Despite new-found environmentalism Dow denies succour to Bhopal

http://bagchblog.blogspot.in/8/2012/despite new-found environmentalism dow denies succour to bhopal

Before the commencement of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the gas-affected people of Union Carbide, Bhopal and their several organisations mounted a protracted campaign against the Dow’s sponsorship of it. The Dow funded the £7 million wrap around the Olympic Stadium and also has negotiated a 10-year £100 million sponsorship with the International Olympic Committee. The Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is now a subsidiary of The Dow Chemicals, the latter having bought it in the late ‘90s.

It is well-known that in December 1984 a lethal gas, methyl isocyanate, leaked out of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal and killed thousands and maimed many more for life. The protesters’ contention was that while the company poured millions in the Olympics it did not sufficiently compensate the victims of the gas leak. It has also refused to clean up the factory site on which its subsidiary had dumped toxic material which polluted the soil, the environment and the ground-water in the area inflicting misery on the people.

While there was muted support for the Bhopal protesters from the Indian politicians those in Britain went after the matter more seriously. Senior Labour Party leaders demanded an audit of Dow’s sponsorship of the Olympics and the Chief of its Ethics Committee, Meredith Alexander, resigned over Dow’s sponsorship. Five different protest groups presented London Olympic Games communications director Jackie Brock Doyle with five boxes of signatures – a 28,000-strong petition on Change.org and a 30,000-strong petition on SumOfUs – calling for a public apology from Games organisers. They also demanded from Dow a financial contribution of £7 million to help remediate the contaminated land and water supply.

The Dow, however, steadfastly denied its responsibility in the tragedy as, it contended, it bought the UCC 15 years after the tragedy and that by then all legal claims were resolved. UCC had paid $470 million as compensation to the Indian Government and that the matter was settled at the highest court of the land which after the settlement had exempted the Indian arm of the Corporation from any further litigation in the matter. It went on to say that the responsibility for the clean-up of the site now lay with the Indian Government. Paul Deighton, Chief Executive of the Games and Sabastian Coe, Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) found no substance in the protests and the Games went on with the Dow connection.

One cannot really fault the Gas Affected for their persistent campaign against the Dow as they, numbering thousands, continue to suffer the consequences of the lapses of the UCC and its erstwhile Indian subsidiary. Its system of waste disposal has proved to be lethal. Not only it left barrels of wastes in the complex, it dumped toxic wastes around it. These have leached into the soil not only contaminating it, these have also contaminated the sub-soil water which the inhabitants of the nearby settlements use, inter alia, for drinking purposes. A recent test report of the ground water has revealed excessive amounts of dichloro and hexachloro benzene, mercury and lead in the drinking water used by the residents of the adjoining colonies. The complications these could cause in human systems on regular ingestion need hardly be mentioned.

The entire row of the sponsorship of the Games by the Dow brought forth its uncompassionate, uncompromising and indifferent attitude to human misery. It has also displayed its callous indifference to the environment which its subsidiary happened to have fouled up harming the people and their habitat. That would truly be a justifiable conclusion. However, the truth now is different. Of late, Dow has turned a new leaf. Bryan Walsh, a senior writer with the Time magazine, recently reported that the CEO of Dow Chemicals negotiated with the head of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the biggest green groups based in Washington, a collaborative effort to maximise the environmental value of the Corporation’s operations with a view to enabling it to go green. It has announced “a five-year, $10 million collaboration with TNC to eventually tally up the ecosystem costs and benefits of every business decision” and to make environmental factors part of its profit-and-loss statements. The Dow chief Andrew Liveris is reported to have stated “Our planet’s natural resources are more and more under threat” and “protecting nature can be a profitable corporate priority and a smart global business strategy”, a statement , though hardly could ever be  expected from him at least in India, should be music to the ears of environmentalists.

