The Audit Report of TCGA (- a Public-Private partnership by IGIB under the leadership of S K Brahmachari) by a Government of India agency have now come to a similar conclusion. It has found that:
1. IGIB did not follow proper procedures in selecting the private partner. It did not call for competitive bids; it instead decided on a private partner based on favoritism.
2. The agreement with the private player (i.e. The Chatterjee Group) was not vetted by a legal expert to ensure safeguarding the interest of investing public funds.
3. There were no terms and conditions for sharing of total revenue by the partners in the agreement except that earned through IP rights (i.e. no agremment on revenues from other sources such as services).
4. The list of equipment (along with cost) to be provided by both parties was not clearly defined. The audit report particularly took note of lack of any clause on the contribution of the private partner.
5. The risk involved to both the parties were not identified or shared in a balanced manner. The liabilities of the private partner was restricted to only Rs 3.5 crores and even that clause was amended later in favour of the private partner.
6. There was no provision for preparation of separate accounts of TCGA and getting these certified from an independent Statutory Auditor for enabling IGIB to periodically review the same.
7. There were no penalty clause in case of any failure on the part of the private partner to comply with the provisions of the agreement and no exigencies were taken into consideration.
8. The private partner was given all rights of all matters, finance, legal, and appointment of manpower of TCGA (the newly formed entity under PPP mode).
9. IGIB did not effectively do any planning for the project to ensure its successful implementation.
The result of the above is that TCGA even after 5 years of its existence is making loss, while it was supposed to show sustainable profit since its second year of functioning. Many crores of public fund has been lost due to delays, corruption and mismanagement.
[Note: The veracity of the above findings of the Audit Report can be checked by asking to make that report public and using RTI Act. Also see this.]
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
CSIR stole the idea and IP of Soleckshaw
A solar electric rickshaw launched with great fanfare by India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) two years ago is yet to find any takers. While this is causing concern, a Pune engineer has claimed the CSIR copied his design.
The three-wheeled "soleckshaw" can in principle use solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity to drive its motor.
It was developed by the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI) in Durgapur, West Bengal, a unit of the CSIR, and promoted as a green rickshaw because it emits no gases that can contribute to global warming.
Despite high-voltage publicity, the soleckshaw has not caught on. "Till now no soleckshaws have been sold in the market on a commercial basis by (our) licensees," Amit Banerjee, head of the manufacturing technology group at CMERI, said.
Around 30 soleckshaws fabricated at CMERI for demonstration were initially deployed in Delhi (at Chandni Chowk), Kolkata, Durgapur, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Dhanbad and Ahmedabad, said Himadri Maiti, senior adviser in the CSIR.
"However, currently they are not in operation due to various local administrative and management problems," he admitted.
Operations within the jurisdiction of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) could not be resumed as the civic agency "has refused to grant a fresh licence" for any rickshaw, he added.
The charging stations set up at a few places by the Central Electronics Limited for charging the soleckshaws' batteries "are not being used at this point of time as the vehicles are not in operation at those locations", Maiti said.
He said the CSIR's plans to deploy at least 1,000 soleckshaws in the Commonwealth Games village in Delhi was abandoned as the Games Organising Committee, after initially agreeing to our proposal, "backed out on the plea of security issues".
And the CSIR's proposal to operate at least 10 soleckshaws for postal delivery under a pilot project in Rajashtan's Ajmer district is still pending with the postal department, he said.
To add to the CSIR's embarrassment, a Pune engineer has claimed that except for some slight changes, the CSIR's soleckshaw is a copy of the electric cycle rickshaw his non-profit research and development institute built some 10 years ago.
"Our electric cycle rickshaws were inaugurated in Pune University campus in 2002 and technical details were published in the Indian journal Current Science in its Sep 25, 2002, issue," Anil Rajvanshi, an Indian Institute of Technology graduate and director of the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) near Pune, said.
Twenty such rickshaws were fabricated at NARI which logged more than 5,000 km in trial runs, he said.
"Ours was the first motor-assisted pedal rickshaw with back wheel braking and gears, which the CSIR also has in its design," he said.
"Instead of putting a permanent magnet direct current motor at the back, the CSIR used the hub wheel motor on the front wheel and specifications regarding the speed, travel distance per battery charge etc are also almost same," he said.
"So one can say it is a very good copy of our efforts," he told IANS.
"In May last year, I even sent them (CSIR) an e-mail telling them they seemed to have copied our design of the electric rickshaw but till today there is no reply," said Rajvanshi who, after a teaching stint at the University of Florida in the US, returned to India in 1981 to devote himself to research at NARI set up by his father in 1968.
The electric rickshaw is one of NARI's products. Others include improved kerosene lanterns, sugarcane leaf gasifier and sweet sorghum -- a sorghum grass variety that can be used as food and fuel.
But Banerjee denied that the soleckshaw is a copy of NARI's electric rickshaw. "It is a completely different technology," he said.
"It has been designed, developed and manufactured completely by us," he said, adding, "There are a few technical novelties in soleckshaws, compared to any such vehicle in the world, which we cannot disclose at this moment."
Rajvanshi said NARI's intellectual property has been copied by the CSIR but claimed he neither had the resources nor the time to fight the government of India.
