001. UK Traveller Warning, Koodankulam, Tower Radiation, Health Specialists.

Kerala Health Service fails to attract specialist doctors. News. Times of India.

The Kerala government banned private practice of doctors employed in medical colleges, dental colleges and nursing colleges. All of these medical colleges were already suffering from acute shortage of experienced doctors and medical teachers after most of them having gone to foreign countries to take up better employment there. Government’s attempt to call them back from leave did not yield results; most of them just resigned from their positions or merely did not respond to these calls. Even if government had succeeded in recruiting new doctors to fill up vacant posts, they would not have got qualified and experienced doctors as hundreds of private hospitals also were vying for them. Senior medical students now carry on the running of medical colleges and the future of medical education in that state is dull. Government brought about this situation by forcing doctors to quit for joining private hospitals where they could continue home practice simultaneously. Allowing the home practice of doctors would have helped in maintaining the overall health care in the state and solved the problem of the dearth of experienced doctors in government hospitals, but things now have gone out of hands and control of the government. However much the government increased the pay of doctors, it had no effect on their remaining in service because no doctor did or would abandon home practice for sitting inert and idle in their homes. Either Kerala looses all qualified and experienced hands or they liberally allow private practice to retain experienced doctors in service, which is the predicament there. But as we have seen, maintaining the quality and uninterruptedness of patient care in the state is now no concern of the politicians and bureaucrats there. Each person comes as health minister, issues a few orders here and there, loosens a few foundation stones at critical points and vanishes into anonymity never to be heard again. Soon we will hear about something like the health establishment in the state has collapsed. Then we will hear about a government order banning patients in hospitals until they are fully insurance covered. It will not be too long before we hear that the whole set up has been given on lease to foreign consultancies for running. The last government order from these traitors would be the announcement of the sale of all government hospitals as a lot to foreign investors ‘for ensuring quality medical assistance to all, considering the interests of the state’. There would be no protestation riots from the youth organizations of even the revolutionary parties for it would be their leaders issuing these orders and excellently explaining everything in the light of Karl Marx’s theories of dialectical materialism and poor Lenin’s principles of class war.''

Politicians and bureaucrats have the basic misconception that doctors, like them, care only for money and would forget the impact and influence of real good education. In Kerala, this banning of private practice was first enforced by a minister belonging to the central committee of the Communist Party of India Marxist-a party which is in intellectual darkness as regard to this issue-who thought that banning private practice of doctors was something simple and technical like banning illicit liquor, tobacco and plastic cover. Inspired by Kerala, politicians in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Orissa, and Maharashtra states also carried out similar raids on doctors’ homes and clinics arranged by medical council of India, which only alienated good doctors dedicated to patients. We know, Karnataka has the largest number of paper medical colleges where anyone can seek admission and pay and obtain medical degrees, protected or owned by the politicians and bureaucrats there, investigated never by any medical council. Where money and political power are involved, no investigations would be. The first thing the medial council of India ought to have investigated was involvement of large private hospitals in bringing about these bans and legislations and how much they paid politicians and bureaucrats to bring about this favourable kind of situation to keep their establishments afloat. Even 65 years after the British left India, they still have not been interested to open at least one dispensary in each village, forgetting which they are shutting down home practices.

