Satya.balakrishnan

President Pranab Mukherjee must reject the Union Cabinet’s unjustified ordinance

The UPA government’s Food Security Bill (brief) is likely to cause severe damage to the Indian economy, while saddling future generations with an open-ended spending commitment that will be hard to wind down. The government’s own Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices and the Expert Committee (report) headed by the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (report) have argued against it. As Ravikiran Rao argues in Pragati, the scheme will not only widen India’s gaping fiscal deficit, but severely distort the national food supply chain.

But you do not have to agree with the bill’s critics to acknowledge that a bill on which there is no consensus even among the government’s top economic experts, which imposes a burden on future generations, at a time when the Indian economy is in doldrums and the investors—domestic and foreign—are wary about investing in India, should not be implemented in a hurry.

Yet that is exactly what the UPA government is attempting to do. After emotional blackmail—for which purpose Nobel laureate Amartya Sen was recruited—failed to persuade parliament in the previous session, the Union Cabinet has now decided to sneak it through an ordinance.

Under the Constitution, an ordinance is an emergency provision, equipping the Executive to implement measures when the Parliament is not in session. The ordinance must be approved by both houses of Parliament the next time they convene and “shall cease to operate at the expiration of six weeks from the reassembly of Parliament”. What is important to note is the debates in the Constituent Assembly, the wording of the Constitution and Supreme Court judgements are clear that issuing ordinances is an emergency provision to be used at extraordinary times. Chief Justice P N Bhagwati, heading a Constitution Bench in D C Wadhwa vs State of Bihar held that

“The power to promulgate an Ordinance is essentially a power to be used to meet an extraordinary situation and it cannot be allowed to be ‘perverted to serve political ends’. It is contrary to all democratic norms that the Executive should have the power to make a law.” [1987 AIR 579, 1987 SCR (1) 798/IndiaKanoon]

The Union Cabinet’s decision to implement the food security bill—that is still in Parliament—through an ordinance flies in the face of the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Justice Bhagwati’s ruling is clear—an ordinance can only be used to meet an extraordinary situation, not perverted to serve political ends.

Where is the extraordinary situation? Where is the food emergency? Is there a famine in the country? Is a famine projected? If there is no extraordinary situation, then the Union Cabinet’s decision to wrap its political pet project in the garb of an emergency is against constitutional morality. It is perhaps unconstitutional as well.

There is no doubt that there many right-thinking Indians who believe that the food security bill is a good thing and that it will even provide food security as intended. However, it will be hard for any reasonable person to conclude that the situation in India is dire enough to bulldoze constitutional and democratic norms and present parliament with a fait accompli.

The argument that the ordinance is necessary because Opposition parties have not allowed Parliament to function does not wash. While the BJP has provided the Congress party with a seemingly plausible excuse, the Union Cabinet is bound by the Constitution. It is sworn to uphold the Constitution. It cannot refuse to perform this duty merely because the Opposition is not playing by the rules. If we are to buy the premise that two wrongs make a right, we are either in a jungle or in a banana republic.

President Pranab Mukherjee is perhaps sympathetic to Sonia Gandhi’s ideological persuasions. As a life-long Congressman, he might be inclined towards the party’s socialist leanings. Yet when the ordinance comes before him, the only question he must ask is “Is there an extraordinary situation that demands this ordinance?” Parliament convenes in a few weeks. Can this not wait until then?

The Indian Republic’s history is replete with presidents, who despite being lifelong Congressmen, have had the integrity, courage and statesmanship to question Congress-led governments. It is up to President Mukherjee to decide whether he wants to be a Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed or a Rajendra Prasad.

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: Last week, a relative called me up when I was in the middle of my practice to ask me if I knew that the anti-diabetic drug I had been treating his wife with had been banned by the Indian government, according to a newspaper report he was reading.

Surprised that I had no wind of this development from the two morning dailies I had just finished reading, I switched to the online edition of his newspaper to discover that what he had informed me was indeed true.

***

Our country with a conservatively estimated population of over a hundred crore now has a population of about ten crore diabetics.

If you are stunned by this figure I am not surprised as it certainly appears very huge. But with the incidence of diabetes, conservatively estimated again, to be between seven and nine per cent of the population, that is exactly what it translates to.

Now, at least 30 per cent of these ten crore diabetics are being treated or would have been treated sometime sooner or later in their lives with a drug called Pioglitazone which is one of the very potent anti-diabetic drugs available almost all over the world in any doctor’s armamentarium.

