Bhopal Notes :: 48 :: Indiscriminate sand mining – digging one’s own grave

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Sand mining in Morena on River Chambal

Looks like, we have become blind to the consequences of our actions. In our quest for development, more importantly in the quest of legitimate or illegitimate wealth, everyone – from a businessman to a real estate thug or a politician – is out to milk the natural environment of the country regardless of the consequences of their interventions on it that eventually impact the people at large.

Of late, numerous people including politicians have been claiming that Bhopal has become a real estate hub of the country. Perhaps, the claim is justified. Even a layman can see the ads in the newspapers about the new constructions that are ceaselessly coming up all around the city. None knows whether these are coming up with or without a plan, the new City Development Plan being now overdue by as many as 12 years. Reports have indicated from time to time that these are coming up in accordance the 2005 City Development Plan but that seems to be farfetched as the lands earmarked in 2005 must have already been used up leaving little, if at all, for new constructions.

All that, however, is beside the point; what is important to know is that the break-neck pace of construction in and around Bhopal has exponentially raised the demand for sand in meeting which the rivers of the region are being denuded of it. A report recently appeared that as many as 32 big and small rivers of the region have lost most of their waters and some have even gone dry. Even a fairly big river like Betwa, a tributary of Yamuna, was recently reported to have gone dry at Vidisha. People have been wondering as to how this could happen this year after a bountiful monsoon. But, every action has its reaction. It seems the farmers have been illegally diverting water from the river for irrigation. Then, of course, the main reason of indiscriminate mining of sand – legal or illegal, more of the latter – has to be accounted for.

Even after hefty bribes paid at various points before delivery of the stuff mining of sand is immensely profitable. It produces quick bucks and the unscrupulous miners have enriched themselves. Bribes and political backing does the trick. From the reports one gets it seems to be free for all; only one has to be resourceful, has to have right connections, has to be unscrupulous enough and unconcerned about the environment and its future and, bingo, money rains down on to one’s lap. One recalls the sad incident of a young Indian Police Service office sacrificing his life to stop the sand mafia from carrying out their sinister operations. He was just run over by a heavy vehicle of the mafia.

 The government’s indifference tells a tale of apathy and utter unconcern for the rivers of the region that may result in a bleak future for it. Denuding of the rivers is likely to entail water-stress in the region adversely affecting the millions of the region. That in-stream sand mining causes degradation of rivers is well known. Not only does the river bed is deprived of the protective layer of sand that holds water keeping the nearby aquifers charged, continued extraction may cause the stream to degrade the river up to the depth of excavation. This causes severe damage to physical and biological environment of the river systems. Drying up of rivers is one of the serious consequences which could lead the neighbouring areas to become water-stressed. The rampant destruction of riverine eco-systems all over country needs hardly any mention. Madhya Pradesh, however, walks away with the cake in this regard.

In fact, indiscriminate sand mining in rivers is virtually like digging one’s own grave. For the folly of the current generation future generations may have to pay heavily. In this connection, a mention needs to be made of the hypocrisy of MP government which is running a Narmada Seva Yatra – journey along the river to serve the Narmada River. Behind it what is being done is exactly opposite of “Seva”. Tons of sand is being extracted from the river, mostly illegally. It was reported that 1000 trucks ply on the road between Hoshangabad and Bhopal every night transporting sand with predetermined rates of bribe to be paid at various check points. Even the close relatives of the chief minister were found to have been involved.

No wonder, none raised the issue, not even in the Legislative Assembly except in feeble voices. The crooks, including politicians, are playing with the future of the region. If today the agri-GDP of the state is climbing at the rate of around 14% it is likely to plummet in the ensuing years if the state’s rivers are ceaselessly ravaged.

Unfortunately, the government is unmindful of the damage that is being wrought in state’s river systems. Curiously, the toothless bodies like the State Pollution Control Board or other public organizations charged with the responsibility o conserving the state’s physical environment have been mutely watching the loot that is going on. One hopes that it is not too late already to restore the rivers in question to their pristine condition.