Clinical laboratories need hematologists, pathologists and microbiologists to run tests but these medical specialists are not easily available to private laboratories. So they engage government specialists to work in spare time and on off-duty days. There again it is patients who get services of the best, which saves their lives. It is because government hospitals do not have facilities to test all patients or conduct all tests that patients go to these private laboratories. They are proof of authorities’ negligence and dereliction in setting up well-equipped laboratories attached to hospitals from the village level up to the metros. If government labs were equipped and staffed well, government specialists would have done these tests in government hospitals. Without equipping government labs, dictating specialists not to attend spare time duties in private clinics, is denying best services to patients; it is politician’s jealousy for professionalism. Let professionals work wherever they are needed, which would alleviate pains and solve health problems more effectively. We expect specialists to be allowed to practice privately and freely as there are not enough numbers of them compared to general practitioners, but here what we see is, in general medicine a doctor can practice but in specialties like much needed pathology, microbiology and hematology one is not allowed to. There is some kind of fishiness in government decisions in this matter. They decide which specialties are to be included in the ban or excluded from calculating on from which the great private hospitals expect and need a great influx of patients. Is it time politicians in government are seized and subjected to forced psychiatric treatment, before more delusional and hallucinatory decisions are taken and health services ruined beyond repairs? Sometimes, a skilled anesthetist will have to be called by a private hospital to attend to an operation on a patient there. Anesthetists are an essential part of an operating team who can make it a success or failure. A skilled anesthetist is a much sought-after thing. If an anesthetist is free and an operating team in a private hospital is in need of one for saving the life of a patient, what wrong is there in spending his spare time to save the life of another human being? But this jealous politician of ours is against such loftiness and has decided to include anesthesia in the list of banned specialties; we know he was a lesser-learned craft teacher in a primary school in his former life before coming into politics and becoming a health minister. If he is questioned, his young followers will rush into the hospital and seize doctors by their collars as they did in Uttar Pradesh. We the people are in a way lonely and those skilled physicians who can save our lives are bound hand and foot by under-educated politicians so that they won’t be able to save us- these politicians we elect each time casting our votes.

Some doctors do send bagfuls of money to banks each day collected from private consultation but we shall not be jealous. Think about the time, effort and energy they spend during the long years of study, the longest when compared to those bureaucrats in IAS, IFS, IES and IPS. Brain drain of doctors to England, America, Australia and the Middle East has been going on for so many years because there were not brighter brains in government to prevent it. There were early warnings about this from learned and foresighted quarters but authorities heeded not these warnings. Billions of rupees spent by the country for educating these brains became useless for the country and all of those who could secure a pass port, travel ticket and grant of leave left the land. Only those with domestic encumbrances such as little children, ailing wives and aged parents remained to treat natives. It is those who remained to treat natives who are hunted for private practice now. Today, when government tries to fill up vacancies of doctors in hospitals, there are none to take up employment with government. We cannot punish those bureaucrats and state ministers who brought about this situation through their irresponsibility and unwisdom because they have constitutional immunity. But which doctor would have gone abroad leaving native practice and a family behind if equally attractive pay was paid and equally reliable equipment were provided in native hospitals? So, our jealous bureaucrat nipped in bud all such positive thoughts and prompted government to believe that if private practice ban is enforced fiercely and more and more doctors punished for private practice, they will get the heat and come government’s way. What actually happened was the other way; attraction for government service ceased and private hospitals came up everywhere to bridge the gap. In future, to get doctors for working in government hospitals, they will have to pay more than what the private hospitals and foreign governments pay, thanks to the advice of wicked bureaucrats and crooked politicians. If you are beginning to point out that there are handsome retirement benefits and pension schemes in government, know that they are all already done with after new parliamentary legislation, to a level much lower than that of private hospitals. Do not think politicians and bureaucrats in the country are totally ignorant and short-sighted; they are not and they want total destruction of the famous free hospital system of India which has been a model to the world, and to prepare way for their sons and daughters in giant private hospitals and mammoth medical companies.

Cellphone tower radiation not harmful: Indian Medical Association. News. Times of India.

