From Akbar to Aurangzeb – A Study in Indian Economic History

From Akbar to Aurangzeb – A Study in Indian Economic History

Author: W H Moreland
Publisher: Low Price Publications, Delhi
Pages: 341

Unlike other history books which deals with Kings and macroeconomic perspectives, this book is intended mainly to learn the grass root conditions existing in India at that time, the economic lives of individuals, societies and countries, struggling to be alive. It provides a rich source of information on the economic aspects of India during a short period of Akbar’s death (1605) to the accession of Aurangzeb (1658). The development of foreign trade, formation and consolidation of foreign trading companies, material of import and export, the coins and weights and measures prevalent at that time etc are only a small part of the information provided by Moreland. The book was originally published in 1923 and being a member of the erstwhile Indian Civil Service, the author carries weight in his scholarship and the arguments he puts forth.

After the sea route to India through the Cape of Good Hope was discovered by Vasco Da Gama in 1498, the trade to India and the Spice Islands (Indonesia) was monopolized by the Portuguese for a little more than a century. The English and Dutch East India companies were formed in the beginning of 16^th century and their naval powers gradually drove the Portuguese out of Indian seas. The Dutch assumed power over the Spice Islands from the Portuguese. The new companies found it hard to maintain a balance of trade with India, as the imports from Europe were not saleable here, as the purchasing power of the people was very low. Only a few curiosities and luxurious articles were purchased by the Moghul nobles and other rich merchants. Consequently, the Europeans had to pay for the material they exported to Europe in gold or silver, which again, was controlled back home. Pepper, cotton, calico, indigo and salt petre were the main articles of trade from India as no other spice was grown in India. To find the money (gold and silver) to trade, the new companies participated in the Asiatic carrying trade in which cotton was transported from India to Spice Islands where they can be converted to spices like clove, nutmeg etc. Also, raw silk was carried from India to China or Japan where there was a gold surplus. The British company was in worse financial position than the Dutch but since they had no base outside India unlike the Batavian occupations of the Dutch, the British started a factory in Surat. The term ‘factory’ is not used in the modern sense, but rather as a warehouse. This was necessary because collection of material was not feasible while the ship was anchored at port because the traders increased the prices when they know that the demand was urgent. Hence, the British found it advantageous to build a factory, collect materials there and export it when ships arrive. This was the modus operandi of the companies.

There are some interesting points in the book, particularly a reference to Kunjali Marakkar, the naval chief of the Zamorins towards the end of the fifteenth century. He says that, “The only great challenge to the Portuguese was that of “Cunnale”, the pirate-king of Malabar. The story of his rise to power is curious rather than important. Enjoying the secret protection of Calicut, he gradually became a serious danger to Portuguese shipping, and towards the close of the 16^th century he assumed the title of “Lord of the Indian Seas”, and granted licenses for shipping on the lines adopted by his enemies. A Portuguese expedition sent against him was defeated, and he then styled himself “Defender of Islam, and Expeller of the Portuguese”; but his enjoyment of these titles was short, for a second expedition was completely successful, and it is said that the “Lord of the Indian Seas” was eventually executed at Goa.”

The spice trade lost its importance in the 18^th century because, “The insistent demand for pepper and cinnamon, cloves, mace and nutmegs arose partly from their use in preserving meat for winter consumption, and partly from the taste of the time; while its gradual reduction was due on the one hand to changes in Western agriculture, which ensured supplies of fresh meat throughout the winter, on the other hand to changes in the art of cooking, and in particular o the substitution of sweet for spiced dishes.”

