Manifesto amnesia

The Telangana movement had a 60-year glorious history. It succeeded in achieving a separate political entity in 2014 after much drama. Even during the movement, many wise political analysts did caution about the kind of separate State that we will inherit, given the prevalent political culture of the protagonists.

Now, some eight months after the new government has come to power, there are several disturbing trends in the air. While the manifesto spoke of education health and basic needs of the people, when in power, the concentration seems to be entirely on identifying government lands, sale of government lands, and building sky-scrapers in the centre of the city. The government is targeting vacant land for acquisition wherever it finds it, whether the lush lung-space of a park or a hospital premises, even as it seeks to ‘regularise’ illegal occupations. And this is for no other noble purpose than to build Singapore style sky-scrapers (for unspecified purposes) and more administrative blocks.

The latest victim of this land obsession is the Chest Hospital in Erragadda, which the government of Telangana seeks to shift out of the city. Between the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) and the Chest Hospital in Erragadda, there is some 120 acres of land at stake. The IMH and the Chest Hospital are both teaching institutions offering much needed services to the below poverty line population from the districts of Telangana, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The location of the hospitals in Hyderabad makes them accessible to patients, medical students and the employees. Shifting the hospitals to remote a location, unconnected with efficient public transportation is extremely undesirable.

Both kinds of ailments (chest and TB and mental ailments) involve prolonged treatment and prolonged follow-ups where monthly visits are required for the patients and their kin. As it is, it is a difficult proposition for the families of the patients to make the effort to bring them to the hospitals regularly and complete the line of treatment. If the facilities are shifted to a more inaccessible location, the patients and their families will be the hardest hit by this decision.

Both chest and mental specialities do not have too many such hospitals in the state sector. These are a life-line for many grateful families, who had nothing but praise for the hospitals when a team comprising doctors, sociologists and academicians visited them.

The government, instead of displacing existing hospitals for a parade ground that will be used twice a year or for more administrative blocks, must retain the hospitals, strengthen them. If it so desires, it can create more new facilities in remote areas as well, making medical care accessible locally, but not by killing established hospitals.
A leading surgeon, Dr Raja Reddy, commented that there is no functioning government general hospital close to the newer extensions of the Hyderabad city beyond Erragadda area. If there is an accident or emergency in Kukatpally or Gatchibowli, the patients have to go all the way to either Gandhi Hospital or Osmania General Hospital, which can be a nightmare in the current traffic conditions.

The TB and Chest Hospital was a thriving general hospital till a few years back. And there is a need to revive the hospital as a general hospital that can play a similar role to that of Gandhi and Osmania hospitals, which are reeling under the burden of over-crowding.

In the popular cartoon Madagascar, a group of zoo-bred animal friends find themselves stranded on an island where they have to find their own food. The desperate, starving lion with its natural instincts awakened, begins to see only steaks whenever he looks at his good friend, the zebra, and begins to chase him.

The predicament of the politicians in power appears similar to this. After starving in the political wilderness for long, when they come to power, they begin to see only real estate and other opportunities in every situation and proceed to devour their friends, the voters.

Administration cannot be arbitrary in a democracy. A public hospital serving the needs of the people cannot be just displaced to accommodate a parade ground or an office. To build a hospital with the level of service that an established hospital is able to provide, takes years. What will be the fate of patients who depend on these facilities? Both the chest and mental specialities do not have too many such hospitals in the state sector.

Election manifestos promise health and education. The clarity of vision about governance to provide the largest number of people access to most basic needs gets clouded on the day the government is sworn in. Post election, the people are reduced to praying that at least the existing facilities remain intact, even if no strengthening of the old ones happens or no new facilities come up. Such is the fate of the largest democracy.

By: Padmaja Shaw