Why PM has no faith in AIIMS

Nidhi Mittal New Delhi
Exclusive

In what can be termed Union Health Minister Dr Ambumani Ramadoss’ long-term vendetta plan, 185 super specialist doctors, mostly from the critical diseases departments of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, have been quietly shown the door.
All of these senior residents were in the forefront of the agitation against the Minister in the Venugopal and the anti-reservation protests.
Not that Ramadoss can be legally faulted in his game plan as he has used a long dormant clause in the AIIMS statute book to get his baiters out of the way and carry on his agenda to have more Governmental control over the autonomous body.
These senior resident doctors have been refused a routine extension of their three-year term, which has long been done automatically. On January 3, these doctors, most with AIIMS for six and more years, were issued a 10-day notice to vacate their rooms, ending their long and crucial association with the institute.
Such has been the resultant shortfall that even the Prime Minister has been indirectly affected. Out of the 15 mandatory senior residents on call for VVIP duty, there have been only seven left with the rest being axed, courtesy Ramadoss. A new and relatively inexperienced set of eight doctors had to be called in to deal with the situation.
Other than that, AIIMS, which has long been reeling under an acute shortfall of doctors, will now be even more pressed. Already, an inner circular has restricted the number of OPD cards to be issued daily. The ENT department, for instance, will now take in only 50-60 cases a day. “Earlier, there was no such restriction on OPD. Now people will have to wait for months to get into even the OPD,” another resident doctor said.Some of the departments which have borne the brunt are ophthalmology, surgical oncology, radio therapy, anaesthesia and hospital administration.
Explaining the line of events, radiation oncologist Dr Harsh Kumar, who was the doctors’ union president and at the forefront of the anti-reservation stir, said: “A few days back, the administration posted an ad for recruitment of senior residents. It said that the exams were due and it was to be completed by January 31. But then, the ad was withdrawn. When we approached the Dean, he said he couldn’t do anything because of orders from higher authorities, and that this was a lawful step.”
The outgoing doctors say that though a Parliamentary regulation has bestowed the AIIMS Director with the authority of extending the term of resident doctors in case of a controversy — like exams not being held — the authorities, “i.e., the Health Ministry”, has this time put out a rule that only three years of senior residency would be allowed.“All this is about dirty politics. People in power want to create a crunch so that when a hue and cry happens, they can push in their own people,” alleged Dr Rahat Habi, senior resident in the radio therapy department.
While 50 of these 185 doctors who have just completed their PG and MD, have survived for now as they are yet to complete their three-year term, they will function only as “ad-hoc” doctors and their term will automatically expire after completion of their present contract.
Even a complete strength of 550 doctors is unable to cope with the work load of seeing 9,000 out patients daily apart from the in-house ones. With 135 less specialists, the situation will only get unmanageable.Asked why there was no effort to recruit more doctors immediately, Dr Sunil Chumber, sub-Dean, clarified: “That’s not true. In January, 35 seats fell vacant. We have put in place 30 doctors. An ad inviting applications for more senior doctors will be out next week. There is no doctor crunch in the hospital as we have put junior residents on temporary duty.”He defended ending the three-year tenure of senior residents calling it law. “That some senior residents had been serving for more than six years was unacceptable.”
However, as Dr Rahul Bhargava, who has replaced Dr Harsh in the Oncology department, said: “They should have let them (135 who have packed up) serve till the time they brought in new doctors so that the patients didn’t suffer. That’s a valid and selfless demand.”
With the ouster of 185 doctors, most of them assistant professors, the education of students will also suffer hugely. Which would mean a huge dent in the reasons AIIMS was set up.India’s first Health Minister Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, while passing a Bill to bring up AIIMS in 1956, had said: “It has been one of my cherished dreams that for post-graduate study and for the maintenance of highest standards of medical education in our country, we should have an Institute... which would enable our youth to have their post-graduate education in their own country, in their background with the necessary experience that we would like to give to them to do research in the various spheres of medical education.”
Apart from this, the pressure that serving doctors will feel is bound to add to patient woes. Officially, a doctor is supposed to give in just 48 hours a week. However, at full strength, every resident doctor is doing continuous 48 hours duty at least once a week. So the total work they do per week far exceeds the residency scheme — more than 110 hours a week per doctor.
“With us leaving, these doctors will have more duties to do. Due to increasing pressure there have been cases of suicides in the neurology department. Mishandling of patients will increase too. How much pressure can a human being take, even if he is a doctor? There is a limit to which one can work,” said Dr Harsh.
Though most of the 135 doctors have already got offers from private hospitals, that too at four times more salary than AIIMS, which is Rs 50,000 for a senior resident doctor, the specialists want nothing of the sort, if they can continue at the apex institute.