Slave trade was rampant in India at that time, as the author says, “At the outset, Batavia was a capital without a population. The Dutch themselves were few in numbers, and the hostility of their neighbours was sufficient to prevent any large influx of settlers from the vicinity; a letter written from Batavia in the year 1626 says that the natives had abandoned all parts previously inhabited, and that from paradise the country had become a wilderness. A supply of inhabitants had to be organised, and, as might be expected from the conditions prevailing at that time, the skilled craftsmen, shopkeepers, market-gardeners, and the like were obtained from China, while the East coast of India furnished general labourers and domestic servants. The Chinese came of their own accord, and lived in Batavia as free men under a ‘captain’ of their own nation; the Indians, on the other hand, were purchased on the coast from dealers of their own nation, and were imported as commodities in Dutch vessels. From about 1620, therefore, the Dutch requirements from India were, first, a large initial supply of slaves, and then a steady stream of reinforcements to make good the wastage, which may fairly be assumed to have been heavy. Owing to the change of climate, imported slaves, “Bengalders, Arakanders, Malabars etc’, were greatly affected by sickness on their arrival in the islands. The supply was obtained by ordinary commercial methods: there is nothing to suggest that the Dutch merchants practiced either force or fraud, and we find them regularly buying from Indian dealers after obtaining the permission of the authorities.”

Francisco Pelsart, the chief of the Dutch factory at Agra, describes the life of the people as, “the manner of life of the rich in their great superfluity and absolute power, of the common people in their utter subjection and poverty – poverty so extreme and so miserable that the life of the people cannot be adequately depicted or described, for here is the home of stark want, and the dwelling-place of bitter woe. Yet the people endure patiently, seeing that there is no prospect of anything better, and scarcely anyone will make an effort, for a ladder by which to climb higher is hard to find; a workman’s children can follow no occupation other than their father’s, nor can they marry into any other caste. There are three classes of people who are indeed nominally free, but whose status differs very little from voluntary slavery, - workmen, peons or servants and shop keepers. For the work men, there are two scourges, low wages and oppression. Workmen in all crafts, which are very numerous (for a job which one man would do in Holland here passes through four men’s hands before it is finished), can earn by working from morning till night only 5 or 6 tackas, that is, 4 or 5 stivers. The second scourge is the oppression of Governor, nobles, Diwan, Kotwal, Bakhshi, and other Imperial officers. If one of these wants a workman, the man is not asked if he is willing to come, but is seized in his house or in the street, well beaten if he should dare to raise any objection, and in the evening, paid half his wages, or perhaps nothing at all. From these facts, their diet can be readily inferred. They know little of the taste of meat. For their monotonous daily food, they have nothing but a little khichri, made of moth mixed with rice, cooked with a water over a little fire until the moisture had evaporated, and eaten hot, with a little butter, in the evening; in the day time they much a little parched pulse, or other grain, which they say satisfies their lean stomachs. Their houses are built of mud, with thatched roofs. Furniture, there is little or none – some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking, and two beds, for here man and wife do not sleep together. Their bed clothes are scanty, merely a sheet, or perhaps two, serving both as under – and over – sheet; this suffices in the hot weather, but the bitter cold nights are miserable indeed, and they try to keep warm over a little cow dung fire, which is lit outside the door, because the houses have no fire-places or chimneys; the smoke from these fires all over the city is so great that the eyes run and the throat seems to be choked.

In this country, peons or servants are exceedingly numerous. For their slack and lazy service, the wages are paid by the Moguls only after large deductions. Most of the great lords reckon 40 days to the month, and pay from 3 to 4 rupees for that period; but wages are often left several months in arrears, and then paid in worn-out clothes or other things. Very few serve their masters honestly; they steal whatever they can; and if they buy only a pice-worth of food, they will take their share, or dasturi (commission)…..Otherwise, it would be impossible to feed themselves and their families on such low wages; and accordingly their position and manner of life differ very little from that of the workman in the wealth of their poverty.

Whatever he may deal in – spices, drugs, fruit, cloth, or anything else – the shopkeeper is distinctly better off than the workman, and some of them are even well-to-do; but they must not let the fact be seen, or they will be victims of a trumped-up charge, and their property will be legally confiscated, for informers swarm like flies around the officials, and make no difference between friends and enemies, perjuring themselves when necessary in order to remain in favour. Further, they are so oppressed that if the Emperor’s nobles or governors should require any of their goods, they must sell them for very little – less than half price….”