The change of heart has not come just like that. It has a lot to do, as Walsh said, with the threat of government action on emissions on which a price has now been fixed, insistent share-holder pressures on green issues and a growing concern over the limits of available natural resources. In a well- researched piece entitled “Three faces of Dow” in Garbage Magazine, supposedly a ground-breaking environmental publication, Art Kleiner, a journalist and author of note, has described three past and present identities of The Dow. “First, there is the ‘traditional’ Dow: the frugal, small-town chemical company founded a century ago... close-knit and egalitarian, where chemistry PhDs stay from college until retirement... and where the toxicology labs date back to the 1930s.” There is also the "antagonistic" Dow – “the Dow of napalm and Agent Orange... the Dow that bitterly fought Oregon housewives and Vietnam veterans over herbicide sprays”. The third is the "learning" Dow, the company with a change of heart about environmentalism. That is where the collaboration with TNC comes in. TNC’s scientists, Walsh says, will advise Dow on how the company’s business decisions impact the environment—and in turn, how the environment affects Dow’s business. The ecosystem will become a new and major component for Dow’s bottom line, putting environmental sustainability on par with business sustainability.

Surprisingly, despite this change of heart The Dow did not budge from its rigid stand that it had nothing to do with the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. After all, whatever happened in Bhopal, terminating and disrupting the lives of thousands of locals, was the result of the callousness and indifference of its subsidiary, UCC, currently somewhat like a kid-brother to it. True, a final settlement was reached way back in the 1980s but, like everybody, both Dow and the UCC are aware how and why a shoddy settlement was arrived at with the Indian Government to the great disadvantage of the victims of the gas leak. Its new-found environmentalism has to have elements of Humanism embedded in it. If it had millions to pour into the Olympics The Dow could certainly use a few of them to mitigate the human misery authored by its subsidiary and to restore the destroyed human habitat in Bhopal. That would have been admirable and, perhaps, more ethical act and appropriate way of discharging its corporate social responsibility. That would, perhaps, also have endeared it to Indians who would have become more welcoming and offered it greater opportunities for industry and commerce. Sadly, this never seemed to have occurred to it!   

"http://www.zimbio.com/member/proloybagchi" 

Sign of the times - contempt for rule of law

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/8/2012/sign of the times-contempt for rule of law

It is an open secret in this country that food articles are adulterated, contaminated and frequently treated with toxic chemicals. This is done to sweeten fruits, quickly ripen and enlarge sizes of fruits and vegetables and to lend to them a farm-fresh sheen. This has been going on for quite some time and the press and some TV news channels have been pretty vocal about it. But the authorities concerned of the food and drug administrations of various states have seldom taken action. The result has been that this has been going on merrily and those indulging in the practise never bother about either the law or the consequences of their deceit on the consumers. We have reached a stage today that virtually every item of food, be it vegetarian or non-vegetarian, milk or edible oils, is consumed with trepidation. A reputed physician in the local cancer hospital, when asked about enormously large waiting crowds of patients, told me it is all a result of pollutants in the atmosphere and contaminants in what people ingest.

Over the years governance has been so lax that adulterating or contaminating food articles seems to have become par for the course for those who trade in them. That is why when the local district and food safety officials got active late last month after a lapse of a couple of years there was resentment and those who took samples of some food articles from a well-known restaurant in the business district of Maharana Pratap Nagar, Bhopal, came in for some rough treatment. Not only were they gheraoed (a kind of wrongful and forcible restraint), preventing them from leaving the premises and they were subjected to some hooting and slogan shouting. Unused as they are to being checked in their wrong-doing, the offenders promptly collected a crowd of sympathisers from nearby eateries.

The bone of contention was “mawa”, Indian name for thickened milk, which is an essential ingredient of most of the Indian sweets that are made by confectioners. Many tons of adulterated thickened milk and other milk products were seized all over north India a couple of years ago and our own state was not far behind. Despite intensive action the illegal trade has continued and this year in Bhopal alone many quintals of adulterated mawa have been detected and seized before and after the fracas at MP Nagar. The illegal business picks up during the festivals occurring between August and October. No wonder, therefore the local authorities thought of carrying out checks and came up against aggressive offenders. The adulterants and contaminants are very harmful for health and lacing the food stuff with them should be treated as a serious offence.

