Blast from the past may blow us away

Russian scientists have set a world record by raising a plant from genetic material extracted from a 30,000-year-old frozen fossil recovered from Siberia.
While I marvel at the prowess of the advanced technology, I can’t help but wonder if it is wise to recreate a living being of another time. When you read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and watch the movie years later, the possibility of bringing back an extinct species, you realise is nothing more than the imagination of a fiction writer.
No, I am not paranoid about corporate conspiracies of hatching deadly species in their secret labs nor an evangelic apocalypse-monger who cries hoarse with a don’t-try-to-play-God propaganda.
The plant, Silene stenophylla, is not an extinct species and is still found in Siberia. However, according to a BBC report on the development, when the scientist compared today’s plants against the samples that have been ‘resurrected’, they found several differences in the shape of petals and the sex of flowers and they could not explain the anomaly.
Though human intervention has been a major reason for extinction of several species, there are several natural phenomena, which bring about this process — and in turn trigger the process of evolution.
Bringing back to life something that has been dead for 30 millennia or for that matter from any point in the past brings with it the dangers of introducing into our environment an entity that we aren’t ready for or in control of.
For example, a 1,000-year-old fossil might have embedded an equally old parasite, which had natural predators or counter-mechanisms in hosts those days. When the host organism is recreated, the parasite is also resurrected and a possible contamination of today’s defenceless ecosystem could trigger an ecological catastrophe.
Nature has distributed its variety across different terrains and has raised and annihilated species according to climatic and environmental requirements. Whenever humans, the apex predators and the intelligent creatures, have attempted their hand at this, the results have had undesirable fallouts.
Almost every country suffers from infestation of some form of the other. Life forms that were artificially introduced to alien lands accidentally or deliberately have become pests that have grown to uncontrollable proportions and wiped out several local species.
One of the worst affected regions in the world is the continent of Australia, where several animals like rabbit, cat, fox and cane toad are wrecking havoc on local environment. Several species have become extinct due to these animals and more face the same fate in future if the present scenario continues. Australia is just one example. Almost every country has its share of pest problems from introduction of non-local species.
With all the advancement in science and technology, we can’t still solve problems regarding creatures of our times. So the proposition of a face-off with species from the past becomes even more complex. We may be faced with a war, which we may win only with unacceptable losses to ourselves and the supporting ecology.
The phrase ‘blast from the past’ has a ring to it, but that may be the last good thing we remember before eventually joining the mighty dinosaurs in the pantheon of the extinct greats.

(This article was published as the editorial column in Postnoon on February 22, 2012)

French connection to serve multiple goals

Finalisation of French fighter jet Rafale as the choice for Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) will give the Indian Air Force the much needed boost and plug the gap that will be left by the fast approaching retirement of Soviet-era MiG-21s.
The four-year tender process that began in August 2007 had six contenders — two from the US, one each from France, Russia, Sweden and a UK-Europe consortium. In April 2011, Dassault Rafale of France and Eurofighter Typhoon were shortlisted as the finalists and almost a year later the Frenchman walked away with the contract.
The $10-billion deal for 126 jets, which defence analysts point out may go up to $15 billion with ancillary contracts, will also take bilateral ties between India and France a few notches up. The deal came through at a time when the French industry is battling the fallout of the Eurozone crisis.
This is the second major Indo-French defence deal in the last six months after the $1.4-billion upgrade contract for IAF’s Mirage-2000 fleet. The contract will also boost India’s defence industry and science sectors with the mandatory clause that 50 per cent of the deal amount be invested in domestic partnerships.
The biggest beneficiary will be the PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), which will manufacture 108 of the jets under a transfer-of-technology agreement; the rest will be supplied by Dassault in fly-away condition before 2015. The HAL team can also use the expertise thus gained from the process to enhance the quality of the indigenously developed Light Combat Aircraft and to develop technologies for future projects.
The MMRCA deal was on the verge of being scrapped a year back when offset proposals of contenders went missing from the IAF headquarters and later resurfaced on a South Delhi roadside. The defence ministry decided to go ahead with the shortlisting process after an internal probe concluded that the documents were part of an appendix and their disclosure would not put any of the contenders at advantage or disadvantage.
More than a defence purchase agreement, the MMRCA deal marks strategic shift in the defence policy. By refusing to heed the US pitch that bilateral ties will be hyphenated with business, India has sent out a clear message to the rest of the world that it doesn’t need a superpower to prop it up and that it will take unpopular decisions to protect its national interests.
By choosing the French fighter, India has told Uncle Sam that the American policy of sanctions and supply disruptions based on its whims and fancies — like it did after the 1998 nuclear tests — will put it at a disadvantage with the French and the Russians, who honour agreements regardless of calm or storm.
India’s decision to diversify its shopping destinations will also ensure that it will no longer be dependent on a single vender or power block for crucial defence supplies. It is also a message to Russia that it can no longer take India’s evergreen friendship for granted, nor allow disruptions in supply chain or maintenance contracts with other international suppliers vying for the massive Indian market.
The transparent and focused MMRCA deal has shown that with the right approach multiple targets can be achieved. With more potent additions to its arsenal, India has asserted that it is not going to bury its head in the sand in a troubled neighbourhood.

(This article was published as the editorial column in Postnoon on February 1, 2012)

Whose power is it anyway?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has put an end to ambiguity over the government’s policy on how it plans to implement the controversial nuclear power projects by saying the Kudankulam plant will start operations in the next couple of months.

The four reactors, built with Russian technology, are slated to provide 4,000MW to the national power grid and cater to both the domestic and industrial consumers.

One can’t help but wonder if the newfound panacea for our power woes will go the same way as the mega dams, which Jawaharlal Nehru had touted as “temples of development”. These projects provided electricity and irrigated millions of hectares but also displaced millions of people and drowned vast stretches of pristine forests.

Till Fukushima, Japan was the poster boy for champions of “safe, fail-proof” nuclear power and the tsunami nailed all the well-crafted and well-publicised lies. It has come to a point where even breast milk in the nearby precincts have been found contaminated by radiation.

If somebody wants to establish a firecracker factory next to your house won’t you want it shifted to some uninhabited area? Won’t you be worried for the safety of your family and that of the neighbourhood even if the top rocket scientist comes and tells you about its safeguards?

In a country where operations and safety features of all nuclear facilities are ‘classified’ and details opaque due to ‘national security’ concerns, it is only natural that the threatened population is up in arms.

Visuals of tribal folk near the Jaduguda uranium mines suffering from unknown diseases, congenital defects in newborns, sterility in young adults, and lung disease in mine workers, from Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace (the filmmaker had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get the censors’ cuts quashed) are enough to make anyone have second thoughts about ‘safe’ nuclear power production.

The prime minister’s soft voiced yet razor sharp concluding observation that Kudankulam protests were “overdone” smacks of arrogance and makes a mockery of the idea of democracy. Not surprising for a head of the government who is used to being dictated by a higher power.

When the whole world is phasing out nuclear power and replacing it with greener and sustainable technologies, it’s sad that our government is going for it — a policy with single-minded focus of burgeoning the wallets of private players at the cost of health and safety of public.