hamirpur, Chitrakoot, Datia, Chattarpur etc. from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, which was a prosperous region in the post-British era has been reduced to a region which can be described, without overdoing, as backward. There has been a constant call for a separate Bundelkhand state but all in futility. For the development of this region, and of course for political reasons as well, Rahul Gandhi and co., in their bid to strengthen Congress' hold and influence in UP and MP, drew the PM's attention to this region by demanding a separate Bundelkhand Development Authority (BDA). The role of BDA would be to plan and execute various action schemes for the development of this region. Everything was fine till the hue and cry started by the MP administration who called foul. According to the MP Assembly and the ruling party in the state, this proposal should be viewed as an intervention in state matters by the Centre and that it is nothing more than mere political game. It also stated that though they have been constantly pressing upon the Centre, since the time of UPA-1, for releasing of adequate funds to the state government for the development of this region but no action has been taken.

Now the problem here is, which is leading to the bottle neck, if the state government has always been so concerned about the development of this region then why is it opposing a novel idea that will ultimately achieve the goal- the progress of Bundelkhand. The answer is not difficult to apprehend. If the proposed BDA sees the light of the day and Bundelkhand witnesses some progress, then UPA's stance in MP and UP will become strong and this can prove dangerous in future state elections. Moreover, as BDA will be under the central government, the grant, of nearly Rs 4,900 crore, which the state would have received would have to be forgotten which will mean that the state ministers will not be able to stuff their pockets with as much money as they would have been able to do otherwise. In short, Bundelkhand was never the issue. The issue was, and is, the money. This fight against the formation of BDA by MP is nothing but a means to achieve self interests of the politicians- a fight against progress.

Test Post

As I am planning to get back to blogging and post some serious stuff and that too regularly, I thought that it'd be great if I can publish my blogs without logging onto blogger and directly from my desktop without having to navigate to the blogger service on the web.

After doing some googling, I found out that this could specifically be done by using the native built-in feature in Microsoft Word 2007. So here I am trying to publish this post directly from MS Word. If this works fine, that is, without any formatting issues then, I think, I have found a great tool to help me keep blogging. I also had found an add-in for word from blogger for Word but that doesn't simply work. Researched that blogger has changed somewhat and no support has been channeled to the blogger add-in. Thus, had to discard it and moreover, it just wasn't even working.

I would find it more useful if someone informs about any such more things to help me blog from MS Word. Here the spell and grammar checks are much much better.

Let's hope that I do post regularly!