"It would have been nice if the CSIR had at least acknowledged NARI's pioneering efforts," he said.
"We at NARI failed in our attempt to commercialise our electric rickshaws; if the CSIR can popularise theirs and sell them in large numbers then it will be a vindication of our work," Rajvanshi said.
However, that looks like wishful thinking given the fact that two years after its launch there are no soleckshaws on the road except the 10 vehicles that Maiti said were "currently plying in Faridabad (Haryana) with the initiative of one of the licensees".
The failure of the soleckshaw to take off is not unexpected, said a senior CSIR scientist who did not want to be named.
"Our primary goal should have been removing drudgery of rickshaw pullers by introducing motorised rickshaws rather than 'green' rickshaws and cutting down carbon emissions," he said.
[The above article was published in The Economic Times Online on 28th Sep. 2010]
The three-wheeled "soleckshaw" can in principle use solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity to drive its motor.
It was developed by the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI) in Durgapur, West Bengal, a unit of the CSIR, and promoted as a green rickshaw because it emits no gases that can contribute to global warming.
Despite high-voltage publicity, the soleckshaw has not caught on. "Till now no soleckshaws have been sold in the market on a commercial basis by (our) licensees," Amit Banerjee, head of the manufacturing technology group at CMERI, said.
Around 30 soleckshaws fabricated at CMERI for demonstration were initially deployed in Delhi (at Chandni Chowk), Kolkata, Durgapur, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Dhanbad and Ahmedabad, said Himadri Maiti, senior adviser in the CSIR.
"However, currently they are not in operation due to various local administrative and management problems," he admitted.
Operations within the jurisdiction of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) could not be resumed as the civic agency "has refused to grant a fresh licence" for any rickshaw, he added.
The charging stations set up at a few places by the Central Electronics Limited for charging the soleckshaws' batteries "are not being used at this point of time as the vehicles are not in operation at those locations", Maiti said.
He said the CSIR's plans to deploy at least 1,000 soleckshaws in the Commonwealth Games village in Delhi was abandoned as the Games Organising Committee, after initially agreeing to our proposal, "backed out on the plea of security issues".
And the CSIR's proposal to operate at least 10 soleckshaws for postal delivery under a pilot project in Rajashtan's Ajmer district is still pending with the postal department, he said.
To add to the CSIR's embarrassment, a Pune engineer has claimed that except for some slight changes, the CSIR's soleckshaw is a copy of the electric cycle rickshaw his non-profit research and development institute built some 10 years ago.
"Our electric cycle rickshaws were inaugurated in Pune University campus in 2002 and technical details were published in the Indian journal Current Science in its Sep 25, 2002, issue," Anil Rajvanshi, an Indian Institute of Technology graduate and director of the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) near Pune, said.
Twenty such rickshaws were fabricated at NARI which logged more than 5,000 km in trial runs, he said.
"Ours was the first motor-assisted pedal rickshaw with back wheel braking and gears, which the CSIR also has in its design," he said.
"Instead of putting a permanent magnet direct current motor at the back, the CSIR used the hub wheel motor on the front wheel and specifications regarding the speed, travel distance per battery charge etc are also almost same," he said.
"So one can say it is a very good copy of our efforts," he told IANS.
"In May last year, I even sent them (CSIR) an e-mail telling them they seemed to have copied our design of the electric rickshaw but till today there is no reply," said Rajvanshi who, after a teaching stint at the University of Florida in the US, returned to India in 1981 to devote himself to research at NARI set up by his father in 1968.
The electric rickshaw is one of NARI's products. Others include improved kerosene lanterns, sugarcane leaf gasifier and sweet sorghum -- a sorghum grass variety that can be used as food and fuel.
But Banerjee denied that the soleckshaw is a copy of NARI's electric rickshaw. "It is a completely different technology," he said.
"It has been designed, developed and manufactured completely by us," he said, adding, "There are a few technical novelties in soleckshaws, compared to any such vehicle in the world, which we cannot disclose at this moment."
Rajvanshi said NARI's intellectual property has been copied by the CSIR but claimed he neither had the resources nor the time to fight the government of India.
"It would have been nice if the CSIR had at least acknowledged NARI's pioneering efforts," he said.
"We at NARI failed in our attempt to commercialise our electric rickshaws; if the CSIR can popularise theirs and sell them in large numbers then it will be a vindication of our work," Rajvanshi said.
However, that looks like wishful thinking given the fact that two years after its launch there are no soleckshaws on the road except the 10 vehicles that Maiti said were "currently plying in Faridabad (Haryana) with the initiative of one of the licensees".
The failure of the soleckshaw to take off is not unexpected, said a senior CSIR scientist who did not want to be named.
"Our primary goal should have been removing drudgery of rickshaw pullers by introducing motorised rickshaws rather than 'green' rickshaws and cutting down carbon emissions," he said.
[The above article was published in The Economic Times Online on 28th Sep. 2010]
Friday, June 11, 2010
Brahmachari's Lies and Fraud of OSDD Exposed in Nature!
Samir Brahmachari and his new his sidekick Rajesh Gokhale are again exposed in the Media, for their fraud and lies, this time in the latest Nature article, for their hype of OSDD. The two were last scene cowardly hiding behind well-orchestrated blog rebuttals by their coterie of young recruits, after the Nature expose.