It is accepted knowledge that radiation and vibration from mobile phone handsets and mobile phone towers is not a tonic to animal body and birds but a hazardous modern necessity for the time being. It is inconceivable that radiations from Mobile Phone Towers do not affect human health and well-being. Even if we are sitting inside a rocky cave surrounded on all sides by dense foliage and vegetation or are lying hidden inside a rocky pit in the deep and unfathomable bowels of the Earth, our mobile phones still have range and we can still send messages and receive messages, which means the atmosphere around us and our surrounding air are saturated with radiations and unperceivable vibrations. It is known all over the world, even to tiny school children, that our little mobile phone handsets are much harmful to human body than the large television sets. Who will deny that saturated presence of unnatural radiations is harmful to human body? At times, authorities including the union minister for communication will issue press releases, assuring that every step is taken to prevent excessive radiation from mobile phone towers. But what steps are they taking or can they take, apart from dismantling towers and resorting to other costlier communication technologies? At times they will say that some kind of directive has been issued to limit radiation to harmless levels. What harmless levels, undefined and ambiguous? Are these directives being kept and observed by the tele-communication department? And the sound pollution caused by these omnipresent mobile phone towers! Almost all of them have diesel generators attached to them to substitute electrical power when electricity fails, which almost always does. Never seen or heard about a costly noise-proof generator attached to a mobile phone tower in India. Noise-proof generators are must for all mobile phone towers, but except just a few here and there, almost all of these towers use diesel generators. No lawyer has ever approached a court nor has a judicial court ever issued an order prohibiting the use of diesel generators. So now, all over India, we have freely-functioning mobile phone towers, transmitting as much communication and radiation as they can, and affecting the health and life our children, pregnant women, ailing old men, avian beings and livestock. Occasionally, a few research organizations, funded by government which in its turn is funded by BSNL, Airtel, Tata and Reliance, would conduct some divertive studies and declare that they have found beyond doubt that mobile phone towers causing hazardous radiation is a baseless allegation. Assam Agricultural University finding house sparrows surviving more than tree sparrows in Guwahati did not prove house sparrows are not affected adversely by cell phone tower radiation. It only proved house sparrows living in protected environment are less affected and tree sparrows living in the open are being eliminated en mass and becoming extinct.

Atomic Energy Commission and National Power Corporation differ on commissioning date of Kudankulam Nuclear Unit Number Two. News. Times of India. 

There is widespread belief that nuclear energy is low-cost and low-priced which is only because it is heavily subsidized and tax-exempted. Once these exemptions and subsidies are removed, which sure will be as it regularly happens with other energy forms, its price will sky rocket. The largest nuclear energy producers amassed huge profits from their long-functioning plants but electricity prices did not come down. The energy is there and the profit, but the profit goes to a few hands; the burden of keeping waste becomes that of future generations. Statistics show that the more nuclear energy is produced, the more highly priced it becomes. But, when the more wind energy is produced, the lesser has its price become. It is because nuclear monopolies control governments unlike renewable energy producers and have a free hand in deciding at what price their product is to be sold even while enjoying subsidies, and at what rate their price is to be raised each year which is about 10 percent now. The question is, without state subsidies, concessions and exemptions how are nuclear plants viable? In many countries, local communities and local administrations run economically and environmentally viable small renewable energy plants without setting up elaborate grids. They do not dictate their laws or command governments what policies are to be adopted in energy sector. But that is not the case with nuclear energy sector. Because their plants need huge amounts for construction and they possibly own their distribution grids, they consider governments their slaves, which they actually are, and dictate terms, rules, laws, even while enjoying state concessions. Why should this go on for more years and in more countries? While there are already established other energy production forms which do not enforce political and economic slavery, why rely on and retain a rich slave master who is unsuitable to the modern-day world? It is irrational and illogical that energy makers function as policy makers also. Power makers delegate their representatives to the policy making body; top government officials in the policy making body joins the energy makers when they retire, which causes these heavy state subsidies, exemptions and concessions to nuclear energy makers. First they work in the government, lobbying for the company; then they work in the company, again lobbying government for the company. Perched in their positions which we mistake for governmental, for the past decades, they have been crying out loud that unless nuclear energy is there, the world will fall into darkness. 15 percent of energy produced in Germany in 2009 came from renewable energy sources. This could be made to 50 percent in the world in 2020 and to 100 percent by 2040. They also have been demanding extension of the life period of their reactors, for they would bring steady profits without further investment, and for, they would be there to defeat moves to turn to safe renewable energy sources.

