Hinged on hope
The Himachal Pradesh Government has made bold to cut sales tax on a number of items in the Budget for the financial year 1999-2000. And yet, it has hiked the tax on diesel.

Home, sweet home
THE Centre deserves a round of applause for taking a number of initiatives in recent weeks for lifting the pall of gloom from over the housing sector.

Govt’s expenditure: Restructuring is the answer
by P. K. Dave
Among the several welcome features of Mr Yashwant Sinha’s Budget is his anxiety about the high rate of growth in the non-developmental expenditure, and his recognition that the most effective and lasting resolution of this problem.

The no-nonsense lady in the white coat
By Reeta Sharma
DR Sarla Gopalan, Professor and Head, Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at the PGI, is yet another luminous citizen of Chandigarh.

75 Years Ago
Bombardment of Corfu
CORFU: Reuter’s special correspondent, who was an eye-witness of the bombardment, in a vivid account says that the Italian squadron, in battle formation, arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon, preceded by a plane which flew over the eastern part of the Island.

Another roll-back war

A full-scale roll-back war has broken out, this time on new telephone tariff. In the name of a cost-based rate structure, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has jacked up the rental by 40 per cent and local call rates by 25 per cent. The number of free calls has also marginally come down. This was enough for the BJP-led government’s allies like the Trinamool Congress to kick up a ruckus. And within hours, the government directed TRAI to hold its hands for the time being. Thus has collapsed the first attempt to let a regulatory authority take important economic decisions as between the government and private service operators. Urban telephone subscribers will feel relieved since the increased rates were to take effect from April 1 and, additionally, there is a bit of a slur: most of them will come under the category of "low users", meaning making 500 calls or less a month. Of course, there are compensations for them and others. Long-distance and international calls will cost a lot less, by as much as 45 or 50 per cent. Telephone addicts or those who rely on the telephone because of their business or professional interests will be happy. The top rate has come down from Rs 1.40 a call to Rs 1.20. In other words, the humble subscriber’s loss has been the big user’s gain.

Until now it used to be the other way round. Revenue from long-distance service was partly diverted to subsidise local calls and to keep the rental low. The cost-based tariff structure has reversed this. What is more, when competition grows as between rival service providers, the rates may come down, even for the basic service like telephones. This is spelt out in the new order. It says the charges are only the ceiling and not the minimum. When private operators bring in advanced technology, it would be possible to make international calls at the local call rates by using the Internet connection.

TRAI’s order breaks fresh ground. It is the first time that telephone rates have been decided by an authority outside the government, and hence the political protest. The rates are determined by technological and economic considerations and not influenced by political compulsions. And the dispute too is on the likely financial fallout for the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Both agree that DoT will lose money over the next three years, but widely differ on the amount. But given the drastic reduction in long-distance and international calls, the traffic volume should sharply go up and that can only bring in more cash. Whether that will compensate the loss due to lower rates will be known only at the end of the year. One expert is so optimistic of higher revenue that he fears that the DoT infrastructure will not be able to carry the additional load. There is one revision that forces one to read and re-read several times to start believing. The charge for leased lines has been slashed to one-seventh of what it is now. The minimum charge has crashed from Rs 1,87,500 to Rs 28,856 and the top rate has shrunk from Rs 11,25,000 to Rs 96,000. Some reduction that!