Breaking law, resistance to law-enforcement – contempt for rule of law is what seems to be driving people. Lax, in fact, absence of governance has made the offenders bold enough to challenge the authority of the government. Those who unauthorisedly occupy public lands go after the squads of government officials who have the mandate to free them of encroachments. The auto-rickshaw drivers do not charge commuters by their installed metres, do not wear uniforms and do not display their names despite repeated orders of the district administrations. Basements meant for parking of vehicles have been sold or let out for shops, leaving no alternatives for the vehicle-owners but to park on the roads constricting the road-space for smooth movement of traffic. These are only illustrative; the malaise has gone viral affecting most of the socio-economic facet of current times.

Things have been happening like this for years but the administration has never shown any spine. Laws are weak and, on top of it, these are also sparingly enforced. And then, there is inevitable interference from political bosses rendering the bureaucracy helpless. A spunky sub-divisional magistrate had stood up to a minister when he interfered in her operations to penalise an adulterator of food stuff. She was promptly moved out and put in an inconsequential post in the Academy of Administration. (Please see “A spunky bureaucrat and an intemperate politician” http://bagchiblog.blogspot.com). No wonder, an era of lawlessness has descended in the state. Regardless of the claimed rise in the state’s GDP people are generally consuming what should be trashed away as poison.  

Return of the "Darkness"

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/7/2012/return of the darkness

Looking around one comes across a kind of darkness that seems to be descending on the country. It is somewhat like what the Nobel Laureate, VS Naipaul, described in his travelogue, “An Area of Darkness”, but, perhaps is more forbidding as it is occurring in the second decade of the 21^st Century.  Ominous, as it seems, the thought processes of our people seem to be consciously and unrelentingly heading towards the medieval ages. Although it cannot be reckoned as the sign of the times when serious efforts are under way to achieve material progress, yet many societal aberrations strongly suggest that regressive tendencies are getting free play.

Suppression of women’s freedom and their abuse appears to be gathering strength. The “Khaps”, a sort of socio-political village grouping, have become active again and are issuing dictat that are reactionary to the core in the prevailing atmosphere of freedom in a modern democratic society. The “Khaps” and their agglomerations, “Sarv Khaps”, were, for ages, instruments of administration in the village republics of north-western India comprising the modern northern Indian states of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. From time immemorial the Indian society has been organised around the village unit and the republican fabric of the village administration did not die out despite the emergence of subsequent systems of administrations. However, with the establishment of panchayats (village councils) “Khaps” lost much of their significance.

Yet, these seem to be functioning in some pockets and from time to time are issuing uncompromising dictat, mostly on norms of marriages and against women. Though archaic, their power and influence continues to be formidable. A young couple of Kaithal district in Haryana was done to death in 2007 for marrying for love. They happened to be from the same gotra (clan), and were from the same village. Unacceptable to the “Khap”, the couple was murdered despite an order from the state high court for provision of police protection for them. Recently, in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh (UP), in a Taliban-like fatwa, the “Khap” of Asara village banned love marriages, prohibited women below 40 from shopping and from using cell phones outside their respective homes. Appallingly, some local political parties came out in support of the “Khap”. Even the new young and well-educated chief Minister of the province parried questions and avoided condemning the fatwa, thus indirectly turning a blind eye to the sinister system that could take the community back to the dark, medieval ages of patriarchy.

Women, generally, are at the receiving end all around the country. Earlier this month a 20-year old girl was molested and stripped by a gang of around fifty hoodlums as she came out of a bar with friends in the eastern city of Guwahati in Assam. A Hindu extreme right wing outfit, Sri Ram Sene (Army of Lord Ram) had organised an assault in 2009 on girls in a pub in Mangalore. One couldn’t believe the visuals as the rowdies physically attacked girls injuring some of them, whose fault was that they had gone to the pub – something the Sene, apparently, consider being against the tenets of Hinduism. Its aim is to bring back the traditional Hindu society in which women were properly wrapped up in yards of cloth and confined to the kitchen, obediently serving every need of the husbands and their families. 

