Hindutva’s ‘Giant Mahabharatha skeleton Found’ story is a hoax

Washington, Dec.15 (ANI): A report that suggested that a National Geographic Society team had dug up a giant human skeleton in India, in collaboration with the Indian Army, and linked it to events related to the mythological epic Mahabharatha, has been exposed as a hoax.

“Recent exploration activity in the northern region of India uncovered skeletal remains of a human of phenomenal size,” a March 2007 article in India’s Hindu Voice monthly had claimed.
The report went on to say the discovery was made by a “National Geographic Team (India Division) with support from the Indian Army since the area comes under jurisdiction of the Army.”
The account added that the team also found tablets with inscriptions that suggest the giant belonged to a race of super-humans that are mentioned in the Mahabharata.
The hoax began with a doctored photo and later found a receptive online audience thanks perhaps to the image’s unintended religious connotations.
A digitally altered photograph created in 2002 shows a reclining giant surrounded by a wooden platform with a shovel-wielding archaeologist thrown in for scale.
By 2004 the “discovery” was being blogged and e-mailed all over the world”Giant Skeleton Unearthed!”And it’s been enjoying a revival in 2007.
The photo fakery might be obvious to most people. But the tall tale refuses to lie down even five years later, if a continuing flow of emails to National Geographic News is any indication.
The messages came from around the globe Portugal, India, El Salvador, Malaysia, Africa, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Egypt, South Africa and Kenya. But they all ask the same question: Is it true?
Hindu Voice Editor P. Deivamuthu admitted to National Geographic News that his publication was taken in by the fake reports.
The monthly, which is based in Mumbai, published a retraction after readers alerted Deivamuthu to the hoax, he said.
“We are against spreading lies and canards. Moreover, our readers are a highly intellectual class and will not brook any nonsense,” Deivamuthu added.
The recent hoax is reminiscent of the once famous Cardiff Giant myth, involving a ten-foot-tall (three-meter) stone figure dug up in 1869 in Cardiff, New York.
Many people believed the figure was a petrified man and claimed he was one of the giants mentioned in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. (ANI)

December 15th, 2007.

More at http://kedarsoman.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/hoax-giant-skeleton-found-in-india/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071214-giant-skeleton.html

Snakes have devine power in Hinduism, it kills 50,000 Indians each year

Snakes on a Plain: Living With Cobras Outside Calcutta

Bites Are a Problem Priests
Can’t Always Deal With;
Malati Dhara Sees a Doctor
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
November 26, 2007 WSJ

MUSHARI, India — A five-foot monocled cobra slithered through a throng of barefoot children one afternoon recently. Not even the toddlers recoiled in fear.

“We sleep with the snakes, we eat with the snakes, we live with the snakes here,” shouted 14-year-old Chinmoy Mahji proudly. “We are not scared.”

Talk about a snake pit. The deadly serpents are everywhere here in Mushari and its three adjoining villages, set amid muddy ponds and rice fields on the hot Bengali plains northwest of Calcutta.

A dozen yards from the assembled children, another cobra was lazily trying to swallow a frog that, under the effects of the snake’s poison, had ballooned to the size of a melon. One more cobra emerged from a pond where village women washed their pots and nonchalantly made its way under a nearby house.

Samir Chatterjee, a school headmaster here, says that according to his census, more than 3,000 cobras live just in Choto Pashla, one of the three hamlets that abut Mushari. “Whenever I lie down in my bed, a cobra will just slide on top of me, without hurting me,” boasts Narottom Sain, a Mushari village leader.

While Mr. Sain has yet to be bitten, many others are not so lucky. The area’s chief Hindu priest, Shyamal Chakraborty, says that several villagers are attacked by cobras every month.

What to do when that happens is a matter of contention here, as India’s ancient ways and taboos clash with slowly encroaching modernity. Snakebites are a serious problem in India: According to estimates cited by the World Health Organization, serpent attacks kill as many as 50,000 Indians each year.