Hinged on hope

The Himachal Pradesh Government has made bold to cut sales tax on a number of items in the Budget for the financial year 1999-2000. And yet, it has hiked the tax on diesel. This paradox will rob the Chief Minister, Mr Prem Kumar Dhumal, of some of the populist cheer, which he might have otherwise achieved. It is true that the use of diesel for agricultural purposes in Himachal Pradesh is not as extensive as it is in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana. But, the hike will have a cascading effect which can more than neutralise the advantages accruing to the common man following the total withdrawal of 8 per cent sales tax on graphite lead pencils and contraceptives. The central sales tax on fruit and vegetable products, vanaspati ghee and edible oils is also proposed to be brought down from 4 per cent to 2 per cent. Similarly, it is proposed to carry out a 50 per cent reduction in sales tax on bricks, agarbattis, plastic shoes, fruit juice and computer software. Welcome that this reduction is, it does not reflect the real financial position of the State. Its economy is in a mess and it has been teetering on the verge of collapse for quite some time. When in opposition, the BJP had been stressing that things could be turned around through deft financial management but now that it has come to power, it has not been able to display that financial wizardry. Even in this Budget, it has laid great store on special central assistance. But there is no certainty that the Centre will be obliging it to the extent it wants. Under the circumstances, a drastic downsizing of the bureaucratic machinery has become absolutely imperative. But all such attempts have proved to be a non-starter in the past. If the same story is repeated this time, the rosy picture that Mr Dhumal has tried to paint will start fading early. But despite all that, the rural bias in the Budget is unmistakable. So is the focus on social services. There is a perceptible attempt to empower panchayati raj institutions. At the same time, Mr Dhumal seems to have placed his bets on corporations. He has proposed the formation of four new public sector undertakings: the Himachal Pradesh Roads and Other Infrastructure Development Corporation, the Bus Stands Management and Development Corporation, the Satluj Valley Rail Construction Corporation and the Health Systems Corporation.

Himachal Pradesh is not the only State which is finding it nearly impossible to cut down administrative costs. Things are even worse in the adjoining Jammu and Kashmir where protests have broken out following the presentation of a "harsh" Budget. The residents of the State have been reduced to penury thanks to a decade of terrorism. The Chief Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah, has exhorted them to stand on their feet but they are saying that they have no feet to stand on. The tax burden would have been less difficult to bear had it been shared by everyone up the line, instead of down the line. But the people who lord over the State have not reduced their profligacy in tune with the financial exigencies. People have started asking as to how some top politicians have managed to construct palatial houses in the past two years if the State is so hard pressed. It is true that the central assistance has been coming only in dribbles. Even the reimbursement of the expenditure incurred on security has been tardy. Still, the growing prosperity of the leaders is the talk of the state. Ironically, it is the BJP, which is spearheading the protest against the "draconian" Budget.

Home, sweet home

THE Centre deserves a round of applause for taking a number of initiatives in recent weeks for lifting the pall of gloom from over the housing sector. The real estate market had never been as sluggish as it was before the presentation of the Union Budget on February 27. The first good news was broken by Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha when he raised the income tax exemption limit on the interest on housing loans from Rs 30,000 to Rs 75,000 per year. Now it is the turn of Union Minister for Urban Affairs Ram Jethmalani to provide further encouragement to the housing sector. After having knocked down the archaic Urban Land Ceiling Act he is toying with the idea of allowing 100 per cent foreign direct investment in the building sector. As of today, only non-resident Indians are allowed, through their overseas offices, to make investments in real estate. That NRI investments account for a measly Rs 530 crore in the housing sector in India only strengthens the case for sweeping reforms. Mr Jethmalani’s loud thinking on allowing FDI in the housing sector is part of the process. There is also some good news for the housing loan sector. The Reserve Bank of India has cleared the Urban Affairs Ministry’s draft Bill for revamping of the foreclosure law, a seemingly unpleasant but basic requirement for protecting the interests of housing loan disbursement agencies. Foreclosure is the legal provision enabling a lender to repossess some mortgaged property in the event of default in repaying the loan amount by the borrower.

The biggest surprise of the week was, of course, the decision of the Housing and Urban Development Corporation to introduce a housing loan scheme for individuals. The success of HUDCO’s scheme would depend on the terms it offers for housing loans to individuals. Unless they are extremely attractive, the existing players in the housing finance business have little to worry about. A major handicap for HUDCO in reaching out to individual house-builders may be the limited number of outlets it has in the country for the disbursement of individual loans. In any case, HUDCO gives the impression of being a Samson not aware of his source of strength. It should not reduce itself to the status of just another lending agency. The primary objective of the public sector organisation is to promote low-cost and eco-friendly building technologies. It claims that the cost of construction of a standard unit can easily be brought down from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 6.5 lakh by using HUDCO-approved technologies. However, an individual who wants to use these technologies is helpless because they are not available in the market. HUDCO should create a nationwide network for providing technical assistance to individuals and institutions interested in low-cost and eco-friendly housing units. In fact, it should sanction loans only to those who commit themselves to using housing technologies approved by it. In a certain context the creation of a network for providing "doorstep transfer of technology" to individuals and institutions should be given a higher priority. Thereafter, individual home loans would be like the proverbial icing on the cake.