A similar tradition-bound society is what Naipaul encountered during his travels through the country that he undertook to discover his roots. He put down his observations, in his travelogue “An area of darkness” published in 1964. That was more than fifty years ago, only about a decade and a half after the country’s independence when it was emerging out of centuries of imperial rule and was still in search of an identity. Highly religious, caste-ridden and tradition-bound, he found India stagnating and bogged down. Gloating over its ancient glory, it was indifferent to material progress. Guided by the theory of Karma, the country wallowed in poverty, squalor and filth. Its leaders were disinterested in progress and oblivious of the economic revival taking place apace in the war-ravaged countries. Contented with the “Hindu rate of growth” of around 3.5%, they appeared to be blind to the human misery that surrounded them. For a Trinidad-Indian living in England, brought up on the staple of Indian folk-lore that were laid on with layers and layers of romanticism, the actuality of the physical, social and spiritual visuals of his mother-country that Naipaul got hit with was a big let-down.

That very same construct appears to be making a re-appearance. The society seems to be getting radicalised and religious bigotry is striving to occupy centre stage. Radicalised fringe elements of both the major religious groupings have had successes in brow-beating the government into submission. While, the same Sri Ram Sene goons raided in 2008 an exhibition of the paintings of internationally famous Indian artist MF Hussain and vandalised them, some Hindu extremist groups, by way of threats to his life, ensured that the artist lived out the rest of his life in exile.

Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi doctor-turned-author, exiled from her country for authoring an allegedly undesirable literary work was forced out of India – her country of refuge – in 2008. After having come under physical attack from a Muslim political group in Hyderabad in 2007 she was forced out of Kolkata by radical Muslims under the threat of death. Kept under what she described as “unendurable” (virtual) house-arrest in New Delhi for months by the Centre, Nasreen later thought it best to leave the country. India-born Booker-prize winning author Salman Rushdie came in for somewhat similar treatment in 2012 for authoring Satanic Verses 24 years ago that allegedly mocked Prophet Mohammed. Under pressure of Islamic fundamentalists he was prevented from attending the “Jaipur Lit Fest”. In all these instances the weak-kneed governments of the states and the Centre deliberately did not adopt their avowed secular stand and played along with the fundamentalists for reasons that were patently political. 

Apart from competitive radicalism pervasive corruption is overwhelming the country; it has spread like a virus infecting every segment of the society – from industrialists to businessmen, from traders to tradesmen, from politicians to the bureaucracy right across their various levels. Billions from public funds have been siphoned off by politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists, throwing cold water on the much-acclaimed sizzling “GDP growth”. Ethical values had, probably, never plumbed such depths. With hardly any sign of governance law and order are on a long holiday. Loots, abductions, thefts, molestations and rape are routine. Dalits are tormented, even murdered; their women are humiliated and frequently raped.

 The country seems to have hit a dark, portentous patch. The future appears to be menacing and sinister and foretells a kind of darkness much worse than what Naipaul happened to observe. 

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World War II - Kohima War Cemetery

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/7/2012/world war II-kohima war cemetery

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, recently visited Kohima War Cemetery to pay homage to hundreds of soldiers who lost their lives fighting for the Allied Forces in the Battle of Kohima in 1944 during World War II. Prince Andrew is the first member of the British Royal Family to have visited the Cemetery maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission of which India is one of the seven members.

Many perhaps do not know the importance of that distant town, Kohima, nestling in the misty hills of Nagaland in the North East. The Battle of Kohima was fought for around three months by the Allied Forces who defended India against a determined Japanese offensive. It was a turning point in the War. Aiming at the railhead at Dimapur the Japanese made a resolute attempt to break through the defences into the Brahmaputra Valley and then into India, only to be resisted with strength and pushed back by the Allied forces. The decisive Battle was fought mostly around the Kohima collector’s bungalow and his tennis court. Towards the end of the battle the two enemies happened to face each other from across the two side-lines of the court, eventually ending up fighting hand-to-hand with huge number of casualties on both sides. Once Kohima was secured, the Japanese were pushed back down the Kohima-Imphal Road into Burma, and later from the entire South East Asia.

The Kohima War Cemetery is beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The Cemetery has a lovely garden that overlooks Kohima. The structure, design, horticulture, etc. are all on the basis of the standards prescribed by the Commission. At Kohima the Stone of Remembrance, a feature of all War Graves taken care of by the Commission, has an evocative epitaph which says,

“When you go home tell them of us and say

That for their tomorrow we gave our today”.