Compounding the problem is the widespread belief in the snakes’ divine powers, and a religious prohibition on harming the deadly reptiles. The cobra, in particular, occupies a hallowed place in the Hindu religion. The god Vishnu is often portrayed with a halo of cobra heads, their hoods flaring, above his head. Another major Hindu god, Lord Shiva, is usually depicted with a cobra wrapped like a scarf around his neck.

According to legend widely believed here in Mushari, the monocled cobras — black serpents with a characteristic clear circle on their hoods — first settled in the area in the year 911, on the orders of the snake goddess Manasa.

The reptiles, one of a number of cobra species that live in India, are revered as incarnations of gods. Only Brahmins — members of Hinduism’s priestly caste — are allowed to touch them. Even the skins shed by the snakes are covered by the taboo. With the cult attracting thousands of pilgrims, Mushari’s priests are eager to maintain their authority — and the impression that their magic alone can properly treat the frequent snakebites.

“If you don’t visit the doctor and just come to us, the bite will be cured in two, three days,” explains Mr. Chakraborty’s son Nayan, himself a saffron-clad priest, as he plays with a hissing cobra on the village square. “But if you choose to go to a doctor, your limb will swell up and there will be complications. We tell people that if you don’t listen to god and go to a hospital, it’s at your own risk.”

The priestly treatment consists of making bite victims bathe in a shallow pond by the ancient ocher-colored temple, rubbing special mud into the wound and performing incantations. In many cases, it seems to work. “When the snake bit me three months ago, I just ran to the priest, and soon it all healed,” says 9-year-old Srabani Kundu, as she points to faint fang marks on her right foot.

Asked whether anyone has died of snakebites in the area, villagers grudgingly admit that it does happen — but, they add hastily, only as a result of attacks by nonresident cobras, or by other snakes — vipers or kraits, perhaps. “Our sacred cobras only kill ducks and chickens, but never humans,” assures Mr. Sain.

Puzzled by the apparent mystery, the Zoological Survey of India, a government institution, sent in a team of scientists led by reptile specialist D.P. Sanyal in the early 1990s. Dr. Sanyal says he determined that the serpents teeming around Mushari are indeed “monocled cobras, highly poisonous no doubt.”

But he didn’t get much further: Local villagers, eager to uphold the religious taboos, didn’t allow him to collect venom samples and prevented him from taking one of the snakes to Calcutta for examination.

These religious taboos — and faith in the priests’ magical powers — are slowly beginning to crumble. Facing the prospect of death after a bite, some villagers nowadays are opting for more conventional medicine. One such snakebite victim is Malati Dhara, a young woman who was attacked by a cobra as she watered her garden last year.

At first, Ms. Dhara tried to follow the old custom. She called on Mr. Chakraborty, the chief priest, and spent the first hours after the bite applying mud and chanting. But in her case, the traditional rite didn’t do the trick. Soon, her foot became bloated and blue, and she vomited.

Feeling her body go rigid, Ms. Dhara asked to be rushed to the nearest hospital, in the town of Burdwan, about 25 miles away. There, she was injected with a broad-spectrum antivenom. “The priest had assured me that he will heal the bite, but it didn’t happen,” she says. “When I finally got to a doctor, he told me — you’ve come so late, you’re lucky to be alive.” Ms. Dhara still has a disfiguring scar on her foot where the snake got her.

“A cobra is highly neurotoxic, and no one will survive without the antidote if the poison is properly injected,” says Indranil Banerjee, the emergency medical officer at the Burdwan hospital. “I see this often. After being treated by witch doctors, people come here too late and just die.”

To infuse its lethal venom into the bloodstream, a cobra must turn its head, squeezing out poison that’s connected to its fangs. The frequent survival of victims in Mushari, Dr. Banerjee says, can be explained by the fact that local villagers manage to shake off the cobras immediately when they bite. Also, he adds, a snake that has recently bitten a mouse or a frog may be fresh out of poison.

