20 March, 2006 by The_Boss

Five Monday the 20th March 2006 at 9pm

At five, Akrit was reading Shakespeare and he performed his first surgical operation at just seven years old. He also claims that he will find a cure for cancer and AIDS.

This film follows Akrit as he comes to the UK to meet top scientists and psychologists who give their verdict on this young talent.

Akrit was walking and talking at ten months, and became obsessed with medicine at an early age. His father encouraged him, and spent years badgering the local authorities to give his son the opportunities he deserved.

Akrit first gained celebrity aged seven when he successfully performed an operation to separate the fused fingers of a girl a year older than him.

He taught students ten years his senior and became India’s youngest-ever Indian university student. Akrit’s progress has come at a price: frustrated with the perceived lack of support for his gifted son, Akrit’s father became depressed and left the family home last year – telling him not to get in touch until Akrit had found a cure for cancer.

Adored by his self-sacrificing mother and treated as a genius, Akrit has no doubt he will do this.
But how strong are his ideas? Is he just a big fish in a small pond?
These questions may soon be answered.

Word of Akrit’s achievements has spread and he has been invited to spend two weeks at Imperial College, London. There he will meet potential mentors and IQ experts who will test his skills, and introduce him to the reality of labwork.

In London, Akrit meets research biologist Dr Mustafa Diamgoz and his colleague, consultant Anup Patel. The pair are impressed by Akrit’s knowledge and amused at his chutzpah!

Akrit is obviously keen to impress: Mustafa observes that he definitely misses the influence of his father, and is used to never being contradicted. While Akrit’s intellectual intelligence is high, his emotional intelligence is that of an overconfident boy.

His knowledge astounds a group of medical students: one admits that Akrit may be ahead of them in terms of theory, but points out that a different set of skills – empathy, compassion, tact etc – are needed to deal with patients and their relatives.

The doctors’ challenge is to encourage Akrit’s enthusiasm, while bringing him a bit more down to earth. As he is shown round the labs, he expresses surprise that with so many resources and so much hard work, there is not a breakthrough every day!

Without a more realistic perspective, disappointment and burn-out may follow. Scientists must be humble: the pair explain why working in collaboration with others is an advantage. Akrit must never be afraid to ask for advice or admit that he may be wrong.

Akrit undergoes a battery of IQ tests from the UK’s leading testers, Team Focus. Surprisingly, the scores are a very mixed bag: he scores in the top 2% for verbal skills and his general knowledge is excellent. However, his practical skills are below average. Not attending school with his own age group has had its disadvantages, and as a classic early developer, Akrit’s progress has slowed.

After hearing nothing but praise all his life, these potential setbacks are a lot for Akrit to take in. He is forced to acknoweledge his dreams of securing instant research funding won’t come true just yet. But Mustafa is still encouraging, and has some good advice for him: it is important to take a step back every now and then, and it is not healthy to attempt too much too soon.

He suggests that Akrit comes back to London to see him in future years. To his enormous credit, Akrit attempts to come to terms with this reality check. He has begun to realise that everyone has their ups and downs, and that with realism and determination, a great career may still await.

But with so many prodigies failing to make the transition to adult genius, we will just have to wait and see.

Can the LA paparazzi be tamed?

Britney Spears is among stars who have been under the gaze of photographers

The Los Angeles paparazzi are as much as part of Hollywood life as the studios, celebrities and publicists.

Snapping stars is big business for the legions of photographers who stake out the clubs, restaurants and shopping malls of Beverly Hills.

But all that could change if new laws are brought in to curb the activities of the paparazzi.

In recent months there have been some ugly incidents in which photographers are widely believed to have overstepped the mark.

The day Britney Spears was taken from her home on a stretcher and ferried to a local hospital, scores of tabloid photographers swarmed around her ambulance.

Flagrant flouting

A police helicopter and a dozen officers on motorbikes were drafted in to escort the singer, at a reported cost to the local authority of $25,000 (£13,000).