Six months earlier, in another PR fiasco (see article), the duo failed miserably in a PR Stunt to convince the Indian public that they had done a revolutionary act by sequencing a Indian human genome. Esteemed Indian scientist spoke up and exposed Brahmachari and Gokhale for having done nothing new and for having wasted Indian taxpayer dollars.
To cover up that PR fiasco, Bamboozling Brahmchari and Rajesh Gokhale (who himself called OSDD a fraud), have now attempted to cover their tracks by an even bigger lie befitting a Bolloywood script.
In this new scene, Brahamchari, (a professed fan of Hitler and Hitler’s BIG LIE approach) is going to save the world, win the Nobel Prize, using impoverished students, “high science” and “annotation of the TB Genome”, to cure TB, through Open Source --- All wonderful elements for the front page of any Bollywood rag.
The only thing Brahmachari should get now is jail time and perhaps leave to go study at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) so he gets his formal professional affiliation as an Actor.
Fortunately, a courageous reporter at Nature, K.S. Jayaraman has raised questions about OSDD, and is now under the crosshairs of Bhramachari and his coterie of sychophants. Most deplorable is how Brahmachari has recruited students to join his theatrical parade by giving away laptops and a false sense of “scientific collaboration” and Indian patriotism.
Ironically, Brahmachari, an Indian, himself is singularly responsible for the oppression of thousands of innovative CSIR Indian scientists, by putting in place larger number of incompetent Directors who do his bidding, but ensure anyone competent or of significant creativity who expresses dissent or differing views is demolished overnight --- not the basis for Science, Truth or Innovation.
The current PR of “annotation of the TB genome” is Mr. Brahmachari’s continuing “big lie” and hype tactic. This time, however, not only esteemed Indian scientists but also prominent International Scientists have severely criticised the PR stunt around TB annotation. A new Nature article, now in press, itself has brought Brahmachari’s lies and fraud to worldwide attention.
S K Brahmachari is a fraud as a scientist. He uses a coterie of other frauds such as Vinod Scaria and Zakir Thomas, who do not even have a PhD in life sciences. And those who claim to be scientists and are at Director Level in CSIR labs (such as Rajesh Gokhale of IGIB) make bizarre and ludicrous assertions that there is no need for peer review and publication of scientific findings.
While Brahmachari may have swayed early media reports in his favour by his gimmicks; he terribly failed to impress prominent scientists by his bluffing. Following are some of the comments about TB annotation claims made by prominent scientists and even the partner organizations of OSDD:
· John Quackenbush (Professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, USA): “Annotation is a challenging job requiring specialists, and I doubt if students with little experience can do this. It is unfortunate the Indian group made these claims before outsiders had a chance to review the students' data. The worst thing you can do to your country is to oversell your science.”
· James Galagan (Associate Director of microbial genome analysis at the Broad Institute, USA): “Until we are able to review the data from the India group, it will be hard to know how well they dealt with issues of quality control, standardization and clear quantitative metrics — difficult but non-trivial issues with annotation projects.”
· Richard Jefferson (CEO, Cambia, Australia) who is the only international partner of OSDD says: “External validation of these annotations experimentally and computationally remains to be done, and will clearly need to be subject to peer review…. Until then… the contributions will be conjectural.” He also admitted that OSDD team has “oversold” its work.
· Dr K. Anil Kumar (Principal scientist at the Institute of Life Sciences in Hyderabad, a partner in the OSDD project) says: “I guess there was a lot of pressure on the OSDD team to hurry up; validation was sidelined as it takes time.”
· Dr. Pushpa Bhargava (Founding-Director, CCMB, Hyderabad, a lab of CSIR) says that the claims that the team had identified a candidate drug molecule and that students reliably annotated the genome so quickly "are simply hilarious".
Mr. Brahmachari and his cronies are thus proved as big time LIARS once again, and a disgrace to Indian Science. What does Mr. Brahmachari gets by making such foolhardy claims? We hope he is not taking his public claims of winning Noble Prize due to OSDD too seriously.
Brahmachari is driven by two motives: (1) PR for himself and fame and (2) Moving money for those who financed his being made Ad Hoc Director General. Note, Lalji Singh was to become DG, and at the last minute a Bengali mafia paid off Minister of S&T to put incompetent Brahmachari in place.
OSDD is part of the entire game. It is not only a PR stunt to boost the image of 'unreal' scientists, but also a clever model to siphon off crores of tax-payers money in the name of research. The reality of this is substantiated from the recent claim of Dr. T.K. Chakraborty (Director, CDRI) on the eve of 59th Annual Day of CDRI: "Phase III clinical trials, to evaluate the hepatoprotective effect of Picroliv in patients of tuberculosis receiving multi-drug treatment has been concluded. The data has been compiled and detailed analysis is in progress. An interim analysis of the data shows enhanced clinical recovery in Picroliv treated tuberculosis patients."
If a drug is already in such an advanced stage of development and that too within a CSIR lab then what is the purpose of OSDD TB research?
What is the recent talk of a very early stage lead molecule for TB cure being given to Jubilant Chemsys by IGIB for further research and development?