Corruption was rampant among the officials, as “Apart from taxes, local authorities could hope to realise a large income from presents, fines and bribes. The first of these heads does not call for detailed description; the practice of giving presents was universal and binding. Writing primarily of Agra, Pelsart recorded that criminals were rarely executed unless they were poor, but their property was confiscated for the benefit of the Governor and the Kotwal. He added an expression of pity for those who came before these godless and unrighteous officers; their eyes bleared with greed, their mouths gape like wolves for their prey, their bellies hunger for the bread of the poor; every one stands with hands open to receive, for no mercy or compassion can be had except on payment”

Overall rating: 4 Star

Next

Next

Author: Michael Crichton

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 423

‘Next’ is Crichton’s last piece of work, published in 2006. This work is in stark contrast to his other books which is so thrilling and packed with scientific snippets that the reader would be compelled to finish the book in one go. ‘Next’ is nothing of the sort, being a documentary than a novel in which there is no interconnecting thread going through all sections. This is Crichton’s views about the revolutions through which genetic engineering is going through and the immoral and unethical pathways via which it is progressing, mainly due to the unnecessary legal hassles put forward by the US legislature. It talks about talking chimpanzees, a humanzee (a chimpanzee born on an embryo fertilised with human sperm), parrots doing maths, pharma companies claiming ownership on donor’s tissue cells and forcibly trying to recover it from their siblings etc. The book should rather be presented as a statement by the author against some of the worst practices the genetic industry is facing now.

Crichton suggests solutions to the sorry state of things. They are,

1. Stop patenting genes
2. Establish clear guidelines for the use of human tissues
3. Pass laws to ensure that data about gene testing is made public
4. Avoid bans on research
5. Rescind the Bayh-Dole Act (the act which permits university professors to sell their discoveries for their own profit)

Overall rating: 3 Star

The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol

Author: Dan Brown

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 478

The latest thriller by the creator of ‘Da Vinci Code’ and ‘Angels and Demons’ is another page turner in the inimitable style of the master story teller. The book is based on the esoteric rituals and practices of the very poweful secret society ‘Free Masons’ in which the most prominent personalities of the USA are members. The prodigal son of the society’s tallest leader tries to break in to the society through a map encoded in a small stone pyramid kept in secret cellars. This man was practising occultism and believes that the knowledge or ‘lost word’ which can be located by deciphering the engraving on the pyramid will turn him into a demon with mystical powers if he sacrifices himself at the altar of the House of the Temple of Freemasons. Robert Langdon, the hero of the two earlier super hit books, along with the help of Katherine Solomon, the sister of the freemason’s leader averts this crisis by unlocking the secret codes. The villain of the piece possesses a video of occult practises performed by the freemasons in which several influential senators and justices of the Supreme Court are participating. The CIA is determined to stop the video from circulating and declares its recovery as a concern for national security. All is solved at the last minute by the lead characters. A thrilling piece of work which holds the suspense in every word of it. Superbly done.

So much for the thriller part! But the contents however, is disappointing particularly after Angels and Demons in which Brown resorts to science fiction in which a positron explosive device is used. Such a device, though doesn’t exist now, is certainly feasible if technology is sufficiently advanced. Angels and Demons is based on solid science and many chapters are staged at the CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) giving the author an air of scientific honorability. Alas, all that is dashed in the present work! Here, Brown praises the power of human mind, how the ancients had possessed greater knowledge than the present society, a pseudo-science called Noetics which explores whether the power of mind can alter the physical world and answers in the affirmative. There are passages in which Katherine declares that it is a solid scientific reality that thoughts have mass and prayer groups or minds working in unison can affect the world in a beneficial or harmful way.

