POLITICAL I83UES IN HEALTH 67 Sharroa and his colleagues at St. John's Medical College, Bangalore, obtained evidence which indicates that construction workers had their basal metabolic rates below what scientists had hitherto considered as the irreducible minimum requirement for man. Whatever be the possible mechanism, acquisition of the ability of man to further lower the survival threshold in both immunological and nutritional terms has profound political and social implications. The power elites had retained their control on the population by keeping the weak in a state of weakness. In the forties the weak died in large numbers when they went below the threshold of minimum conditions for survival. But in the ecological situation in the seventies a significant proportion of the weak, who would otherwise have died, managed to survive in a state of weakness which is even more pronounced than what was the condition in the forties. They thus become a still easier prey to the mechanisations and manipulations by the power elites. The political significance of this ecological phenomenon lies in the fact that this adds a new dimension to the power struggle of the have-nots to wrest their lights from the haves. Conclusion Extensive use of health services as a political weapon by the ruling classes to maintain an unjust social order, the use of population control programmes to unleash a virtual class war by the oppressors against the oppressed people and the use of distorted nutritional ^research" findings to try to find an alibi to brand the vast masses of the people in the Third World as permanent mental cripples are some of the glaring instances given to emphasise that issues concerning health, population and nutrition cannot be understood without taking into account some fundamental political, economic and social dimensions. The fact that these vital dimensions have not thus far received the attention they deserve itself provides an indication of a well conceived political conspiracy to attempt to manipulate scientific knowledge to subserve the political interests of the ruling classes. 1 Health by the People, K W Newell, (ed), World Health Organization, Geneva, 1975. 2 National Symposium on Alternative Health Care Delivery System: Background Papers, Hyderabad, 1976, Indian Council of Medical Research and Indian Council of Social Science Research. s C Gopalan and B S Narasingarao, Indian Journal of Medical Research, 59,6, Supplement; 111, 1971. 4 P V Sukhatme. Nutrition Review 28,223, 1970. 5 P Erik Eckholm, Picture of Health: Environmental Sources of Disease, Norton, New York, 1977. o World Health Organisation WHO Chronicle, 28; 95, 1974.