RESEARCH

Are book fairs serving their purpose? W e are told that books are important, and they indeed are. However, what comes across from the sight of authors and poets -- some singers and actors too, if you consider the Kolkata Book Fair -- chatting in circles inside and outside the stalls, taking themselves for Socrates, is the fact that intellectuals are perhaps more important. Indians who have lived in the eastern parts of the country will recall that once upon a time parents used to exhort their children to read The Statesman to improve their English, if nothing else. Trying to please the parents thus was quite tasking for the li'l ones though. If allowed to celebrate the naïveté of this nincompoop a little, I'd recollect how painful it was those days to sit with both the newspaper and a voluminous dictionary, underline the most unusual of words -- curse the self-indulgent reporters/sub-editors who had a fascination for them -- in order to enhance one's vocabulary instead of

Illicit trafficking in human organs is shocking news. But there's a much older racket that is thriving - unnecessary Caesarean section for childbirth. I expose a nine-month long conspiracy to create a medical situation that leaves women with no choice N ot only to medical practitioners, but also to the huge population of lay people who must see a doctor for the treatment of apparently routine to dangerous diseases, the recent arrest of five kingpins, including a doctor, in a kidney trade racket should come as no surprise. This is not because many tend to presume that organ trade must be thriving "somewhere out there", but because when it comes to manipulation of patients, including those who are highly educated -- education serves no purpose when at the eleventh hour your doctor turns livid and says, "You may go to any other doctor if you don't trust me!" -- it has perhaps become fait accompli. Never mind if you are a PhD in cryogenic technology; anybody who