Ms. Dhara’s near-death experience — and rapid recovery after the antidote — dented somewhat the priestly authority in the area. Other villagers have since gone to the hospital with snakebites. On a recent day, as Ms. Dhara recounted her tale, 21-year-old Gora Chand Dey nodded in approval. “Now, everyone knows you have to see a doctor,” he said loudly. “People no longer believe in these priests.”

Still, the age-old taboos aren’t quite dead. Breaking up this conversation, Ms. Dhara’s mother-in-law, Sandhya Dhara, stepped into the crowd. “We have to follow our traditions and go to the priests when the snakes bite,” she insisted. “Their rituals are the only cure.”

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Hindu terror on Christmas Day, 3 people killed, set 13 Churches on fire

by Nirmala Carvalho,
Hindu nationalist organisation Viśva Hindū Parişad tries to stop Christians from celebrating Christmas. Their long list of violent acts includes attacks against the police.

New Delhi (AsiaNews) – This Christmas was a day of violence in Orissa. The temporary toll includes three people killed; 13 churches set on fire; two parish houses destroyed; tens of people hurt, many seriously; a Christian orphanage vandalised; trains blocked for hours; and police cars torched; al of it as a result of a full scale onslaught by the Viśva Hindū Parişad (VHP), a Hindu fundamentalist organisation. The terror started on Christmas eve and continued throughout Christmas Day. The police has imposed a curfew in many villages but is still unable to keep the situation under control.

The spark that ignited the wave of violence was a visit on Christmas Eve to Bramunigam in Phulbani District (Orissa) by Swami Lakhananda Sarswati, an 80-year-old local VHP leader.  Surrounded by his bodyguards, he came to a Christian area where local worshippers had put up again tents to celebrate Christmas that some 300 VHP members had previously destroyed.  A quarrel followed which the media reported as “an attack against Swami Lakhananda Sarswati.” The VHP reacted to the incident by calling for a day of “national strike” in Orissa.

In Phulbani District all hell broke lose. Many armed VHP members attacked churches, some 13 in all, forbidding Christians from celebrating Christmas, shooting at people, killing three (two Christians) and wounding many more, including three who are now fighting for their life. Clashes continued into Christmas Day with police doing nothing according to eyewitnesses.

The list of violent incidents in Phulbani released by the All India Christian Council includes:

§         In the Daringabadi Block the offices of World Vision of India, a Protestant organisation, were attacked and set on fire; office documents were destroyed along with a jeep and seven motorcycles.

§         In the Balliguda Block, five churches were damaged, including a Baptist church, a Catholic church and a Pentecostal church as well as a Catholic Sisters’ convent. Furniture, sound systems and tents were burnt. A computer training centre was vandalised. VHP members also interrupted Christmas celebration at another Baptist church.

§         In Nuagam Block, churches in Kdupakia, Sirtiguda and Gosukia Jangungia villages were attacked; furniture and liturgical items were destroyed.

§         In Chakapad Block, a church was set on fire whilst Christians were holding a Christmas celebration. Some parishioners were hurt.

§         In Phringia Block, a Catholic church was destroyed by a bomb thrown by fundamentalists. A Protestant clergyman, Rev Junas Digal, had his head shaved, was forcibly brought before a Hindu temple and forced to bow in front of a Hindu deity.

§         In Raikia, tens of Christian-owned shops were reportedly destroyed with armed VHP vigilante groups, marching up and down the streets all day long, ordering Christians to stay indoors.

§         In central Phulbani, a Baptist church and a Catholic church were not allowed to conduct Christmas celebrations. An orphanage run by a Catholic priest was attacked and three vehicles torched. The Carmel Convent School in Phulbani was attacked; its school buses and vehicles were broken into, then set on fire and destroyed.

Many Christians have complained that the police did nothing to stop the violence. But in Phulbani and Tikabali mobs of Hindu fundamentalists also attacked a police station and road block, setting them and a jeep on fire.

The private residence of a minister, Padmanabh Beheras, was also attacked.