This shows a public-private nexus to gain from tax-payers' money. Moreover, the Scientific Committees made for OSDD has majority of members that are either friends/colleagues/subordinates to S K Brahmachari and/or direct beneficiaries of the government money (and not top-league international scientists).
For example, Gokhale (IGIB, Delhi) is in the scientific committee and Raghava (IMT, Chandigarh) and Andrew Lynn (JNU, Delhi) are part of budget committee and all of them enjoy the benefits of grant money (in fact being the biggest beneficiaries). With such people in committees, not all expenses (direct or indirect) relating to OSDD is available for public scrutiny.
During an investigative inquiry, S K Brahmachari refused to provide answers to Nature Reporter.
Why is he afraid to hold an Open Forum with international scientists to prove or disprove his claims?
The call for Open Forum was first made by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai and Dr. Deepak Sardana in October 2009 when they revealed inappropriate conducts of CSIR Leadership (link to report). They raised doubts and several questions about CSIR-Tech, OSDD, Soleckshaw, hiring of individuals for important positions, and several big-ticket government sponsored research in a Nature Commentary (link)
S K Brahmachari never answered those questions and continued to carry on with his unethical corporate governance style, perhaps with full support of Prithviraj Chavan (Minister for S&T). In such a short period of time they have completely stultified the reputation of CSIR and transformed it into Corrupt Society of Indian Researchers.
It is now time for CSIR scientists to stand up for Indian Science, petition for the immediate ouster of Brahmachari and his coterie, speak up as other Scientists have done to expose the hype, so Indian science can truly flourish in an environment of openness, freedom and transparency.
[Also see the previous article titled "Proof that OSDD Claims are LIES" on our blog]
Six months earlier, in another PR fiasco (see article), the duo failed miserably in a PR Stunt to convince the Indian public that they had done a revolutionary act by sequencing a Indian human genome. Esteemed Indian scientist spoke up and exposed Brahmachari and Gokhale for having done nothing new and for having wasted Indian taxpayer dollars.
To cover up that PR fiasco, Bamboozling Brahmchari and Rajesh Gokhale (who himself called OSDD a fraud), have now attempted to cover their tracks by an even bigger lie befitting a Bolloywood script.
In this new scene, Brahamchari, (a professed fan of Hitler and Hitler’s BIG LIE approach) is going to save the world, win the Nobel Prize, using impoverished students, “high science” and “annotation of the TB Genome”, to cure TB, through Open Source --- All wonderful elements for the front page of any Bollywood rag.
The only thing Brahmachari should get now is jail time and perhaps leave to go study at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) so he gets his formal professional affiliation as an Actor.
Fortunately, a courageous reporter at Nature, K.S. Jayaraman has raised questions about OSDD, and is now under the crosshairs of Bhramachari and his coterie of sychophants. Most deplorable is how Brahmachari has recruited students to join his theatrical parade by giving away laptops and a false sense of “scientific collaboration” and Indian patriotism.
Ironically, Brahmachari, an Indian, himself is singularly responsible for the oppression of thousands of innovative CSIR Indian scientists, by putting in place larger number of incompetent Directors who do his bidding, but ensure anyone competent or of significant creativity who expresses dissent or differing views is demolished overnight --- not the basis for Science, Truth or Innovation.
The current PR of “annotation of the TB genome” is Mr. Brahmachari’s continuing “big lie” and hype tactic. This time, however, not only esteemed Indian scientists but also prominent International Scientists have severely criticised the PR stunt around TB annotation. A new Nature article, now in press, itself has brought Brahmachari’s lies and fraud to worldwide attention.
S K Brahmachari is a fraud as a scientist. He uses a coterie of other frauds such as Vinod Scaria and Zakir Thomas, who do not even have a PhD in life sciences. And those who claim to be scientists and are at Director Level in CSIR labs (such as Rajesh Gokhale of IGIB) make bizarre and ludicrous assertions that there is no need for peer review and publication of scientific findings.
While Brahmachari may have swayed early media reports in his favour by his gimmicks; he terribly failed to impress prominent scientists by his bluffing. Following are some of the comments about TB annotation claims made by prominent scientists and even the partner organizations of OSDD:
· John Quackenbush (Professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, USA): “Annotation is a challenging job requiring specialists, and I doubt if students with little experience can do this. It is unfortunate the Indian group made these claims before outsiders had a chance to review the students' data. The worst thing you can do to your country is to oversell your science.”
· James Galagan (Associate Director of microbial genome analysis at the Broad Institute, USA): “Until we are able to review the data from the India group, it will be hard to know how well they dealt with issues of quality control, standardization and clear quantitative metrics — difficult but non-trivial issues with annotation projects.”
· Richard Jefferson (CEO, Cambia, Australia) who is the only international partner of OSDD says: “External validation of these annotations experimentally and computationally remains to be done, and will clearly need to be subject to peer review…. Until then… the contributions will be conjectural.” He also admitted that OSDD team has “oversold” its work.
· Dr K. Anil Kumar (Principal scientist at the Institute of Life Sciences in Hyderabad, a partner in the OSDD project) says: “I guess there was a lot of pressure on the OSDD team to hurry up; validation was sidelined as it takes time.”
