BY RAJAN NARAYAN

AND A few more stray thoughts and a few more observations for yet another Sunday. For a Sunday following the week when the Goa University allowed its premises to be abused for meetings of the Congress party. For a Sunday following the week when Chief Minister Digamber Kamat suffered acute embarrassment during the so called interaction of students with Rahul Gandhi. For a Sunday following the week when the CBI coincidently charge-sheeted Babush Monserrate when he began yet another toppling bid against the Digamber Kamat government. For a Sunday following the week when not only the sick, but even the dead were treated with disrespect at the Hospicio Hospital in Margao. For a Sunday following the week when the GMC was once again accused of gross medical negligence.

CONNIVING REGISTRAR

AND a few stray thoughts on the registrar of the Goa University, Dr M Sangodkar conniving in the misuse of the Goa University premises by the Congress party. The Registrar of the University, who has a controversial record, sent out a circular to post graduate students in the University and students of affiliated colleges directing them to attend a planned interaction with Rahul Gandhi. All along, the Registrar was aware that the so called interaction with Rahul Gandhi was actually a membership drive by the student wing of the Congress Party. This was confirmed by the fact that only students who secured a badge from the Youth Congress were permitted to attend the interaction with Rahul Gandhi held at the University football ground. Indeed, several bus loads of students from professional colleges were turned away because they did not have passes issued by the Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), which is the student wing of the Congress.

Rahul Gandhi himself gave the game away when, in a very brief interaction with the media, he revealed that the primary purpose of his visit to Goa was to promote the NSUI and the Youth Congress. The Registrar of the Goa University was forced to withdraw the circular he issued to college managements and heads of departments to attend the interaction consequent to protests from the student wing of the BJP. But, unlike the National Institute of Oceanography, the Registrar of the University did not cancel the permission granted to the Youth Congress to hold the interaction with Rahul Gandhi at the University. The NIO auditorium, which was to be the venue of Rahul Gandhi’s interaction with Congress members, declined to allow its auditoriums to be used for the meeting.

UNPRINCIPLED

UNLIKE the NIO, which took a principled stand on the issue, the Registrar of the University was willing to bend backwardness to accommodate the Congress party. So much so, the interaction with the members of the GPCC was held at the University football ground soon after the interaction with the NSUI or potential NSUI members were held. The Registrar went a step further and allowed the Congress Party to use the auditorium in the University premises for the interaction of Rahul Gandhi with members of the Youth Congress. When questioned by media persons about the misuse of university premises, the Registrar claimed that the interaction with Youth Congress members was not held in the auditorium of the university but a special room reserved for VVIPs. The University has set a very unhealthy precedent, which is likely to be cited as a precedent by other political parties.

IT HABITAT

THE objective of Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Goa was to boost the membership drive for the NSUI and the Youth Congress. Incidentally, one of the principle items in the agenda or the only item in the agenda of the Youth Congress was to demand the revival of the Rajiv Gandhi IT Habitat, which was promoted by Dayanand Narvekar during his tenure as IT Minister. The Youth Congress of course did not tell Rahul Gandhi that the land allotment in the Dona Paula IT Habitat was a major scam with the bulk of the plots going to real estate companies and not IT companies. The fact that the revival of the IT Complex was the main concern of the Youth Congress is not a coincidence. The president of the Youth Congress, Sankalp Amonkar, is a nominee and a close confidant of the former IT and finance minister, Dayanand Narvekar, who was dropped from the cabinet when he was charge-sheeted in the cricket ticket scam.

Rahul’s attempts to rejuvenate the frontal organisations is part of the process of democratising the NSUI and the Youth Congress by having the office bearers elected in genuine transparent elections instead of the current practice of the Congress High Command nominating them. But, ironically, when it was suggested that the members and presidents of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committees should also be democratically elected and not nominated by the High Command, apparently the suggestion did not meet with the approval of the party president, Sonia Gandhi. It is a case of the son proposing democratisation of the Congress Party and the various frontal organizations, but the mother unwilling to risk elections to top positions in the party. Which only reinforces the belief that there is no intra party democracy in the country though elections to the Legislative Assembly and Parliament are conducted democratically. The fact that money and muscle power has been increasingly subverting the electoral process is of course another matter.