This is the drug that was being used as the last resort when all else failed to control the disease, before recommending Insulin injections which most patients understandably dread, both because of the pain and the cost.

This was a drug that had some very unique beneficial properties, the most important one being its ability to reduce the development of insulin resistance in the body. It was therefore a very good add-on drug that would also help in reducing the dose of insulin required to bring the blood sugar levels down.

This drug was also capable of reducing the levels of Triglyceride, one of the bad Cholesterols in the blood that can increase the risk of heart attacks. But like almost every other drug this drug too was said to be potentially capable of sometimes causing some serious side effects which notably were almost unheard of in Indian patients.

I have been treating almost a third of my diabetic patients with it over the past 12 years of its existence in India and I have never come across even a single patient who developed any of the serious side effects.

And, I have never come across any of my fellow doctors, including exclusive diabetologists who have encountered them in their practices.

Most importantly, it was also a drug that was indigenously manufactured and therefore cheaply available across the length and breadth of the country and this perhaps was what sounded its death knell in our poor nation.

***

Just a few years ago there appeared on the medical horizon a new class of drugs called the Gliptins, developed and manufactured overseas, by seething rich pharma giants under strong and strict patents.

They were touted as the miracle molecules that could revolutionise the treatment of diabetes by obviating the need to use insulin and were hastily thrust, at an astronomical cost, into almost all the third-world countries, including India which could ill afford them.

Imagine even a well-to-do diabetic patient having to take tablets costing around forty to forty five rupees every day, life-long.

How many Indians can afford this kind of treatment for themselves when there are many other things to do for the rest of their family members with their hard-earned money?

Most importantly, despite aggressive marketing these newer drugs simply failed to even make a tiny dent in the management of diabetes because they simply failed to live up to what was expected of them by way of their efficacy.

So all those who stood to lose heavily after breeding and backing the wrong horses had to quickly do something to rein in their losses.

***

There is a sentence in Wilbur Smith’s novel of the same name that says, ‘When the lion feeds, someone has to die’. And so the first victim that had to die to keep the powerful Gliptin lion alive was Rosiglitazone, a sibling of Pioglitazone.

It was accused of first degree murder, quickly tried, convicted and summarily executed although more than a hundred other more lethal drugs still rule the roost here, flying across sales counters, without doctors’ prescriptions.

Close upon the heels of this macabre victory the honourable ‘Brutuses’ turned their daggers on the present victim citing its banishment from France and Germany, although it is still very much in use in almost the whole world, including the United States, Canada, Japan and the rest of Europe.

In fact it is still the tenth largest selling drug in the United States.

Now in our country, with Pioglitazone gone, the Gliptins, which have failed to do anything impressive, will be the only option for diabetics who desperately try to avoid embarking on Insulin. And, this is where all those who peddle them will stand to gain their billions from their clever act.

***

So investing just a few millions in ‘buying’ the help of someone in our health ministry only amounts to offering the crumbs that fall off their plates onto the dining table.

Perhaps the makers and marketers of the different kinds of Insulins too are abettors of this heinous crime as patients who do not benefit from Gliptins now have no other option than to start them.

Today, it is a matter of pride that Indian doctors are among the most respected and trusted all over the world. With their academic excellence and clinical skills they have made a tremendous impact on the healthcare front and are much sought after both by patients and research foundations.

We have some of the best professional societies for conducting research on almost all the major diseases well within our country.

Yet, without seeking the opinion of any of these bodies and without as much as a debate or discussion among the many excellent academic fora that we have in our country for the study of Diabetes and with just a stroke of the bureaucratic pen, someone, somewhere, sitting in the ivory towers of administration in New Delhi and who does not know the A, B or C of pharmacology or medical practice has signed the death warrant that is bound to spell doom for at least three crore Indian lives.

It is an act that will amount to being the biggest genocide in history if only we have the far-sighted vision to foresee it. And if we do not have this vision, it will be a tragedy that will most likely go unnoticed because it is not going to happen at once like the Bhopal gas disaster to make a noticeable impact, unfolding silently like a Biblical pestilence only over the next few decades.

Diabetic patients who cannot afford the Gliptins, the prices of which have shown no signs of coming down and which cannot do much good even if made affordable, simply cannot keep their disease under control.

All those who cannot afford Insulin injections or accept the pain and inconvenience of embarking on them will stand to lose.