· Dr. Pushpa Bhargava (Founding-Director, CCMB, Hyderabad, a lab of CSIR) says that the claims that the team had identified a candidate drug molecule and that students reliably annotated the genome so quickly "are simply hilarious".
Mr. Brahmachari and his cronies are thus proved as big time LIARS once again, and a disgrace to Indian Science. What does Mr. Brahmachari gets by making such foolhardy claims? We hope he is not taking his public claims of winning Noble Prize due to OSDD too seriously.
Brahmachari is driven by two motives: (1) PR for himself and fame and (2) Moving money for those who financed his being made Ad Hoc Director General. Note, Lalji Singh was to become DG, and at the last minute a Bengali mafia paid off Minister of S&T to put incompetent Brahmachari in place.
OSDD is part of the entire game. It is not only a PR stunt to boost the image of 'unreal' scientists, but also a clever model to siphon off crores of tax-payers money in the name of research. The reality of this is substantiated from the recent claim of Dr. T.K. Chakraborty (Director, CDRI) on the eve of 59th Annual Day of CDRI: "Phase III clinical trials, to evaluate the hepatoprotective effect of Picroliv in patients of tuberculosis receiving multi-drug treatment has been concluded. The data has been compiled and detailed analysis is in progress. An interim analysis of the data shows enhanced clinical recovery in Picroliv treated tuberculosis patients."
If a drug is already in such an advanced stage of development and that too within a CSIR lab then what is the purpose of OSDD TB research?
What is the recent talk of a very early stage lead molecule for TB cure being given to Jubilant Chemsys by IGIB for further research and development?
This shows a public-private nexus to gain from tax-payers' money. Moreover, the Scientific Committees made for OSDD has majority of members that are either friends/colleagues/subordinates to S K Brahmachari and/or direct beneficiaries of the government money (and not top-league international scientists).
For example, Gokhale (IGIB, Delhi) is in the scientific committee and Raghava (IMT, Chandigarh) and Andrew Lynn (JNU, Delhi) are part of budget committee and all of them enjoy the benefits of grant money (in fact being the biggest beneficiaries). With such people in committees, not all expenses (direct or indirect) relating to OSDD is available for public scrutiny.
During an investigative inquiry, S K Brahmachari refused to provide answers to Nature Reporter.
Why is he afraid to hold an Open Forum with international scientists to prove or disprove his claims?
The call for Open Forum was first made by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai and Dr. Deepak Sardana in October 2009 when they revealed inappropriate conducts of CSIR Leadership (link to report). They raised doubts and several questions about CSIR-Tech, OSDD, Soleckshaw, hiring of individuals for important positions, and several big-ticket government sponsored research in a Nature Commentary (link)
S K Brahmachari never answered those questions and continued to carry on with his unethical corporate governance style, perhaps with full support of Prithviraj Chavan (Minister for S&T). In such a short period of time they have completely stultified the reputation of CSIR and transformed it into Corrupt Society of Indian Researchers.
It is now time for CSIR scientists to stand up for Indian Science, petition for the immediate ouster of Brahmachari and his coterie, speak up as other Scientists have done to expose the hype, so Indian science can truly flourish in an environment of openness, freedom and transparency.
[Also see the previous article titled "Proof that OSDD Claims are LIES" on our blog]
Proof that OSDD Claims are LIES
We will first lay out his ‘scientific’ claims on this matter and then provide proof to you that what Brahmachari and his cronies has been saying is nothing but a LIE.
Following are the claims that Brahmachari and his cronies have made to the media and Indian public:
• “Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv was first isolated in 1905, has remained pathogenic and is the most widely used strain in tuberculosis research. The complete genome sequence and annotation of this strain was published in 1998 (Cole et al., 1998 ). The information from this project was incorporated into the public database TubercuList which was created using the GenoList model (Moszer et al., 2002).” [Refer to Microbiology 148 (2002), 2967-2973]
• “Presently, it is possible to assign a function to 2058 proteins (52% of the 3995 proteins predicted) and only 376 putative proteins share no homology with known proteins and thus could be unique to M. tuberculosis.” [Refer to Microbiology 148 (2002), 2967-2973]
• “This document provides a brief description of how we generated the annotation for the finished genome of M. tuberculosis F11 strain.” [Refer to: TBDB.org]
• “We are happy to announce the integration of TB Diversity Sequencing dataset generated by Sebastien Gagneux and Peter Small through The Broad Institute Genomic Sequencing Center for Infectious Diseases (GSCID) established by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). TBDB now provides users the ability to search and compare 30+ sequenced strains selected to represent the phylogenetic diversity of TB.” [Refer to: TBDB]
Other web links of interest:
1. Sanger Institute's TB initiative
2. J Craig Venter Institute - TB work
3. What is Genome Annotation?
From the above one can CONCLUDE the following things:
• The genome had been sequenced and efforts on annotation were on-going. Scientists have been trying to find the function of all the genes. And, that they were already more than 50% through with annotation of TB in 2002 itself and that TB database (supported by The Gates Foundation) have already done this job and made it publicly available.
