basskeyz

Another story about Medical malpractice in India

2011-02-19T20:14:00.000-08:00

How patients are advised much more expensive options that are actually detrimental to their health...The uterus snatchers of India

"Healthcare experts say the hysterectomy racket has its roots in the privatisation boom in the medical sector back in the mid- '80s.Till star politician NT Rama Rao came to power,healthcare was state-driven in Andhra Pradesh.

"It is around this time that the practice of unwanted hysterectomies first started showing up in the state,'' notes Veena Shatrugna,former deputy director of National Institute of Nutrition.She says the number of such procedures have steadily risen over the last two decades.

In government hospitals,poor patients are never randomly advised hysterectomies because government doctors stand to gain nothing by doing so."But private hospitals are not accountable to anyone and people were willing to pay for the procedure,'' she says.

Private doctors have also managed to wean away the queues from public hospitals with promises of quicker and better care. "

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/The-uterus-snatchers-of-Andhra-/articleshow/6239344.cms

nice post from pluggd....

2011-01-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

Never regret your decision, Never ever in your life (Unless you betray someone).Here’s something to ponder about. (From my mentor)

Five Regrets – wish you never regret!!! – By Bronnie Ware

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again.

Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honor at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard. This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, but in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to themselves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. Choose consciously, choose wisely, and choose honestly. Choose happiness.

Destructive Emotions - a summary first two chapters

2010-12-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

Experiments with lama Oser
Lama Oser is a trained tibetan monk.
- Buddhism offers a route to training the mind as an antidote to the mind's vulnerability to destructive emotions..contentment instead of craving, calm rather than agitation and compassion in place of hatred
- Meditation is not a single exericise, there are many varieties of metal training. Oser performed a series of meditation exercises

One pointedness - focused concentration on a single object , beginner's method, prerequisite for moving on to other approaches,
Devotion - focus on teachers in which he holds in mind a deep appreciation and gratitude towards his teachers and the qualities that they embody
Compassion - bringing to mind the suffering of living beings and the fact that they all aspire to achieve happiness and be free from suffering - compassion for all beings friends, strangers and enemies - an important aspect is that compassion should be directed at yourself too. Compassion is more than just feeling for other, but a heartfelt caring and wanting to do something to relieve the person's suffering.
Fearlessness - bringing mind to fearless certainty, a deep confidence that nothing can unsettle- decisive and firm, without hesitation where you are averse to nothing..I have nothing to gain and nothing to lose
Open State - thought free wakefulness, mind is open vast and aware with no intentional mental activity..thoughts may start to arise but dont chain into longer thoughts- they fade away
Finally visualization - construct a detailed image of a deity.

Compassion triggered a very pleasant mood in MRI studies. Oser had a very acute perception of emotions based on facial signals. He had overcome the startle reflex - he could suppress this - a feat almost never seen. In another experiment talking to a difficult professor over a contentious topic, the level of arousal of the difficult professor decreased over time..he was always met with reason and smiles, he felt something like an aura - could not be aggressive.. returning agression with loving kindness is beneficial to you.
Such extraordinary people have great powers of attentiveness and concentration.The brain is plastic and with enough training (> 10,000 hours) can learn these skills

What is Happiness ?
Happiness involves feeling a certain way or being a certain way..it is a calm state of mind..not necessarily in the sense of a child getting presents
Kant said that it is one thing to be happy and another thing to be good..that it was important to be morally good than it is to be happy. Among Greek Philosphers there is a tradition that reason must conquer emotions...Plato thought that reason should conquer emotions, desire, temperament. Aristotle thought that a set of virtues including courage, friendship and compassion should be in harmonious relation inside the person. Every virtue involves an emotional component for example there is a time when it is appropriate to show anger but the right amount to the right person.
Wat is virtuous ? Western Philosphers fall into two camps - utilitarian and kantian . Utilitarians engage in moral actions since it leads to higher goodness , Kantians argue that you must engage in moral actions regardless of the effects. Utilitarians would act for the majority good, kantians believe in the absolute good.

