2 June 2012 Kerala Commentary
Rural health scams continue uncontrolled and top officials make millions.
P.S.Remesh Chandran.
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books,Trivandrum.
The state organizers of National Rural Health Mission live like kings with the money allotted from central government funds. It is widely believed that Accountant General’s branches in the states are not allowed to look into their accounts. We shall take the particular example of Kerala which has the highest rates of literacy and health standards. When this scheme was introduced, the initial amounts allotted were utilized not for creating infrastructures in villages but for purchasing scores of costly cars for the officers to travel. They were all air-conditioned cars. Why were non-a/c Maruti 800 cars not purchased? The first directive to have come from central government ought to have been limiting only one car to each district and limiting the purchasing price of one car to 3 lakhs rupees. Costly cars purchased should immediately be sold in auction and replaced with Maruti 800s. This would bring millions back for being diverted to the rural areas. Then the spree was for purchasing buildings. The health services departments in all Indian states have enough buildings and space in the districts and in the headquarters to house NRHM offices. It is also transparent to operate this scheme from health services premises. Why did government allow this spend thrift scheme to operate outside the main stream? Was it not to allow a new generation of officers to have enough freedom for corruption? The organizing and operating of the scheme should have been from the government secretariats. Every building taken by NRHM pays exorbitant rents and every building purchased cost far higher than market rates. Crores of rupees were pocketed by state organizers on this account. Does the government of India have this much money to spare? Is it not people’s money? Every building purchase and rental by NRHM officers should be investigated and illegally made money brought back to public exchequer. Now it has become something lucrative to be posted as an NRHM officer, just like postings to key check posts of the sales tax department. If the salaries the officers draw are looked into, we will not believe that they are serving the poor government of India. Each decides his own salary which is unbelievably higher than what are paid in equivalent posts in the state health services. Some argue that unless paid salaries commensurate with corporate standards, bright officers would not be available to lead NRHM. Why should we pay corporate salaries to a bunch corrupt to the core? There are brighter candidates to replace them at the state health department level salaries, at least in Kerala. Purchase of luxury cars, purchase and rental of buildings at exorbitant prices and rates and self-fixation and drawal of inconceivably high salaries in all states must be immediately investigated by the government of India and the state branches of the Accountant General assigned the charge of conducting their audits.
When someone steals a few millions from government treasury, causes his own exposure in this adventure and escapes into the safety of another promotion post, a few will admire him but the majority of the people will wonder who is ruling the country and if there is any law or policing there. Any sensible person will ask who that rogue is who is not suspended by the ministry even after having been prosecuted for corruption. Evidently he is one of the darlings of the department. What is the IAS Training Institute at Missouri doing? Why are they not calling back the hundreds of corrupt IAS officers? What commitment do they have towards the nation? Many people have the notion that educational qualifications, ability and skill are the determinants for selection and promotion in government services. This notion is held by more and more people nowadays, following the American government’s decision to recruit persons into their services more through telephonic interviews than through face to face interviews so that colour and beauty of applicants shall not influence selectors. The American government's decision is admirable in that selecting only the beautiful, protein-rich and fleshy ladies into services is now being effectively avoided and coloured people too, if with abilities, can get their rightful chances. It is an action which several nations and states in the world, some of them claiming to have achieved complete socialism and some claiming to be the largest democracy in the world have not been bold enough to imitate. We will think that this person, our government secretary, will be spending his life in jail or will be engaged in some other employment after serving his jail term, after a few years. Actually his protectors in the department, the community figure heads, by stalling the enquiery, will give him enough time and lee way to argue that the enquiery is belated, he has already been punished psychologically, that there is no evidence against him and that he should be retaken into service. With lightning speed, they will send him to some remote institution which is another trick employed by devious governments. They will wait for one or two years till the uproar over the issue silences, fabricate a reinstatement order, sent the favourite to some distant institution and simply write on his service record that he has rejoined duty. If one is skilled enough to steal millions from government, generous enough to share it and belongs to some upper caste, anything is possible in India. It is the benefit of being a darling of the department. Not one government official from the top most to the bottom will ever ask that most feared question: Why was the stolen money not recovered? State NRHM officers declined government direction to open websites and post expenditure details so that people can verify. C&AG’s auditing did not become effective. It is actually corruption money taking a full circle.
