Sms,Email,Twitter etc - Technologies That Save Lives

In the days of yore(upto the late 80’s) when there used to be a war in any part of the world or even in your own country, the only way to know about what was happening was through newspapers and radio. Indian parents who grow up during the 1960’s and 1970’s and witnessed numerous wars in the country, still narrate incidents of how they used dive into huge pits and bunkers that were dug at various places whenever they heard a plane pass by or any other loud sound.

Today, as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21^st century it is interesting to see the manner in which our lives have been transformed thanks to some amazing innovations and technologies. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in the 19^th century he would not have imagined that it would one day evolve into something that would enable a doctor working in the Democratic Republic Of Congo(DRC) to successfully complete an operation with detailed instructions from his colleague in London.

Vascular surgeon David Nott(who volunteers for Medicins Sans Frantieres for a month each year in Africa’s troubled Democratic Republic of Congo) had a 16 year-old patient whose arm had been ripped off, causing a wound that had become infected and gangrenous, leaving the teenage boy with just days to live. Nott realised that in order to save the child he would have to perform an operation called a forequarter amputation, involving the removal of the shoulder and collar bone; an operation that he had never before undertaken. So he texted a colleague back in London, who had previously carried out the procedure, and received step by step instructions back over SMS.

The cause of the child’s injuries was not clear, with some suggesting he had been bitten by a hippopotamus and other reports claiming he had been caught in the gun fighting that riddles the nation. 1,200 people die each day in the DRC from the conflict, according to the BBC, more than half of them children. Happily, the teenager on whom David Nott performed his first forequarter amputation made a full recovery. An interesting fact associated with DRC is that it has a very close relationship with the cellular industry, home as it is to significant quantities of coltan, an ore used to produce tantalum, which is used in the production of mobile phones.

Another case in point are the recent terror attacks in Mumbai. Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the attacks began on 26^th November, Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed the thud, thud, thud of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic weapons. At the peak of the mumbai violence, more than one message per second with the word Mumbai in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years. Those descriptions and others on Web sites and photo-sharing sites served as a chaotic but critically important link among people across the world whether they be Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn tracking the fate of a rabbi held hostage at the Nariman House or students in Britain with loved ones back in India or people hanging on every twist and turn in the standoff while visiting relatives for Thanksgiving dinner.

When you look at TV, you see one channel at a time, then you go to another channel, said Dina Mehta, an ethnographer and social media consultant in Mumbai. On Twitter, you get feeds from many different people at the same time.Citizen journalists avoided some of the bureaucratic headaches faced by media organizations (As reported by NYTimes, read here for more).

The above just goes to show the power of the Mobile Phone today. So a big thumbs up for all the Cell Phone manufacturers who have used their expertise and skill to create such products. Perhaps the government can learn from this and equip their critical forces with such technologies, cause in today’s world technology can be used to save lives and avert crisis.

We Have Always Been At War And Have Just Refused To Acknowledge It

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“Enough Is Enough”, we can’t take this anymore, no more words and no more promises. We want action. This seems to be the mood of the nation at the present moment, people are slowly beginning to realize that the political system with which they have lived with for the past few decades is completely incapable of solving the basic problems of the country. While there has been some development and growth in cities like Delhi, the security infrastructure of the country leaves much to be desired. The 26^th November Mumbai terror attacks have been compared to the September 11^th World Trade Center attacks in New York, with the Taj and Oberoi hotels being compared to the twin towers. The United States of America however took serious action against the attacks on them and established a new administrative unit that has maintained security in the country for the past 7 years.The Poll above asks you a similar question, do you think that 26/11/2008 will be a turning point for India ?

“Now that it has been established that the terrorists landed in Mumbai through the sea route, it is certain that the operation had been well-planned in advance and a number of warnings about the attacks had been ignored. We quote Admiral Arun Prakash, the former chief of Naval Staff in an excerpt from his article on the reason behind these attacks and how the government has not yet learnt from it’s previous mistakes.

No set of people could have walked off a merchant ship in Sassoon Docks or stepped out of a dinghy at Machhlimar Nagar and launched these attacks. This operation called for reconnaissance, logistics, communications, local support and perhaps even rehearsals; all requiring time. The number of persons involved, directly or indirectly, could easily run into dozens if not a hundred. It speaks of the abysmal depths plumbed by our police and intelligence apparatus that they failed to hear an underworld rumor or a whisper on the airwaves, or obtain any sort of warning at all. But that seems to be now par for the course in India. Soon after the July 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai, which resulted in over 500 dead and injured, I attended a high level inter-ministry meeting to discuss this issue. After presentations, discussions and brain-storming lasting a couple of hours, a final question was asked by the Cabinet Secretary: what urgent remedial and precautionary measures should we take to prevent recurrence of such incidents? after a pregnant silence, the sole suggestion that came was voiced by a junior functionary:”We must give the SHOs at the thana level more and better quality walkie-talkie sets.” I was shaken to the core because of the pedestrian and worm’s eye perspective that it demonstrated; not high-technology, not intelligence, not weapons, but walkie-talkies! And this was in 2006, after the nation had been experiencing bomb blasts or terrorist attacks with monotonous regularity in the wake of the horrifying 1993 Mumbai carnage. The score today, of course, stands much higher.

What we have been facing for many years now, and continue to face, is an “asymmetric war“, waged by a ruthless and imaginative intelligence agency. This war has many dimensions; aiding separatism and insurgency, attacking our economy by pumping in fake currency, inciting communal violence, and undermining the morale and cohesion of the armed forces (often through the instrumentality of the Indian media) are some other facets of this multi-pronged assault by the Pak Inter-Services Intelligence agency on the hapless Indian State. Like ostriches with heads buried deep in sand, we have refused to acknowledge this asymmetric war. And full responsibility for this situation must be accepted by Indian politicians of all hues, who in their ruthless quest for votes and political one-upmanship have systematically undermined every instrument of state, and rendered the nation vulnerable” (Read here for more).

It is certain that the ISI is more of a terrorist organization than an Intelligence agency and they surely have the information necessary to weed out all kinds of terrorism from the world. The US, UK, Israel and India should together pressurize Pakistan to get the ISI to reveal all it’s secrets. The Indian government cannot let this go on and let a country like Pakistan, which was recently termed as an “International Migraine” by former US Secretary Of State Madelaine Albright (read here), go scot free yet again. It’s time to face the war and act like a country of 1 Billion+ Indians.