Buddhist Psychology
What is a destructive emotion ? an emotion that is harmful to the sense of less happiness, less well being, less lucidity and freedom. As we grow up we cultivate the feeling of' 'I' amd we feel thus 'I' is vulnerable and we need to protect it..form that comes attraction and aversion..aversion to things that threaten this 'I' and attraction to things that please it. This is the source of most emotions. These emotions boil down to the five main ones :- hatred, desire, confusion, pride and jealousy.
- Hatred is a deeply felt wish to harm someone else, to destroy their happiness.
- Desire - attachment is an understanding that things are permanent - that friendship, human beings, love, possessions will last.
- Ignorance / Confusion is a mental state that obscures the mind from its goal and prevents a realization of reality.
- Pride has many aspects - feeling superior to others, not recognizing one's defects or others good qualities.
- Jealousy is the inability rejoice in others happiness

Three levels of Consciousness
Are these negative emotions inherent in our basic nature ? According to Buddhist thought there are three levels of consciousness: gross, subtle and very subtle
Gross level corresponds to the functioning of the brain and the interaction of the body with the environment. The subtle level corresponds to the notion of 'I' and the introspective faculty with which it examines its own nature, the very subtle level is the deepest that has the awareness without the focus on a particular object..the awareness of this level is important in Buddhism. These levels should be viewed as the various layers of an ocean.

Freedom from Destructive Emotions

Negative emotions are not inherent to our nature. One approach in Buddhist praactice is for the meditator to look straight at the emotion like anger and try to determine the nature of the anger (not the cause) and you may determine that anger is not what one made it out to be, it is a collection of different events. So the ability to stare back and identify the source without that thought creating a chain of other thoughts should lead you to a clarity so that the thought cannot block your mind, cloud your judgement. The chain reaction of thoughts is what leads to anger, hatred, and malevolence.

As negative emotions take over the mind they transform into traits and a temperament - a universal antidote for negative emotions - is to use the antidote for a given negative emotion .

Love is an antidote for hatred - the human mind is incapable of holding both these thoughts together for a given reference
Similarly if there is immense desire for a given object, contemplate on the unpleasant aspects of that object. For ignorance we try to refine our understanding of what needs to be accomplished - for jealousy we try to rejoice in others qualities, for pride we appreciate other's achievements , open our eyes to our defects and cultivate humility.

One antidote that works in all cases is the realization of the empty nature of all these emotions which we can achieve by evaluative the true nature of these emotions and asking if they have any substance.

When should you deal with negative emotions ?
After they arise - a beginner's approach - use reason to investigate the conequences of that emotion to distinguish the emotions that bring happiness from those that cause suffering so that the next time such emotions can arise you do not give them freedom.
when they arise - this requires some practice - free your mind from an emotion as it arises so that it does not trigger a chain of thoughts that take over your mind - so one stares at a newly born thought and asks if it has shape and substance to discover its true nature of emptiness.

Meditation allows you to familiarize yourself with how emotions arise and go so that you get used to it and when you have had enough experience - you can just see emotions rise and fleet away.

A very trivial example would be that if one has gas - one could pass it, or one could learn to hold it back but ideally with mediation on compassion and lovingkindness - these emotions(gas) may never arise.

The goal is not repress emotions but to harness them - where anger is not expressed in violence but in a constructive approach.

Happiness is not the same as pleasure, and happiness comes from clarity, inner stability, and fulfillment. What are destructive emotions, they are the emotions that cloud this clarity and prevent you from seeing things as they are.

Kala paisa in switzerland

2010-11-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

Here are some numbers that continue to boggle the mind...

Various estimates put the illicit money stashed in Swiss banks somewhere between $500 billion to $1.4 trillion.
India's foreign debt - $300 billion
India's GDP - $3.5 trillion

#1 - India's position for deposits made in Swiss banks

Holy Cow !!

Fixing Information Assymetry with a Corruption Portal

2010-10-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

Once a friend who used to run his own business told me that to get contracts for his business it was important to know who to pay-off in a given company or government office. There were choices that needed to be made at multiple levels – you should not offer to pay folks who were upright and did not like that mentioned in front of them, you should avoid the operators who would take your money and sit on it and take their own sweet time to move the wheels that you had greased and then there were the efficient operators who would know how to work the system for the right remuneration – you needed to know how to get to this set of people. Also there was a hierarchy of wheels that needed to be greased – you start with the right peon, who connects you with the right officer who connects you and so on so forth – see “ well done abba” for a good example of the hierarchy. You would go and talk to the local paan shop to gain this information about where to start and if you are lucky you may be able to get it right.