A four-hour sit-in organised by the VHP blocked railways and highways in Cuttack, Balasore, Bubaneshwar and Bhadrak causing major delays for train travellers.

Revenue Divisional Commissioner Satyabrata Sahu said the authorities imposed a curfew on Phulbani, Baliguda, Daringibadi and Brahmanigaon, but the situation has not yet returned to normal.

There are about 100,000 Christians in Orissa’s Phulbani District out of a population of 650,000 people.

In the state of Orissa, which is a stronghold of Hindu fundamentalist nationalism, an anti-conversion law has been in place since 1968 blocking missionary activities by Christians.

In 1999 an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two children were murdered and their bodies set on fire in their car.

In the same year a Catholic priest, Fr Arul Doss, was also killed.

26 Dec 2007 AsianNews.IT

Hindu Terrorist held for bomb scare in Delhi Christian church

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 25 – An inebriated man was arrested Tuesday for making a hoax call saying a bomb would explode at a well-known city church, leading to panic among the more than 15,000 people gathered there for Christmas.

Pawan Sharma, 45, was arrested soon after he called up the Mandir Marg police station from a public kiosk in the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital to say that a bomb would explode sharp at 10 p.m. Monday in the nearby Sacred Heart Cathedral.

Police said around 15,000 people, who were present in the church, panicked when the bomb disposal squad arrived and carried out an intensive check. People were minutely frisked and made to pass through metal detectors.

According to police, they lost no time in tracing the phone number and its place of origin.

‘We immediately sent a team to the hospital in plain clothes and asked them to keep an eye over people using the telephone booths. Sharma was arrested after he again came there and made a similar call,’ Assistant Commissioner of Police Gurdeep Singh told IANS.

‘Sharma revealed during interrogation that he was drunk and wanted to enjoy creating panic among people. He had been arrested for making a hoax call at the Lady Hardinge Hospital in 2005,’ Singh said. He said that Sharma was not associated with other hoax calls that have put Delhi Police officials in a tizzy over the past couple of days.

On Monday, a multiplex in east Delhi’s Prashant Vihar was vacated after a phone call claiming that a bomb had been planted inside the premises. It later turned out to be a hoax.

Sharma, a vendor who lives in old Delhi’s Paharganj area, was produced before a city court and has been sent to 14 days judicial custody.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

Hindu priest kills himself promising to come back to life

Mon, 24 Dec 2007

New Delhi – A young Hindu priest in central India has killed himself with the promise of regaining consciousness within three days of his death, a news report said Monday. Crowds milled around a temple in Chhattisgarh state’s industrial town of Raigarh where the body of the 25-year-old priest was kept by his relatives and supporters.

“Manoj Baghel committed suicide on Saturday by consuming poison at a temple in Raigarh. He claimed that he would come back to life within 72 hours,” Raigarh’s police chief JK Thorate told the IANS news agency.

Baghel died soon after being taken to a hospital in Raigarh, some 200 kilometres north-east of state capital Raipur.

Police said they have registered a case of suicide but were unable to take the body because his relatives have brought the body to the temple and kept it in a locked room to see what happens.

“Hundreds of people have surrounded the temple. They have put the priest’s body in a locked room and are refusing to hand it over to police for post-mortem. Many are expecting the priest to come back to life by late Monday,” Thorate added.

Reuters

IANS

Body Cremated IANS 

Nepal’s Hindu Goddess Stumbles Into Modernity

The living goddess likes bubble gum

By TIM SULLIVAN – KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) —

On a cold autumn evening, during a festival giving thanks for the monsoon rains, dozens of chanting worshippers pulled her enormous wooden chariot through the narrow streets of Katmandu’s old city. Thousands of cheering people pressed forward, hoping for a blessing. Drunken young men danced around her, pounding drums and shouting.

But the goddess — a child wrapped in red silk, a third eye painted on her forehead as a sign of enlightenment — took little notice of the joyous riot. Instead, she stared ahead intently, her jaw pumping furiously. Then, finally, she blew a yellow bubble about the size of a plum.