Govt’s expenditure:Restructuring is the answer
by P. K. Dave

Among the several welcome features of Mr Yashwant Sinha’s Budget is his anxiety about the high rate of growth in the non-developmental expenditure, and his recognition that the most effective and lasting resolution of this problem is to begin the process of downsizing the government. And also, to carry this process forward in a systematic way towards reducing the role and the administrative structure of the government. But in abolishing four Secretary-level posts, accompanied by the merger and rationalisation of the departments concerned, he seems to have fallen for the age-old trap of token and ad hoc initiatives that have invariably petered out under the concerted opposition from bureaucrats and their ministers.

Apart from the fact that downsizing and restructuring of the government is not expenditure reform, nor should it be seen as an economy exercise per se, the idea of the Expenditure Reform Commission or Committee had been mooted earlier too, and was not found acceptable either to the ministers or the bureaucracy. And, in any case, the machinery of the government is not related to, and is indeed a much larger concept than expenditure reform. Further, it is not a subject under the Ministry of Finance in the Rules of Business.

What the Fifth Pay Commission had suggested in its remarkably perceptive report was a well-ordered "shift towards a reduced role of government." It said that the government needed to be structured broadly on the following lines: (i) Some ministries and departments may have to be abolished altogether or amalgamated with others (they have, in fact, suggested a list). (ii) The size of a ministry or department may have to be reduced in order to fit it for the reduced role. (iii) The kind of programmes to be implemented may have to be implemented may have to be quite different.

The altered role of the Central government as described by the Fifth Pay Commission required the delegation of much more to the other levels of the government, transferring many of the functions to the state governments in whose sphere they lay and to the non-governmental sector, and the fashioning of a public service that would be geared to the new tasks. Within this broad statement, the Pay Commission has proposed a sound step-by-step approach to public service reforms, involving a redefinition of core functions of the government; a drastic reduction in Central ministries and departments; transfer to the states and panchayats the functions in their spheres; and in the author’s view, most important of all, the transfer of all the functions that do not involve formulation of policy and its monitoring to fully empowered other agencies, which may be public sector enterprises (departments outside the ministry), autonomous bodies or corporate institutions.

The Pay Commission has also made quite detailed and well-formulated recommendations suggesting that the entire process of reform should be under a separate department with a hand-picked Secretary, and placed directly under the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister.

Other than distributing bounties frequently much in excess of the Pay Commission’s recommendations, the Deve Gowda, Gujral and Vajpayee governments have done nothing to take up the serious, systematic and urgent consideration of the commission’s wise and far-reaching recommendations. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha’s dismissal of a suggestion to implement the recommendations by saying that the opportunity offered by the commission’s report had been wasted is quite mistaken.

It is clear that all that needs to be done is not part of expenditure reform, nor can it be achieved by knee-jerk reactions for the economy by abolishing posts and ad hoc reductions in budgetary allocations. This has been tried several times earlier, and defeated by the "establishment"! The same is the story of exhorting greater delegation of powers to the "attached" and "subordinate" offices. The ministries have continued to grow and to concentrate power with themselves.

It is generally known that several months after the pay commission’s report, the Department of Administrative Reform entrusted a few restructuring studies of a few ministries to groups of experts, retired officers and research institutions. A couple of reports are believed to have been submitted, but the action taken on them is not known. In fact, it is also believed that some ministers objected to their ministries being selected for study!

In this background, any exercise for restructuring the government has to be at a much higher and formal level. There has to be a well-directed and continuously monitored movement for a step-by-step restructuring of the government and reform of the public service, backed by a totally functional approach under the personal inspiration and support of the Prime Minister.

The first step in each case has to be to hive off non-Central government functions to the states and panchayats, and also to autonomous entities, including the non-governmental organisations. This should leave the ministries with the formulation of policies, defining goals, setting priorities, undertaking financial planning and allocating resources, leaving programme execution to the field agencies of the Central and state governments, panchayats, municipalities and NGOs.