Coming so close on the heels of Angels and Demons, surely many of the laymen who read these false premises will falter towards the junk science of mind power or Noetics or what ever you call it! There are laughable references that proves the Ancients had more wisdom than us and many scientific theories are described in an encrypted form in the old texts. We are led to believe that String theory, the physical theory for unification of the four fundamental forces of nature is detailed in the Book of Zohar, a Jewish work many thousands of years old! It has now become the fashion of a few people to declare that the ancient texts describe what we know today as scientific facts. The advocates of Vedic Science comes readily to mind. Whatever you say to them, they will show the text in the Vedas where it is described in an esoteric form. The only problem is that since the text is obscure, you have to interpret it in the way the advocates do. String theory however, is still debated and not proved true by any stretch of the imagination. I wonder how Brown can explain the irregularity if it is indeed proved wrong in future accelerator projects! Interpretation is a vast portal through which any scientific theory can be embedded in any text!

Strangely, the author seems to be doing penance after the allegations of blasphemy in the earlier works. He praises all religious books, particularly the Bible and claims that it contains scientific ideas beyond which we need not look further. The human mind, he says, is the true God and its power makes us Gods. A strong link to the Advaita theory is noticeable, in fact, the book is littered with references to Hindu concepts and ideologies. After all such trash, there is one inconsistent sentence in one the final passages, “If the ancestors could see us today, surely they would think us gods”. This is with reference to the achievements of modern Science which we have around us, but it runs counter to argument thread of the book.

Altogether, the book is a disappointing one, which comes only marginally above in quality to ‘Digital Fortress’, the poorest of Brown’s five books. The author is obsessed with Robert Langdon, the hero of three of his works! In a lighter vein, one would be tempted to ask him what happened to Sophie Novou and Vittoria Vetra, the heroines of the previous two works, when we see his romantic overtures to Katherine Solomon, the heroine of this book!

Rating: 3 Star

White Mughals

White Mughals

Author: William Dalrymple

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 508

William Dalrymple is an Indophile English author whose work titled ‘The Last Mughal’ portrays the 1857 freedom war or mutiny, depending on which side you are on, gained much acclaim in India. Chronologically, the ‘White Mughals’ is a prequel to the events which caused the rebellion in 1857. Content wise, there is no relation between the two works. The Last Mughal is essentially history, while White Mughals is more of a novel. It establishes the love and marriage of the English resident of Hyderabad, James Achilles Kirkpatrick with Khair-un-Nissa begum, a noble lady of the Hyderabadi aristocracy. They lived happily for a decade or so, at the end of which their two children were sent to England for education and Kirkpatrick dies following a serious illness. Khair then have an affair with a senior officer of the East India Company, Henry Russell who abandons her after some time to marry an English woman. Khair also dies of an illness soon after. The children who were sent to England are converted to Christianity and never visit India again. This is the essence of the story. Nothing much to impress really.

Dalrymple establishes that the dislike and condescending attitude the British developed towards India and its culture was an entirely new offshoot in the beginning of the 19^th century. Earlier they were more accommodating and eagerly took part in the religious functions and married Indian women. The Anglo-Indian society thus formed were given prominent positions in the company hierarchy till the time of Lord Cornwallis, who put an end to such practices and excluded the hybrid community from the power centres. This was the time in which the British were still dependent on Indian kings and sultans and naturally they found it convenient to establish marital relations with the aristocracy of the princely states. At the turn of the 19^th century, the English were all powerful in India. 50 years after Plassey, they stood unchallenged with the French threat convincingly put out after Mysore wars which saw Tipu Sultan defeated.

‘White Mughals’ however, portrays the moral degeneracy India has sunk into in those periods. He quotes the writing of a Portuguese sailor thus, “Others were no doubt lured from Portuguese service by the delights of a society in which slavery, concubinage and polygamy were widespread and entirely accepted, and where they could emulate the curious figure some British sailors encountered at the beginning of the seventeenth century living with as many women as he pleaseth......he will sing and dance all day long, near hand naked...... and will be drunk two days together”.