During my tenure in the North East in 1988-1990 I had the good fortune of visiting Kohima on a few occasions and visit the War Cemetery. A photograph (now faded) taken then is being uploaded. I also happened to travel down the historic Kohima-Imphal Road on which several tough battles were fought to dislodge the Japanese. The highways authorities, showing an unusual sense of history, have put up signage ndicating sites of various significant battles, for example, “the Battle of Zakhama”.

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Planet Earth near tipping point

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/7/2012/planet earth near tipping point

Despite a dire warning issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) about the catastrophe that Planet Earth was headed for, the recent United Nations Rio+20 Conference at Rio de Janeiro on sustainable development proved to be a damp squib. 

Branding the current era as the “Age of Irresponsibility”, the UNEP, in a 525-page report, warned that “the earth’s environmental systems are being pushed towards their biophysical limits beyond which loom sudden, irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes.” Painting a grim picture, the report indicated melting of the polar ice caps, desertification in Africa, deforestation of tropical jungles, spiralling use of chemicals and the emptying out of the world's seas of fish as some of the myriad environmental disasters that pose a threat to life as we know it. The report adds that “several critical global, regional and local thresholds are close or have been exceeded... Once these have been passed, abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to the life-support functions of the planet are likely to occur, with significant adverse implications for human well-being." 

One such threshold was crossed only recently. Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring detected more than 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Readings of 400ppm and higher have been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. Currently, only the Arctic has attained the 400 level, but the unrestrained way the things are going there is no reason why the rest of the world will not follow soon. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising apace for some decades. It is a disconcerting new milestone. Years ago, it passed the 350ppm mark that many scientists consider the highest safe level for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for restricting the rise of global surface temperature below 2⁰ C (over pre-industrial level) to save the planet from catastrophic changes. But, globally it now stands at 395 and already rising seas and extreme weather patterns are much in evidence.

Indicating the gravity of the problem, climate scientists say it's been at least 800,000 years since the Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s. Before the industrial age the level was around 275-280 ppm. It has been in 300s during the last sixty years. Scientists say that increasing use of fossil fuels like coal and oil caused the alarming rise in the levels of CO₂. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tonnes in 2011, up 3.2%, the International Energy Agency announced the other day.

Those who are committed to 350ppm say that it was the upper limit for the planet if we wished to have it "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." The figure is virtually irrefutable as a constant flow of additional evidence from many directions supports it. They claim that though the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ was around 390 parts per million and the temperature increase is still a shade below 1⁰ C yet it would be prudent to restrict it to 350 ppm to completely obviate the risk of surface temperature rising to and beyond 2⁰ C. Already, they claim, the world has witnessed rapid melt of the Arctic ice, high-altitude glacial systems and perennial snowpack in Asia, Europe, South America and North America, the rapid and unexpected acidification of seawater, warming of seas and rise in their levels, excessive intense short-spell rains, frequent violent storms and damage to coral reefs disrupting the marine eco-system and depriving numerous fish of their habitat.

Many scientists feel that since the CO₂ level has reached the 400 mark it would be impossible to immediately arrest its further rise. One cannot shut down all thermal power plants and stop use of gasoline all at once. Over 80% of world’s energy sources emit large amounts of CO₂. During the last few decades the rate of emissions has gone up, particularly since the 1970′s as a result of increased consumption and growth in population. High economic growth rate in the emerging economies has further boosted up the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. None of these countries would like to cutback on its developmental effort as uplift of millions of poor is involved.

                                                             

The CO₂ level is, therefore, set to rise. Kevin Anderson, a climate scientist, feels that avoiding dangerous climate change is no longer possible because the temperature rise is already close to 1⁰ Celsius “with effects formerly assumed for 2°C”. According to him, temperature rise of 4⁰ C by 2060 is very likely “given the level of action taken so far on climate, world’s economic realities and the short window of time remaining for limiting the average surface temperature rise to 2°C or even 3°C” – a frightful scenario. If a rise of 1⁰ C is causing such havoc, widespread death and destruction that is likely to occur on the rise of 4⁰ C just cannot be imagined. It will be Apocalypse itself. 

