John Mejia’s doctor in Santa Monica, diagnosed an abnormal heart rhythm and told him that beta blocker drugs could control the symptoms, but had side effects. So Mejia turned instead to Martha Soffer and John Holmstrom, practitioners of the ancient Indian medical system ayurveda. After some dietary changes and massage and purification treatments called panchakarma at Surya Spa, an ayurvedic center, "the heart palpitations are almost gone," he says. Growing number of Americans are taking an interest in ayurveda, a 5,000-year-old holistic system of health that in Sanskrit means "knowledge of life".

"It's 100 times more popular than it was 10 years ago," says Scott Gerson, a NY physician with a US medical degree and an PHD in ayurveda. The California Assn. of Ayurvedic Medicine is sponsoring its first Ayurveda Awareness Day on Feb. 13. USA’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine allocated $3.5 million in grants last year to study ayurveda and establish an Ayurvedic Center of Collaborative Research. Researchers at Bastyr University in Kenmore, Wash., Johns Hopkins University and UCLA will work with doctors in India to conduct controlled clinical trials on ayurvedic treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, etc.

Says Mas Vidal, owner of a LA-based Veda yoga studio, "Ayurveda is what all the great yogis practiced. Ayurveda was taught as a way of life." Ayurveda holds that health and well-being of the body, mind and spirit is our natural state. Adds Marc Halpern, founder of the California College of Ayurveda in Grass Valley, Calif. "Western medicine controls the symptom. Ayurveda looks at the root causes in terms of lifestyle and consciousness." Holmstrom says he has treated some Hollywood celebrities, including Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. But ayurveda also is attracting people with chronic health problems who have become frustrated with Western medical techniques that haven't helped them.

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India’s lofty ambitions in space meet earthly realities
New York Times, By David Rohde, 24 Jan 2004

India's national space program bills itself as thrifty space exploration for the common man, has 13 satellites in orbit, produces some of the world's best remote imaging satellites and is planning to send a satellite to the moon by 2007 or 2008. But unlike space programs in other developing countries, low costs have not meant catastrophic launching failures. Only 6 of India's 37 satellite launchings have not succeeded. Said Madhavan Nair, chairman of Indian Space Research Organization. "Water management, satellite television, phone links, predicting natural disasters and helping urban planners, are applications of our space program."

One of the clearest examples of how the program benefits average Indians is in Majhgawan Karan (UP). Using satellite imagery, villagers reclaimed barren land in an area long haunted by hunger, transformed into rich farmland. Mata Prasad, a young Dalit, says "I used to worry about food, Now I worry about the education of my children." Space officials estimate that this project has helped 500,000 farmers reclaim 667,000 acres of farmland in 3,100 villages.

Doctors in the main public hospital in Lucknow, chatted over a live satellite link with doctors in rural hospitals hundreds of miles away. Face-to-face conversations with patients, Test results, X-rays and echocardiograms from the rural hospitals are all transmitted instantly to Lucknow.

In the last five years, Indian rockets have successfully launched two German, one South Korean and one Belgian satellite in orbit. After China launched a man into orbit last fall, the head of the Indian Air Force was quoted as saying that India was developing space-based weapons. In 1992 the United States pressed Russia not to give India the technology for a cryogenic rocket. On Jan. 10, 2004, Indian engineers announced that they had successfully tested an Indian-built cryogenic engine. Pride in that kind of independence and initiative is shared by many. "We will not depend on others," declared Raj Shecker, 21, an engineering student at a satellite manufacturing plant in Bangalore "It's just an Indian feeling."

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The 2003 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor findings says that India, with more than 85 million businesses, is the most entrepreneurial country by volume. The Monitor, financed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, found that 300 million people worldwide tried to launch firms in 2003. This fifth annual report, compiled by researchers at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and the London Business School, looked at 41 countries for its study.

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94-year-old management guru Peter Drucker has said "India is becoming an economic powerhouse very fast and I think India's progress is far more impressive than China's. The medical school in New Delhi is now perhaps the best in the world. And the technical graduates in Bangalore are as good as any in the world. Also, India has 150 million people for whom English is their main language. So India is indeed becoming a knowledge centre."

In contrast, he said, the greatest weakness of China is that it has only 1.5 million college students, out of a total population of over 1.3 billion. There is enormous undeveloped hinterland with excess rural population, but the likelihood of the absorption of rural workers into the cities without upheaval seems very dubious, he said. "You don't have that problem in India because they have already done an amazing job of absorbing excess rural population into the cities, without any upheaval. Everybody says China has 8 per cent growth and India only 3 per cent, but that is a total misconception." he said.

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An Indian scientist working for the Xerox Corporation in Canada, Raj Patel, earned a rare distinction when he was awarded his 100th patent in the US. In fact, this 25-year Xerox veteran became only the second scientist in the company to do so.