India @ 70 - Part 1

With yet another Independence Day celebration on August 15, 2017, India and the Indians were jubilant over the typical hash tag - India at 70. Nationalists were all in for the praise of the present government, while the liberals were causing all the hue and cry around the misses and messes in the political scenario.

But in the whole turn, the nation seems to have forgotten the incident of August 11, 2017 when almost 70 new borns went to definite permanent sleep in the State of Uttar Pradesh.  When we look at the question why?, the obvious answer from any government agency, minister or legislature would be lack of oxygen cylinder supply.  Liberals would target government over it and the government would highlight the failures of the previous government in setting up the right process.  In short, the actual cause for the case would get overshadowed with blames and counter blames.  But, what needs to be looked at the bureaucratic approach that caused the acute shortage of life saving supply to a Government Hospital. 

The Supplier agency was sending reminder alerts to the hospital for delayed unpaid invoices, but no one was there in the bureaucratic chain to heed to those alerts. In the mean time the contract of the supplier gets over and he stops supply of the Oxygen Cylinders, so that makes it much grave a situation than it could have been.  Ultimately the impact was on the lives of those who were to still see the world, they rather saw the cruelty way ahead of the time they could have.  They became the posthumous witness of the entire episode. Many of them leaving the world without may be getting a name by which we shall have said the prayers for their souls to attain the peace.

But, is this the first such case in the Medical Industry in India?  Is this the only case that has been reported and has made some splash in the political corridors as well as media?  The answer probably is Yes, because in recent times this is the most grievous incident that we have witnessed.  But going back in the history of Indian Government Medical History, there are probably more that should teach us a lesson or two:

1. Case of the medicine supply where the doctor in charge goes missing after being identified as the culprit and master mind behind the nexus that diverted hospital supplies to private nursing homes and pharmacists. He is declared dead, but the nexus created by him was still being run that certainly he controlled from his abode away from where the cops would have looked for him.  With adequate political backing by the then ruling government, he was well covered, but finally gets caught  and sentenced - Case from Uttar Pradesh
2. Case of counterfeit / fake drugs being supplied to the Government hospitals by the suppliers while diverting the original to the pharmacists at lower prices and make mullah on both ends.  high profile government officials as well as politicians involved in the racket - Case from multiple states in India, Specifically to highlight - Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa & Maharashtra. Modus Operandi is so neat that only the middle man are caught and then the case gets into the cold basket with no headway.  This still happens and the common man suffers.
3. Case of multiple murders across India for opposing the above practices; culprit gets off as only the offender gets caught and gets a max punishment of Life imprisonment (14 or 20 years). In many cases, the offender gets out way ahead and lives a normal life.  Forget the justice for the political backing for the main culprits and the offenders.

So, if we look at the state of Affairs in the Medical Arena, there is a lot of corruption that has marred the medical supply affair.  What is needed is to clean this malpractice and uproot the corruption in the medical supply chain model.  Unless Government, Media and the public acts to end it, India @ 70 would still be immature Baby rather than a grown up nation.

Demonetization - Perspective of a Banker

Note: This is not my original post, but when I read it on a Facebook Page - Humans of Bombay, I couldn't stop copying and Pasting it here. Kudos to The team on that Page to have brought it out on Facebook and the entire Credit is Due to them, not me. Please Read On -
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“I’m the manager at a bank. On 8th November, I was working a bit late when my husband called me and said, ‘how did you not tell me that 500 and 1000 Rupee notes are getting scraped’ and I was shell shocked. None of us had any idea what was going on…we just knew it was huge. So we went into work the next day, preparing for the days to come but no amount of preparation could fully prepare us for what was coming.

People’s view of the whole situation was limited to the lines they saw outside the bank, but what was happening behind closed doors was entirely different. We became a part of the dirty cycle that runs in this country. On one end there were chaiwallas, istriwallas who are queuing up to deposit their hard earned money but on the other end we're receiving black money that had been stashed away for years possibly and all this cash smells like rotten leather to the point where every one of our branches has ordered masks for the cashiers — that’s how unbearable the stench became! From fights breaking out and the police intervening to educated people storming our offices and violently asking us for money — we’ve dealt with it all. 

Just the other day a builder who’s had an account with us for many years, came forward to finally pay us an amount that he had defaulted on a Non Performing Asset. When we had chased him for months to pay up, he had defaulted but all of a sudden he came forward! He has over 300 crores in black money, but before this he claimed to have none at all — that’s how dirty the business is. 

Don’t get me wrong, i’m not complaining about what has happened — it’s a revolutionary move that will only strengthen our country and I completely understand what the common man is going through as well, but what can we possibly do? There’s only so much cash we have, and only so many people who can attend to such a large population. 

What’s ridiculous is how people are behaving— they’re treating us so badly. Just 4 hours ago I received a call from a man from a place called Nanded who screamed at me non-stop. He went on yelling, blaming me, cursing in Marathi and I’m sitting there just wondering what I could possibly do and we’ve received dozens of such calls each day. Not just that, but the threats have also come. We get calls from people who are politically endowed and threaten to ‘send media to expose us’ or to ‘create a scene’ if we don’t move money — I mean when will we learn? We’re bankers — there’s only so much we can do! We’ve hardly slept these past few days, we’re not taking any weekends off…in fact most of us haven’t even exchanged our own 500 Rupee notes because we’re trying to help others first. 

Our banks are losing money on interest and there’s already enough chaos…do we really need to add to it? We’re all in the same situation, we just need to sit tight and understand that steps are being taken to aid the process — this is for the future of our country and the least we can all do at a time like this is have patience and believe that everything will stabilise soon. And for heaven’s sake, stop trying to use more corrupt methods to get out of an already corrupt situation…we don’t need any more of it!”