by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
By Nivedita Singh,
New Delhi : The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which took power in Delhi four years ago with a promise to build 1,000 Mohalla (neighbourhood) Clinics in the national capital, has managed to provide only 189 of the widely-praised clinics, blaming the central government for the slow pace of execution.
The Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinic (AAMC) project — the opening of primary healthcare centres to ensure free doctor consultations, tests and medicines to people — was one of the flagship schemes of the AAP for which the initial deadline was December 2016. But it was extended to March 2017 and the government failed to meet that target as well.
The tussle between the central and the Delhi governments has been blamed the most by the AAP for the delay in the construction of the clinics as the government lacked the power to take decisions until July 4, 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that Delhi’s Lt Governor was bound by the “aid and advice” of the Delhi government, bringing powers back to the AAP government.
The AAP, which came to power in February 2015, had a plan to have a clinic each — with a doctor, a pharmacist, a clinic assistant/multitasking worker — in a radius of five kilometres over a population of 10,000-15,000.
“Mohalla Clinics have been conceptualised as a mechanism to provide quality primary health care services accessible within the communities in Delhi at their doorstep. In the past three years, 164 clinics could be established. In just five months, 25 more clinics were opened. We can, for sure, say that the court ruling has given momentum to the work,” an official told IANS on the condition of anonymity.
The official said the tender to build 300 additional clinics had been finalised after land was identified. “The construction work is going on in full swing.”
“Identification and finalisation of land have been a major issue (as the subject of land is not under the Delhi government). Acquiring land takes most of the time… The other agencies are not very keen in giving us the land for clinics. As soon as we identify and finalise the land, construction is initiated.”
The PWD is given six months to build the clinic while three months time is assigned to ensure electricity and water supply along with posting of the staff — a doctor, a pharmacist and a multi-tasker worker.
The setting up of clinics has been envisaged in the form of a Pre-Engineered Insulated Box Type Re-located Structure which are to be manufactured and installed through PWD.
The clinics, functional from 8.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. on all days except Sundays, provide services like basic medical care based on standard treatment protocols which include curative care for common illnesses like fever, diarrhoea, skin problems, respiratory problems, first aid for injuries and burns, dressing and management of minor wounds and referral services.
While medicines are provided free of cost to the patients as per the essential drug list, the lab investigations were carried out by the empanelled laboratories. Officials said a total of 214 tests can be done for free through the clinics.
Along with providing health-related information, education and awareness, the clinics also provide preventive services such as antenatal and postnatal care of pregnant women, assessment of nutritional status and counselling and a preventive and promotive component of National/State Health Programmes.
The Mohalla Clinic project has been widely praised, including by the late Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Minister and a former Director-General of World Health Organisation.
Another former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, along with Brundtland visited some clinics last year and were “deeply impressed” by it.
The Delhi government was providing health care services through primary, secondary and tertiary facilities out of which the primary care is delivered through dispensaries, secondary health care through multi-speciality hospitals and tertiary health care services through super-speciality hospitals.
After the AAP came to power, in order to fill the gaps in services, there has been a paradigm shift in reorganising health care services.
Now the Delhi government provides a four-tier health care delivery system, with Mohalla Clinics for primary health care, multi-speciality poly-clinics for secondary health care in the form of OPD consultation by specialist doctors including diagnostics, multi-speciality Hospitals for IPD care (earlier called secondary level hospital) and super-speciality hospitals (earlier called tertiary level hospital).
The health services also cater to people from neighbouring states.
The government is also planning school clinics, to be started on the lines of the Mohalla Clinic.
“The school clinics will be started in Delhi government schools with an aim to improve the health and nutrition of the students. Locations of 265 School Clinics have been finalised,” another officer said.
The government has also proposed 94 additional polyclinics, apart from 25 functional ones in the city. “These will act as a satellite centre for outdoor specialised medical treatment centres,” the official said.
(Nivedita Singh can be contacted at nivedita.singh@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Lucknow : BSP chief Mayawati on Tuesday marked her 63rd birthday with a fulsome attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of betraying the people on promises made in 2014 and the BJP of dividing people in the name of caste and religion and said the people would vote them out in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
Three days after her party tied up with the Samajwadi Party for the Lok Sabha battle, she addressed a press conference again and said the alliance was giving the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and others “sleepless nights”.
“Modi is doing a number of rallies at many places. He is again making a number of false promises to the people like his earlier promises. And these promises will also be shelved,” she said.
