Jyoti Vakhlu
While watching a programme on COVID 19 on a national news channel, I was wonder struck to see a seemingly successful, professionally educated person,an investment banker, from a metropolitan city, ask a bizarre question of the bewildered anchor.The well meaning gent essentially was asking the poor reporter interviewing him, whether the Corona virus was visible to humans eye, and if not, how to to make it visible. My first reaction was pity leavened with some contempt,for the poor overworked soul slogging away on future securities ,assets, and long term dividends. Serves you right, I intoned, you are concerned so much about future calamities,imagined and real.The surge of ill placed indignation suffusing my blood with soothing oils of self worth soon abated, when I thought I would not have been surprised, if this question would have come from someone from a less affluent background, someone not dressed in a tie for example.
That set me thinking about the level of awareness of a lay person,regardless of her privilege or background, about the microbial world,an almost mythical realm, no one seems to want to believe in, in our society. There is a remarkable sense of escapism in us about the microbial world that clouds our mind, when tackling or even talking about microbes.True to form we have been exploiting microbes for centuries,making wines,breads,curdling milk ,much like everywhere else in the world, but on an abstract level there is no discourse about them among the hoi polloi. Sadly microbes have been relegated by our society to the status of tools of trade for the labouring classes toiling away at their baser jobs,and nothing more.
One may well believe in and follow religiously the unproven concept of multifarious humours of the foods one eats, and also, the ghosts,spirits,and witches, but we as a people are oblivious to the microbial dimension. Our ailments are therefore attributed in the main to our dietary choices.How many times have you heard the statements, about cold essence of rice,and warm essence of curd from seemingly sensible people. A friend who just came back from a trekking trip narrated a tale of how he was scolded by his expedition leader, a science graduate, and ribbed by fellow trekkers for being a pansy ,because he insisted on boiling the drinking water, collected from the open stream.When latter on my friend was down with a stomach bug the group leader told him that he need not take any medicine for this. TERE ANDAR GARMI HO GAYI HAI, BOIL PANI PEENE SE (boiled water you took in the beginning has spoiled the balance of humours in your body) was his summation of the poor man’s troubles
The topicality of the subject can not missed and need not be unnecessarily over emphasized given the havoc COVID -19 has wrecked on the mankind. In these panic stricken days we need to soberly weigh the situation and prioritize our knowledge systems and educational resources towards a dedicated and indepth study of microbial systems,ecology and other elevent aspects related to them.
I may like to add we can’t help but engage with the microbial population because we are inextricably linked to them in life and death. We do not just share the planet with them , newer evidence points out microbes related activities /phenomenon on other clesterial bodies like Mars and venus,and that may be true for the whole universe. They can permeate every imaginable niche in and on and over the earth. They can tolerate extremes of conditions well beyond out normal capabilities.They are the most ancient but dynamic,versalite ,stubborn and gritty group of life forms. Sometimes barely passing our definition of life and death , as in case of viruses .They do not only colonize open spaces but have established deep indlienable links with all the other living being.They live on, in and among living things, and interact mostly symbiotically but sometimes negatively as pathogens or parasites with them. To cite an example we are 3 times microbial cells than human cell,and they are not our colonial masters but we are dependendent on them for digestion, immunity , sanity and metabolite systhesis such as vitamins etc.. There are lot of evidences for gut -microbiome – brain, gut -microbe- heart, skin- microbiome -immune system axix . Researchers propose that complex organisms , human beings included, are nothing but incubator for these microbes. Studies also suggest that microbes even direct the evolution of animals and plant human being included.
Not only have they colonized humans but some of them have during their evolutionary journeys chosen other hosts both plants and animals. As animals approximate us more closely than plants , it is to expected that some interlopers may colonize us due various reasons ,one of them may be man -animal conflict. The recent microbial human flash points of SARS, EBOLA, COVID are just links in the long chain or many such flareups over the bygone mellinia, going back to the earliest times. In recent times human beings have managed to tame many a belligerent foes and have won remarkable victories against agents causing deliberating diseases like plague, cholera, black death etc but the battle wages on, novel microbes keep appearing through random mutations and some of them go on to stabilise themselves through genetic drift. Their number increases in the population and imagine the consequences if some of these new variants, have a mutation that makes them harmful for the human population. Additionally existing microbes may switch host whimsically, as is alleged to have her had happened happy in case of Covid 19 and put us in this dire straits.
So in the present stage we need to re-calibrate our faith in the redemptive and emancipatory potential of science and dedicate our knowledge resources to educate people. There is a dire need for including microbiology as a subject in our education system at school, the secondary school and college level. Microbiology has such wide-ranging application in food sciences industry, pharmacology, medicine and agriculture, that we can only ignore the subject at our own peril. Training human resource in this discipline will not only provide us with a ready pool of young microbiologist well versed in theory, techniques and methods of this vital subject but will also open floodgate for the self-made students in various fields with microbiological applications. For policy planners too introduction of this subject may indeed be the panacea to the evil of unemployable educated degree holders churned out by our institutions. A firm grounding in the subject will surely ensure better career prospects for a young graduates . There is a very real need for taking this knowledge deep into our population and a sure way of doing it would be to introduce this discipline at an early stage in a students career, so that , as this knowledge percolates down to the lay person in our society, we will be able to better appreciate and negotiate, even exploit the potential locked up in the microbial treasure trove .This way we will be also better equipped to fight disease, eliminate hunger, and remove want.
I have been given to understand that higher authorities in the education department of the state are considering proposals for introducing new subjects for students at the secondary and higher secondory school level. I would therefore like to request the learned members of the body appraising the merits of various subjects to kindly take up the case for microbiology, as their own cause . The subject needs to be appreciated ,owned and advocated for at any and all forums.Times have shown, we cannot be oblivious to the microbial dimension around us. We can either close our eyes and pretend that an upset stomach is caused by drinking boiled water or we can try to find a cause and perhaps this may lead to a cure. We cannot pervericate or delay as, the times are already upon us .The Latin phrase “Spare aude”- Dare to know- may infact be our only option .Therefore it makes sense to get the kids started in the discipline at the younger age, if we are even halfway serious about being a responsible society and a dynamic country let alone an atmanirbhar -vishvguru ,that we as a nation aspire to be .
(The author is Professor and former Director, School of Biotechnology, University of Jammu.)
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