The ­One of the most deadly legacies of the 20th century is the use of landmines in warfare. Anti-personnel landmines continue to have tragic, unintended consequences years after a battle and even the entire war has ended. As time passes, the location of landmines is often forgotten, even by those who planted them. These mines continue to be functional for many decades, causing further damage, injury and death.
Landmines are basically explosive devices that are designed to explode when triggered by pressure or a tripwire. These devices are typically found on or just below the surface of the ground. The purpose of mines when used by armed forces is to disable any person or vehicle that comes into contact with it by an explosion or fragments released at high speeds.


Currently, there are more than 100-million landmines located in 70 countries around the world, according to OneWorld International. Since 1975, landmines have killed or maimed more than 1-million people, which has led to a worldwide effort to ban further landmine use and clear away existing landmines.

Fight against landmines is a fight for the rights of people to live free from fear, in a safe environment conducive to development and peace.
Mines kill or injure thousands of people every year. And they rob whole communities of their livelihoods. In many countries, mines block people’s access to roads, schools, health care, water supplies, jobs, and opportunities to get ahead.
United Nations Mine Action Team
Under the overall coordination of the UN Mine Action Team, 13 separate UN agencies, programmes, departments and funds provide various “mine-action” services in 41 countries or territories.
Mine action is about more than just removing landmines from the ground, or “demining.” It includes a range of activities aimed at protecting people from danger, helping victims become self-sufficient and active members of their communities, advocating for a world free from the threat of landmines, and helping countries destroy stockpiled landmines, to ensure they may never be used by anyone.
Although the United Nations helps numerous countries face their landmine problems, the organization also helps address the larger problem of “explosive remnants of war,” which includes everything from cluster bombs that failed to detonate on impact but nevertheless remain volatile, to abandoned grenades, mortars and bombs that sometimes kill more people than antipersonnel mines.
The United Nations’ work also extends beyond antipersonnel mines, helping remove antitank and antivehicle mines, which may also kill or injure civilians.

A FOOT SHAPED MIRACLE:
From 1968 to 1975, only 59 patients were outfitted with the Jaipur foot, but the use of the new limb spread outside India during the Afghan war in which Russian land mines caused thousands of injuries. The International Committee of the Red Cross discovered that the Jaipur foot was the hardiest for the mountainous Afghan terrain, and distributed it there.Thereafter the Jaipur foot became a popular choice in countries with landmine amputees, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, among others. The Time article quotes Dr Sethi as saying: “Western aid agencies have helped millions of amputees, and they’ve found that they can’t do it as cheaply as with the Jaipur foot.”Ram Chandra now works with the Delhi-based Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS), a non-profit organisation that provides artificial limbs free of cost to the disabled and also works to rehabilitate them in society. The Samiti organises mobile camps where people are fitted not only with artificial limbs but also with polio callipers. According to the BMVSS website, on an average 15,000 people are fitted with the Jaipur foot and 35,000 with other aids every year. Last year, BMVSS donated a thousand limbs to be fitted to war amputees in Afghanistan. Millions could have been made off the Jaipur foot if its founders had stuck to their intellectual property rights and patented their creation. But that would have ratcheted up the cost substantially and put the foot out of reach of those who needed it the most.As a publisher’s note in the January 2002 issue of US-based technology magazine Siliconeer acknowledged: “Where a Western prosthesis can cost several thousand dollars, the Jaipur foot costs less than $30. Sethi and Chandra could have minted money with this device, but their humanitarian impulse triumphed. In a world where patent rights rule supreme and intellectual property rights can be cause for war, it’s particularly striking that an innovation that has changed the lives of millions of amputees was never patented.”Today, the Jaipur foot is emblematic not only of a fruitful interface between technology and human need, but also gives us in its own way reason to hope. This is reflected in what Ram Chandra, still the simple artisan, pointing out a girl who had lost her leg in an accident, told Time: “People said I would be a rich man if we had patented the Jaipur foot, but it’s enough satisfaction for me to see the joy on that girl’s face when she walks again.” The Jaipur foot continues its journey on that hope. w Contact: Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti, email: bmvss@jaipurfoot.com; website: www.jaipurfoot.com