Suspension of civil rights is a measure governments adopt everywhere to crush people’s opposition to nuclear power. When the construction of a new nuclear plant is going on or raw materials or processed materials are being moved through public roads, government blocks traffic on these roads for hours or for weeks. The area around the construction sites would be banned for protestation marches. Protestors are treated like terrorists, they are forced away, beaten, houses raided, phones tapped and employment terminated. Hundreds of them are arrested, imprisoned and maimed, with or without court orders. Rules and regulations stipulate that reactors must belong to latest technologies and safety and protection measures should also be latest. But reactors continue to open without interference from law but when people, fearing hazards and accidents, protest and assemble, there is every law and judicial presence there to stop and persecute them. Governments like India who boast about being the largest democracy in the world are never ashamed to counter nuclear protestors with guns, grenades, water cannons and latthi charges. For every penny of lobbying money they receive from energy cartels, they save two shots for every nuclear protestor. No government in this world has any substantiating argument to justify nuclear energy against the Aeons-long radiation effect, so they turn to violence like barbarian clan chiefs. For centuries, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism have been dividing people and making them fight one another. Now it is the turn of nuclear energy to make people take stand on two opposite sides and war till the end of their lives. This war which had been going on for more than 60 years had a small respite a decade earlier when large electrical manufacturing companies agreed to a truce whereby they consented to a gradual nuclear phase-out in return for many concessions. They enjoy these concessions but continue to build more and more nuclear reactors everywhere. Even though the first nation in the world to build a nuclear power station, Germany, declaring itself non-nuclear in the future was a shock to them, these companies found it much solacing and a relief to seduce India, China and Russia to go on firmly in the path of the nuclear. As a consequence, the aforementioned civil rights violations and suppression of people’s freedom too are going on in these countries. Actually they are emerging as a nuclear lobby and cornering Nepal, Pakistan, Burma, Tibet and Sri Lanka. If any of these countries go non-nuclear, declare that Indian, Chinese and Russian reactors which are very close to them are a threat to their people and demand dismantling of these reactors, it would start another political polarization and unrest in the sub continent which is the common fear of these three nations which made them unite nuclearly, defying all other previous political attachments.

Suppose our car which is an old-fashioned one, needs a few repairs and we take it to our usual workshop. The garage owner will tell us that many of its spare parts won’t be available in the market anymore since the manufacturer may have moved to more modern models and stopped their production or the available spares won’t suit our model of the car after its long usage and heavy wear and tear. So our beloved favourite workshop makes some makeshift arrangements to save the car from a shameful off-road condition and fits in spares from other model cars or simply does some ingenious welding and refitting. Now the car is ready to undertake a trans-Siberian trip, he announces. We are happy to have our constant companion back in the running condition, that for many decades to come it won’t have anymore problems, and that it won’t cost us any more money or time for repairs for a few more years. And they are happy that they have not failed our confidence in them and that they richer by a few more thousand dollars. But we all know that it is risky. That is the case with all aged, old and problematic reactors. The older it becomes, the more risky it also becomes. Most of their spares also won’t be available and the engineer would be making some similar makeshift arrangements to meet the government’s deadline to avoid power cuts, blackouts and brownouts. Many nations built their reactors during the nuclear plant building spree since the 1970s and all of them are now old, problematic and nearing their expiry year. But these countries would not be willing to replace them with new reactors due to the heavy cost of building new reactors and also due to the inability to appease their opposing people. So they simply decide to extend the service of these old reactors, postponing their retirement. From many countries throughout the world we now hear prolongation of the services of existing power plants. All of them are cheating their people and throwing people to the wolves. When they say renovation, simply know that it is makeshift arrangements. They are never going to dismantle the reactors, cooling towers and attached vessels and metal systems and substituting them with new ones but making stop-gap arrangements till the laws could be modified or bypassed to make possible their continued functioning. Either dismantling and substitution, or shutting down the operation; there is no other alternative to an aged nuclear power plant. Engineers, companies and corporations will come up with excellent-looking solutions to extend the life of a plant and governments will accept their proposals with great show; all to cheat people and the world. A milking cow would be turned to the butcher only when it bleeds in place of milk. If it is an old nuclear plant, even scrap merchants won’t go anywhere near it. Replacing them with original components is never, considering their unavailability.

UK cautions travellers in India after rape of Danish traveller. News. Times of India. 

Chikungunya, dengue, dogs and now rape- India's infra structure for attracting foreign travellers is now complete. It is government's failure in controlling that brought about this situation. The first three could have been got ridden of, had government cared. The last one could have been stopped, had meaningful laws been passed and severe punishments given. Even after committing gang-rapes, culprits can escape punishment after dragging the case through decades in Indian courts. No country with a sane government would advise travellers to pass through India. Indian tourism industry owes its present plight to government.


Edited by P.S.Remesh Chandran. All text by Editor except news headlines.