That got me thinking – if I had to be in my friend’s position did I have the street smarts to be able to figure this out on my own ? Having grown up in god-fearing , wrinkling-my-nose-at-ostentation kind of family I thought it was unlikely that I would be taken seriously if I went to the local paan shop and asked – “bhaia saamne waale office mein ghoos kaun khata hai ?”. Would’nt it be nice if there was a wiki for answering questions like this – you need to get you sales tax filed in Delhi, get your passport from Ahmedabad, get you well dug by the local municipal office – what is the quickest and cheapest way to get that done – and you get your answers crowd-sourced. That is an excellent idea for a India-get-your-work-done / Corruption Portal – you can ask a question in the portal for a price and people who have registered in that portal answer it and get a portion of the price you have paid if you are satisfied with the results. Hell it may even be great idea to keep the portal completely free like wiki-answers for people like me who have no clue but to employ pimps/agents who are in this business just because they have this very information.

Here’ the icing on the cake – once the mystery of these operations is revealed and the operations become available to the general public, is’nt it just a matter of time when the public would ask the tough questions and ensure that the process that encourages these methods get cleaned up. I am reminded of Chapter 2 in the book – Freakonomics – read about it here.

Update - Here's a website that seems to do a lot of what I was thinking about for so many days - kudos to the creators

http://ipaidabribe.com/

Work your love or love your work

2010-10-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

As a kid I wanted to be a scientist, I would read books about great scientists and marvel at what they had created - but I have often wondered what was the source of my motivation ? Was it the fact that they were really intelligent and famous , or that they had found ways to touch millions of lives with their ideas.
Was it fame or was it the ability to help millions with just your idea the driving impulse in my mind ? The answer was really multi-dimensional - it was not fame alone - I did not want to be a movie star, it was not public service alone - I did not want to be Baba Amte or Mother Teresa - it was a mix of all these - I needed some external validation ( fame) of my capabilities ( mind ) but would gain satisfaction in having some real impact on people's lives
Now that I stand at a cross roads again - having been in a career which has been somewhat fulfilling but has given me really none of the above - I stand looking at new directions, I am questioning myself - what do I really love...and I get that answer again..I wish to have impact on people's lives..but as these thoughts come to me, another thought comes - you cannot keep dreaming of only doing big things - then those things will remain in your dreams...You have to start in your own small way doing little things and the path will become clearer...that is how you work your love !!

Indian Zillow

2010-04-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

Recently I was hearing horror stories of how you may buy land in India and realize that you paid money to some guy who did not own the land to begin with..for more information see all the checks you have to do before you buy land.
Would it be possible to build a service that checks the title deed of a given piece of land, encumberances etc for you ( maybe scans it keeps it in a repository and sells you the scans for a price) . In addition reports on the quality of roads , conveniences nearby..and real driving times to important landmarks.
Like Google Maps changes its algorithms for India, an Indian Zillow will probably have to do some similar tricks...and given the market in India should have decent traction..
Is there a service like that already ?

Food and more Food

2009-01-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I had noted how Bleebed up our food management is in India...
Guess what the story gets even better....
We apparently have run out of space to store our foodgrains..this should be happy news , were it not for the fact that a significant portion of India goes to sleep hungry at night...
What is up with our babus who run FCI...how do they sleep at night ?

Doctors , Kickbacks & the Hippocratic Oath

2009-01-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

" To practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to try to avoid harming them"
"Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else's interest."
"To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority."