CM EMBARASSED

AND a few stray observations on the Chief Minister suffering acute embarrassment during the interaction of the NSUI members and potential members with Rahul Gandhi. Students being students are less prone to being manipulated by senior party leaders. So, not surprisingly, they raised several questions regarding to the polices of the Digamber Kamat government, ranging from the subversion of the Regional Plan 2021 to the delay in cancellation of the land allotted to land sharks masquerading as promoters of Special Economic Zones. There were also questions about the damage caused to the fragile economy of Goa due to illegal mining and the transport of ore without taking the necessary safety precautions. But the most embarrassing of the questions that Rahul Gandhi had to face was the justifiable charge by students that politicians, without exception, demanded money for providing jobs in the government.

MONSERRATE

ANOTHER googly that left both Rahul Gandhi and the Chief Minister, who was present on the dais, flabbergasted was why a criminal had been appointed as the education minister. The reference, of course, is to the fact that Babush Monserrate, who has several criminal cases pending against him and has been charge-sheeted for the notorious attack on the Panaji Police Station, is the education minister. An embarrassed Rahul Gandhi reportedly directed the question about Babush Monserrate to Digamber Kamat.

The red-faced Chief Minister, who obviously did not have any credible answer, sought to divert attention from the basic issue of appointing an uneducated charge-sheeted legislator as the education minister by claiming that the minister concerned was a coalition partner and not part of the Congress party. But, obviously, Rahul Gandhi was not convinced as it is the Chief Minister’s prerogative to allot portfolios and it is very bad judgment on his part to allot as vital a portfolio as education to a person with the antecedents of Babush Monserrate. Digamber Kamat is apparently apprehensive that Rahul baba will promptly go and tell mummy Sonia that in Goa uneducated notorious elements are appointed education ministers. Digamber Kamat is reportedly already in Delhi for damage control. The bells are tolling for Babush Monserrate, who is likely to be dropped from the cabinet at the insistence of the High Command.

CBI CORRUPT?

AND a few stray thoughts on the widespread perception that the CBI is even more corrupt and politicised than the local police. This is dramatised by the fact that the CBI, which took over the cases relating to the attack on the Panaji Police Station by Babush Monserrate and his goons, has apparently subverted the case against him. No doubt the CBI has filed a charge-sheet against Babush Monserrate. The charge-sheet reportedly claims that it was due to the inflammatory speech of Babush Monserrate that the over 500 strong mob, who had accompanied him to the police station, turned violent and caused injuries to the police men and even damaged the Panaji Police Station. This amounts to a dilution of the original FIR filed by the Panaji Police, which was under section 307 (attempt to murder) and section 120- b, which deals with criminal conspiracy. It may be recalled that the ostensible reason for the attack was Babush Monserrate’s rage over police officers allegedly harassing his criminal supporters.

Unlike the police FIR, the CBI charge-sheet against the Education Minister, his wife Jennifer, the former Panaji mayor Tony Rodrigues and 34 others only mentions rioting, unlawful assembly with deadly weapons and causing hurt to public servants and damage to public property. Apparently, the attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy charges have been dropped. It has also been alleged that the CBI, in its charge-sheet, has been insisting that it has found no evidence to prosecute Babush Monserrate on the charges of attempted murder and criminal conspiracy. It is obvious that the CBI, under political pressure, has sought to dilute the charges against Babush Monserrate.

SHIFTING STAND

THE CBI has become highly politicised and there have been any number of instances when the CBI has changed its stand to suit the political establishment. The most notorious of these cases is the CBI’s repeated volte face on the allegations against Mayawati, the UP chief minister. The CBI has changed its stand several times in relation to the charges against Mayawati, depending on what is expedient for the Congress party. Moreover, it maybe recalled that it was the CBI which sabotaged the cases against Ottavio Quattrocchi, a close confidant of Sonia Gandhi, in the notorious Bofors case. It was the alleged deliberate bungling of the CBI which led Quattarocchi off the hook and prevented his extradition to India from Malaysia. In Goa itself, much to the surprise and anger of the then additional collector of customs, Daya Shankar, the CBI insisted on charging the brave Customs officer Costeo Fernandes in the Alemao’s gold smuggling case in which Alvarnez Alemao was killed in a scuffle with the customs officer. It was alleged that the Churchill brothers had bribed the CBI. Subsequently, Costeo Fernandes was acquitted by the Supreme Court, which passed severe strictures against the CBI.