Some climate researchers, however, offer consolation. They feel that that 2 °C was likely to be exceeded at the level of 550 ppm, at 450 ppm there would be a 50% likelihood of limiting global warming to 2 °C and that it would be necessary to achieve stabilisation below 400 ppm to give a relatively high degree of certainty of not exceeding 2 °C. With the global CO₂ level pushing 400ppm restricting its rise to 450 seems to be an impossibility. Perhaps, 475 or 500ppm would be a better target (with all the risks involved) from where humanity, with a concerted effort, could try and bring CO₂ concentrations back to 350. But that would require significant reduction in emissions.

Unfortunately, that concerted effort of world leaders is not quite visible. The much-heralded Rio+20 proved to be a fiasco. Martin Khor, executive director of the Geneva-based South Centre, said "We've sunk so low in our expectations that reaffirming what we did 20 years ago is now considered a success". "Everything has been kicked down the lane a few years”, said another participant from G 77. Nothing was agreed upon; what was agreed upon is to have a few more conferences even if, in the mean time the planet gets saturated with CO_{2 .}

World leaders having failed them, many in Rio believed that progress on environmental issues must be made locally without the help of international accords. That probably is the only way ahead to avoid the approaching catastrophe. The time has come when every country, every state, every local body, every individual and every organisation – public or private – needs to work towards a greener and safer world.

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Of venal & corrupt Health Administration

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/5/2012of venal & corrupt health administration

All is surely not well with the Health Administration of the country. The other day two shocking revelations were made in the press. One of them related to detection of serious irregularities by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on health and family welfare in respect of advices and letters of recommendations from some experts submitted to the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) regarding several drugs. These recommendations, apparently, read the same, word-for-word, as those submitted by the drug companies concerned. Experts’ endorsements are crucial testimony for country’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation for allowing launch of drugs in the market.

                                              

The disclosure revealed a nexus between some experts and a few drug companies enabling unquestioned endorsement of the scientific recommendations of their own products for onward transmission to DGCI. These are required to be submitted by the experts after due consideration of the drugs’ content and their efficacy. Evidence, however, has been unearthed indicating that the experts merely affixed their signatures to the recommendations submitted by the companies concerned. Worse, some were submitted on the day of their receipt by the experts, obviously without according to them due consideration. More alarming was the fact that the experts are from a few iconic medical institutions of the country and some of them happen to be working as professors in these institutions.

The innocent, ignorant and unwary patients will be at the receiving end if drugs are pushed in such a manner by the drug companies in collusion with highly placed medical experts without being evaluated in regard to their therapeutic potential. Suspect efficacy of drugs will hit all classes of people across the board and with high drug prices it would be a sort of double whammy for them. Already, people are suffering under the weight of their medical bills. A recent report said that the “out-of-pocket” expenditure – the percentage of expenditure incurred by households on medicines – has increased by 75% during the past couple of years. High medical costs, along with rising prices of essentials, are biting the common man. According to 2011 World Health Organisation estimates about 70% Indians spend their entire income on healthcare and purchase of drugs. With the prices of drugs for common ailments like cardiac disease, hypertension, diabetes creeping up northwards, market watchers are asking for State intervention. Poor are simply unable to afford many drugs. Decrying the ineffectiveness of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy even ruling party politicians are concerned about common man’s woes. 

Such improperly evaluated medicines can also adversely impact exports once they fail to live up to their claims. India is considered the pharmacy of the world. While the domestic retail market in 2008 was estimated to be valued at more than Rs. 55000 crores ($10 billion app.), exports were worth around Rs. 38000 crores ($6 billion app). Unless checked, corrupt practices at the stage of approving and launching a drug in the market would amount to shooting oneself in the foot. 