Flesh is something important and influential in government service. When a fleshy, protein-rich lady with sufficient curves and projections comes to work in an office, several changes in the seating arrangements and allotment of sections would be made there so as to sit her as lightly and cozily as the sex-starving officers would wish. Curvaceous flesh can move officers but not office files. It needs learned and dedicated officers and staff to move them. Flesh had been the selection criteria for recruiting staff to NRHM in all states. Second came relations. Third came recommendations. Right people with right qualifications were not even considered. If anyone has doubt, inspect all state level offices of NRHM and ask how and why only beautiful women came to be recruited as staff everywhere. Also inquire what ridiculous qualifications and certificates they possess. When they laugh, where they are willing, cheques are written for hundred thousands for non-existing projects, as if it is all that officers’ own private money. When months pass, the corruption becomes that of millions. A government steeped in corruption opened this goldmine of NRHM to appease IAS officers before they revolt against corruption. There was one story of a government secretary in Uttar Pradesh in North India who ate up millions from NRHM funds. Another health secretary in a southernmost state while holding office of NRHM insisted that he should be accompanied in his Delhi excursions by the most beautiful and curvaceous damsel working in the health department, to stay with him and to take part in his nightly rendezvous. When they returned to the state capital after a week, her salary was raised to 25000 rupees from 7000 rupees. That is how our money vested with NRHM authorities is burned out. A born sinner will never repent and even heaven will not touch that devil. A mad dog will not cure and that is why the world kills it. A person who is left at liberty to destroy the confidence citizens give to government and steel at will whatever government money is placed at his disposal will destroy human lives as well without hesitance or remorse. He leaves a trail of destruction behind him, his intolerance for having been exposed brutally expressing itself in causing him to destruct whatever solid human creations and relations comes his way. Some sinners, when they reach the tranquil abodes of saints and holy people will repent deeply and transform their minds into other configurations without their knowing, redeeming a part of humanity lost from them, but not our man! He is in his heart and blood a beast that wallows deep in the wormy pits of fleshly pleasures. One will wonder if this creation has a family of his own and why his wife and children did not enter anywhere in this story of corruption. Let us not further pain them, those pining human souls who on their way to eternity, though for a very short time, got entangled in the clutches of this wretched god-abandoned thing.
Following people’s resistance to horrible corruption in the National Rural Health Mission in almost all states in India, and also considering the demand for subjecting the accounts NRHM to auditing, the Government of India recently ordered that all NRHM in the states and in the centre will be from here onwards audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. But this organization has never acquiesced to this auditing. Is it they who are to decide whether their accounts should be audited or not? Which cheating book-keeper will happily ever consent to auditing by competent agencies? Government also directed that all state branches should host websites in which every expense should be posted daily for people’s auditing, along with every detail of staff engaged and their daily activities. Not one state branch has done this. They all now have websites but they show only the photographs of a few pompous officers, attending seminars, holding discussions or inaugurating buildings. The most recent activity of NRHM in many states is constructing buildings which we all know, is a very lucrative business indeed. There are Public Works Departments of government in all states who are proficient at doing such things. NRHM is not a construction company. We have the history of Kerala Health Research Welfare Society which was constituted in Kerala decades earlier, with the promise that very advanced research and development was going to happen in Kerala. The only thing they ever did was taking hold of health services’ land, constructing pay ward building in hospital campuses and fattening themselves by collecting cut-throat rent. The agreement was to return the government land and the buildings back to the health department after 20 years and this private-like enterprise, following the same economical and administrative freedom and agility like the NRHM never handed back the land and buildings even after 31 years. Will anyone believe that it is headed not by a medical director but by a regional engineer-like some kind of thing? This NRHM is modelled after this KHRWS as this milking cow of Kerala is known to all Indian politicians, Kerala for a long time having been far advanced in health standards, now though pushed back. NRHM is run with people’s money and if it is meant to serve rural India, let them be forced to leave the cities and go to the villages. There will soon be another National Urban Health Mission, which can be sure of. If we go inside and learn the operation of NRHM, we will wonder how hard the state organizers strive to expend the money allotted to them. Because they are unable to do so, they come up with the strangest of ideas to expend it. Is this what Central Government planning is? Spending money because there is money to spend! Isn’t it madness?