Tipu Sultan is considered to be champion of Indian freedom since he fought against the British. Our politically inclined historians, however, has lost sight of Tipu’s real intentions in fighting against the British. He had only one aim in doing so, and that was the continuation of his reign and nothing else. He openly sought help from the French who helped him in increasing his military power and providing him with a mercenary force. How can such a person be the fountainhead of India’s freedom struggle? Dalrymple quotes a letter from Napoleon Bonaparte to Tipu, which was sent from Cairo, annexed by Napoleon. It runs thus, “You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire of releasing and relieving you from the iron yoke of England. I eagerly embrace this opportunity of testifying to you the desire I have of being informed by you, by the way of Muscat and Mocha, as to your political situation. I could even wish you could send some sort of intelligent person to Suez or Cairo, possessing your confidence, with whom I may confer. May the Almighty increase your power, and destroy your enemies!”. It is curious to hear Bonaparte talking about iron yoke of England, because if he and Tipu had their ways, India would have been under the iron yoke of France! Some freedom fighter!

The Muslim aristocracy who ruled India had their roots in Afghanistan or Persia. The book describes how these powerful nobles saw the country of their livelihood. Abdul Lateef, a Persian in the court of Hyderabad was “shocked to see men and women naked apart from an exiguous cache-sex mixing in the streets and markets, as well as out in the country, like beasts or insects. I asked my host, “What on earth is this?” “Just the locals” he replied, “They’re all like that!” It was my first step in India, but already I regretted coming and reproached myself”. And this man lived in India for the rest of his life, sapping the tax revenue from those wretched locals whom he despised so much.

All in all, the book is not as nicely readable as the Last Mughal, especially since the author’s narration of even the minutest details like the gardening arrangements of the British resident in Hyderabad. There are several such sections where the reader has no choice but to somehow read through the boring sections. Otherwise, it is a good work, even though the theme is very superficial and does not appear anywhere in the course of Indian history.

Rating: 3 star

The Science of Leonardo

Author: Fritjof Capra

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 274

Leonardo Da Vinci, the renaissance painter and engineer needs no introduction to any audience. Whatever unfamiliarity the general public had, had been effectively wiped out by Dan Brown’s classic, “The Da Vinci Code”. Brown’s colourful portrayal of the great man had created the wrong impressions on many minds, mine included regarding his religious affiliations. Till I read Capra’s eminently written biographical narrative portraying Leonardo as one of the pioneering scientists and a great military engineer, I was naturally inclined to side with Brown’s suggestions of a polytheist about da Vinci.

Da Vinci was born in Florence and rose to prominence due to his works in that city and others including Milan, Rome and France. Capra’s main intention in the book is to bring out those aspects which made da Vinci a pioneering scientist. So, those who reads this book for some of the background anecdotes regarding some of the world’s greatest paintings will be in for despair. Except one or two cursory references even to Mona Lisa, Capra focuses always on the making of a scientist. Leonardo was famous for the detailed drawings on human and animal anatomy, especially equestrian, his surgeries on dead animals and humans, studies on hydraulics and canals, designing costumes and royal emblems for entertainment shows and on and on.

Leonardo clearly anticipated some of the developments in science during the 16^th century, the era of Descartes and Newton. But Capra’s suggestions that had the background been sufficiently advanced during da Vinci’s time, he would have surpassed many of the great men may better be regarded as only his opinion and not based on any established fact. Also, the origins of medieval thought is given very briefly, but attractively. The following paragraph is one of them.

“In early Greek philosophy, the ultimate moving force and source of all life was identified with the soul, and its principal metaphor was that of the breath of life. Indeed, the root meaning of both the Greek ‘psyche’ and the Latin ‘anima’ is ‘breath’. Closely associated with that moving force – the breath of life that leaves the body at death – was the idea of knowing. For the early Greek philosophers, the soul was both the source of movement and life, and that which perceives and knows. Because of the fundamental analogy between micro- and macrocosm, the individual soul was thought to be part of the force that moves the entire universe, and accordingly the knowing of an individual was seen as part of a universal process of knowing. Plato called it the ‘anima mundi’ the ‘world soul’”. The resemblance to the theory of Advaita is so striking!

And finally, a note from da Vinci’s note book – “Just as a well-spent day brings a happy sleep, so a well-employed life brings a happy death”.