“We can’t afford to drain that type of resource from the police department,” says Dennis Zine, a member of the Los Angeles City Council.

Photographer Nick Stern thinks new laws would curb press freedom

“We need to come up with something to control the situation. Normally somebody is in an ambulance and it gets to the hospital without any kind of impediment.

“In this particular case it was impeded because of the paparazzi.”

Tabloid photographers have also developed a reputation for flagrantly flouting traffic laws. Many will think nothing of rushing into a busy street with a camera at the ready if it means they can get a shot of a celebrity in their car.

“Everyone thinks they’re going to get the photograph of the century,” says Mr Zine.

“It becomes a mob mentality. It’s like a pack of wolves, a swarm of bees going after their prey. That’s the issue that we really need to contend with and we need to come up with a solution.”

Another widely-reported skirmish involving the paparazzi occurred when actor Matthew McConaughey went surfing in Malibu.

Ethical journalism

Local surfers, apparently determined to protect their turf, ended up in a scuffle with about a dozen photographers on the beach.

Many local residents have since called for curbs to be imposed on paparazzi operating in the city. Some say they should be banned altogether.

Such a move is unlikely since it would violate freedom of the press laws that are enshrined in the US constitution.

“We need to make sure we comply with that,” says Mr Zine.

We need to come up with something to control the situation Dennis Zine, Los Angeles City Council

It has been suggested that the paparazzi should have a licence to operate, which could be revoked if they step out of line.

In addition, magazines and newspapers may be forced to employ only bona fide photographers with the necessary paperwork. A task force made up of local city officials is considering the options.

“A total clampdown, which I think is what the council is almost proposing, would be far too draconian,” says Nick Stern, a British member of the LA paparazzi.

“It will stop paparazzi, but fortunately paparazzi and showbiz go hand in hand – they always have done.”

At the height of the Britney Spears saga, Mr Stern quit his job with an agency that he claimed pursued the singer too aggressively.

He prefers to describe his work as that of a news photographer, although it still involves taking pictures of celebrities.

Matthew McConaughey was involved in an incident earlier this year

“I still think there’s a great call for good, ethical journalism and real journalism without having 30 or 40 large vehicles chasing a 26-year-old mother of two along Sunset Boulevard,” he says.

Taming the paparazzi is likely to be an uphill struggle for Los Angeles law makers. Glossy, celebrity magazines are sold around the world with much of their content coming from the streets of Beverly Hills, Malibu and Hollywood.

“In the end I don’t think anything will actually happen,” says Mr Stern.

“LA has always been a bit like the Wild West, that’s what makes it an exciting place. You can come here and almost anything’s possible.

“There’s still that feeling that you can come here and make a million overnight – so I think it needs to have that free spirit kind of atmosphere about it,” he adds.

A report by Peter Bowes on the Los Angeles paparazzi can be seen on E24, broadcast on the BBC News channel on Saturday 9 August at 1045 BST and Sunday 10 August at 1745 BST.

A marble edifice honours Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah

The story of Pakistan is one of remorseless tug and pull between the civilian and military rulers on the one hand, and the liberal and religious forces on the other.

In the process, the country has failed to become either a democracy, a theocracy or a permanent military dictatorship.

The chief casualties have been the rule of law, the state institutions and the process of national integration, with grave consequences for the civil society.

The “Talebanisation” of the north-western region is one manifestation of the prevalent disorder; an unending separatist campaign by nationalists in the south-western Balochistan province is another.

Meanwhile, sectarian and ethnic tensions have kept the two largest provinces – namely Punjab, which is the bread-basket of the country, and Sindh, which is its trading and industrial mainstay – perennially instable.

How and why did all this come about?

Hybrid system

The country was born in 1947 with a clean slate and a potential to follow in one of two directions.