• Existence of publicly available databases for TB gene sequence and annotation, some of them have been discussed above. One database is in Pasteur Institut; the other one is in Stanford (which is being supported by Gates Foundation)
In fact, 'real' scientists have already made huge progress in developing diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics for TB (and OSDD team deliberately chose to not acknowledge them):
• TB Diagnotics - Commercially available diagnostic kits being sold by Cellestis
• TB Vaccines - New TB Vaccine for the World by AERAS
• TB Therapeutics - "Sequella Inc. receives Orphan Drug Status for SQ109 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, entitling Sequella Inc. to seven years of market exclusivity for SQ109 for the treatment of patients with tuberculosis."
Following are the claims that Brahmachari and his cronies have made to the media and Indian public:
- “As of today we’ve annotated nearly 98% of the MTB. That concludes a major phase of the OSDD project and is a big step forward for science.” – S K Brahmachari (This he considers a big step because of the belief that only 25- 40% of TB genes have been annotated).
- The official letter dated 27th Oct. 2009 sent by Zakir Thomas, Project Director OSDD, states the following: "Though Mtb was sequenced a decade back, the standard databases have not annotated more than 1000 of the near 4000 genes encoded by the organism. This is symptomatic of the problem of neglected diseases of the poor. OSDD is taking up the challenge of annotating all possible genes in Mtb and hopes that your institution would join this massive effort."
- “The TB genome was sequenced in 1998, but more than half the genes in the genome did not have any function attached to them.” – Vinod Scaria
- “We wanted to collect all the information in one place.” – Vinod Scaria
- “This is the first time that a comprehensive mapping of the M. tuberculosis genome has been compiled, verified and made publicly available." – S K Brahmachari
- SK Brahmachari and OSDD team also made claims several times that no new drug for TB has been developed in past four decades.
• “Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv was first isolated in 1905, has remained pathogenic and is the most widely used strain in tuberculosis research. The complete genome sequence and annotation of this strain was published in 1998 (Cole et al., 1998 ). The information from this project was incorporated into the public database TubercuList which was created using the GenoList model (Moszer et al., 2002).” [Refer to Microbiology 148 (2002), 2967-2973]
• “Presently, it is possible to assign a function to 2058 proteins (52% of the 3995 proteins predicted) and only 376 putative proteins share no homology with known proteins and thus could be unique to M. tuberculosis.” [Refer to Microbiology 148 (2002), 2967-2973]
• “This document provides a brief description of how we generated the annotation for the finished genome of M. tuberculosis F11 strain.” [Refer to: TBDB.org]
• “We are happy to announce the integration of TB Diversity Sequencing dataset generated by Sebastien Gagneux and Peter Small through The Broad Institute Genomic Sequencing Center for Infectious Diseases (GSCID) established by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). TBDB now provides users the ability to search and compare 30+ sequenced strains selected to represent the phylogenetic diversity of TB.” [Refer to: TBDB]
Other web links of interest:
1. Sanger Institute's TB initiative
2. J Craig Venter Institute - TB work
3. What is Genome Annotation?
From the above one can CONCLUDE the following things:
• The genome had been sequenced and efforts on annotation were on-going. Scientists have been trying to find the function of all the genes. And, that they were already more than 50% through with annotation of TB in 2002 itself and that TB database (supported by The Gates Foundation) have already done this job and made it publicly available.
• Existence of publicly available databases for TB gene sequence and annotation, some of them have been discussed above. One database is in Pasteur Institut; the other one is in Stanford (which is being supported by Gates Foundation)
In fact, 'real' scientists have already made huge progress in developing diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics for TB (and OSDD team deliberately chose to not acknowledge them):
• TB Diagnotics - Commercially available diagnostic kits being sold by Cellestis
• TB Vaccines - New TB Vaccine for the World by AERAS
• TB Therapeutics - "Sequella Inc. receives Orphan Drug Status for SQ109 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, entitling Sequella Inc. to seven years of market exclusivity for SQ109 for the treatment of patients with tuberculosis."
Saturday, March 27, 2010
S K Brahmachari and Lies relating to Soleckshaw
Soleckshaw is a solar-powered rickshaw. This seems to be a novel concept as the idea is to remove drudgery of poor rickshaw puller. But, does this seemingly novel concept really designed to live up to its purpose? Or is it just a gimmickry that Indian politicians and bureaucrats are known to play for their own advantage?
- Soleckshaw is not completely driven by solar-powered batteries. In fact, the power of solar batteries is to assist rickshaw puller only when they are climbing uphill; rest of the time they are supposed to use manual labor. And, if they do rely on solar-powered batteries only, then that battery does not last long and soon drains out.
- Soleckshaw in its present technological life cycle costs much more than 2.5 times the normal rickshaw (this is after very conservative estimates). Can a poor rickshaw puller afford such a luxury? Will any bank give him loan for that? – It is a common knowledge that most rickshaws are owned by someone else. Why will those people pay abnormally huge cost for the sake of rickshaw pullers’ health? – And, even if they are willing to buy, THE PRODUCT is actually not even a partial solution (because of above stated reason – it still leads to drudgery).
- CSIR, our premier technological R&D institute, is not even capable of delivering a viable solar rickshaw. Their prototypes have been a huge failure. The only people to benefit from it are – S K Brahmachari and Kapil Sibal. The latter used those prototypes in his election campaign and has won handsomely. Brahmachari got many news items that praised him for such a novel concept.