Elderly patients who stay alone and who do not have the dexterity to inject themselves and who could have kept the disease under control for many more years with oral tablets of Pioglitazone will be the most helpless losers.

And, to top it all, uncontrolled diabetes is a disease with unimaginable morbidity and the highest mortality, all of which is easily avoidable with proper management.

Despite the grim scenario that is set to unfold, all is not lost yet and I still see hope for all the hopeless if a few professional bodies seek a legal remedy from the Supreme Court against this ban which certainly smells of a mega-scam and demand a rethink, taking all pros and cons into consideration.

We can at least retain the drug with a stipulation that it should be used very judiciously only in those patients who are not at risk of its side effects.

But with the Gliptin and Insulin lobby being very strong, perhaps tomorrow itself you may find the media abuzz with write-ups and blogs calling my kind of writing ill-informed and amateurish.

Well paid ghost writers can certainly write a more effective charge-sheet than what an unpaid doctor like me can do and I may naturally be no match for them. But the truth needs to be told in the interests of all those who stand to lose.

The millions of patients who will lose their lives due to their reluctance to buy the expensive medicines that will help them live just a wee bit longer, while their loved ones die of hunger.

Or, the loved ones who will live on, after losing much, much before their time, the ones who nourished and nurtured them.

(K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column in Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared)

Filed under: Issues and Ideas, Life Etcetera Tagged: Churumuri, Diabetes, Gliptin, Insulin, K. Javeed Nayeem, Pioglitazone, Sans Serif, Supreme Court

Targeting her Marxist opponents again, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleged that CPI(M) was plotting with Maoists to kill her with the help of Pakistan’s ISI and financed by North Korea, Venezuela and Hungary. [Link]

“CPI(M) has joined hands with the Maoists in making a blueprint to kill me and to make room for their return to power in West Bengal which will never come off,” Ms Banerjee thundered at her first panchayat poll campaign. [Link]

Mamata Banerjee told an election meeting Thursday that many of the “so-called intellectuals and social workers” who went on television to discuss rape in Bengal were “associated with pornography”. [Link]

It is unfortunate to the extreme that sections of the media, have been trying to suggest that Mamata Banerjee is suffering from an irrational siege mentality, that somehow there is no such international “conspiracy” of the type she repeatedly keeps alluding to.

Well, there is.

The CIA and the Gassad (West Bengal’s secret service that subsists on oily papad-bhaja and kochuri) have been aware for some time of how North Korea, Venezuela and Hungary (even though it is strictly not Communist, the fact that it is Hung(a)ry means they have a strong Marxist tradition) and of course the Pakistanis have been conducting secret deliberations and strategizing on how to dismantle the greatest impediment to their national progress—namely the Trinamool government. It makes perfect sense. By following the policy of Ma Mati Manush, Didi  is making Calcutta into London and Bengal into Shangri-La, thus making countries like North Korea insecure in that they can no longer tell their population “We may not be doing too well  in terms of industry and development but we are definitely better off than West Bengal”.  Hence, they have been operating through their agents on the ground in Bengal, namely the Maoists, the CPM, the BJP, “a particular media group”, and an army of pornographers, so as to destabilize the government (In Bengal, we call it, Elmer Fudd-like, the gowment). What our honorable Chief Minister has not told us yet, perhaps because she does not want to scare her subjects, are the other participants in this conspiracy—-The Illuminati (In Bengal, they cleverly call themselves “Load Shedding” to stress lack of illumination), the Wapas Dei, the ThreeMasons (in Bengal, they are known as Rajmistris), the Ringwraiths (often found near Park Circus eating biriyani at Arsalan), the pornstar-Lenins (Lenin teri le legi tu likh ke le le as the song goes), Hyaenas from China and perhaps most dangerously, an army of indoctrinated cows who call themselves Moo-ists.