It could opt for democracy. It had inherited democratic institutions and experience from the colonial rule, and was itself the creation of a democratic process involving national elections, parliamentary resolutions and a referendum.

Or it could become an Islamic emirate. The Pakistan movement was based on the theory that the Muslims of India were a nation and had a right to separate statehood.

Mr Jinnah made some controversial decisions

They were granted separate electorate by the British rulers, and used Islamic identity as their main election slogan in 1937 and 1946.

But instead of making a clear choice, the early leaders tried to mix the two, and inadvertently sparked a series of political, legal and religious debacles that define today’s Pakistan.

In political terms, democracy has been the first casualty of this hybrid system.

Its foundations were shaken by two controversial decisions made by the country’s founder and first Governor-General, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

He dismissed the Congress-led government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) by decree, and instead of ordering fresh elections, appointed a Muslim League leader as the chief minister with the mandate to whip up parliamentary support for himself.

Secondly, he declared to a large Bengali speaking audience in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, that Urdu would be the only state language.

Alienation

The first action created a precedent for Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad, a former bureaucrat, to dismiss the country’s first civilian government in 1953.

Since then, the governor-generals, presidents and army chiefs have dismissed as many as ten civilian governments that together ruled the country for 27 years. The remaining 33 years have seen direct military rule.

Mr Jinnah’s second action alienated the Bengali population of the eastern wing, and set a precedent for the West Pakistani rulers to neutralise the numerical superiority of East Pakistan through legal entrapments and outright disenfranchisement.

Baluchistan has a long history of resisting external influences

After the secession of East Pakistan in 1971, the military rulers have repeatedly vitiated the federal and parliamentary character of the 1973 Constitution, thereby alienating the three smaller provinces of the remaining country.

Legal safeguards against tyranny fell by the wayside in 1954 when the Supreme Court justified the governor-general’s dismissal of the government and the parliament by invoking the controversial ‘theory of necessity’.

The theory has endured, and nearly every dismissal of a civilian government and every military takeover have been upheld by the higher judiciary, undermining democratic traditions.

On their part, the military rulers have co-opted both surrogate politicians and religious extremists as instruments of political strategy and national security policy.

The political recruits have provided a civilian façade to military governments, while religious – and sometimes ethnic – extremists have tended to distract and destabilise governments run by secular political forces.

Aid to dictators

Last, but not least, the Americans have tended to use their crucial financial and military support selectively against democratic governments.

The pattern is unmistakably clear.

The first large-scale American food and military aid started to pour into Pakistan in late 1953, months after the dismissal of its first civilian government.

Mullahs of the Red Mosque had openly threatened the government’

It continued for a decade as Pakistan under a military regime joined various US-sponsored defence pacts against the Soviet Union.

The US started having problems with Pakistan when an elected government came to power in 1972, but poured billions of dollars into the country when another military regime took over in 1977 and agreed to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Similarly, while the elected governments that followed during 1988-99 had to live with a decade of US sanctions, the military regime of Gen Musharraf, that ousted the last civilian government in 1999, remains a ‘well supplied’ ally in the US’ ‘war on terror’.

There are, however, indications that the Americans may finally be getting fed up with Gen Musharraf, just as they got fed up with General Ayub Khan when he started to warm up to the Soviet Union after the 1965 war with India, or of General Zia-ul Haq when the Soviets decided to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 1987.

There is also a gathering political storm on the horizon, in keeping with the cyclical pattern of the country’s political weather.

As elections approach, exiled leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both former prime ministers, threaten to return to the country with the express aim of effecting a regime change.

But Gen Musharraf, like his predecessors, is fighting to keep his military office and his special powers under the constitution to dismiss governments and parliaments.

Thus, the story of Pakistan continues to be one of despotic regimes using religious extremists and external support to keep the secular democratic forces at bay; and when these forces do assert themselves, to tie them down in legal constraints that are designed to ensure their failure.

It is the story of a society that has been going round in circles for the last 60 years.