Why politicians won’t construct rural hospitals

Have you ever wondered why so many of our nearly 800 MPs and 4000+ MLAs from rural constituencies rush to establish educational trusts but show no interest in addressing the crying need for rural hospitals?

This leads to the bigger question: Given the pressing need for decent rural hospitals, is it not appropriate that well-established politicians use their mass mobilisation and networking abilities for this cause?

Practically every prominent politician in the country has an educational trust to his name which is almost always in expansion mode. Starting with Arts, Science and Commerce colleges, they grow on to add institutes in high-demand segments like engineering, medicine, pharmacy, IT and now, biotechnology.
Since these trusts have charitable objectives, they receive numerous government concessions, financial grants and tax waivers. The biggest of these are large tracts of land at throwaway prices on practically indefinite lease.

Consider some recent examples: Maharashtra minister Narayan Rane’s close relatives run the Mumbai-based Dnyaneshwari Shikshan Trust which has no known track record in education. And yet, a prime plot in Pune (valued at Rs20 crore) meant for a government rehab centre for the mentally ill, gets transferred to this trust at a fraction of the amount.

President Pratibha Patil’s daughter, Jyoti Rathore’s Maharashtra Mahila Udyam Trust got a Rs19 crore plot (7.93 hectares) from the Maharashtra government some months back. The commercially valuable land is located five kms from the Pune-end of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Coincidentally, a 10 acre plot adjacent to this one has been bagged by the Kasegaon Education Society, closely associated with Maharashtra minister Jayant Patil.

To be fair, some of the big, politician-driven educational trusts do run institutes with fine reputations. One is at peace on that count, although the question remains, why did the politicians not apply the same model to promote rural healthcare in their constituencies?

Is it because one can get away by taking donations while providing substandard education while that is not possible with hospitals which deal with people’s lives?

Take the case of an 86-year-old woman who recently suffered a hip fracture in the taluka town of Phaltan in sugar-rich western Maharashtra — a bastion of Sharad Pawar’s NCP.

For more than an hour there was no ambulance to bring her to the local, private hospital. When a rickety ambulance arrived, it was without paramedics. After a poor quality X-ray, the doctor decided that surgery could be done only after five days. 

In sheer frustration, she had to be moved to an orthopaedic hospital in Pune, 86km away; the ambulance driven at a painfully slow speed, on  the heavily potholed  Phaltan-Pune road.

 “Half of Silicon Valley is owned by my batchmates from IIT, Kanpur. I repent having returned to India 30 years ago to settle in Phaltan to do research for rural development… Think of how the rural people are suffering for want of  decent healthcare...”  This was the anguish of the woman’s son — Anil Rajvanshi, a US-returned researcher developing renewable energy technologies and devices for rural India.

Rajvanshi can afford to take his mother to the best of India’s hospitals. But what about the millions of our poor brethren who are at the mercy of politicians in their constituencies?