*Photo from internet

Bhopal Notes:: 40 :: Inadequacy of healthcare in Bhopal

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Hamidia Hospital Registration area - a much thinner crowd than what we came across

Being retiree of the Central Government I am a beneficiary of the local dispensary of Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS). This somewhat detaches me and others like me from the system of state government healthcare. I said “somewhat” as we too are not entirely free to seek healthcare from any quarter. The check is applied when new medicines or investigations are prescribed or hospitalization is suggested. At that point of time, unless there is an emergency, we have to go to a local State or Central government hospital for the necessary recommendations by a specialist. Bhopal CGHS has six doctors but none of them is a specialist. 

Such an occasion arose recently and my wife and I went to the Hamidia Hospital to visit the Orthopaedic out patients department (OPD). We were horrified to see the crowds at the registration area. There must have been around 500-700 people waiting for registration. Huge queues stretched from the general, women’s and senior citizens’ counters. Since both of us could not have stood all that while for registration because of our age and skeletal problems we decided to call it a day deciding to try our luck at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a central government institution.

 We had been there once earlier about two years ago and were able to visit the OPD of an orthopaedic surgeon even though we reached the distant place around 10.00 AM. We reached this time too around the same time only to be told that registration had been closed at 9.00 in the morning after commencing at 8.00AM. The man at the counter told us that only 40 out-patients are registered because of limited availability of doctors and people wait outside from 3.00AM onwards. The counter officer suggested to us to try online registration. My wife tried that too to find to find to her shock that no orthopaedician was available till March 2017.

 Compelled as we were, we visited the private clinic of a senior orthopaedic surgeon of the Hamidia Hospital whose recommendations were promptly acted upon by the CGHS. The only difference was that we had to pay the government orthopaedician a tidy consulting fee for his labours in his private clinic. The CGHS does not act upon prescriptions of specialists from its own empanelled private hospitals in identical circumstances but, surprisingly, the medicinal and diagnostic recommendations of a government doctor made from his private clinic are somehow considered sanitised enough for it to act upon.

Such are the rules, call it hypocrisy or what you will. Another anomaly is that while one can avail of the treatment of an empanelled private hospital as an in-patient but one cannot do so as an out-patient. A specialist there is good enough to deal with any number of serious and life-threatening diseases involving costly investigations or surgical procedures but their recommendations/prescriptions handed out from their OPDs are not acceptable. That probably is because of governmental distrust of private hospitals because of their frequently reported unfair, greedy and exploitative practices. But, I am digressing.

My point was different. What I was aiming at was the utter inadequacy of the governmental healthcare system in Bhopal. The crowds for registration at two hospitals are indicative of that. One would be surprised if things happen to be different in other urban centres of the state. For that matter even the Red Cross Hospital which earlier used to appear better provided these days wears a look of inadequacy. There too a large number of patients were seen waiting for attention of a medicine man. Either that or there is total breakdown of public health that produces huge number of patients crowding around government hospitals where treatment is much cheaper. Those who can afford can go to corporate hospitals to get treated and/or looted but the poorer sections do not have that alternative or option.

 This is what is happening in an urban area – the capital of the state; what happens in the rural and remote areas is any body’s guess. Only sparsely distributed health centres, with inadequate number of physicians/surgeons and para-medics, attend to the needs of hundreds of thousands as out or in patients. Over-population, illiteracy and lack of awareness about sanitation and hygiene give rise to heavy incidences of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Deaths are frequent; not being rare, unlike elsewhere life is cheap here  No wonder, the likes of Dana Majhi have to admit his wife in a hospital 10 kms away and then walk back home lugging her on his shoulders after she unfortunately dies.

Two governments, one each of the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, have had uninterrupted runs of 10 years each in the state, yet apparently they did not do a thing to improve the healthcare system of the state either in the rural areas or in its urban centres. Bhopal, for example, has a handful of government hospitals for a population of more than 20 lakh (2 billion).  At best there are only half a dozen government hospitals if you leave out the ones like those of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd., Railways, Army, and the ones meant for victims of Gas Tragedy of 1984 etc. The city has expanded practically on all sides and all this must have taken place with the approval of the relevant government agencies. But there is hardly any government hospital that was planned for or built in these extended areas. One wonders what the Town and Country Planning organization and the department of urban development/administration or, for that matter, the department of health were doing. Apparently, the state progressively withdrew itself from its obligation of providing healthcare to a burgeoning population at reasonable costs and left avery large section of the population at the mercy of the rapacious corporate and other private hospitals. They hardly can afford the jacked up costs of such hospitals’ consultants’ fees or of medicines from their in-house pharmacists, or, for that matter, the numerous investigations that they mostly have conducted for raising their own revenues.