The health sector is somehow saturated with corruption, whether at the Centre or in the states. A former central minister of Health & Family Welfare was involved in several scandals during his tenure, including what is known as the “vaccines scam”. He ordered the public sector units to discontinue manufacture of various essential vaccines only to throw open the entire market to one of his cronies for easy pickings. Ultimately, the other day he was charged by the Central Bureau of Investigations in a Delhi court for abusing his authority and permitting a medical college to admit students without having necessary faculty and clinical facilities. Establishment of medical colleges has become a very paying proposition. Politicians, in collusion with money bags, bribe their way into acquiring prime lands for establishing such colleges, the approval and later recognition for which is easily obtained by pulling strings and money changing hands. The President of the Indian Medical Council, Dr. Ketan Desai, and two others were arrested last year for taking hefty bribes for granting recognition to a medical college. No wonder, the quality of medical education leaves much to be desired. Barring a few reputed hospitals, medical institutions and (elderly) private physicians, the general quality of medical attention to the patients is poor, more so to those belonging to the economically weaker sections.

The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) appears to have become a goldmine for corrupt politicians, doctors and administrations. The ambitious goal of the Mission is to “improve the availability of and access to quality healthcare by people, especially for those residing in rural areas, the poor, women and children”. The second news report was about the sleaze detected NRHM in Madhya Pradesh where, one after the other, two directors of health services have been caught with huge amounts of liquid and fixed assets - all disproportionate to their respective incomes. In the earlier case even the minister in-charge was involved along with the principal secretary of the department of health, an IAS officer, who, mercifully, is being prosecuted. The minister resigned but escaped prosecution. In the recent case, the director was found to be in possession of assets worth more than Rs. 100 crores (Rs.1 billion app). Serious irregularities were detected in the process of tendering and procurement of medicines, mosquito-nets, etc. During the raid at the director’s residence his wife reportedly advised the Lokayukta (Ombudsman) officials to raid the houses of ministers to whom a crore (Rs. 10 million) of rupees was required to be delivered every month.

 One can imagine the astronomical sums that have been poured into the Mission from the fact that in Uttar Pradesh alone Rs 10000/- crores are believed to have been siphoned off. Two chief medical officers and three other officials were murdered and scores of engineers, doctors, administrators and ministers have been charge-sheeted by the CBI.

Conscious of the abysmal level of public expenditure on health (1.4% of GDP) the government has been allocating huge amounts of tax-payers’ money to the states in an effort to achieve universal health coverage, including cashless treatment. The Centre’s resolve to boost government spending can potentially make high-quality care accessible to all. It has not shied away from making necessary allocations as can be imagined by the way the system has been milked by the powers-that-be at the Centre and in the states, especially, in MP and UP. No wonder, despite the (now waning) growth story India ranks below the Sub-Saharan Africa in many international health-related indices. While the corrupt, cannibalistic predators do not allow the benefits of outlays to reach the needy, high drug prices and raging inflation prevent millions from buying essential medicines because of pervasive poverty – a significant facet of the Indian growth story.

 Clearly, the corrupt hordes in the government wouldn’t allow it to achieve its own “goal” of building a healthy and strong India.

 

Of LPG, edibles & prices

http://bagchiblog.blogpost.in/5/2012/of lpg,edibles & prices

A time seems to have come when people should give up cooking. A recent report said that a domestic LPG cylinder is soon going to cost Rs. 996/-, virtually a thousand rupees, for those who have an income of more than Rs.6 lakhs per annum. The Standing Committee on the matters relating to petroleum ministry has made the recommendation indicating that those who are rich should not be supplied the subsidised LPG. For all one knows, the recommendation may even get accepted regardless of the fact that identification of those who are in receipt of the specified income is going to be a tough proposition. If implemented, only the salaried class would get trapped while others, who are professionals, traders and self-employed, etc. and have to declare their own incomes (which most don’t do entirely) are likely to continue to get subsidised LPG.

The scenario that is unfolding is quite frightful. As the rupee continues to lose value vis-a-vis` the dollar one cannot really imagine where all it is going to end up. In another year or two a LPG cylinder could hit Rs. 2000/- taking it well beyond the reach of many. With the growing trade gap, rising fiscal deficit, astronomical sums poured into the social sector (mostly siphoned off) and flight of foreign investment from the country things have gone from bad to worse. Dollars have become so scarce in the foreign exchange market that the currency has been constantly appreciating against the rupee – one of the major factors which has made prices of petro-products go through the roof.