Published in The Pioneer on January 25, 2009

Digging a grave!

In what could be CGWA’s attempt to shirk responsibility and make Delhi a parched desert, the authority has recently issued ‘New Borewell Guidelines’ which do away with the necessity to take permission from any Government agency before sinking a new tubewell.More than 200 borewells have been sunk in the notified districts of South and South-west Delhi in the past few weeks and the avalanche is just beginning.With the new guidelines, all that is now needed is to send an intimation to a deputy commissioner of the district to make a new tubewell 10 days before one starts the process. This has come as good news for tubewell digging contractors who have been informing people that no permission is needed to dig borewells even as much as 800 ft deep.While in 2000, the CGWA had notified the south and south-west districts of Delhi for their overexploited and severely depleted groundwater reserves, now, in an inexplicable volte face, it has made digging of tubewells a free activity.The effect of the change will be disastrous. The water table, which was already going down at the rate of one metre or more per year in these districts, will plunge more rapidly. Existing tubewells, many of which are owned by the DJB/MCD to supply water to the ordinary public, will dry up faster.The worst sufferers, however, would be the urban poor who are largely groundwater dependent. “As their tubewells dry up owing to overexploitation in the nearby posh colonies, they will be left with no source of water. Even the DJB tanker supplies will suffer since many tankers in these two districts are actually filled wholly or partially with groundwater,” said Jyoti Sharma of FORCE.With increasing depth, the water quality is also undergoing a sea of change — salinity levels have increased, calcium and magnesium levels are above safe limits, traces of iron and even fluoride have been found in groundwater samples in these districts.A FORCE study showed that while a slum cluster could make do with 300 litres of water for a six-member family, an urban village household would use 500 litres for a five-member family, an upper middle class family in DDA flats use as much as 1000 litres for a four to five members and a rich house-owner consumes 1500 litres for three to four members.The wastefulness becomes worse when the incremental source of water supply is the household tubewell — gates, cars, balconies, driveways and roads in front of the house are washed twice a day; plants are over-watered.The irony is, that the move has come at a time when Delhiites are waking up to the need for water conservation. Concepts like water conservation, water recycling and rainwater harvesting are increasingly being adopted. Citizens were also filing PILs to protect groundwater, for example, the PIL by Gurgaon residents against further commercialsiation because of lack of water and other infrastructure, PIL by environmentalists to protect the ridge area as it is the primary source of groundwater recharge etc.

Published in The Pioneer on February 15, 2009

The complaint man

Rarely do people think of utilising their autumn years the way this 63-year-old man does. After retiring from his business, Pratap Singh devoted himself to the cause of the society, in a way that he gave nightmares to all the top officials who even issued an order to ignore his complaints, says NIDHI MITTAL