It is only now that the state elections are approaching that the state government is talking of augmenting the healthcare facilities. They have said that the Hamidia Hospital is going to have as many as 2000 beds. One wonders whether its rusty and creaky administrative organization would be able to manage such a huge establishment when it cannot manage the same hospital with 500-odd beds where replacing a broken-down old lift takes more than a year. It also does not have either a MRI machine or a CT scan machine. The machines that were reportedly procured for conducting angiography have hardly been put to use.

The government is also asking the Centre to transfer the Bhopal

AIIMS OPD

Memorial Hospital & Research Centre (BMHRC) to the state. It was a very well built hospital with well-qualified physicians and surgeons with the funds provided from the (measly) compensations paid by the Union Carbide Ltd. After the Trust that ran it was wound up it was tossed from one agency of the department/agency of the Health Ministry at the Centre to another that broke its back bone and landed it in an unholy mess. The mess that was created

was a fertile ground for the local corporate hospitals to poach its qualified and experienced specialists on payment of astronomical salaries. The mess continues and in this mess the state government wants to wade in mainly because of the hospitals excellent property. If ever the state government happens to control it the mess will be bigger and it may run as a close second to the messy Hamidia Hospital

Surprisingly, the government is aiming at big establishments when the needs are of smaller units located in various newly established localities. These could be like general hospitals providing the rudimentary first level of medicinal or surgical treatment. Every sick person need not visit a multi-speciality hospital as a large number do not need the attentions of specialists. Perhaps this way the patients would be treated in a better manner and the physicians/surgeons would be able to pay greater attention taking their time in examining and suggesting treatment to them The dreadful amount of waiting that common sick and suffering people have to undergo under present conditions need to be immediately addressed. Whether the government is able to do it will have to be seen. We may have to have a long  wait for its reaction too.

*Photos: from internet

Bhopal Notes 35 :: Critique of State's diesel pticing

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We all know how the gasoline prices are seemingly playing on a seesaw – going up and down as and when the prices in international oil markets swing due to reasons that are many. A certain thing, however, is constant, and that is the taxes that governments at the Centre and in the states recover on sales of gasoline products. Looking like not one but several pounds of flesh, these taxes grabbed by the state raises the sale price per litre of oils that move the wheels of commerce and industries as also those of the urban life. General public has no alternative but to lump this kind of extortion and carry on regardless with its normal life.

A recent report in a vernacular newspaper screamed how diesel prices differ from each other in the national and state capitals. It said that the difference between the two makes the consumer in Bhopal pay Rs. 7 more per litre than what their counterparts pay in the national capital. It has been contended that diesel is costliest per litre in Madhya Pradesh than anywhere else in the country. A major oil company of the country has brought it to the notice of the state government that the high price of diesel in the state has been causing fall in sales in the state whereas the sales in neighbouring states have registered a rise. The transporters who run their vehicles on diesel from north to south and from east to west are reported to be avoiding buying the fuel in Madhya Pradesh. No wonder, the sales of diesel have gone down to the detriment of suppliers. Obviously, the state by levying high rates of taxes on the fuel is pricing itself out of the market.

 The basic cost of diesel after refining is Rs. 27.46 per litre. Hereafter the taxes take over. From Additional Excise Duty, to dealers’ commission to VAT and Additional VAT levied variously by the states the price per litre escalates at every stage for the consumer so much so that the taxes, taken together, amount to more than the basic cost of the fuel. Our state currently charges 31% as additional VAT on diesel taking its price way above what is prevalent in other states, especially those that are in the neighbouhood. Unsurprisingly, therefore oil marketing companies have registered a fall in sales and are a pretty worried lot so much so that they have brought this fact to the notice of the state government.

