I WOULD NOT LIKE TO FALL SICK

The Health Minister Mr Harish Rao was apparently dissatisfied with the poor services available at the AIIMS, Bibinagar. Really, Mr Rao? He talks as if the facilities available in the government hospitals run in Hyderabad are top class. I shudder to think of the government facilities elsewhere. Sometime ago the state government wanted more people to go to government hospitals. Even I would like to go to a government hospital considering how much a private hospital charges. But one visit and that is enough for you to sell your soul to the insurance companies. 

He talks about AIIMS with such a chip on his shoulder because it is a Centre run project. He could have had that right if the state government run hospitals were run tickety boo. with efficiency, cleanliness, doctors on call, clean toilets available for doctors and patients, That is not the case is it? 

Did you guys know that the minister's permission is needed to hire a sweeper in the government hospital and the job is so coveted that there is no sweeper in some of the government run hospitals. Skeletons, used for the study of the human body by students of medicine are available at Rs. 30,000, but the bills passed are for Rs. 30 lakhs and more. Doctors and nurses have trained themselves to control their bladder long enough and so do not care that there is no clean toilet facility available in the hospital. Let us not discuss the fate of the patients then.

The current government colleges can go to the dogs with no infrastructure whatsoever and the state government has been sanctioned a few more colleges. There are no ready buildings available at many of the centres where medical colleges have been announced. A foundation stone or two have been laid and the professors who have been appointed have to either commute from Hyderabad everyday or take up room in these back of boondocks places and hope for the best. 

I would have doffed my hat both to the health minister and the easy-on-the-eye and smooth talking K T Rama Rao if they could have convinced one builder or one foreign company to set up a unit in one of the districts. 

If anyone were to step into Hyderabad and look at the multi-storeyed buildings, it would lead the innocent soul to believe that infrastructure in Telangana is on the growth. But like all CMs make mistakes, costing them their post for a lifetime, the focus on infrastructure is only in Hyderabad. Small green patches, fancy fountains at roundabouts, a so-called cycling patch somewhere, some greenery on the central median of all roads and the common citizen is led to believe that the CM and his family (they run the government after all) and the so-called state government cares for its citizens.

Meanwhile they are snatching huge swathes of land and handing it to their favourite builders for some more glass covered tall structures. While My Home was the talk of the town earlier, he is in the dog house and a persona non grata. 

Now with the revoking of GO 111, the 84 villages with get tall structures at the cost of Himayath Sagar and Gandipet. And the order was revoked because the poor people in these villages wanted development and progress and the government succumbed to their demand. Do you see a pattern here? We will soon be held at ransom by contractors for they will rule the roost. They will fund the next elections and will have all politicians in their pockets. I am not saying anything out of order. This is the way politicians are kept in power and this is the way governments are run. 

If KTR were a sensible man, he should hard sell the other smaller towns as locations for these big companies so that there is a semblance of equitable growth. If Hyderabad is to grow like this, old timers, retired persons and the less enamoured of the city life will have to leave or stay in a cocoon so as not to feel the isolating impact. 

Oh, but I was talking of medical facilities run by the government. More than 20 medical colleges have been sanctioned to Telangana. There is no infrastructure at all and professors have been appointed and they are commuting to far off places on a daily basis, though the smart ones have set up home there. They are not teaching any students there because there is no infrastructure and they sit in an old dilapidated government hospital with one toilet which is unusable. 

These are all senior professors and a few doctors who are running this place and they do not get a clean toilet. Considering there are no rooms to start classes, it would be too much to ask for hostel facilities for the appointed staff, who commute everyday. There are some who are familiar with the way the government works and attend when there is an inspection. Of what, I am wondering. 

Please understand that the students graduating from these colleges will become our future doctors, who will charge you an arm and a leg at his/her private clinic for he really does not care to work for the government hospital. The one who is attending and catering to the general public is probably the pavam kinds who cannot afford to set up his/her own clinic. 

When our basic infrastructure, like government schools and colleges, government hospitals are questionable, why would I feel good about the state government? Should I truly be impressed by the swank roads leading to the glass structures in the Cyber City, while the inner roads are still death traps when the rains come? One strong gust of wind with a bit of a storm and Hyderabad was gasping for breath. There was not a peep from both father and son, the former preparing for his Bharat Yatra and the latter preparing to go sell some more of Hyderabad land to foreign investors at Davos.

And because of this cloistered growth that is Hyderabad, there are frequent traffic jams, caused more by VIPs than anyone else, I think. And to ease the traffic jams, the only solution the brilliant duo thought of was to build a tunnel under the only green space in part of the Hyderabad region. Incidentally I am wondering what the Nizam is doing, not making any comments on the goings on about a tunnel under his palace and so on. 

Deccan Plateau rocks are being pulverized in the very presence of activists who are vocal but have no teeth. But this is bound to happen when you have a brutal majority along with a killer instinct to kill everything that is people oriented or towards the benefit of the future generation. I would suggest that we all should tend to more potted plants and breathe in that oxygen, because soon there will only be more bridges, six-lane roads and high rises.