At his age, people either retire to a calm retreat spending time reading and gardening, or take to God Almighty in a big way. But 63-year-old Pratap Singh has decided to utilise the free years of his life in a way that would accord him a pedestal in other people’s lives. May be not for everyone because for the police and Government officials he is a major thorn in the flesh. Thus the tag — ‘complaint man’.Singh has filed some 2,500 complaints with not only the police but also Government departments, including the Home Ministry. The terror of this man in official circles, at one point of time, grew to such an extent that Delhi’s first woman chief secretary Shailja Chandra issued a circular to all the departments to ignore Pratap’s complaints.But nothing could deter Singh who has taken it upon himself to eradicate what he calls evils of the society — or at least bring them to light — and that includes exploitation of the poor. For those whom he has saved from land sharks and powerful Ministers, he is no less than a messiah.Shielding the farmers of Kishangarh village in Vasant Kunj, South Delhi, he made life so difficult for the culprits and corrupt cops that they framed an extortion case against him, claiming that he gave extortion calls to then Jt CP of southern range Satish Chandra. Not just that, he was also accused of going to the house of one of the land sharks and beating up his younger brother!That was in 2000. Though he was briefly arrested for the extortion case, it took the court no time to back his innocence and exonerate him. As for the other case, it is still pending.Though evils in society disturbed Pratap since his college days, when he loved sitting alone and reading for hours, his activism started in 1989 when an illiterate farmer Rai Singh came to him with folded hands. His 2.5 acre land had been grabbed by a UP MLA. The Minister tricked the poor farmer and took his thumb impression on a blank piece of paper.“I felt very bad and gave him some money. I registered a case and got him a lawyer also. Soon I started getting threat calls for standing up to the Minister. But I had no personal interest; it was the question of that farmer’s right. He eventually won the case and got his land back. It was then that it struck me that someone needs to stand up against such things, so why not me,” says Pratap from a fly-ridden self-contained room he has on the side of his sprawling property in Kishangarh.This was the beginning of an ordeal for lax officials. After Pratap retired from his business of making bricks, “but continued to pay income tax”, social activism became his life and breath. “I decided to make officials accountable for their corrupt ways,” says Pratap.Apart from the regular FIRs that he keeps registering, Pratap has filed 500 complaints with the DDA, 350 with the MCD, 340 with the revenue department and a similar number with other such departments besides the RTIs, which he terms as a revolution for the common man, “because at least the people with power are forced to answer.”Not even in one of the complaints has there been any personal gain for this 63-year-old. The under-construction Leela bridge on Jail Road at Vasant Kunj is a result of Singh’s efforts. He had been fighting for the widening of the road and building of a bridge to avoid accidents there for over five years now.The road was to be widened by 40m, but the land mafia had grabbed the area and opened a dhaba there. Illegal activities also started there, so he lodged a complaint on January 24, 2003. “At that time I didn't know that a judge was also involved. My complaint merely said that Jail Road was to be widened but had been grabbed by land mafia in nexus with the DDA. After multiple complaints on this issue, I finally received a letter from PWD in 2008, saying they would complete the bridge before the Commonwealth Games and the construction has begun,” Pratap tells you.He said, authorities killed time by making excuses like they were seeking permission from Supreme Court for cutting of trees because it’s the ridge area. Once when they got a go-ahead, they came up with an excuse that extra growth of trees had happened so they will have to seek permission afresh. “See how deep rooted corruption is. The PWD was looking for reasons to not do the needful.”Pratap makes it a point to file one complaint at many offices so that there are little chances of it to die down without coming to notice. He also files RTI applications for every case to get maximum proof.He has been blamed for targeting top officials, more so after he filed a complaint against PWD’s chief executive engineer over a road construction mess-up. “Can a low-lying clerk have the power to run such a big nexus? The top brass has to be involved when big money is involved,” he insists.In 2003, a Parliamentary Standing Committee of Home Affairs was constituted which called for suggestions and complaints from all departments. Pratap, seeing an opportunity, hurriedly sent all the corruption-related complaints with him. The committee sent them to the departments concerned, demanding answers.To evade answering, “because then all the top officials would have been behind bars”, the officials found a way to get rid of him, once and for all.A notice was issued on January 27, 2004, by Shailja Chandra alligating that “he is in a habit of filing complaints as a matter of routine and his complaints should be ignored.”But Singh was unstoppable. He filed another application questioning this order. “Why should I be scared of anyone? I only target people who are corrupt, irrespective of their status and power. Why would I have an interest if some unknown road were not being built? It’s only because I care and I am concerned as a responsible citizen that I raise my voice. Someone needs to rise above self-interest,” says Pratap.However, Pratap’s letter seeking a cancellation of this order was rejected. As a result, his task became even more difficult with officials now having sanction to not take time seriously.“I can’t sleep until I report anything wrong that I have seen happening. Once I have filed a complaint I can sleep peacefully, even if they don’t take an action. But I make it a point that I furnish enough proof to support my case. I also click related pictures,” Singh says.That is how he gathered the courage to question DDA on unauthorised constructions in Sector-5 of the DDA colony near Vasant Kunj. In an answer to his complaint, Pratap was told that Sector-5 did not exist! However, in the zonal maps and the master plan issued by DDA, Sector-5 is clearly marked.“They are denying something that is on their own map. Actually, there is a colony of illegal Bangladeshi migrants there. I then filed an application to know the number of Bangladeshis in the area. I was sent a letter saying there are no illegal migrants and that they are all Indian nationals, which is not true,” he said.Pratap’s other complaints have been against farmhouse parties and encroachment of water bodies.Call him the complaint man or a man of conviction, this astrologer by hobby knows how to make the best of his autumn days.