Some of the verses from the oath that every doctor takes. These days it seems that a system of compensation has emerged in the medical fraternity in India which creates a conflict of interest and effectively makes doctors in India break their oath.
If you ever go to any facility that does medical tests in India and especially in Kolkata, the first thing they will ask you is the name of the doctor who has referred you to the test. There seem to be kickbacks involved wherein the doctor actually recommends only certain institutions for doing the testing, and the money the testing facility makes provides a commission to the said doctor for the tests recommended.
This extends to hospitals as well - so your patient may need a procedure and it may not require him to be admitted to a hospital ; he probably will be encouraged to get admitted because he will have to shell out more money and there is so much more dough for the doctor to make when he gets the commission from a hospital. This is in direct contrast to the medical issues in USA where insurance agencies try to prevent any procedures that may not be required ; it's another matter altogether that they take it to the other extreme.
Taking the argument a little further, it would be a matter of time when certain doctors would ' let things get a little worse' before they treat their patients in the oft chance that they the patient has to be admitted to a hospital. It was reported in the Times of India a few years back that this system of kickbacks starts from the distributors itself and that article states that gallstone surgeries have increased significantly in proportion to the marketing being done for technology intensive laproscopy.
Going to a doctor it seems has now become a dangerous proposition in itself - " Someone save me from my doctor "

Yahoo Vs Google

2008-11-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

Tried Yahoo search today after many years...
Pleasantly found out that Search suggestions for Yahoo ( drop downs as you type in Search term) goes much deeper than Google especially when searching for people...
On a note of self flattery - it actually had a drop down that identified me with my company...given that I am pretty much a non entity in the world and people who even know me tend to think that I am part of the background...Hmmmm I am impressed.
I tried this with various searches and found this to be true across the board.
This may be a pretty good idea...prompt users in a given search direction instead of relying on the cryptic two words that they may be putting in the search box.

Rebel Mind

2008-11-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

Try to make your own mind happy,

it does the opposite.....

Try to make your your own mind love ,

it responds with hate,

Try to make it not think about something,

it thinks about that only......

Is my mind not my own....???

Why does it not listen to me...??

It will listen to your heart...

fill it with love..for your being...

for your loved ones...

for your world

for your enemies...

it will listen to you then....

Testing and Resting ( on your laurels that is)

2008-07-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

The hype :
Cuil, a new search engine has been created by former Google and IBM veterans, and they hope to succeed where others have failed and give powerhouse Google a run for its money.
Pronounced "cool," the company said that it has developed new architecture and algorithms and that its search engine has indexed 120 billion Web pages, which Cuil said is three times the number of pages as Google and 10 times as many as Microsoft.
The Reality :
Even after indexing 120 billion webpages, one would hope that the 'cool' search engine can atleast find itself.
Searching on the term 'cuil' it does not come up with its own webpage. Try it yourself :-
' Search on cuil at cuil '
Here is a screenshot of this search , for prosperity..cause I hope that the smart people at cuil would fix this soon.

I would think googling yourself would be the first thing anyone would try with any search engine. Is it possible that these guys were so busy releasing their search engine and resting on their past laurels that they did not do even the most basic of testing ?

'Bijli' aur 'andhera'

2008-06-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

Manmohan ki sarkar girte girte bach gayi….bachi Kya ?
Amrika se Nuclear energy chahiye…China ke dost lene nahi de rahe…beech mein phans gaya hai India.

India consumes about 588 Billion Kwh today, and is projected to consume 1216 Billion Kwh in the next fifteen years. Majority of power generated today is fueled by Coal that directly contributes to global warming. Our long term strategy of building Hydro electric plants is not paying off; a large number of these projects are stuck in legal quagmires and bad management of socio economic effects on the people displaced..(Ask Medha ji)…so what is in store for India, if the Chinese ‘dosts’ do not let the nuclear energy in,
…’andhera’ hi ‘andhera’ ???
Bhagwan ka hi hai sahara??
Google devta se pooccha ..mili ek company…ausra.

Ausra is a company that specializes in form of energy called solar thermal energy. Instead of using photo-voltaic cells, they reflect and concentrate the sun’s energy on a bunch of pipes carrying water. The water converts to steam and that is used to drive turbines….sounds exceedingly simple.

I think the difficult part may also have to do with storing this energy as heat energy to be used later for driving the turbines when the sun is not at its hottest.

Here is a link to how his works.

So here is the interesting part...a few papers on this website claim that an area about 145 km by 145 km covered with this technology can meet the electricity consumption needs of USA.