GMC NEGLIGENCE

AND a few stray observations on continuing charges of medical negligence against the GMC and other public hospitals in the state. In the latest instance of allegation of medical negligence, Health Minister, Vishwajit Rane, has directed the Dean of the Goa Medical College, Dr V N Jindal, to conduct an enquiry into alleged negligence which led to the amputation of the leg of a 20-year-old youth from Bicholim. Apparently, the young man who had suffered a minor fracture in an accident had been referred to the GMC for treatment. It is being alleged that no proper care was taken in plastering the affected part. Apparently the plaster was so tight that it blocked blood supply to the legs. This resulted in gangrene which in turn led to the amputation of the leg of the young man.

We are not surprised by the charge of medical negligence, particularly in the Orthopaedic Department of the GMC. What do you expect when the Head of the Department, Dr S M Bandekar, is so preoccupied with his private practice that he is seldom, if ever, found in the GMC? This is true not only of Bandekar but his colleagues in the department as well. So much so, very often the plastering is done by untrained unqualified attendants. This is not the first case of medical negligence in the GMC. We had pointed out recently how a rabies patient, Ashraf Hasanwale, was summarily discharged from the GMC by the associate professor in medicine, Dr Edwin Gomes, who insisted it was a case of hysteria and transferred the patient to the Institute of Psychiatric Human Behaviour. Though the report of Natioanl Institute of Mental Health And Neuro Sciences in Bangalore clearly stated that the death was due to rabies, no action or even an enquiry was conducted into why Dr. Edwin Gomes acted so irresponsibly.

Forget about misdiagnosis and shoddy plastering, it is virtually impossible to get any consultants to attend to patients after office hours or on holidays and Sundays. Just last Sunday, I received a desperate call from one of the garbage supervisors of the Corporation of the City of Panaji who had sought admission in the GMC for a serious medical problem. Apparently nobody had attended to him for four hours after he went to the Casualty Department. It was only after I made a couple of calls to senior officials of the GMC that he was attended to. The GMC, which has always struggled to cope with the huge rush of patients not only from Goa but from neighbouring states, is now further burdened because of the two-year delay in opening the new hospital that has been built in Mapusa to replace the Asilo.

HOSPICIO WOES

THOUGH the state of the art new district hospital is ready in all respects, including equipment and recruitment of additional staff, the commissioning of the hospital has been delayed because the Health Minister is still looking for a private party to manage the super specialty departments. The Health Minister was recently rapped by the Goa Bench of Bombay High Court, which found it absurd that the hospital premises should have remained idle for two years. The court has directed the government to open the hospital immediately with whatever facilities and staff are available as the old Asilo hospital is literally crumbling.

And a last stray thought for yet another Sunday. Forget about the sick and the ailing, even the dead are not treated with dignity in government hospitals in Goa. The morgue at the Hospicio hospital in Margao is in a constant state of disrepair. Though it was recently expanded, apparently there is politics in the renewal of the maintenance contract, which expires at the end of January. So much so, when the chilling system in the morgue broke down, the maintenance contractor refused to attend to it. The Superintendent of the Hospicio Hospital, on his part, did not make arrangements to shift the bodies to the GMC, which has a much larger capacity.

SLIGHTING DEAD

AS a result, a family which had kept the body of the father at the morgue awaiting arrival of close members of the family from abroad, found to their shock and horror that the body of their beloved father had turned completely black and unrecognisable. The authorities, even while admitting that they knew that the chilling system was malfunctioning, did not have any credible explanation as to why the relatives had not been informed. The problem was of course compounded by the fact that prompt arrangements are not made to dispose off accumulated unclaimed bodies which pile up not only at the morgue at Hospicio, but the GMC as well. Surely the dead need to be treated with some dignity. So while the Health Minister draws up ambitious plans of setting up super specialty departments in private partnership, perhaps he will find some time to strengthen the basic infrastructure for both the living and the dead.