Main concerns
Widening of the Jail Road in Vasant Kunj and construction of the bridge.
ATR: The bridge will be built before the 2010 Commonwealth Games

Widening of the Mehrauli-Mahipalpur road with 40m wide green belt on both sides.
ATR: A new concept of ‘road over road’ established which doesn’t allow the widening

No demolition of unauthorised construction in Sector-5 of DDA colony near Vasant Kunj.
ATR:Letter sent saying sector-5 doesn’t exist, while DDA’s zonal map shows it

Grabbing of the road that goes to Chhattarpur from Qutab Minar by land mafia.
ATR:Court put a stay on all constructions around ridge area

Parties in farm houses.
ATR:No material response, but Delhi chief secretary banned Government officers from attending farm house parties

Thus they spake
Joginder (driver): Pratap bhaisaab is everything to me. He has seen me growing up. But apart from that it’s because of him that my family still has a reason to live. The land mafia had grabbed my plot of land in Najafgarh and when I informed the cops, they made me sit in the police station for the whole night. Then I went to bhaisaab who instantly informed the DCP, special cell. I have now got my land back, all thanks to him. He also gave us money to file the case in court. He is always so kind to poor people.

Bittoo (driver): Pratapji has helped me in my hardest times. He is a protector, just like God. I can’t say anything more about my problem.

Satish Chandra (Spl CP, Vigilance): I don’t know anything about this man or his complaints. (On being reminded that Pratap was accused for extortion by him) In that case, you would have all the facts, I have no knowledge of it.

Shailja Chandra (Executive Director, National Population Stabilisation Fund): Since it happened six years back, I can’t recall anything about Pratap Singh, though I have a faint recollection about a complaint about farm house parties. But it’s important to highlight such cases to show how unnecessary complaints add to the burden of paper work of the officials. This should be discouraged.

