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QUANTUM LEAP: We need to know about Ganga Basin

Published: 17:39 EST, 19 October 2015 | Updated: 17:39 EST, 19 October 2015

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Driving through the eastern part of the city and over the National Highway 24, one just can’t miss the sight of canals, hydraulic structures over nallahs and rivulets, hand pumps in roadside eateries, tube wells in fields behind them, walls painted with advertisements of submersible pumps etc.

Similarly, flying over Uttar Pradesh one can notice an elaborate web of canals and water bodies.

The bulk of the capital’s population consumes water coming from the Ganga, through canals, on a daily basis. Yet for most of us, all these sights and experiences occur in isolation and we fail to see the big picture.

Fulbright fellow and author Anthony Acciavatti calls the Ganga river basin the 'Ganga water machine'

The fact is that all these – rivulets, canals, lakes, pumps, tube wells – are part of a giant and unique system called the Ganga river basin, which Fulbright Fellow and author Anthony Acciavatti calls the “Ganges water machine”.

The Ganga river basin is unique in the world – spread over 1.1 million square kilometre, it is home to one-fourth of India’s population. It is also the world’s most engineered river basin. It is a dynamic system, closely inter-connected with the monsoon.

Acciavatti came to India in 2005 on a one-year fellowship to map the river basin, but ended up spending close to a decade to complete the task. He has travelled by foot, boat and road from Gomukh to Patna along the river, documenting its dynamic nature, engineering infrastructure in the basin, along with associated history and culture. He has developed dynamic maps of the basin.

“When I started my work, beyond maps printed in the 1960s, I couldn’t find any visual material of how millions of people were distributed across this vast agricultural basin. No one really had anything that I hadn’t already seen in the U.S.,” Acciavatti recalled while speaking about his study at the just concluded CMS Vatavaran green film festival.

He then started mapping the basin on his own with a digital camera, hand-held GPS unit and a self-designed instrument to map soil. He chose points and areas to visit and re-visit to record and interpret how they changed over the course of a year.

He lived in Allahabad for one year, visiting the Triveni Sangam every week photographing and drawing how it changed.

“I combined conventions of drawing from architecture and geography with photography and techniques of animation,” he says.

Acciavatti now has a total of 25,000 images. The Ganga atlas that he has published this year is a unique book, presenting comprehensive picture of cultural and physical dynamics of the Ganga basin.

“This river can never be drawn as two parallel lines. It has layers of canals, wells, roads, railway lines, human settlement, agriculture, and topography. For instance, maps and texts in the book show how and why ‘soft infrastructures’ like wetlands are well suited for run-off or how temporary structures keep the river at a navigable depth in pre-monsoon months,” Acciavatti explains.

These insights can be valuable when we are talking of ‘cleaning’ and ‘rejuvenating’ the river.

Medical professionals and doctors making tall claims in media have been warned by the World Medical Association (WMA).

The body has expressed concern over the increase of physicians' appearing on mass media to recommend unproven treatments or products.

A new set of guidelines are being developed for doctors. These are aimed at contributing to patient safety by ensuring physicians provide accurate, timely, and objective information.

Doctors should desist from being involved in commercial activities that may compromise professional ethics.

WMA has also adopted regulations to protect patients who use mobile health devices like phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants and health promotional apps. It has also urged patients and physicians to be careful when using mobile health.

Dyslexia screening tools for teachers

A poster of the film starring Aamir Khan

The Aamir Khan-starrer Taare Zameen Par was not only just a box office hit, but also resulted in widespread awareness about the learning disability called dyslexia.

The film was acclaimed by the medical community globally and was screened in several scientific platforms.

A key problem the movie highlighted was delayed or missed diagnosis. Despite being a common learning disability, dyslexia goes undiagnosed because of lack of awareness and absence of tools for assessment.

Special learning disabilities have to be assessed through age and culturally-appropriate standardised tests in local languages. Now the Manesar-based National Brain Research Centre has developed dyslexia screening tools for school teachers and psychologists in Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and English.

“Since dyslexia is a learning disability, the teacher is the best person to screen children for it,” pointed out Prof Nandini Chatterjee Singh, who led the research project.

The assessment tests have been validated by clinical psychologists in about 4,800 children across five cities (Allahabad, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Mysore).

“Data shows that the tools are able to detect dyslexia-related problems in children. Given the fact that learning in rural populations is primarily in native languages we think new tools will be most beneficial in rural areas,” Singh added.

Government can't enforce gutka ban

Gutka sachets may be on the way out, but retailers are still selling gutka ingredients

Restrictions imposed on the sale and promotion of tobacco products, be it cigarettes or gutka, are a tall order in India. This has once again been proved in Delhi, where the state government had prohibited the manufacture, storage, distribution or sale of all forms of smokeless tobacco products.

But the government has not been able to enforce the ban following a Delhi High Court order not to take any coercive action against retailers.

In any case, gutka sachets may have disappeared from shops, but nearly 90 per cent of retailers are selling gutka ingredients, according to a survey conducted by John Hopkins Centre for Communications Programms.

Smokeless tobacco products are freely available at a very low price near educational institutions, meaning young people have easy access of these products.

The boards declaring that ‘sale of tobacco products to minors is prohibited’ were not displayed at all outlets as per the law.

“On the positive side, we found that there was universal support for the ban even by those who were currently consuming tobacco products in the form of gutka or any other form,” pointed out Pradeep Krishnatray, director of the programme.