The ministry may establish clear guidelines and controls, and reserve certain rights, but not under any circumstances negate or withdraw any part of the freedom of execution or delegation of the powers of the executive and financial decision-making from the field agencies, etc., for effectively managing and implementing the policies, priorities and programmes under their charge. It is necessary to emphasise here that by establishing modern and effective monitoring systems, the accountability of the implementing agencies will be ensured by the Ministry, which will, in turn, be able to show its accountability to Parliament.

I strongly urge Parliament and the government to consider the establishment of a restructuring commission under a mature politician to be appointed in consultation with opposition leaders, with not more than three other members, of whom one should be the secretary — a dynamic, committed and result-oriented officer. The commission may decide its own priorities and methods of work. It may make recommendation packages each of which may then be entrusted by the Prime Minister to a high-powered task force under a minister for restructuring the government, with the Cabinet Secretary as the Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive.

Neither reform nor downsizing is the primary objective. What is needed is to restructure and modernise the government and make it effective. There must be full political commitment and participation in this non-partisan, apolitical endeavour. — INFA

The author, a retired IAS officer,was once India’s Ambassador to the European Community and Lieut-Governor of Delhi.

Under-employed army of ‘babus’
by Arvind Bhandari

Governmental profligacy has been one of the most distressing aspects of the national scene ever since the country gained Independence. In 1948-49 the total government expenditure was Rs. 257 crore and within 50 years it rose to Rs. 2,35,246 crore in 1997-98. In the Central Budget for 1999-2000 the total expenditure has been estimated at Rs 2,83,882 crore.

The Budget presented by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha shows no intent whatsoever to curb government expenditure barring indulgence in some tokenism in the form of abolishing the posts of a few secretaries in the Ministry of Finance. This will not do. If the powers that be are serious about the urgent need to downsize the government, they will have to summon up the requisite political will to tackle headlong the difficult problem of considerably cutting the bloated army of under-employed "babus."

When the Fifth Pay Commission recommended a handsome increase in the salaries of Central government employees, it made it clear that the recommendation was based on the assumption that simultaneously administrative reforms would be ushered in with a view to reducing the staff strength by 30 per cent over 10 years. In a despicable display of pusillanimity, the Gujral government succumbed to the blackmail of the employees’ unions and went even beyond the generous recommendations of the Pay Commission in increasing the pay scales. But as regards initiating a process to reduce the size of the government, there was no sign of it.

Since the salaries of state government employees generally approximate to those of Central government employees, the Gujral government’s surrender has meant a substantial hike in the salaries of about 21 million employees throughout the country, adding up to a wage bill that now takes up 9 per cent of the GDP. The other three major items of non-development expenditure are defence, interest payments and subsidies, which together cost a massive Rs 1,43,904 crore, accounting for about half of the total expenditure.

Defence expenditure has been placed at Rs 45,694 crore in 1999-2000, up from Rs 41,200 crore in 1998-99, registering an increase of about 11 per cent. Ever since Independence, India’s defence expenditure has never been subjected to proper parliamentary scrutiny. Partly, defence has been treated as some kind of a holy cow, so that to question the expenditure on it is regarded as unpatriotic. Partly, our MPs are not equipped with sufficient knowledge to examine a complicated subject like defence expenditure.

It is high time India’s defence expenditure was subjected to a careful and detailed examination by a committee of independent experts with a view to ascertaining whether there is scope for pruning it. It does not matter that China and Pakistan spend a higher percentage of their GDP on defence than India. Pakistan’s per capita defence expenditure is $28, whereas the corresponding figure for India is $ 10. What matters ultimately is that a country’s defence expenditure should be based on its own genuine needs and not on a blinkered arms race.

India has one of the largest standing armies in the world with a sanctioned strength of 10,45,560 soldiers and 44,703 officers, which comes to a total strength of nearly 11 lakh. It is estimated that if the Indian Army were to be downsized by 50,000 soldiers, there would be a saving of Rs 500 crore.