Published in The Pioneer on February 1, 2009

Tragic tale of Shankars

Had the tsunami killed his daughter, Ravi would have been better off. But that was not so. His eight-year-old daughter Apurva was spotted at a relief camp but vanished from there just a few days before he located her. His son died in his arms but his wife survived. It has been four years since then, but not a day goes by when the couple does not pray and cry for their daughter. NIDHI MITTAL brings you their moving storyA cheerful dinner as usual, followed by bed time talks and struggle to put the kids to sleep in time. Things were just the same without any impression of the impending doom that was to haunt this family forever. Ravi Shankar had just woken up when his wife Mamta was preparing the bed tea in the adjoining kitchen. Still on his bed, he felt the ground underneath shake. His wife came out of the kitchen hurriedly. In a few seconds, yet another stronger jerk put the couple on their heels. Alarmed, they woke up their two children. Mamta picked up her year-old son in her arms, while Ravi held eight-year-old Apurva’s hand tightly. The family ran out and sat in the open space outside the house, watching other neighbours doing the same.Still groggy, the children looked around cluelessly. Everyone thought it was a earthquake and things will settle down in a while. Only till the time they saw a man running towards the herd of people shouting “paani aa raha hai, bhaago”. Ravi instantly took Apurva’s hand and climbed a high ramp. A strong tidal wave came and went back washing their feet. In a matter of minutes, the group saw another huge wave building up from a distance, speedily heading towards their side, breaking big coconut trees on its way like reed. Chaos ensued in the midst of which Ravi pushed his family into a truck loaded with tribals running for their lives.Ravi helped his family get in and asked Mamta and Apurva to hold on to the stead tightly. Apurva was on the other side of the truck. Ravi could see the gigantic wave coming like a monster to eat them up. And then it was all water and shouts.This was on December 26, 2004, the most unfortunate day for India when tsunami felled thousands of lives and families, leaving behind it unaccounted orphans.This is not an effort to bring back the terrible tales of sufferers of that natural disaster, but a father’s appeal to who ever can help bring his daughter back.Ravi, a sergeant with the Indian Air Force, and his wife have lived each day full of hopes to find their daughter Apurva and have seen the hope come down crashing at the end of each painful day. That fateful morning when the truck was washed away, everyone went haywire. Ravi didn’t know how to swim. It was a green bamboo log that stuck between his thighs and helped him float.After a few minutes, which seemed like ages, when the water receded, Ravi came up to the runway of the Air Force station in Car-Nicobar where he was posted then. But soon, another monster wave came with its mouth wide open and Ravi held tight to the fencing of the runway wall knowing that this time a log may not come to his help.Water receded again. “Nothing was the same. Everything had split apart, including our lives. I could not find my wife and children. While I was helping a woman, I saw Mamta coming from somewhere in my friend’s car carrying my son in her arms. We immediately took him to the doctor because he was not moving. There were two doctors on the island, one of whom was dead,” recalls Ravi.The doctor told the couple their son was dead, because of taking in excessive water. Doubting his judgement initially, they asked for the medical superintendent's opinion, who confirmed the death. Shattered, the immediate thought of the couple was to look for their daughter.Ravi searched every part of the island but could not trace Apurva. The relief operation then began and they were sent to Tambaram in Chennai where the couple spent three days and then headed for their home in Jamshedpur.“Apart from our grief of losing our son, we were uneasy throughout about our daughter. My wife and I refused to believe that she may be dead because we were hearing tales of people being traced days after the tsunami struck. At that time I heard of a spiritual leader Benny Hinn who had come visiting from a foreign country. I was told he could tell me where my daughter was,” says Ravi.Immediately, he set off for Bangalore where he could not meet the man because “he was busy with the big people like Ministers who frequently visited him for advice.” Not losing hope, Ravi went back to Car-Nicobar on January 25, 2005. But he could not stay there even for a single second. The horrifying sight of the island just a month back flashed before his eyes. “A sudden fear struck me. I came back in the same plane I had gone there,” says Ravi in a chocked voice.He then headed straight to Port Blair with his daughter’s photo where two more people in search of their children joined him. “Then I felt a little encouraged. Otherwise, wherever I went, no one was interested in my problem because everyone had lost someone or the other. These two men shared the same emotions, so it was a boost,” he says.Something at Port Blair rekindled hope in Ravi. At a relief camp, he met at least three people who told him that they had lived in a relief camp with his daughter. That was a big camp from where they had been sent to this one. Thanking God for this stroke of luck, Ravi rushed to the big relief camp but all he found there was gaping emptiness. People from that camp had been dispersed to several other smaller camps. With no clue about where to look for his daughter now, Ravi went back to the first camp which was run by spiritual master Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s followers.