- One can easily get electronic rickshaws at a competitive cost; but the wishful thinking of ‘green’ rickshaws is coming in the way of the primary goal – ‘removing drudgery of poor rickshaw pullers’. If CSIR leadership is so worried about ‘carbon credits’ why cannot they run their ACs powered by solar panels?? Does their ACs have energy ratings? Why is Ambassador – oil guzzling car – their choice of car?
- Lack of technological competence is evident in a recent policy decision by Pranab Mukherjee. He stated that no customs duty (and excise duty) will be levied on solar rickshaws. Customs duty?? – Is it not pathetic to think that now we have to import parts from abroad to build a cycle rickshaw?
- It is known that MNRE is considering a proposal to hugely subsidize these rickshaws. Why cannot they make a ‘novel’ product that is not sucker of tax-payers money?
- Dr. S K Brahmachari justifies that along with the above subsidy, rickshaw pullers can benefit from commercial posters that they can put at the back of the soleckshaws. Can those posters not be put at the back of any rickshaw (manual, electronic batteries or solar-batteries)? – Will it not be better that rickshaw pullers be empowered by giving soft loans to buy normal (but ergonomically designed) and/or cheaper electronic-battery powered rickshaws instead of hugely expensive soleckshaws?
BUT, S K Brahmachari and others want to be seen as progressive ‘green’ scientists at ANY COST…. So, why care about technological competency to deliver project, tax-payers’ money, and the true goal of health benefits to poor rickshaw puller?
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
CSIR Leadership’s Wishful Thinking and their Lies to Public of India
CSIR Leaderships's wishful thinking and daydreaming with respect to their technological competence is leading to wasteful expenditure. Is this deliberate or just a very poor management style of functioning? - This question remains to be probed and answered.
Freedom for Science had earlier brought forth many instances that suggest involvement of CSIR Leadership in corruption and poor governance. In this article, we further expose TWO big-bidget projects of CSIR by asking some relevant questions.
Freedom for Science had earlier brought forth many instances that suggest involvement of CSIR Leadership in corruption and poor governance. In this article, we further expose TWO big-bidget projects of CSIR by asking some relevant questions.
NCL claims to harnessing solar power by indigenous research
Dr. Sivaram (Director, NCL) in a press release (of January 2010) boasts of Rs 900 crore research project to harness solar power. He makes a feel-good impression by talking about futuristic innovations – “paints that absorbs and store solar energy for use in computers, and mobile phone chargers to efficient roof tiles that does away with the traditional photo-voltaic cell panels and mirrors that can focus solar energy to generate hot water and steam.”
The above project is supposed to be part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission launched by PM Manmohan Singh.
Our QUESTION is – Have they checked on the credibility of CSIR scientists to deliver this project successfully before committing such serious public money?
A quick google search will lead to a news item that will clearly lead to a negative answer. NCL (of which Dr. Sivaram is the Director) spent Rs 70 crores and more than eight years to develop indigenous fuel cell technology. The project was started in 2001, and did not meet its initial targets. Now, the claim is that they may have the technology ready by 2012.
Contrary to this, China started developing the fuel cell technology in 2002. They finished developing the technology successfully in 3 years at a cost of $18 million (roughly Rs 80 crores at current exchange rate).
Should Dr. Sivaram and his team not focus on wrapping up their old commitments before talking about futuristic projects? Or is it simply the lure of Rs 900 crores?- Make hay while the sun shines!!
NAL’s plan to build 90-seater civilian aircraft
NAL’s story is not very different from the above story (of NCL). Daydreaming is rampant among CSIR Leadership.
NAL was developing a 14-seater indigenous aircraft (named SARAS) and had in fact built two prototypes. – One does not know CSIR’s definition of ‘indigenous’. The engine of the aircraft was imported from Canada and almost all the electronics from Israel. – Anyhow, the test flight last year of the more advanced of the two prototypes was a disaster. It ended in a crash that lead to the death of two bright Air Force pilots.
It was claimed that this was a huge setback to the ‘indigenous’ development of aircrafts – it had put the team behind by almost 2 years.
Now, they want to start a big-budget project to build 90-seater civilian aircraft. Is this not a very ludicrous claim? How has government approved this project?
Is NAL not obliged to first demonstrate their competence by building a 14-seater plane (SARAS)? – They should first prove their competence by showing that the product they have developed is actually commercializable and is truly ‘indigenous’.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Corrupt CSIR Director Embezzles Public Money; gets Support from S K Brahmachari & Prithviraj Chavan
It has been brought to our notice that Dr. Rakesh Tuli (Director, NBRI, Lucknow) is facing serious charges relating to corruption and bad governance practices. Some of these charges are listed below:
1. Misappropriating public money by purchasing very expensive laboratory equipments that are soon written off the government books after the purchase.
2. Most of these expensive equipments are bought for scientists of the institute, but never reaches the institute or scientists working there. And, before one gets to know these equipments are quickly written off the government books.
3. To cover-up this embezzlement of government and public money, Dr. Tuli has been using various intimidating tactics on the scientists of the institute. He has gone to the extent of fabricating false charges on scientists and administrators who oppose his corrupt practices.