Accusing the government of betraying the people, she said: “The government failed to fulfil its promise to farmers, students and others. They promised to bring back black money, they promised to put Rs 15 lakh in every bank account.”
Demanding that Muslims be also given 10 per cent reservation on the basis of their economic condition, she said, “The Modi government brought the 10 per cent reservation to the economically weaker sections of the upper caste in view of the elections. But our party supports the bill.
“But we want that the Muslims should also be given 10 per cent reservation on the same basis,” she said.
Targeting the BJP and Rastriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the four-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said: “They in the name of religion are not only doing wrong politics but now they have started doing politics on the caste of gods and creating communal divide for political gains.”
She accused Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of doing politics over Friday prayers by Muslims.
She alleged that the government was using religion based identities to alienate masses from one another.
Talking about the alliance of BSP and SP in the state, she said: “This year my birthday has come at a time when the Lok Sabha elections are very near. And keeping the polls in mind, my party has formed the alliance with the SP which has given sleepless nights to the BJP and also others.”
She accused the Centre of using the institutions like CBI to harass its political opponents.
“The best example is of Akhilesh Yadav, and such an act by the government is condemnable and unfortunate. It is a political conspiracy.”
On January 12, Mayawati and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav announced that the they will contest the coming Lok Sabha polls together in Uttar Pradesh sharing 38 seats each of the 80 in the state, while not putting up candidates in Rae Bareli and Amethi, the constituencies of Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
The Congress has otherwise been kept out of the alliance.
The Bahujan Samaj Party supremo also said that it was Uttar Pradesh that decides which party would form the government at the Centre. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and its allies had won 73 seats.
Appealing to the party workers to vote for the alliance and forget earlier differences, she said: “To make this alliance a success, I appeal to all the workers of the SP and BSP to forget past differences and work for the victory of both parties’ candidates. This would be the biggest gift on my birthday.”
She also warned the party workers that the BJP was capable of spreading confusion and rumours and urged them to remain alert.
Slamming both the Centre and the Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, she said the BJP had lost support of the people of the state as they did not fulfil promises made in 2014.
Batting for a complete farm loan waiver of farmers, she said it would have been beneficial to the farmers of the country if the Modi government had implemented the Swmainathan Commission’s recommendations regarding the agriculture sector.
“The ground reality of the agrarian dimension is that small farmers still continue to opt for private money lenders and loans from private banks as there is no structured government policy of waiving their debt.
“The government should give 100 per cent farm loan waiver. Else farmer suicides will continue. A strong farm loan waiver policy should be made,” she said.
Mocking at the Congress’s farm loan waivers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, she said the Congress government announced to waive farm loans till March 31, 2018 after it came to power on December 17, 2018.
The BSP leader blamed the BJP and Congress governments for corruption since Independence.
“Due to corruption, the farmers, Dalits and tribals did not get opportunity to progress. And thus we had to form the BSP after getting disillusioned,” she added.
At the event, Mayawati released the 14th edition of her “Blue Book”, which details her struggles as the BSP leader.
She also wished Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple, an MP from Kannauj, on her birthday which also falls on Tuesday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
By Amulya Ganguli,
Just as Narendra Modi mocked the Congress on the rural employment scheme by saying that it was a living example — “jeeta jagta smarak” — of the party’s failures, the parliamentary approval of a 10 per cent quota for the economically weaker sections under the government’s aegis underlined its inadequacies on the economic front.
Had the economy been booming and there were jobs aplenty, there would have been no need for providing the crutches of reservations for another group in addition to the existing provisions for the scheduled castes (Dalits), scheduled tribes (Adivasis) and the Other Backward Castes (OBCs).
It was the perceived discontent over the absence of employment opportunities which made the government identify an additional 10 per cent of the population for affirmative action.
It may have felt that the initiative was all the more necessary because the popular angst over a moribund economy had found expression in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) recent electoral defeats in as many as five states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram.
The BJP’s earlier failure to cross the halfway mark in Karnataka must have also been seen by the party along with the latest setbacks as a warning sign in the months before the next general election.
Moreover, the defeats in the heartland states were attributed to the disquiet among the middle and upper classes over not only the BJP’s economic policies, but its social stance as well in the context of its hesitancy to effectively counter the judicial relook at the law on atrocities affecting the Dalits and Adivasis, which annoyed the middle and upper classes/castes.
The latest set of quotas, therefore, are aimed both to assure the new beneficiaries about jobs and education and to reaffirm the party’s long-established brahmin-bania bias.