The burden of interest payments alone would go up to Rs 88,000 crore in the next financial year, up from the revised estimate of Rs 77,248 crore for 1998-99. Interest payments grow in a vicious circle. Ballooning expenditure compels the government to take recourse to market borrowing, and then debt servicing further adds to the expenditure. There is no panacea for this except that the government should show more discipline in regard to its expenditure.

The major subsidies, including those on food, fertilisers and export promotion, have been accounted for Rs 22,440 crore for the next financial year, up from the revised estimate of Rs 21,063 crore for 1998-99. The Finance Minister has expressed his helplessness in reducing subsidies. The truth is that he has not tried enough.

If the rich and middle classes are taken out of the public distribution system and their pampering ended, there would be a saving of about Rs 5000 crore. If the fertiliser subsidy is confined to only poor and marginal farmers, there would be a saving of another Rs 5000 crore. The snag is that these measures require a bold and strong government and not a weak, wobbly coalition of the type headed by Mr Vajpayee.

Some time ago, a discussion paper presented in Parliament by the then Finance Minister, Mr Chidambaram, pointed out that there are many more subsidies being offered by the Centre and the states in areas such as power, transport, irrigation, agriculture, non-elementary education and industries. All the subsidies, taken together, constitute nearly 15 per cent of the GDP! Drawing a distinction between "merit" and "non-merit" goods and services, the paper suggested that subsidies pertaining to the latter category should be phased out by 50 per cent over the next three years. Once again, who will bell the cat.

The writing itch
by Darshan Singh Maini

I GUESS, I was born with some kind of a neural itch, which perhaps manifested itself in some odd ways — in the restlessness of my fingers, or in the play of my toes as though engaged in some baby-language of the limbs. Maybe, just a play of the emerging imagination in a loving lap, or in a crib. To be sure, when babes converse with their own tiny, primal selves, even mothers are no privy to it. Their adoring gaze takes in the beauty of it all, but there the mystery and the wonder abide.
It is in some such ways that I can best explain my scribbling itch since my childhood or school-days. However, it’s not only the story of my own “graphomania” (as Michal Kundra styles compulsive writing) which’s the point of this piece. I’m concerned here as much with the process itself, with the manner in which the impulse becomes an itch, and the itch, finally, a passion. There’s at the very outset an element of dalliance in the play of the imagination on a fascinating turf.
It’s almost certain that before the writing itch begins to turn into a rash, one’s imagination is likely to have been broken to flowers of fancy — say, to folklore, to the granny’s tales, to children’s classics, or to the spinners of yarns etc. For no imagination can ever be entirely sovereign or self-sufficient; it needs some nourishment, and some spur to kick it off. It’s thus that those little romances of adventures and daring exploits, of lyric love and lovely women help prime the imagination for its own play. This kind of triggering, then is a condition for the kinetics of writing. And the primary requirement is one’s love of language — from the mother-tongue to any that has deeply touched your mind, and domesticated itself.
It’s, however, important to know that literature is, ipso facto, an “affair” with one’s language. Poetry, in particular is, the essence, a question of words in their exotic, metaphorical, reflexive and rhetorical form. Even poetic fiction or prose ultimately draws not only its energies, but also its vision from the appropriation of words and their interplay. And what, in the final analysis, is Shakespeare’s “grand style” but the investing of language with a God-like authority, and taking it to those outputs of our being where thoughts begin to dismantle, and the song becomes a long lament of the words and words and words in a trace, as, for instance, in King Lear?
My own “romance” of writing began early enough in my high school days when I would hire from a khokha book-shop takka or anna novels in Urdu, and then retire into the sanctuary of a big peepal tree nearby, or into an attic upstairs to feed my eager imagination on tales of revishment, mid-night elopements, letters of doe-eyed love written by nazneens in purdah to adoring nawabzadas, despatched through the roof pigeons or some faithful retainers. And this habit grew upon me almost like a vice. The later shift to the English classics was, therefore, a smooth passage when I was initiated into the energies and enticements of the English tongue during my undergraduate days. And in this manner, the great writers of English prose and poetry became, soon enough, “the singing masters of my soul”, to recall W.B. Yeats’s words. This pupilage, if I may say so, is still my vocation, and my salvation. And now in the years of twilight, of my long illness, and of my vanishing dreams, the writing of articles, columns, essays, critiques, poems etc., indeed, constitutes my nirvana, as I often tell my callers and correspondents. Writing as such remains healthful so long as it keeps energising one’s spirit. And I hope and pray that this hand which has wielded an obliging pen for over 60 years or so will still be in position when the Great Call comes!
To revert to the question of “the itch”, I may add that the so-called” seven-year-itch” is not the only itch owing its trouble to sexuality. As Freud and later psychologists have affirmed, even scribbling or scrawling has, oddly enough, a covert link with it. To put it differently, writing too has its frisson, and its vicarious, erotic side. As we all know, public toilets are, as a rule, a favoured place for scribbling obscenities. The “itch” has many a fabulous and feverish aspect. The graffiti on the walls, hoardings etc. is only an oblique gratification, a kinky consummation.

