The Indian public is awakening to the obvious: Talk in the corridors of power and outside it among the political class, politicians across the board and in the media at large has the pure wind. The Chinese have understood this welcoming truth (for them) and are playing along with a public relations campaign with obliging coverage from certain Indian broadsheets like the Hindu. Appreciating the widespread anger in India at China’s move to block the naming of Masood Ahzar, the Pakistan-based jihadi mastermind behind the attack on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot, Beijing went into a public relations overdrive, stressing the importance India was to regional peace and stability and much else drivel of a similar genre. The ballyhooed invitation to President Pranab Mukherjee to visit China sent the Hindu newspaper into a paroxysm of delight at the prospect the lotus-eater’s optimism about a new age in Sino-Indian relations. India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval appeared equally buoyant about a solution to the vexed Sino-Indian boundary. Having experienced a bruising encounter with reality, he discovered that his Chinese interlocutors, including the prime minister, were as stern and unyielding on the issue as they ever were. The Gallic saying, ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same,’ has much wisdom to commend it to Indian bureaucrats and politicians.
Let us be serious for a change. Chinese regimes since Chairman Mao’s time has been brutal and utterly cynical in the pursuit of the perceived national interest. China was the prime supporter of the genocidal monster Pol Pot and his murderous Khmer Rouge government. The United States and Britain helped by keeping the Khmer Rouge seat warm in the United Nations after Pot Pot and his infamous crew were toppled from power by the military intervention of Vietnam, thanks to which the Cambodian people and their culture were saved from certain extinction.
Consider China’s support to the Pakistan military dictator Yahya Khan whose forces raped and slaughtered millions of Bengalis striving for freedom and independence in the former East Pakistan. Now, the Chinese regime of President Xi Xinping has gifted his country’s ‘all weather friend’ Pakistan with $48 billion in military and economic aid. What does China stand to gain from such an ally? Not its mineral wealth, which is a scarce resource. Nor from its human capital which is no less scarce with widespread illiteracy and heavy dependence on madrasa education. What Pakistan has in abundance are jihadi terror networks always ready for use bombing activity across the border in India. Such cooperative agencies are useful instruments to keep India off balance and suitably distracted. Complementing these joint anti-Indian endeavours was China’s supply of a readymade nuclear bomb to Pakistan and the supportive technologies to keep Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme - solely targeting India, as Islamabad has repeatedly said – in place and going forward. The same applied to Pakistan’s missile systems. China’s overt and covert support for Pakistani terrorism is well calibrated; it is no aberration.
The Indian response has to prepare for a long game with no room for illusions or namby-pamby sentiment. Believe you me, China has myriad vulnerabilities which no amount of bluster can conceal. Conversing with the United States on maritime cooperation with a clear underlying anti-China message is no bad thing. The Mint editorial (April 20) was admirably nuanced. The recent India-US foundational agreement on mutual logistical agreement was far from an alliance. India does not, and will not, support US policies in the Middle East or the Baltic or Ukraine. IF the US fulfils its commitment to transfer vital naval technologies to India, it will help the Indian Navy keep pace with China’s rising presence in the Indian Ocean. Mint rightly pointed out that India needs to allay Russian (if there be any) since ‘Russia still remains India’s most reliable partner and every step must be taken to keep Moscow in confidence….’ External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj must have conveyed these reassurances to her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Russia has its own anxieties about Chinese ambitions in Central Asia, where Chinese diplomacy has recently been excluding Russia of late. All these elements must be factored into a new robust China policy. Play the game as that ancient master Chanakya would have done, and Delhi will have hit the right note. No sooner were these words written than news broke that German-based Uigher leader Dolkun Isa and other Uigher activists from Washington will attend an inter-faith peace in Dharamsala hosted by the Dalai Lama. China is livid. The battle is well and truly joined.
Obama brazen interference in UK’s EU referendum
Elementary courtesy, one would have thought, would persuade US President Barack Obama from pitching with his preference on how British citizens should vote in the June referendum on Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union. However, the much vaunted Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ having reduced Britain to an American satrapy. This is also the take of the Daily Mail columnist Peter Obone, who has denounced the relationship as ‘sinister.’ Readers will be treated to a robust evaluation of the Obama administration’s record in office in Seymour Hersh’s latest work, ‘The Killing of Osama Bin Laden.’ (Verso, London). Hersh is America’s foremost investigative reporter, a legend in his country and around the world.
Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, who is leading that Brexit has accused the American President of ‘hypocrisy’ when he demands the Britain shares power with Brussels, yet ‘refuses to sign the international convention on the law of the sea, let alone the International Criminal Court.’ Speaking at a Leave campaign rally in Newcastle, Mr Johnson said the referendum was ‘a massive opportunity to burst… out of the shackles of Brussels.’ The London Mayor was applauded when he referred to the EU being ‘deeply anti-democratic’ and ‘sometimes borderline corrupt’ in how allocated its budget. He concluded by saying Britain would ‘thrive and flourish as never before if it left the EU and carved out its own trade deals with fully empowered sovereignty.’
Let the British people decide their future with considered wisdom without being press-ganged by Mr Obama or Christine Legard of the largely discredited IMF whose false economic recipes have beggared nations that were once prosperous.
Meerut man in US paraplegic project
Five years ago, an American male, Ian Burkhart, 24, was paralysed below the chest in a freak diving accident. A US research team headed by a Meerut-born Indian scientist has developed technology that enables the paraplegic to move and control his limbs through his ‘thought’. This remarkable technology was developed at the Bartelle Memorial Institute in Ohio in collaboration with the Ohio State University.
Neurosurgeons at OSI inserted a computer chip that enables messages to pass from the patient’s brain to his limbs bypassing the damaged spinal cord. This has helped Burkhart to regain partial movement of his fingers, hand and wrist. Much of the credit for this landmark medical feat belongs to Meerut-born Gaurav Sharma.the lead investigator in the project.
Sharma received his schooling at St Thomas English Medium School and subsequently at St Mary’s Academy, both in Meerut, and at the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, before going to the US for his Masters and PhD. Aged 28,
Dr Sharma is one of the inventors of the neuroprosthetic technology known as Neuro Life, explaining how it works. ‘As Ian thinks about moving his hand, the chip records his brain signals and our algorithms decode his intent. The signals are then routed as electrical pulses to a sleve wrapped around Ian’s arm that stimulates the muscles to enable the desired hand movement in real time. The study shows what is possible in the future, and can offer hope for movement restoration to millions of people worldwide living with paralysis.’ Dr Sharma continued: ‘Our next big step is to make the algorithms and hardware more robust so that patients can home with them and use it in their everyday lives.’
Dave Friedenberg, algorithms and data analysis leader for Neuro Life at Battelle, said: ’The system allows Ian to move his fingers, hand and wrist by thinking - just like most of us do. The difference is the connection is made outside his body using technology instead of inside his body. via the spinal cord.’
The patient Ian Burkhart commented: ‘While training for this project, I had to break down my thought processes to help the computer learn. The most mentally exhausting part was blocking out everything else in my brain and focusing on just that one movement.’
