Some steps taken to better health care in Bengal

It is an irresistible though disturbing reality of our times that our media discourse is driven by negative stories. The old adage that “good news is no news” has come to haunt us. In the past 18 months, the Trinamool Congress has been in office in West Bengal. We have not solved all the state’s problems and can make no grandiose and outlandish claims. Yet, we do have our achievements, solid advance and benchmarks we are proud of.

Unfortunately, none or little of this makes it to prime-time bulletins and screaming page-one headlines. Hence, I am adopting a mechanism of direct contact. Over the next few days, I will share with you details of what we have done in key sectors of the administration and development. On offer will be straightforward facts, no analyses or embellishments. Do read this and make up your minds for yourselves.

Let’s begin today with public health:

• A 24-hour hour fair-price medicine shop has opened at Kolkata’s SSKM Hospital. M.R. Bangur Hospital, Barasat District Hospital, Jalpaiguri District Hospital, North Bengal Medical College and Hospital and Midnapore Medical College and Hospital already have this facility.

• The Chief Minister has institutionalised monitoring of the public health network after surprise visits to SSKM Hospital, Shambhunath Pandit Hospital, Bagha Jatin State General Hospital, Chittaranjan Shishusadan Hospital and Dr B.C. Roy Children’s Hospital (all in Kolkata). Superintendents of state hospitals have to text message the Chief Minister’s Office each morning to report against certain parameters.

• The state cabinet has agreed to establish the West Bengal Health Services Board to directly employ doctors and health workers. The Department of Health has announced a programme to train 50,000 candidates to fill the shortage of nurses in the state.

• HR development and augmentation is back in focus. Government doctors who have worked for at least three years in remote, difficult and backward areas will now be entitled to a 50 per cent quota in post-graduate (PG) diploma seats and a 40 per cent quota in PG degree seats.

• Doctors from medical colleges will be compulsorily required to work in sadar and rural hospitals at least two days a week. The number of seats in government medical colleges has been increased to 1,750 from 1,205. Two new medical colleges are coming up in Malda and Kamarhati (North 24 Paraganas).

• A “sick neonatal care unit” has been inaugurated at Kolkata’s Dr B.C. Roy Hospital. Seven other state hospitals are to have similar units soon to care for critically-ill new-born children. These include four district hospitals in Howrah, Malda, Siliguri and Burdwan.

• The government is upgrading district hospitals in Purulia, Burdwan, Birbhum, Malda and East Midnapore and Siliguri with private participation. The chief minister has inaugurated the “health city” complex in Bankura, which includes a medical college and hospital. She has also laid the foundation stone of a multispecialty hospital in Nandigram.

• Twenty-five super-specialty hospitals are being planned in various district towns and sub-divisions using a public-private-partnership (PPP) model. Key initiatives have been taken to improve health infrastructure and indices in the Maoist-troubled Jangalmahal region.

• The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has introduced a Universal Health Insurance Scheme for families living below the poverty line. The sum assured for each family is Rs 30,000 per annum. About 50,000 families have already been enrolled and have got their insurance cards. Cards for a further 50,000 families are ready and awaiting distribution. The scheme will be expanded in the coming year.

What we will achieve at Bengal Leads

Since so many of our religious traditions are defined by the lunar calendar, only two festive occasions in West Bengal are constant every year. There’s Poila Boisakh - the beginning of the New Year in April, and Makar Sankranti - January 14, which signifies the hope of a better harvest.

It is fitting the second edition of Bengal Leads - our state’s leading business and investor meet, opens in Haldia the day after Makar Sankranti. It too signifies a constant: the firmness and resolve of the Trinamool Congress government to revitalise West Bengal’s economy and restore to it the industrial robustness that made it a leader till as late as the 1960s.

What will we achieve at Bengal Leads? Will tycoons fly in and out in their private jets? Will 100 countries be represented? Will there be photo-ops with one billionaire after another? No. In that sense, those complaining and groaning about Bengal Leads vis-à-vis Vibrant Gujarat are right. Point conceded, my friends, argument over. You are welcome to relegate us to second place in a race we aren’t even running.

I’d like to make one submission though: the legacy Vibrant Gujarat 2013 can build on and the legacy Bengal Leads 2013 is saddled with are extremely different. Give Gujarat – or Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu for that matter – 34 years of Communist rule and see where things stand.

The Mamata Banerjee government has been in office for 18 months, in the first lap of a long, long marathon. Yet, it is important to understand and appreciate renewal has begun. As a political party, we are not ideologically blinkered. As a government, we fully understand and welcome the role of private capital and businessmen in making investments, setting up factories and industrial facilities and ushering in employment and growth.

We believe the government has a part to play in facilitating this and where required in setting up independent regulatory mechanisms. The business of government is not business. The business of government is development. This is the message underpinning Bengal Leads.

How have things changed in these past 18 months? For a start, there is greater social stability in the state, and simply much less violence. When we came to office, West Bengal faced two law and order challenges. There was a Maoist problem in Jangalmahal and an autonomy movement in Darjeeling. We have managed to amicably resolve both.

A few days ago, in Parliament, the UPA government released some statistics. In 2010, 300 people were killed in West Bengal in Maoist violence. In 2012, only one person was killed – only one. Will industrialists and potential investors not be happy the Maoist challenge is being neutralised without causing upheaval?

The Trinamool government has taken a number of decisive policy steps. Section 14Y of the Land Ceiling Act has been prudently deployed to bring various new categories of businesses into the exemption list. It has improved tax collection. This has gone up by over 30 per cent in one year simply due to better administration and an improved work culture. Do note the government has not raised tax rates.

West Bengal has made notable progress in e-governance, including e-commerce, to improve transparency and efficiency. The government is working towards a system where public procurement will be increasingly online and absolutely transparent. There has been a simplification of e-governance procedures – from tendering onwards.

In the past year, West Bengal’s SDP has grown at 1.5 per cent above the national average. This gap will expand as the infrastructure projects the Trinamool government has launched start to mature. A deep-sea port is being planned at Ganga Sagar to again make the Kolkata metropolitan area the international trading hub it once was.

In the coming days, Kolkata will finally get a world-class airport, with the rebuilding of the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Airport. Bagdogra airport, the gateway to north Bengal, is getting night landing facilities. This will be a boon to the upper half of our state. A green-field airport is also coming up in Durgapur and a modern convention centre in eastern Kolkata, in Rajarhat.

Friends from near and far will hear these stories at Haldia. They will absorb the news and take their own call. Some will invest immediately, others will bide their time. That is fair enough, but at least they will take a business call – not a call forced upon them by a coercive government.

That is the spirit of new Bengal. Come, join and share it in Haldia.