Gasoline is taxed, sometimes heavily, for various reasons. In India it could be for taking care of roads or for restricting its extravagant use to prevent uncontrolled outflow of foreign exchange for buying it in international markets. India hardly produces 20% of what is consumed in the country. Its prices may also be hiked by levying taxes for environmental reasons, i.e. to control emissions to prevent avoidable escalation of global temperatures. This, of course, would be a central act so that taxes are uniformly levied throughout the country. Taxes levied for environmental reasons would not normally be expected in an individual state as that would hardly make any difference to the environment. In any case, Madhya Pradesh government does not seem to have levied 31% additional VAT for this reason as there is no let up in the use by private parties or by the government of diesel guzzling vehicles. Most of the ministers and MLAs use only heavy SUVs that generally consume diesel and there is no indication of any step to curb its use. Besides, the high rate of taxation does not seem to be meant for improvement of roads either as roads in urban or rural areas have shown no improvement for years.

In heavily taxing diesel the state government has neither displayed any inclination for helping the commuting public by taking care of the roads, nor for the imperatives of the state’s and national environment. It has so far shown, on the other hand, scant regard for the environmental norms in matters dealing with forests, water bodies and atmospheric pollution. The only reason for levying such a hefty tax on diesel and petrol that suggests itself is that these fuels are considered cash cows. The taxes are levied for its own purposes by the government for financing several populist measures that it has taken in the social sector of the state’s economy. After all, the government has to fight another election and like any other political outfit it wants to come back to power. Nothing ensures higher incidence of favourable voting at the hustings than measures that are populist and are supposedly meant to uplift the economically weaker sections of the society.

Levying taxes for generating funds for expenditure on improvement of lives per se cannot be held against the government as it would seem to be a step to help the poor. But despite the hefty levies on transport fuels and alcohol, another cash cow, the lot of the poverty stricken masses has not improved. A report of 2015 said that the highest numbers of malnourished under-5 children are in Madhya Pradesh with 74% suffering from anemia and 60% from malnutrition. Infant and maternal mortality rates are also high, in case of the latter it is higher than Jharkhand and Odisha, though, of late, these have shown a decline.

There is, however, a flip side to it. Diesel is basically a fuel largely used in passenger transport and transportation of essential commodities. Hiking the price of diesel by levy of taxes has, therefore, a cascading effect adversely impacting the prices of essential commodities needed by even by the poor. The elevated costs make life difficult for them and could even drive a large section of them below the poverty line adversely impacting the social sector indicators.

A balance is, therefore, necessary to ensure that the high price of diesel does not hit the poor where it hurts. Perhaps, highlighting the stark difference in prices of diesel between Delhi and Madhya Pradesh had behind it this very suggestion. Since other states seem to have kept the diesel prices within reasonable limits none of them figures in the report. Having, apparently, failed to strike that balance, the state would seem to need to do just that to make life a little easier all around.

*Photo: from internet

Spreading sleaze

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No wonder there have been frequent electricity outages for reasons of defective transformers to repair which the supply is frequently disrupted. It now transpires that the Additional General Manager of the Central District for electricity distribution in-charge of management of transformers was found to have amassed assets worth more than fifteen crores.

While he was lining his pockets the system was going to seed. Not too long ago a large number of transformers are reported to have been bought. One does not know about their quality; but it is true that outages have continued even after replacing the old ones.

Looks like, this state has become a den of the corrupt and the venal. The mother of all scams, the one relating to the state’s Professional Examination Board and the state Public Service Commission is already under investigation. Huge amounts changed hands to manipulate results to enable undeserving candidates to get admissions in professional institutes and colleges A minister has been put under arrest and the highest executive of the Board is also behind the bars. Even the chief minister and his wife have come in for adverse notice for recommending names for irregular clearance for admission in various professional institutes/colleges. The latest news is that the whistle blower in the case is under serious threat and he is not being provided the necessary protection. The government seems to have developed an aversion for him. It was he who exposed the massive inter-state scam in which enormous amounts were involved. All kinds of irregularities, from manipulation of marks to impersonation, seemed to have been allowed for a price.