And then the goddess smiled, just a little.

Priti Shakya is 10 years old, the daughter of a family of poor goldsmiths. At the age of 4, a panel of judges examined her in a series of ancient ceremonies — checking her horoscope, searching for physical imperfections and, as a final test, seeing if she would be frightened after a night spent in a room filled with 108 freshly decapitated animal heads. She was not.

So Priti became a goddess, worshipped as the incarnation of the powerful Hindu deity Taleju, and going into near-complete isolation in an ancient Katmandu palace.

She will return home only at the onset of menstruation, when a new goddess will be named. Then Priti will be left to adjust to a life that — suddenly and absolutely — is supposed to be completely normal.

That is how it has been for nearly four centuries, in a tradition that held out against modernity even as Nepal, ever so slowly, began to change.

But modernity is coming, even to the goddess.

She has been dragged into Nepal’s political maelstrom, her influence argued over by everyone from Maoist militants to the prime minister. Her role, meanwhile, has become a topic of public debate, with human rights lawyers, politicians and academics wrangling about a child’s rights and an ancient form of worship.

Today, everything from television to insults reach into the goddess’ palace.

A communist politician called her an “evil symbol” and the Supreme Court launched an investigation after activists said the tradition violates Nepalese law. In a showdown that melded religion, politics and the monarchy, the nascent democratic government refused to allow King Gyanendra to receive the goddess’ annual blessing — thought to be an all-important protector of the king. When the king went without permission, the government slashed the number of royal bodyguards.

Among the Shakyas, the goldsmith caste that chooses the goddess from its daughters, it has become increasingly difficult to find families willing to send their girls away.

For some people, all this is simply too much.

“We know there needs to be change,” said Manju Shree Ratna Bajracharya, the eighth generation of priest from his family to oversee the temple of the royal kumari — or virgin — as the goddess is commonly called. “But this criticism of the tradition, this is pure ignorance.”

He is bitter about politicians who focus on the kumaris for political gain, and the way she has been pulled into their battles with the king. He distrusts the rights activists, wondering if they are using the practice for publicity.

“The tradition can’t be treated like this,” said Bajracharya, who spends most of his days working as a bureaucrat in the state electricity company. “It is too important to Nepal.”

But any criticism at all would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago, when Nepal was emerging from centuries of Himalayan isolation. It was a nation bound by feudal traditions, a country that handed out visitors’ visas very reluctantly, and where few people could imagine a king without absolute power.

While change did eventually come — foreigners began arriving regularly in the 1960s, when Katmandu became famous for its hippies and cheap drugs — it came slowly. It was only five years ago, for instance, when women earned equal inheritance rights under Nepalese law.

Today, Nepal is a democracy — albeit a fragile one, with crushing poverty, a figurehead monarch and a powerful Maoist militant movement with tenuous ties to mainstream politics — and change is coming even to the kumari.

Some of those changes are political, such as how the prime minister now seeks her official blessing, instead of the king. But some are more personal.

Teachers have been appointed, keeping the goddess on the same academic track as any other girl her age. There’s also television in the palace these days, giving the kumari access to everything from Bollywood to the news, and there’s talk that she may be allowed someday to live at home with her family.

It is an attempt to give some normalcy to the goddesses, who can flail desperately when they return to the outside world.

Rashmila Shakya, one of eight ex-royal kumaris still alive, remembers the pain of her return. Now a 25-year-old computer technician, she left the kumari palace at age 12. She’d had no proper schooling, and her feet had not touched the outside ground for years. Her only playmates had been the children of the palace’s caretaker, and while her family could visit, even they saw her as a goddess. Her return home took a heavy toll.

“I didn’t even know how to walk around like a regular person,” said Shakya, a quiet, bookish young woman who dreams of becoming a software designer. “The crowds frightened me.”

Still, she said, she doesn’t regret her time in the palace.

