A rising power is not only about FDI. It is equally about improving the standards of health and sanitation services. Improving those services is not only about spending more and seeing the money disappear
It’s amazing how the self-appointed ‘national media’, a clutch of newspapers and news channels based in the National Capital Region, wakes up to grim realities of India’s extremely ugly underbelly only when life in New Delhi and its suburbs is disrupted. Had the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya (the latter a new addition to the national capital city’s health woes) not taken a frightful form, laying low the chattering classes and the toiling masses with equal viciousness, similar affliction elsewhere in the nation would have gone unnoticed in our so-called national media.
An instance comes to mind. Some years ago, there was a crippling outbreak of chikungunya in Kerala. Hundreds if not thousands of people were struck by this debilitating mosquito-borne disease. Those days The Pioneer had an edition published from Kochi and VR Jayaraj, who still reports for the paper, travelled far and wide to do some excellent stories that exposed the rickety public health services of Kerala, a State that has ostensibly achieved nirvana in the realm of social development.
Some of the stories found space in the main edition of the paper. Strangely, no other newspaper or news channel picked up the story. It would be easy, and intellectually lazy, to blame that neglect on the tyranny of distance — every media house claiming to be ‘national’ had multiple reporters in Kerala. Editors were simply not bothered because the chikungunya bug was not burrowing into their bodies, or those of their relatives and friends, to play havoc. Now that they are at the receiving end, it’s ‘national news’ and an issue of great import.
But there’s more to the story than is unfolding in filth-ridden Delhi that increasingly looks worse than a garbage-strewn upcountry kasba. It appears the outbreak of dengue is severe in West Bengal. Other States, too, have witnessed a spurt in post-monsoon communicable diseases. For instance, the killer encephalitis bug is back in eastern Uttar Pradesh, claiming its annual toll of lives, especially of children who are the most vulnerable. Malaria, that prompted the discovery of tonic water, remains hale and hearty too.
All this and more find no mention in our sanctimonious ‘national media’; television screens are not darkened to draw attention to the darkness that prevails on the public health and sanitation front. We could argue that health is a State issue and thus no concern of the ‘national media’. Yet that would be dishonest, if not outright stupid. Here’s why.
Everybody went to town with the pitiful story of Dana Majhi, a tribal in western Odisha’s poverty-afflicted Kalahandi, carrying the dead body of his wife as the hospital where she died reportedly did not provide a vehicle to him. Dana Majhi’s story deserved to be told as widely as possible, if only to shame health department and district administration officials whose callous ways remain unreformed.
I recall visiting Kalahandi in the mid-1990s after starvation deaths were reported from Odisha’s black pot, though not for the first time. A couple of days before I reached Kalahandi, an old woman was found in her hut, dead for days. Ants had feasted on her eyeballs and the photographs that were shown to me by a local journalist told a gut-wrenching story. later that day I met the District Magistrate, a nattily dressed man whose brown leather spats, I distinctly remember, stood out in the bleakness all around. “There have been no starvation deaths... These are all cooked up stories”, he told me. What then are these deaths, I asked. “Oh these are deaths caused by organ failure”, he airily replied. Further conversation was impossible, so I left.
But I digress; let’s return to Dana Majhi’s story. Every media house reported the story and highlighted the plight of a man too marginalised to confront authority and extract his due: Dignity. But nobody highlighted, though it was mentioned in passing, that Dana Majhi’s wife had died of tuberculosis, an easily preventable and definitely curable disease. His first wife, too, had died of TB, according to some reports.
The abysmal failure to root out a disease that has plagued us for centuries although modern science, affordable and accessible, makes that possible, is an indicator of India’s gargantuan failure on the public health front. The same point could be made about malaria,kala azar, encephalitis and a host of vector-borne diseases. Sri lanka, with a minute fraction of India’s resources, has achieved the seemingly impossible by stamping out malaria.
This is not to minimise the little we have achieved, but to underscore the larger failure. Polio has been successfully eradicated through an innovative programme. Before that, small pox was eradicated. Mass outbreak of cholera is not heard of any more. The question naturally arises: If all that could be done, why can’t more be doneIJ Is it lack of fundsIJ Is it the absence of political leadershipIJ Is it bureaucratic lethargyIJ Are people to blameIJ Is the pharma mafia reluctant to see ‘Third World’ diseases eradicatedIJ Or is it plain kismetIJ
It’s likely a cocktail of these and other reasons. Delhi showcases all that is wrong with the public health and sanitation sector. Hospitals are administered by both the State Government and the Union Government. Funds are finite and largely spent on administrative expenses. Demand outpaces supply by miles. Private hospitals are seen as enemies of the public. Multiple authorities clash and confront one another with no benefits flowing to the people.
Yes, the Delhi Government, such as it is, has more or less abdicated responsibility. But should all blame go to the Aam Aadmi PartyIJ Shouldn’t accountability be fixed on the BJP-run municipalities for failing to do even the barest minimum in keeping the city clean of festering piles of garbageIJ It’s a telling story that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachch Bharat Mission has been reduced to a mocking farce at his doorstep. Not by the AAP but by his own party’s civic councillors and the seven MPs and three MlAs who have been found missing in action when Delhi needed them most. Passing the parcel is neither good politics nor good optics. The Delhi hospitals run by the Union Government could have played a far more pro-active role. They did not.
There is no percentage in fobbing off the plight of the people by pointing out health is a State subject and the Union Government can do only that much. Health and sanitation were a State subject when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched his war on polio. Harsh Vardhan was a Minister in the Delhi Government. That did not impede the programme. Indeed, the anti-polio campaign remains a shining example of turning adversity into opportunity through farsight and multi-agency cooperation.
India desperately needs an over-arching health policy for the 21st century, not grand assertions and announcements of piece-meal programmes. It needs a pro-active Minister for Health at the Centre who looks beyond routine advisories and can motivate his or her counterparts in the States, a leader who can lead a national movement. Harsh Vardhan should not have been given the task of monitoring rainfall; his record and abilities deserved far greater recognition. The Prime Minister can inspire, but to expect him to lead from the front is unfair.
Similarly, Swachch Bharat Mission has to be more than bogus statistics cooked up by babus to prove things are happening. They are not. Once again, Delhi showcases failure on this front too: A recent report documents how, despite funds being provided, municipalities have failed to build toilets. The shining successes of Swachch Bharat are the cleaning of Varanasi’s ghats and Versova’s beach. Both were undertaken by volunteers with no role played by municipal or Government agencies. So what are we paying Swachch Bharat cess forIJ
A rising power is not only about FDI and growth and industry. It is equally about improving the standards of health and sanitation services. And improving those services is not only about spending more and seeing the money disappear into the black hole of administrative sloth and corruption. It is about imagination and leadership. Surat, once the plague city of India, is now a model of public health and sanitation. If Gujarat could do it, surely so can IndiaIJ Nobody knows this better than Modi. Congress-mukt Bharat has been done with. Can we now move on to vyadhi-mukt Bharat, disease-free IndiaIJ
(The writer is commissioning editor and commentator at ABP News TV)