The no-nonsense lady in the white coat

By Reeta Sharma

DR Sarla Gopalan, Professor and Head, Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at the PGI, is yet another luminous citizen of Chandigarh. If you see her without her white coat, you are likely to think of her vaguely as an armyman’s wife from South India. Unassuming and without airs, she goes to the local market like a woman next door. Dr Sarla has the image opposite that of a doctor at the PGI: she is a no-nonsense person.

She is not one of those professionals, who acquire expertise in self-promotion but is absorbed in pursuing her profession — the normal career graph and also her personal life. By her very nature, she cannot look the other way if anyone in her profession displays callousness, ignorance or goes in wrong treatment or does not following the medical procedure and thus has harmed or put the patient’s life in danger. This conscientious approach is not limited to her subordinates at the PGI. She takes it as her business to monitor the work of private practitioners, plain quacks or any employee of the government health services.

This is the other side to Dr Sarla Gopalan — a Sherlock Holmes in the white coat. If a patient dies despite her best efforts, she activates the much-cultivated network of community health services to dig up the medical and "social history" of the patient. She believes that most of the women who die in gynae-related diseases have a set social background which contributes to their death. Once all the facts are verified, be warned that Dr Gopalan will never spare anyone, be it a doctor, a medical health worker or any other person medically qualified. She would lodge a formal complaint with the authorities and not look the other way or get busy with her own business as is the usual practice.

Want to know how many such complaints she has made? One, two, six, ten .....? You are under-estimating her.

Hailing from Tanjore, in Tamil Nadu, she was born on February 29, 1944, thus making sure that her birthday would fall only once in four years. She got her MBBS in 1966 from Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi. For the next two years (1967-69) she worked in Zambia where her father, a diplomat, was posted. Soon she joined the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG), London, for higher studies and took an MRCOG degree in 1976. She returned to Chandigarh to join the faculty of the PGI in 1974. She obtained her Ph.D. from the PGI itself under the guidance of the famous late Dr Devi in 1983.

It is both very pleasant to find people like Dr Sarla who pursue academic studies throughout their life. She went to RCOG, London, once again in 1994 and returned as a Fellow of the RCOG. In 1998 she was made FAMS, the fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. By virtue of this honour Dr Sarla Gopalan is at present the Chairperson of the All-India Coordinating Committee of North Zone to evaluate and recommend doctors from wanting to migrate to the UK.

The following is an excerpt of a conversation with her:

Question: In retrospect, how do you compare the gynae scenes of Zambia, India and England?

Dr Sarla: As for my learning experience, Zambia was a real challenge. Then that country had only two qualified consultants. Mostly those with middle school education became medical health assistants who attended to all gynae-related diseases, problems and child birth, etc. But most of them were experienced in handling normal deliveries. I personally benefited immensely from this experience and exposure, which helped me in the initial years of my career.

Compared to Zambia, England provided hi-tech sophisticated learning. It was there that I learnt the importance of the patient’s social status. Their National Health Service provides equal treatment to all people, and nobody dies for lack of medical care.

Even here in the PGI facilities were quite admirable way back even in 1974. Every doctor would gain incomparable experience in countries like India and Zambia, because of the sheer virtue of large numbers and varied types of cases.