“While telling me that they had no idea where Apurva was, those people suggested that I join their ‘art of living’ classes which would calm me down. I looked at them in disbelief and disgust and came back without uttering another word. There I was dying to locate my missing daughter, and these frauds were telling me to join some stupid classes,” he says.Back to square one again, a helpless Ravi decided to return. He did not think of taking his case to higher authorities or registering it with IAF’s complaint department because he knew no one would come out to help him. “My friend Venkataraman, a senior sergeant, had also lost his son. He had all the proof that his son was alive. He wrote to everyone from the President of India to the IAF chief to police authorities, but no one helped him find his son,” says Ravi.Venkataraman’s 12-year-old son was tracked to the Nirmala School relief camp in Port Blair. When he reached there, the caretaker Phoolkumari told him that the child had been in her camp, but his maternal uncle had taken him away. She said they didn’t feel the need to note his address or check his credentials. Since that day, no one knows where the boy is.Ravi had joined duty at Car-Nicobar on June 16, 2004. His family joined him just a month-and-a-half before the tsunami struck on November 4, 2004. Mamta now curses the day they stepped on that fateful land, obviously ignoring the fact that the monstrous tsunami had hit many other land masses too.“My children had just started making friends and were getting used to the lifestyle there. Apurva is a reserved girl. She talks less and makes less friends,” she says with a worried look. Apurva was a shy eight-year-old who loved spending time alone with her mother at home and this is what worries Mamta the most. “I don’t know how she would be managing. She can’t even interact with people,” she says.Life has been no less than a hell for Ravi and Mamta since then. Knowing that their daughter has survived that deadly disaster and that they missed reaching her only by a few days, Ravi and Mamta have not spent a day without weeping and wishing the worst away from their missing daughter.However, hope keeps coming back to the aggrieved couple, leaving them more hurt everytime. Something similar happened, when in 2005 Ravi’s friend in Pune, Ms Grace, told his grievous story to Shashi Brother, a man with supernatural powers.“She asked Brother about my daughter and he said she is alive and will soon come back to us. He even described her precisely as if he could see her. He also told them what clothes she was wearing that night, which no one else except us know! After hearing all this I started believing in him,” says Ravi, adding that he has still not met the man but keeps talking to him on phone. Only a few days back Brother insisted that Apurva would return but admitted that he had no information about her whereabouts.Apart from emotional upheavals, the struggle for searching their daughter has cost them dear. Ravi visits Chennai almost every year to place advertisements for Apurva in leading newspapers “because someone suggested this was the best way to get to her if she was still in that State.”Placing an ad in top dailies like New Indian Express and Dinamani has cost Ravi Rs 12,000 per insert. Besides bearing the cost burden Ravi is also risking his job as, being in defence service, “people are not allowed to reveal their identity publicly in such a way”. Ravi was warned by Venkataraman who was issued a warning by the department for coming on news channels to appeal for his son.Keeping up with their struggle to find their daughter, the couple is doing everything to not remind them of their disaster. Ravi’s wife has taken up a job with the CSD canteen to keep herself engaged. The couple now also wants to have another child but has not been able to owing to medical complication emanating from emotional stress.Now posted in Delhi, the day starts for Ravi and Mamta with the thought of Apurva and tears in their eyes. “We don’t have many visitors. So, whenever the door or phone bell rings, it seems someone has finally located my daughter. I go running towards the door but nothing happens,” says Mamta with tears in her eyes.Gradually getting disillusioned with the entire system, Ravi, at times, wishes Apurva had died in that wave. “Sometimes I think it would have been better if she died and we found her body. At least we would know she is no more. Now that we know she is alive, we die each day wondering what could be happening to her. Shivers run down our spines thinking about the worse,” says Ravi in a choked voice.One of Ravi’s friends has put out an e-mail describing his case and asking everyone to keep forwarding it with hope that it may reach the right person some day. Though getting her back is what they want, a hapless Ravi wants to put out a request that he “at least wants to see her once.”Ravi Shankar’s mobile number is 9868763263. Foray got the story though one such e-mail.

Published in The Pioneer on February 15, 2009