The twin objectives are unlikely to have an easy run. For one, by exceeding the judicial stipulation about a 50 per cent limit on reservations by introducing the new quotas, the government courts the risk of running into legal difficulties.
For another, in its attempt to woo the middle and upper castes, the BJP may open the gates for the quota warriors to create mayhem with various demands. Already, an OBC leader has called for doubling the quota for his community from 27 per cent to 54 to bring it closer to his estimate of the actual number of OBCs in the country.
For a third, the BJP’s pro-upper caste tilt can alienate the Dalits, Adivasis and the OBCs to the electoral advantage of the party’s opponents, especially in the Hindi heartland.
At the same time, the few “forwards” in these parties of the backward castes can move towards the BJP, compounding the confusion created by the reappearance of the caste-based “Mandal politics” of the 1990s.
But how will this divisive brand of caste mobilisation play out in the new era of economic aspirations? In the 1990s, the promise of assured jobs was deemed enough for the caste-based outfits to reap electoral benefits, sidelining the Congress and compelling the BJP to turn to the temple issue to keep its Hindu flock together.
But, now, the provision of quotas will mean little in the absence of jobs, as Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari recently told the Marathis demanding reservations.
The BJP will have to contend, therefore, not only with the legal hurdle relating to the quantum of quotas, but also the charge of making promises in a vacuum, as it were, since the expectations of the unemployed are unlikely to be fulfilled.
But these are not the only criticisms which it will face. No less strident, especially among the middle and upper classes, will be the charge that the BJP is turning its back on the economic reforms unlike the period immediately before the last general election and for a few years afterwards when it was seen to be in the forefront of the private sector-led rejuvenation of the economy.
Now that Union Minister for Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan has called for bringing the private sector within the ambit of the quota system, the feeling may grow that the BJP will have no option but to follow this regressive advice since the government and the public sector will not be able to provide enough jobs for the needy.
Since the Congress, too, had called for reservations in the private sector in 2003 and has not formally dissociated itself from the party’s 1955 pledge to usher in a “socialistic pattern of society”, it can be assumed that the Indian political class will not hesitate to move backwards towards a licence-permit-control raj.
The fact that the new law on quotas was passed almost unanimously in the two House of Parliament with only a few courageous MPs showing that they still live in the 21st century is evidence that the political class across the spectrum not only believes in a controlled economy, but also has no time for meritocracy.
To them, all that matters is cynically favouring their respective caste- and community-based vote banks through quotas and the strangulation of a free market since investments will dry up in such a society.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
By M. Burhanuddin Qasmi,
The strategic partnership of Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in UP is very crucial in the run to 2019 general election in India. The Indian National Congress should have been taken on board but its arrogance, as seen in recent past during Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan elections, might be among the reasons to keep it out. However, with or without Congress, the outcome in UP for the alliance is not going to be much deferent in the post election.
Following 2014 election it was proven unmistakably that in UP, precisely, votes division among SP, BSP and (at a few places) Congress caused BJP’s sweep. The colourful Modi baloon that was on air in 2014 is no more entertaining for many NaMo fans. The SP-BSP duo will be in better position to check the mad-horse ride of BJP in UP this time.
The political chemistry in whole of India is not same and it cannot be the same. Kerala, Telengana and Assam are arithmetically somehow similar for Muslims in India. They should try to consolidate more power in these states. It will be in Congress’s interest, nationally, to club with AIUML and AIUDF in Karela and Assam as pre-election partners.
Muslim leaderships with small parties in UP and Bihar could not create their own support bases and failed to take wise decisions at right times. Without a visible foothold on ground no political party can claim shares in the real political game. Thus protecting constitutional interests and future dignity of Muslims in India should be the soul objective of voters in UP and Bihar.
Muslims should favour SP-BSP in UP and RJD-Congress in Bihar without slightest doubt in minds. The alliance parties in both the states should, however, ensure adequate representations of the community within their respective parties while distributing tickets. UP and Bihar will pull the king down in 2019 unlike past, when these states had been the king makers.
West Bengal, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka may throw unexpected results as was seen following Tripura assembly election last year. There are hopes for BJP to make some gains. Muslim, Dalit and ST voters can play smart with EVMs. These states are going to be the swing states in 2019 elections and these may also heavily influence the overall outcome by the end.
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Chattisgar, Assam, Haryana and Punjab will offer better chances for the Congress. These states will decide either Rahul Gandhi will be an option for the post of Prime Minister following 2019 counting day or not.