Q: Gynae and women are made for each other. What kind of major gynae cases come to the PGI? What problems Indian women face in this regard?

Dr Sarla: We mostly receive very bad cases of infection caused during abortion and delivery by medical health workers, midwives or older ladies who often handle such cases in the rural areas. What is shocking is that even from cities we receive such cases which have been mishandled by doctors.

Q: What is the percentage of such cases and how do you deal with them ?

Dr Sarla: (Shakes her head in despair) you will be shocked to learn that 70 to 80 per cent deaths are directly caused by infection while performing abortion, helping delivery and during post-delivery care. Whenever there is a bad case with proof of wrong treatment, mishandling, dangerous infection and also signs of callousness and questionable medical expertise, I make it a medico-legal case. This ensures a through investigation in case our efforts at the PGI fail to save a woman. It happens despite all the equipments with us because such women are brought to us too late. Will you believe that five or six cases a week have to be registered as medico-legal?

Q: Why are these women brought too late ? Do these cases come from distant places ?

Dr Sarla: They are brought too late because quick decisions are not taken by health workers, doctors, quacks, midwives or whosoever handles the women while performing an abortion or a helping in a delivery. Most of these cases are from rural areas of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and even Jammu and Kashmir. Some cases even from Panchkula and Mohali have been referred late. And we helplessly watch these women die. I was aghast and very angry with a woman doctor of Haryana about one such case. I complained against her to the Health Ministry in Nirman Bhavan, New Delhi, sending full details of the case. I want to save every woman because that is my duty. Besides her death has manifold repercussions. Her death can orphan her children, who grow up coping with painful social and psychological problems. The diseased women’s husband as in most cases brings another wife, who again may meet with a similar fate. It is a shame that a woman from Bapu Dham Colony, Dhanas or Panchkula dies here. The PGI is just next door. Yet they are brought here when the cure is beyond us.

Q: But why does it happen even today when we are told that health awareness has spread among all women?

Dr Sarla: It is a myth that all women in India have become conscious of their personal health. If it were so, why do we have population explosion? Our women still are not aware that every child birth is at the cost of their health. In a majority of cases Indian women cannot decide for themselves as to how many children they want, what gender and at what intervals? Even though abortion has been legalised, women approach inexperienced midwives or quacks for the same.

In our society a majority of men do not feel responsible towards child birth or the health of their wives. Our society gives the husbands and in-laws the power to decide whether a pregnant woman needs a check-up or not, needs to be taken to hospital or not. They take all decisions on her behalf. It is mostly in the rural Indian scene, but in cities too women face the same fate. I am revolted when even educated women come to me for abortion for the only reason that the husband or in-laws do not want to second or a third girl child.

Q: What is your advice to women ?

Dr Sarla: They should learn to fight for their rights about their health. After her marriage a girl should know all about child birth, infection and the delivery process. This will enable her to take appropriate decisions. Women should demand all they need in pregnancy and other health care. The government has been doing enough to educate people about family planning but this initiative has also to be matched by women and men.

75 YEARS AGO

Bombardment of Corfu

CORFU: Reuter’s special correspondent, who was an eye-witness of the bombardment, in a vivid account says that the Italian squadron, in battle formation, arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon, preceded by a plane which flew over the eastern part of the Island.

Three blank shots were fired from a destroyer at 5 o’clock. The bombardment began six minutes later, and was directed on the Old Fort to the right of the town and the police school to the left of the town.

The British Vice-Consul, Mr Graves, and an American Near-East Relief Officer rowed to the Italian flagship and told Admiral Solari that the firing was absolutely unnecessary as the town was not defended.

Mr Graves protested against receiving only a quarter of an hour’s warning of the bombardment. He also protested against the bombardment of the citadel which was full of refugees.

The American relief official protested against the bombardment of the police school, which was imperilling 1,150 orphans in his care, who were in the vicinity of the school.

Admiral Solari replied that the fire was directed at the fort behind the school.

The correspondent says that the sight of dying refugees, mostly children with dreadful wounds,was heart-rending. Eight thousand troops were landed.