4. Dr. Tuli has been providing exaggerated and false data relating to publications to boost his personal profile and show him as a very capable scientist. He used similar corrupt behavior to even get the post of Director, NBRI.
5. Dr. Tuli has also fudged figures relating to the income received by him or the institute from various projects (as grants, royalty, etc.).
Despite such SERIOUS charges and complaints by scientists/administrators of the institute, NO action has been taken against him by either Prithviraj Chavan (Minister S&T) or S K Brahmachari (DG, CSIR). Instead of initiating an independent probe against him, both the senior officials of GoI (i.e. Chavan and Brahmachari) have been working hard to cover-up this matter.
* No action has been taken on the complaints against Dr. Tuli.
* Dr. Tuli is now being supported to buy old and dysfunctional equipments to cleverly show that these equipments indeed came to NBRI and have been written off because they are not functioning.
* Dr. Tuli is resigning on 7th February 2010, which is Sunday.
* Dr. Tuli is being made Director of NABI (National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute) at Mohali. This institute falls under Dept of Biotechnology, which also comes under Ministry of S&T.
OUR QUESTIONS
1. How can equipments worth crores of rupees be bought and all of them written off so quickly?
2. If all the equipments have indeed become faulty, why have charges not been framed against suppliers and people involved in purchase decision of the equipments?
3. Why a thorough investigation has not been done on the credentials of Dr. Tuli when it has now become a public knowledge that he has fabricated publication claims and other important things?
4. Why an official procedure has to be carried out during a weekend (i.e. Sunday)?
5. Why is Brahmachari (DG CSIR) filing a petition in Supreme Court to save this tainted and corrupt Director? Should DG not be suspending his services for the time being and requesting an independent agency to do a thorough investigation?
6. Why is Dr. Tuli now being rewarded the post of Director NABI by Chavan (Minister S&T)?
The above actions clearly demonstrate that some of the very senior officials in Ministry of S&T are colluding to embezzle public money. Ministry of S&T should be renamed as MCP (Ministry of Corrupt Practices)!!
Apart from the above episode, there should be thorough investigation on CSIR (a Ministry of S&T entity) which has lately been facing serious corruption charges. Its BIG budget projects (like a new and expensive campus for IGIB, OSDD) should definitely come under scrutiny.
For details on this matter, visit http://www.projectvijay.blogspot.com .
1. Misappropriating public money by purchasing very expensive laboratory equipments that are soon written off the government books after the purchase.
2. Most of these expensive equipments are bought for scientists of the institute, but never reaches the institute or scientists working there. And, before one gets to know these equipments are quickly written off the government books.
3. To cover-up this embezzlement of government and public money, Dr. Tuli has been using various intimidating tactics on the scientists of the institute. He has gone to the extent of fabricating false charges on scientists and administrators who oppose his corrupt practices.
4. Dr. Tuli has been providing exaggerated and false data relating to publications to boost his personal profile and show him as a very capable scientist. He used similar corrupt behavior to even get the post of Director, NBRI.
5. Dr. Tuli has also fudged figures relating to the income received by him or the institute from various projects (as grants, royalty, etc.).
Despite such SERIOUS charges and complaints by scientists/administrators of the institute, NO action has been taken against him by either Prithviraj Chavan (Minister S&T) or S K Brahmachari (DG, CSIR). Instead of initiating an independent probe against him, both the senior officials of GoI (i.e. Chavan and Brahmachari) have been working hard to cover-up this matter.
* No action has been taken on the complaints against Dr. Tuli.
* Dr. Tuli is now being supported to buy old and dysfunctional equipments to cleverly show that these equipments indeed came to NBRI and have been written off because they are not functioning.
* Dr. Tuli is resigning on 7th February 2010, which is Sunday.
* Dr. Tuli is being made Director of NABI (National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute) at Mohali. This institute falls under Dept of Biotechnology, which also comes under Ministry of S&T.
OUR QUESTIONS
1. How can equipments worth crores of rupees be bought and all of them written off so quickly?
2. If all the equipments have indeed become faulty, why have charges not been framed against suppliers and people involved in purchase decision of the equipments?
3. Why a thorough investigation has not been done on the credentials of Dr. Tuli when it has now become a public knowledge that he has fabricated publication claims and other important things?
4. Why an official procedure has to be carried out during a weekend (i.e. Sunday)?
5. Why is Brahmachari (DG CSIR) filing a petition in Supreme Court to save this tainted and corrupt Director? Should DG not be suspending his services for the time being and requesting an independent agency to do a thorough investigation?
6. Why is Dr. Tuli now being rewarded the post of Director NABI by Chavan (Minister S&T)?
The above actions clearly demonstrate that some of the very senior officials in Ministry of S&T are colluding to embezzle public money. Ministry of S&T should be renamed as MCP (Ministry of Corrupt Practices)!!
Apart from the above episode, there should be thorough investigation on CSIR (a Ministry of S&T entity) which has lately been facing serious corruption charges. Its BIG budget projects (like a new and expensive campus for IGIB, OSDD) should definitely come under scrutiny.
For details on this matter, visit http://www.projectvijay.blogspot.com .
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