LPG has been the standard domestic fuel for the last few decades and has been instrumental in changing urban lifestyle. Modern Indian kitchens are not made for the kind of fuel that, for example, my mother used to use – soft coke, fire wood and cow-dung cakes. Besides, they have disappeared from most cities and towns. Unfortunately, for an urban household currently there is no alternative to LPG except electricity as energy source. That, too, has been becoming expensive virtually every year. With the distribution companies unable to check persistent power theft and the prevailing rampant corruption in their ranks power tariffs are hiked annually. Using electrical appliances of high-wattage is, therefore, beyond the reach of many middle-class households. One could perhaps tap solar power but not all houses get enough sunshine. In rural areas women and children forage around for fire wood, dried twigs or whatever, being unable to afford even the subsidised LPG. Only the rural rich now can afford kerosene or LPG. Soon they too may have to give them up as the government progressively loosens its hold over fuel pricing. 

Cooking food at home may soon become a thing of the past. That will be a great tragedy. Indians cannot do without food cooked at home. Besides, influenced as they have been over hundreds of years by different cultures, the recipes are such that food has to be cooked in oil and fried with colourful and aromatic spices. Every meal, from breakfast to lunch and from afternoon snacks to dinner, has to be cooked. If cooking fuel becomes unaffordable, Indians wouldn’t know what to do. Very few Indians can survive on raw vegetables or processed meats. In fact, in many regions of the south and the east none would ever have raw vegetables barring tomatoes and onions. Westerners, perhaps, can manage with their salads and mass-produced cold cuts, but not Indians. 

Then, there is another emerging problem. Even if one is able to somehow manage the fuel the question that remains is what does one cook – prices of everything edible having gone impossibly high? Prices of edible oil and vegetables, for instance, are sky high. Prices seldom come down even in the season when availability peaks. What is more, there are hardly any seasonal vegetables now which, in season, used to be cheap. Every vegetable, whether of summer or winter, is available right through the year. Hence one finds okra in winter and cauliflowers in summers – thanks to advancement in horticulture and a little more easy availability of cold-storage facilities. But prices always rule high despite the fact that India is one of the top producers of vegetables in the world. According to the figures of the Ministry of Agriculture India is at the top of the world in production of peas, second in production of aubergines, cabbages, cauliflowers and onions and third in potatoes and tomatoes. Yet, the prices rule high because of the middlemen and the evil of cartelisation. While middlemen push up the prices of all food items –vegetables, lentils and food grains – cartels don’t allow the prices to come down. Farmers and consumers are at the receiving end of their intervention.

Some farmers, however, have become smart. They have taken to injecting chemicals into vegetables to ripen them quickly to get a better turnover. That, in the process, they inject toxins which, on ingestion, could be a health hazard is of no concern to them. This aberration is of recent origin but has continued unchecked for want of effective governance. Likewise, colouring agents and sweeteners are routinely injected in fruits like papayas, watermelons, melons, pomegranates, etc. Wellness-gurus recommend steady consumption of fruits and vegetables without realising that most of them carry contaminants that could prove to be toxic. In any case, the prices have shot up to such astronomical heights that they have become unaffordable for a large section of the population. Supplies may not be matching the demand, stimulated as it is by rising incomes but, if one goes by ads, fresh vegetables and fruits are also being increasingly used in manufacturing of cosmetics – moisturisers, fairness creams, feeding the craze for a fairer complexion. No wonder, even the lowly banana, once a fruit for penniless sadhus wandering in the wildernesses for moksha, are going for Rs.40/- a dozen.

Non-vegetarian stuff, too, has not remained behind. In a decade and a half mutton prices have shot up five fold, from Rs.60/- a kilo to Rs.300/-. The same has been the case for fish and poultry. While fish could carry deadly heavy metals, poultry in many parts has been detected with heavy dosage of harmful antibiotics. Nonetheless, once again the rise of the middle classes has fuelled the demand that has further been stoked by television channels showing foodies cooking and hogging non-vegetarian stuff. The way things are going, soon non-vegetarian food may become unaffordable for a vast segment.

The country has certainly witnessed rapid GDP growth. But, so have the prices of fuel and edibles risen exponentially in tandem. Largely a poor country, with widespread hunger and malnourishment, no wonder India is scraping the bottom of several international social sector indices.