Herald: Highlights of the October 2011 issue
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Tag Archives: October 2011
Dr David Hansen
“Very few people see any contradiction in using radical rhetoric while remaining moderate in their actions; there is little reflection on the possibility of words being translated into action by a few. It is imperative for us to differentiate between rhetoric and action.”
Locked and Forgotten
In this illness, the patients are not in touch with reality, their perceptions change, they can hear voices sometimes,” he says, adding that most patients of psychosis claim to be perfectly normal but a psychiatric examination shows otherwise.
Amid fear and apprehension
When the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited Chitral early last month, the local political leaders who spoke to him were unequivocal. “We put forward to him very simple demands: Regular army should not be deployed in Chitral; strength of the scouts should be increased; and gunship helicopters should be provided to them,” says Khursheed Ali Khan, a local politician who was part of the delegation which met the COAS.
Dispatches from the camps
The road from Hyderabad to Mirpurkhas is lined with fields of roses, sugarcane, cotton and, of course, mango orchards. This wealth of crops is now submerged in water; while the crops are clearly destroyed, many fear for the mango trees as well. Against the backdrop of lush green but water-logged fields, displaced families are camped along the road with their livestock.
Familiar stories
The stories they portrayed, though not outside the sphere of recognisable tragedy, thus appeared refreshingly real. The participants included those who have suffered themselves as well as those who have made the effort to travel to unsafe areas to document ordinary people, rendered extraordinary by virtue of their colossal losses.
Reserved for the future
In the last one year alone, the Sindh government has realised that almost all its infrastructure projects for Thar coal were either too ambitious financially or too big to be completed in time for speedy mining and power generation. In 2010, the provincial government had estimated that the development of a road network, building of water supply schemes and effluent disposal facilities, laying of electricity transmission lines and the provision of a railway link would cost 1.14 billion US dollars over the next five years.