Rating: 3 star

In Search of the Big Bang

In Search of the Big Bang

Author: John Gribbin

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 346

John Gribbin is a renowned science writer who has a direct appeal on the general public. His style, full of clarity and fluid explanation of even difficult concepts marks him apart from other writers of the bunch. However, this one piece is an exception to the rule. The narration is terse at several sections, which might also be due to the fuzzy perception of concepts even by experts of the field. How can one account for the existence of a quantum fluctuation, an act of creating something from nothing? What is the difference between believing that God created universe from nothing and that the universe spontaneously originated from a quantum fluctuation in vacuum? Though Gribbin makes fun of the Pope’s comment at a science seminar in Vatican in 1981 when he advised great scientists, including Hawking who was present, to avoid going for the origin of the Universe as it is in the purview of the meta-physicists, we can’t help feeling that Science has a lot more to go forward in at least trying to explain the events which unfolded not at the beginning, but even after the elapse of a time period after the event. Cosmology abounds with theories which can be tested at only very high energies which occur only very near in time to the Big Bang. The author valiantly defends such theories as if it is common sense, but in several cases, it is just the contrary.

However, several concepts are clearly spelt out. An example is the elucidation of the second law of thermodynamics, which is also called “The Supreme Law of Nature”. Heat always flow from a hotter object to a cooler one, states the law. This creates an arrow of time in which processes can occur only in one direction. Though physical processes are time invariant, meaning that they happen in the same way, even if time is reversed, the second law defines the direction in which time flows.

The description of Edmond Halley’s works in Chapter 3 is thrilling. Ptolemy and Hipparchus had created star maps in the beginning of the Christian era. But in 1718, Halley realized that three stars – Sirius, Procyon and Arcturus – were not in the places where Ptolemy had seen them. The differences in positions were much too great to be dismissed as error by the ancients. Arcturus, for example, appeared in 1718 to be twice the width of the full Moon away from the position in Ptolemy’s writings. Halley inferred that Arcturus, and the other stars, had moved over the centuries since the Greeks recorded their positions.

Parsec, the unit of measurement of distances to stars is clearly explained. Since the radius of the Earth’s orbit is 150 million km, observations made 6 months apart, from opposite sides of the Sun, are at the ends of a baseline 300 million km (2 AU) long. It is a matter of simple geometry to calculate how far away a star would have to be, in order to show a certain parallax displacement across such a baseline. One parallax second of arc, or parsec for short, is the distance to a star which would show a displacement of 1 second or arc from opposite ends of a baseline equal to the distance from the Earth to the Sun. A parsec is a little more than 30,000 billion km, and is 3.26 light years.

Distance to other distant stars are galaxies are made with the help of a class of stars called Cepheid stars which vary in brightness. These pulsate, swelling up and then shrinking in upon themselves, repeating the process over a regular cycle during which their light waxes and wanes. There is a unique relationship between the brightness and period which holds true for all cepheids. This helps to fix the brightness of a distant star. The name is derived from Delta Cephei, which was one of the first identified as a variable.

One of the issues which had puzzled me for years was why powerful telescopes were always made with mirrors instead of lenses. Gribbin clears the issue with one shot. Bigger lenses are bent out of shape by their own weight, whereas mirrors are advantageous because no light is passing through, the back can be supported by a frame work to hold the mirror in shape.

Edwin Hubble postulated in 1929 that the universe is expanding and the expansion is proportional to distance. The constant of proportionality is called Hubble’s constant. Since this value changes over time, some scientist prefer to call it Hubble’s parameter. George Gamow and Ralph Alpher established the Big Bang theory in 1940s to explain the origin of the universe, which was improved by Alan Guth, with his inflationary model.

Overall rating: 3 star (How apt to rate a cosmological book in number of stars !!).

DNA – The Secret of Life

DNA – The Secret of Life

Author: James Watson

Publisher: Arrow Books

Pages: 432

Dedication: For Francis Crick.