 Almost every day a new scam surfaces in the state and these scams are not ordinary ones. It seems all the corrupt people want to make billions in a jiffy. Even the lowest of officials – a patwari (the lowest revenue official) to a forest ranger, clerks in municipalities, etc. – do not lack aspirations. They all amass liquid and solid assets worth crores. Naturally, the executive engineers or officers of their level or even of even higher levels aim big. Recently, the IAS couple, Arvind and Tinoo Joshi, were dismissed from service after having been placed under suspension around five years ago. The couple is reported to have amassed assets worth 340 crores.

The governance is lax. It has got to be so when the high and the mighty are involved. A number of IAS officials have cases running against them. Some have even become ripe for prosecution but the state government either does not issue sanction or incurs long delays in doing so. According to law, the senior officers of principal secretary’s level and above cannot be prosecuted unless permitted by the government. They are more equal than ordinary mortals. And the permission seldom comes. How can one expect unscrupulous officers to preside over their own or their own colleagues’ dismissal? Corrupt and venal thus continue to run the government.

All this is happening in a state that is supposedly economically backward. If the amounts involved in the scams detected in rest of the 29 states, 7 Union Terrtories and at the Centre are taken together it would surely be a huge amount. There are states like Maharshtra, Karnataka, Haryana, Jharkhand etc. which are reputed to be more corrupt than Madhya Pradesh. At the centre alone scams worth hundreds of thousands crores were reported during the rule of UPA II.

 I have talked about only the amounts involved that have been detected  in the scams. If all those that have somehow escaped the notice of the investigative agencies are also accounted for the amount would undoubtedly be mind-boggling. Besides, tens of billions are floating around unaccounted in the black economy which, some estimates suggest, is of around 50% of the country’s GDP which was estimated to be more than US $1 trillion. The tax payers’ moneys are being siphoned off by few crooked, unscrupulous, perverse and sleazy people. Remember, in this country even the poorest of poor, who number millions, have to pay taxes.

No wonder somebody had once said that “India is rich but Indians are poor”.    

Madhya Pradesh loses its tigers and sobriquet

That Madhya Pradesh lost the sobriquet of “Tiger State” after the last national tiger census conducted in 2010-11 is now history. Having had the largest number of tigers during the preceding censuses it was widely known as the “Tiger State”. Whether the sobriquet was given or assumed is not quite known. It is a pity that the state, despite the massive financial assistance and expertise lent by the Centre and availability of its own enormous human and other resources could not retain the sobriquet. Ironically, despite the rise in tiger numbers in the country from 1411 in 2006 to 1706 in 2011 it is Madhya Pradesh which lost the largest number of them – the number came down from 300 to 257. The only other ‘tiger region’ that lost tigers during the period was Andhra Pradesh – it lost 23 of them.

For its bull-headed and lackadaisical ways the forest department has been engulfed in controversies for some years now. The biggest of them all was relating to the Panna Tiger Reserve which lost all its tigers by the close of 2008. Despite the early warnings from several sources, including the nation’s tiger conservation agencies, the department refused to pay any heed to them. Its Principal Chief Conservator (PCCF-Wildlife), HS Pabla, mulishly kept claiming that the Reserve had 20-odd tigers when everyone else reported that they were disappearing fast, mostly because of rampant poaching. Instead of taking steps to check the veracity of the statements, especially of the central tiger conservation agencies, the forest department, sticking to its guns and displaying an adversarial attitude, joined issue with them.

This is not all. After the tigers were all gone, when an inquiry conducted by the Central Special Investigation Team (SIT) came to the conclusion that they were mostly poached the state government set up its own enquiry committee, as is evident now, to put a lid on the whole thing and to protect its PCCF. The state level inquiry came to the conclusion that gender imbalance in the tiger population caused by declining number of females made the males go looking for them outside the Reserve only to be poached or just get killed. No mention was made of the reasons for occurrence of the gender imbalance. Likewise, no mention was made of the failure of the Reserve staff or visiting forest officers to notice the progressive gender imbalance over the years. Needless to say, no effort was made to fix responsibility for the total disappearance of the tigers from the Reserve.