“Not everybody gets to be a goddess,” she said, smiling. “In one life, I got to have two lives.”

AP

Hindutva states issued ‘ghost’cards for Public Distribution System

Rot in PDS: Over 2 cr ghost cards

NEW DELHI: It has been one of India’s worst kept secrets. But now, a recent study has put the number of “ghost” public distribution system cards at a staggering 2.3 crore and, what is even more damning, revealed that as many as 1.21 crore “deserving” poor have been left out of the food security umbrella.

So, the PDS or the “ration card” scam is actually a massive double whammy. Not only do a huge number of fake cards point to diversion of the PDS subsidized foodgrain, but the leaking system is bypassing those who are in dire need of state support. While the government is importing foodgrain to maintain buffer stocks, the delivery system is falling wide off the mark.

The study, conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), has provided evidence to confirm what senior ministers like P Chidambaram and Sharad Pawar have been claiming — that foodgrain is being diverted to the black market and may even be smuggled into Bangladesh.

A back of the envelope calculation shows the economic dimensions of the PDS fiddle. If the entitlement to 35kg of foodgrain, comprising wheat and rice, for every family under PDS is taken into account, the ghost cards can represent a potential diversion of 966 crore tonnes of foodgrain each year.

There is a very real fallout of the ghost cards despite the NCAER report, even in the face of its own findings, claiming the system is working “quite satisfactorily”. The finance minister, for one, certainly does not agree. On Wednesday, Chidambaram told the National Development Council that PDS “could become an albatross around our neck and an opportunity for rent seekers to enrich themselves… about 58% of subsidised grain does not reach the target group, of which a little over 36% is siphoned off the supply chain”.

Various other reports, commissioned by the Supreme Court and government, seem to have been validated by the recent NCAER data. The study looks to make things a little less bleak by not accounting for the ghost cards when calculating the extent of diversion. But the 2.3 crore figure cannot be wished away. Uttar Pradesh has issued 1.11 crore more cards than it should have, NCAER feels. Rajasthan has an excess 24 lakh cards and Gujarat and Haryana have more than 10 lakh ghost cards each. A ghost card can be used either by an undeserving beneficiary to buy cheap grain or just be diverted. In either case, the purpose of PDS to provide nutritional security to the poor is defeated.

The report found that the rich had been given the lowest income group ration cards — AAY cards — in 70% of the cases in the Northeast and in 30-35% of the cases in other states.

Even people who got their PDS supply of wheat and rice did not pay the stipulated price. In the six states that NCAER surveyed, not once in the six months of the study’s duration did people purchase grain at the fixed rate. In Rajasthan, the people paid at times 35% more than the prescribed rate for wheat, the staple diet in the state.

This is a sign of not only rampant corruption but also puts the cheap foodgrain out of reach of those who need it as some people complained that they couldn’t afford the rations even at subsidized rates. The “premium” introduced by unscrupulous Fair Price Shop owners is bound to make the really poor more vulnerable.

Of the six states surveyed, the study found Bihar to be worst off. Almost 90% households in case of rice and 70% in case of wheat complained of impurity, insect-infested supply and broken grain.

22 Dec 2007, Nitin Sethi,TNN

More than 15 million rural household in India are landless

NEW DELHI: More than 15 million rural households in India are landless. Another 45 million rural families own some land, less than 0.10 acre each, which is hardly enough to make them self- sufficient, let alone generate a profit.

To benefit landless farm workers and small farmers, most States either prohibit or restrict renting of farmland. Where the law prohibits tenancy, the practice continues informally with the illegal tenants receiving no recognition or protection under the law.

In a research done by the Washington-based Rural Development Institute (RDI), it has been found that rental restrictions have backfired and are preventing poor families from accessing land.
Livelihood benefits

Plots larger than 1,300 square feet generally provide the most economic and social benefits per square foot. Functionally landless, agricultural labourer families which own a plot typically derive important livelihood benefits such as improved nutrition (microfield plots averaging 0.18 acre and ranging from 0.07 to 0.38 acre provided approximately 18 to 91 per cent of the families’ grain requirements), income, place for residence, enhanced social status and access to credit, and bargaining leverage in labour markets.