Nothing can be more rewarding than having a book about DNA straight from one of the co-discoverers of its double helix structure. Francis Crick and James Watson discovered its internal structure in 1953 and were duly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. The style and structure of the book is inimitable. An unbroken chain of sly humour makes it eminently attractive and compels the reader to get stuck to it even though the topic of discussion is pure science and technology. Though Watson was accused of ‘scientific racism’ in his later years, the book presents no such example. On the contrary, his avowed enmity to racism is amply evidenced in his tirades against the proponents of Eugenics in the beginning of last century. Eugenics prompted many states in US to adopt laws for sterilizing people with genetic disorders so that their genes won’t pass along. Many a times, the victims were mainly of African or Asian origins.

Many physicists or would-be physicists took part in the search for DNA. Erwin Schrodinger, who needs no introduction to physics students wrote a book titled, “What is Life?” in which he suggested that the language of life might be like Morse code, a series of dots and dashes. In fact, the language of DNA is a linear series of As, Ts, Gs and Cs. And just as transcribing a page out of a book can result in the odd typo, the rare mistake creeps in when all these As, Ts, Gs and Cs are being copied along a chromosome. These errors are the mutations geneticists had talked about for almost fifty years. Watson was attracted by Schrodinger’s sound logic and Crick was actually a physicist who turned to biology after reading “What is Life?”. He asserts that, “The discovery of the double helix sounded the death knell for vitalism. Serious scientists, even those religiously inclined, realized that a complete understanding of life would not require the revelation of new laws of nature. Life was just a matter of physics and chemistry, albeit exquisitely organized physics and chemistry”.

Watson discusses several genetic disorders, citing the defect at the root of all, in genes. Sickle cell anemia, a genetic disorder common in Africans, makes the red blood cells of victims tend to become deformed, assuming a distinctive “sickle” shape and the resulting blockages in capillaries can be horribly painful, or lethal. The difference between the normal gene and those afflicted with the disease amounted to a single amino acid. Glutamic acid, found at position 6 in the normal protein chain, is replaced, in sickle cell hemoglobin, by valine.

Explanation of GM foods are neat and to the point. Example of BGH is cited. Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) is similar in many ways to human growth hormone, but it has an agriculturally valuable side effect: it increases milk production in cows. Monsanto Corp cloned the BGH gene and produced recombinant BGH. The milk yield increased by 10%. The milk produced is indistinguishable from that produced by non-supplemented cows. As the GM food debate swirls around us, it is important to appreciate that our custom of eating food that has been genetically modified is actually thousands of years old. In fact, both our domesticated animals, the source of our meat, and the crop plants that furnish our grains, fruits and vegetables, are very far removed genetically from their wild forebears. Agriculture did not suddenly arise, fully fledged, ten thousand years ago. Many of the wild ancestors of crop plants, for example, offered relatively little to the early farmers: they were low yield and hard to grow. Modification was necessary if agriculture was to succeed. Early farmers understood that modification must be bred in if desirable characteristics were to be maintained from generation to generation. And in the absence of gene guns and the like, this activity depended on some form of artificial selection, whereby farmers bred only those individuals exhibiting the desired traits – the cows with the highest milk yield, for example.

Bt Cotton is also explained nicely. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) naturally assaults the cells of insect intestines, feasting upon the nutrients released by the damaged cells. The guts of the insects exposed to the bacterium are paralyzed, causing the creatures to die from the combined effects of starvation and tissue damage. First used as a pesticide in France in 1938, the bacterium was originally thought to work only against moth/butterfly caterpillars, but different strains have subsequently proved effective against the larvae of beetles and flies. The success of the mechanism has inspired genetic engineers. Instead of applying the bacterium scattershot to crops, it would be better to engineer the gene for the Bt toxin into the genome of crop plants. The farmer would never again need to dust his crops because every mouthful of the plant would be lethal to the insect ingesting it (and harmless to humans). The method has at least two clear advantages over the traditional dumping of pesticides on crops. First, only insects that actually eat the crop will be exposed to the pesticide; non-pests are not harmed, as they would be with external application. Second, implanting the Bt toxin gene into the plant genome causes it to be produced by every cell of the plant; traditional pesticides are typically applied only to the leaf and stem.