The Math

So USA consumes about 3.816 trillion Kwh. India about 588 Billion Kwh (about 15 % of USA)
so if 145 Km * 145 Km can meet USA electricity needs, we will need about 3239 sq km just using the same ratio.
i.e. about 57 km by 57 km like about the size of Goa, covered with mirrors can meet the electricity needs of the entire nation.

For all you feni fans out there, I know...Bad Idea...Goa is much too precious too cover with mirrors. but in a country as vast as India, could we find the wherewithal to even harness 10-20% of this energy from setting up plants say near a desert or places which are not as habitable, but we can finance or find a source of water.

We have done this already...
Solar cookers have been marketed in India since 1982. I remeber seeing the ads on Krishi darshan on good old doordarshan. For a lot of people in rural India it has been a good alternative to cooking fuel.
We even set up a solar cooker with help from the germans in Mount Abu, which could generate 500 kgs of steam and cook food for more than 1000 people at a temple.
Read more here

So even if we don't get all the nuclear energy, could we use what dinesh bestows us on everyday...?? I was even thinking since we are distilling lots of water, it could even be a source of clean water for say 50 homes...maybe not ...but that's just me trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Food & Hunger

2008-06-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

Data Point 1

Despite significant economic progress, 1/4 of the nation's population earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of $0.40/day. Official figures estimate that 27.5% of Indians lived below the national poverty line in 2004-2005. A 2007 report by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) found that 25% of Indians, or 236 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees per day with most working in "informal labour sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty.

Source - Poverty in India report in Wikipedia.

Data Point 2

A study done by the government on food wastage in India estimated that an astounding 58,000 crores was the amount of food wasted in India due to lack of inadequate post-harvest infrastructure.
More details of the study done by an honorable minister can be found here

(Well the very fact that he took the initiative to measure this makes him honorable)

Math

So lets do some real eazee simple dumb math here….56000crores of food..& 236 million hungry people…(Ouch..why did they invent two different number systems to make our lives complicated).

Anyway…Here goes
236 million * 20 rupees/day*365days = 172280 crores

If god gave us ‘chappad phad ke itna saara khokha’ there goes India’s poverty…poof..!!
At the same time..we are actually wasting about 58,000 crores of food.feeding rats, feeding all sorts of micro-organisms who feast on rotting food…Bravo.

Even if we could not save the Tiger we are doing really well on other biological diversity measures.
So if we did not waste this food..could we make a significant dent on our poverty situation…as much 1/3rd of India’s poverty without relying on God’s largesse ?

Gyaan

The skeptics will be laughing saying here’s a guy who has never as much as bought ‘anaaj ki bori’ from a shop who is giving ‘gyaan’ on food processing.
But here are the simpleton’s thoughts…

So if we managed our grain in FIFO..first in first out in our granaries; could so much of it be wasted ?
Would adding refrigeration to our granaries be a bad investment?
Eat local…there is a reason why each part of India developed its own cuisine. A lot of food gets transported from one part of the country to another and wasted. Could that be reduced a little bit ..not much I realize since the Haryana and Punjab belt are the granaries of India.
The article talks about tax benefits for food processing industries..I am afraid it will only be used by the MTR types who will use it for packaging and selling food to urban India. What we need is a better storage and distribution capability, something the government largely owns I think.
Make ‘ration’ shops compete with each other by allowing private distribution channels who can buy from granaries and regulate quantity they buy (so that in harder times they don’t hoard).

Beauty & Nationalism

2007-08-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

From Incredible India!...a juxtaposition of Beauty and Nationalism...on our Independence Day

Ego & Love

2007-07-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

Makes it worthwhile,
a reason to care,
brings joy with all you share,
love someone to be loved in return,
that's what makes the endless churn,
so easy to bear.

Yet loving yourself,
Changes the game over,
Am I being cared for, looked upto,
so that I could return the favor ?

Me, I, the self is prime...
yet it weakens the soul,
and there comes a time,
when a reptile is born ,
in the empty hole.

Sympathy brings warmth,
when meant for others,
directed at yourself,
feeds the serpent..
taints ur feathers.

A struggle..every moment..
did they respect me,
so are they worth my dime ?
Did you notice that affection,
came and went away..
every time...??