At this point of time, it is useless to speak about any Muslim-led political party beyond Assam, Karela and Hyderabad unless a Waisi, Ajmal or Abu Asim is visibly present somewhere. Those Muslims who are harbouring political aspirations in their hearts should nourish themselves politically mature and grow their persons as capable players within Indian complex polity before jumping in the ring unwisely.
Undoubtedly, there is a scarcity of genuine Muslim leadership in India, those available are very very few or are very limited in appeal. To begin with in politics, especially for a new party or even for an individual, it is always better to contest Panchayat or Corporation elections, then Assembly and then Lok Sabha. A reverse of this order is a bad idea and those who advise to try it, are simply amateur and emotional lots.
Defeating NDA should be a clear terget this time by all Indians. Unity of India and communal harmony among its citizens are some of the laud calls to respond by all en masse. Indian Muslims must not get confused by excited slogans from unseasoned politicians. Be it driven by extra-nationalist zeel of some or victimhood mind set of others, application of minds on individual level will the wise way for voters. Muslims have been, of course, always in the receiving end but have been, on the other hand, surviving with some dignity and basic safety since post partition India.
This on going five years – post 2014, clearly proved that if they do not make mature decisions in politics now, they may even be like Muslims in Israel, Borma or China. If a Muslim leader is not ready to understand or read this clear writings on wall, then he or she is either naive, vested interest or senseless tool and such people should be rejected outright by all.
——
(The author MB Qasmi is editor of Eastern Crescent and director of Markazul Ma’arif Education and Research Centre, Mumbai.)
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
SDPI National general secretary Abdul Majeed
By Pervez Bari, Maeeshat.in,
Bhopal: The Social Democratic Party of India, (SDPI), has described the 106th Indian National Science Congress, held at Phagwara in Jalandhar, Punjab recently, as the theatre of the absurd. It can also be correctly said “Indian Science Circus”, the party said.
SDPI national general secretary Abdul Majeed in a statement said that Indian Science Congress is nothing but a Mela (fair) if not a Circus as a Scientist noted. It is high time it is closed and a new organisation purely Scientific is formed with least interference from Government.
Abdul Majeed said the atrocious claim made by Andhra University VC Nageswara Rao at the Indian National Science Congress that the Kauravas of Mahabharata were born out of stem cell research and test tube fertilisation process and that Raavana had more than 24 types of aircraft, the Pushpaka Vimana just one among them, has left the scientific community stunned.
Abdul Majeed sad that in one fell swoop, AU’s VC, Mr. Nageswara Rao has outdone Narendra Modi who once claimed that India was advanced in years of yore that Indian scientists transplanted an elephant’s head on a human body which happens to be lord Ganesh worshipped by Hindus. He has also pulled ahead of Home Minister and physics Lecturer Rajnath Singh who is also renowned for such preposterous statements as: Heisenberg Uncertainty principle is based on Vedas. So, VC Nageswara Rao is in good company!
He has hailed the joint letter signed by 37 distinguished science academics and communicators who were appalled by such statements against the “unscientific claims” made at the Indian Science Congress this year. The letter was sent to the general president of the Indian Science Congress Association expressing their deep shock and agony that false claims, based on confusing episodes in mythology as science. They lamented that scientific presentations made to the Children Science Congress wherein such claims tarnish the image of Indian science globally, and also undermine the credibility of the genuine contributions of the great science personalities of yore, that too, in front of young and impressionable minds.
He said that a Vice Chancellor talking like this in a Science Congress is absolutely ludicrous. Who let this clown mix mythology with Science? There are lots of great Scientists in India and allowing this type of non-scientific nonsense is just horrible. The problem is with people like the AU’s VC who hold positions of responsibility and influence, but whose beliefs are blinded with their passion for upholding Hindu mythology and asserting the fantastical bits as highly advanced scientific achievements of the ancients. The pity is that the numbers of such naive, irrational and unintelligent individuals seem to growing rapidly.
He said if this opinion had been expressed by a peon of the Andhra University, it would have been lamentable but perhaps excusable. If the VC of a university holds and expresses such an opinion-and that too at the meeting of a science conference–there is no hope for higher education, no hope for science or technology in India. It raises serious questions–who appointed him as the VC? On what basis are VCs appointed at a University?
Abdul Majeed suggested he Indian Science Congress should seriously evaluate the speakers who it invites to speak at its meetings. It should not become a laughing stock of Indian academia. Pity the students of Andhra University who will have his signature on their diplomas.