In 1992, UNICEF estimated that some 124 million children around the world were dangerously deficient in vitamin A. The annual result is some half million cases of childhood blindness; many of these children will even die for want of the vitamin. Since rice does not contain vitamin A or its biochemical precursors, these deficient populations are concentrated in parts of the world where rice is the staple diet. An international effort, funded largely by the Rockefeller Foundation has developed what has come to be known as “golden rice”. Though this rice does not contain vitamin A per se, it yields a critical precursor, beta-carotene (which gives carrots their bright orange color and golden rice the fainter orange tint that inspired its name).

Watson led the Human Genome Project (HGP) in its beginning. A 3 billion dollar effort with cooperation across countries and academy and industry helped it become a grand success. The HGP has proved Darwin more right than Darwin himself would ever have dared dream. Molecular similarities stem ultimately from the way in which all organisms are related through common descent. A successful evolutionary ‘invention’ is passed down from one generation to the next. Once evolution solves a particular problem – for example, designing an enzyme to catalyze a particular biochemical reaction – it tends to stick with that solution. Some 46 percent of the proteins we see in yeast also appear in humans. Also, 43% of worm proteins, 61% of fruit fly proteins and 75% of fugu proteins have marked sequence similarities to human proteins. A comparison of the gene count of several species are given.

Common name Number of genes

Human 25,000

Mustard plant 27,000

Nematode worm 20,000

Fruit fly 14,000

Baker’s yeast 6,000

Gut bacterium 4,000

The Neanderthal genes were sequenced successfully. They had more in common with human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) than with those of chimpanzees, telling us that Neanderthals were unquestionably part of the human evolutionary lineage. At the same time, however, there were dramatic differences between the Neanderthal sequences and all 986 available sequences of modern human mtDNA. The sum of the genetic evidence leads us to conclude that while Neanderthals do have their place on the evolutionary tree of humans and their relatives, the Neanderthal branch is a long way from the modern human. If, when they encountered each other in Europe 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals and humans had indeed interbred, their mtDNA sequences would have entered the modern human gene pool. That we see no evidence of such input implies that modern humans eliminated the Neanderthals rather than interbreeding with them.

The rationale for skin color is given. Why did people living in higher latitudes lose melanin? The best explanation involves vitamin D3 synthesis, a process carried out in the skin and requiring UV light, D3 is essential for calcium uptake, which in turn is a critical ingredient of strong bones. As our ancestors moved out of Africa into highly seasonal environments, with less year round UV radiation, natural selection favoured pale-skinned variants because they, with less sun blocking pigment in their skin, synthesized D3 more efficiently with the limited UV available. The same logic may apply to the movements of our ancestors within Africa too. The San tribe, for instance, in South Africa, where UV intensities are similar to those of the Mediterranean, have a strikingly pale skin. But what about the Inuit peoples, who live in or close to the hardly sunny Arctic but are surprisingly dark? Their opportunities for producing the vitamin would appear to be further limited by the need to be fully clothed all the time in their climate.

Human genome has a striking similarity to that of the chimpanzee. They have 24 chromosome pairs whereas we have 23. It turns out that our chromosome 2 was produced by the fusion of two chimp chromosomes. There are also differences in chromosomes 9 and 12 and several inversions within chromosomes.

DNA fingerprinting is also explained in detail. This technique was discovered by accident by a British geneticist, Alec Jeffreys. He noticed that a short piece of DNA repeated over and over again and such repeats varied in number from individual to individual. Jeffreys determined that the repeats were junk DNA, not involved in coding for protein, but he was soon to discover that this particular junk could be put to good use.

The book covers all the aspects of genetic research and examines the burning issues in detail and with an endorsement by the author that nothing is amiss in the new technology. When ill informed people rally up against Bt Cotton and GM food, it is very helpful for the society to have a dissenting voice. Watson’s definitive approval lends weight to several counter arguments to have science have its way and keep politics and superstitions away from it.

Overall rating: 5 Star