However, the cat is now out of the bag. Ajay Dubey of “Prayatna”, an environmental action group, has ferreted out information that the forest department recently handed over details of nearly two dozen cases of tiger deaths in Panna to the home department asking for CBI inquiry into them. After examination, the latter picked up three cases which, according to it, seemed worthy of independent investigations. Prayatna’s efforts indicate that the forest department had received several reports of poaching of tigers, yet it failed to take the needed steps either at the field level or in the headquarters. This corroborates the contention of the SIT which after evaluation of all the relevant factors concluded that there were no ecological reasons for the tigers to become extinct in Panna. According to it, a steady decline in the numbers of females was noticeable since 2003, the maximum decline taking place between 2003 and 2005, and then continuing on until 2007-08. Poachers brought down more females as they have smaller home ranges and hence they became extinct before male tigers.

Seemingly, obsessed with tourism, the department kept dismissing every report appearing in the media as “media hype”. The local MPs and MLAs had expressed concern and some cases were filed in the Apex Court too. During the same period letters were also written to Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary Forests by the Chairman and Member Secretary, respectively, of the Central Empowered Committee after its two visits to the Reserve. Developing a peculiar imperviousness, the department ignored them all. When it was virtually curtains for the tigers in Panna in June 2008, Pabla was still waxing eloquent about their presence therein in the prestigious Sanctuary Asia magazine.

After Prayatna's expose even the forest minister’s comments was ostrich-like – that his department was prevented from doing the needful by a dacoit gang that was camping in the Reserve. The SIT has categorically stated in its report that the outlaws were in the Reserve between 2006 and 2008, whereas poaching, a fact never given due credence to by the state, had been continuing since 2001.

Clearly the fall in tiger numbers in the state is a natural consequence of the dedicated efforts made and “due diligence” displayed by the Madhya Pradesh government and its forest department. Beginning with the chief minister, who put humans before the tigers in a tiger reserve and consistently opposed creation of a scientific buffer and succeeded in having a moth-eaten buffer delineated for the Reserve, all have contributed their bit. According to the SIT, “Without a good buffer….. survival of small tiger population, even under moderate poaching pressure, is difficult”. And Panna has acute poaching pressure, surrounded as it is with settlements of tribes that are traditional poacher, poaching tigers not only in Panna but all over the country.

When the death of the “Jhurjhura tigress” indicated involvement of sons of two prominent politicians who illegally entered the Bandhavgarh Reserve inquiry was handed over to CB CID just to kill it. Despite the lapse of 16 months, the CID is yet to come out with its investigation report and the case remains buried in its dark recesses.

Again, when on the lines of the advice tendered by the National Tiger Conservation Authority “Prayatna” filed a writ in the state high court to ban tourism in core areas, the department opposed it tooth and nail, the PCCF even advising hoteliers and tour operators to have themselves impleaded for the specious reason that tourism prevents poaching. He forgot that tourism, with its infamous tiger-shows, was very much prevalent in Panna and yet the Reserve lost all its tigers – most having been poached. According to the SIT report, during 2002-2005 “The management shifted focus towards tourism and during this period even the forest department in their document have accepted maximum number of poaching…”

Tiger-tourism seems to have remained a priority with the forest department but it has failed to protect the very resource (and its habitat) it was exploiting. Apart from Panna, the Kanha Reserve, the supposedly best-managed, lost as many as 29 tigers at the last count. It even lost nearly 3000 sq. Kms. of tiger-habitat that has led to frequent internecine fights for territory – many ending in tiger fatalities.

Besides, the department has achieved the distinction of clocking the third highest number of vacancies in “frontline positions” in the country – the very staff that are responsible for protecting forests and wildlife. There has, however, been proliferation in the higher echelons of the department. Quite bizarrely, even the Tiger Strike Force created by the state has had successes in catching poachers of only wild boars and stray ungulates. It has so far failed to catch a single poacher of tigers.

Now that Karnataka is the new “Tiger State” and Nagpur may become the “Tiger Capital” the question that nags one is whether the once-upon-a-time “Tiger State” will be able to save its tigers. Given the present dispensation, it seems unlikely. The dice are heavily loaded against the tigers. The top brass of the government do not seem to have a perspective for the tiger in the natural order of things. And likewise, the top brass of the forest department do not want to see reason and face facts. The days of “Shere Khan” in the jungles of Madhya Pradesh, therefore, appear to be numbered.