The survey suggests that 340 million people in India are dependent largely on agricultural wage labour, $1 or less a day.

Global research shows that landlessness is the best predicator of poverty in India — a much better predicator than either illiteracy or membership of a traditionally “untouchable” caste.

Obtaining property rights can positively impact women’s lives, including increasing physical and economic security, and enhancing wellbeing and status in marriage and community.
Domestic violence

A cessation of domestic violence can be traced (at least in part) to the receipt of property rights in some cases, says the survey.

The RDI is working with non-governmental organisations and government partners for changing policy and legislation to require that land be granted jointly to husbands and wives or independently to women.
Women empowered

Owning land, women are empowered and income is more likely to improve the welfare of the family.

West Bengal, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh recently budgeted over $11 million to provide landless families with microplots, on which they can build shelter and cultivate a home garden for family diet and income.

http://www.rdiland.org/

World Bank debars 2 firms in Indian child health project

WASHINGTON: In its global fight against corruption, the World Bank has debarred two firms for alleged collusive practices in connection with the Bank-financed Reproductive and Child Health Project in India.

The two firms, Nestor Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Pure Pharma Ltd were debarred for a period of three years and one year respectively after a sanctions hearing in fiscal year 2007, according to a new Bank report.

The hearing followed approval by the World Bank Group Board of a broad new set of reforms to the Bank’s sanctions regime in fiscal year 2007 that will help ensure uniform compliance with the highest ethical standards in all aspects of Bank-financed projects around the world, the Annual Integrity Report said.

The World Bank’s Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) also undertook a Detailed Implementation Review or DIR of five projects across the Bank Group’s health portfolio in India, which is to be completed and provided to the region in financial year 2008.

INT, the report said, has greatly increased its use of DIR, which is a proactive diagnostic tool that uses forensic accounting and investigative techniques to examine Bank projects in a given country for indicators of fraud and corruption. INT completed two DIRs in fiscal year 2007 in Kenya and Vietnam.

INT made significant contributions to the global fight against corruption in fiscal year 2007, with a 25 per cent increase in closed investigations from the previous fiscal year.

It also launched a voluntary disclosure programme to deter private-sector corruption, and reached agreement on a coordinated approach to rooting out corruption among the international financial institutions.

“Corruption is a cancer that steals from the poor, eats away at governance and moral fibre, and destroys trust,” said World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick. “The challenge for the World Bank is how best to diagnose, determine, and clean out corruption in concert with developing and developed countries.”

According to the report, “Improving Development Outcomes: Fiscal Year 2007 Annual Integrity Report”, INT closed a total of 301 cases in fiscal Year 2007 ended June 30.

These included both cases of fraud and corruption in Bank-financed projects and cases of alleged staff misconduct, an increase of 60 cases from fiscal year 2006. In addition, the total carryover of open cases into fiscal year 2008 was 232, a decrease of 62 cases (21 per cent) from the fiscal year 2006 backlog and the lowest year-end total since fiscal year 2002.

Economic Times, 20 Dec 2007 

Indian arrested in Cambodia for fraud

 PHNOM PENH: An Indian businessman in Cambodia has been arrested for tampering with manufacturing dates of medicines and reselling them, local media reported on Wednesday.

Indian national Kartik Sayay, director of Pragya Co Ltd, was arrested at his home in this capital city on Monday, Municipal Economic Police Chief Pich Pannha was quoted as saying by Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper.

The daily said he faced court a day later and was remanded in custody after police allegedly found equipment for repackaging medicine under fake names and stamping false expiry dates.

If convicted he might face a jail term of between 10 and 20 years. Fake and falsely labelled medicines kill a number of people in Cambodia every year and the government has increasingly acted to combat the problem.

20 Dec 2007, IANS