Recently in Kolkata and in certain district towns, there has been much uproar after a series of rapes, with ordinary people and “intellectuals” taking to the streets in protest, asking the government to do a better job in protecting women. These consiparators have been tomtoming a report  that has put West Bengal on top (for the second year running) in states with highest crimes against women, which on the face of it seems to castigate the present TMC government for not doing much. The operative word is “seems to”. First of all, statistics is an ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) conspiracy. Also take a look a little closely and you realize that the perpetrators of all these crimes must have all have been born during the CPM or Congress regime and hence it is those parties that should be blamed for their acts and not TMC. It’s here when the insidiousness of the scheme becomes apparent; that the CPM sowed these evil seeds such that they raise their head during Didi’s rule and besmirch her achievements.  The people making the accusations forget the fundamental axiom: “If it is something good, it’s TMC’s credit, if it is something bad, it’s previous government’s fault.” And if anyone has any problem with this, well to quote Didi “Apni ball marben ami over-boundary maarbo” (You hit me with a ball, I shall hit you for an over-boundary) (Video) [Side factoid: Raina has bought a Tshirt with this slogan printed and is packing it for South Africa tour]

The principal problem of course remains the Phantom Menace of Maoists. Like zombies from “The Walking Dead”, they are everywhere, waiting to spring out in front of the chief minister when she least expects it. Like the simple village women who accosted the Chief Minister, protesting against atrocities against women. CPM-Maoists. Like the student who asked the Chief Minister a question in a televised town-hall meeting. CPM-Maoist. Like the TMC party-man who questioned Mamata at a rally. Maoist. (He later joined BJP) Like the man who surrendered himself in front of the CM’s house declaring himself a Maoist. Now this guy is NOT a Maoist. And that’s highly suspicious too.

And here is where the rubber really hits the road. In a state where there are so many Maoists lurking about in 2013, one would think we have had Maoists here for ages. Not so. In 2010, there were no Maoists in Bengal. Yes you read that right. Skeptical? Well Didi herself said that there are no Maoists (link) and we know she is not part of the conspiracy. So how did all these Maoists get into Bengal within three years? We don’t know but I think, and I don’t have any proof of this, that the Federation from Star Trek is beaming Maoists from Rigulus V right into the heart of the state. The reason I say this is the color of Scottie’s jersey, yes the man who mans the transporter. Which for all you non-Trekkies is red. Red like…you know the rest.

What really shocked me was this snippet carried on NDTV where Aparna Sen expresses her shock at the way Mamata Banerjee has changed from the time she and her fellow intellectuals walked in support of her. Oh my goodness “Ami Miss Calcutta 1976”. You want poriborton and then get all upset once you get it. Ms. Sen claims Didi used to be so sensitive to rape victims before and now she isn’t. In those days, and many of us are old enough to remember, whenever there was any case of harassment of women, Didi would rush to the site and demand the dismissal of the CPM government for breakdown of law and order machinery. Now even when no one does anything or even blames her, because there is basically no Opposition in the state, Didi claims that the Maoists and the CPM and the media channels are politicizing the issue of rape just for their nefarious agenda. Nothing wrong about this. People change. Circumstances change. She was in the opposition then and now she is the ruler.  What is your problem? Do you have any problem?

Here is another example of poriborton. There was a time when Banerjee was synonymous with bandhs, where many felt that her espousal of bandhs, which caused untold misery and loss of productivity, was populism at its most aggressive? After all, how can you not like the person who gives you free holidays? Now she has changed after becoming Chief Minister. As a matter of fact,  she has become violently against all bandhs (“It is my humble request that to the Election Commission that parties that call bandhs should be banned”), despite this: “Her comment triggered a huge uproar from various political parties with some even ridiculing her for forgetting that her party had “called bandh 21 times in Bengal between 2007 and 2011″. Not that Didi does not still like for people to have the day off, (after all, the more things change the more they stay the same). But now that she rules, she simply uses her executive privilege to simply declare holidays, like the half-day for Jamai-sashti , a full day for Tagore’s death anniversary and yet another full day for Shab-e-Barat . No need for bandhs anymore you see. Finally, change we may believe in.

So let me appeal to you to not to fall prey to Maoist propaganda. You know your grandma warned you of this when she told you the story of “Hao MAO khao (Ma, Mati) Manusher gondho pao”.  And don’t trust the media. Remember the press only carries stories of rape, they never carry stories of those who were not raped. (“Are all women in Bengal being raped?“) Identify kindly the “news pollution” (a neologism courtesy Didi) which is even worse than noise pollution. Be grateful to this government for its achievements like winning IPL in 2012 (did the CPM government ever do that? Eh?). Most importantly, do not draw cartoons, forward emails, protest anywhere near where the CM can hear you or ask questions or demand answers. Because if you do, that can mean only one thing. Like the invasion of the body snatchers, the Maoist or the CPM cadre spore has infected your mind, and the most terrible thing is that you don’t know even know it.

[Image courtesy: NDTV]

 

What happens when good jobs disappear? It’s a question that’s been asked for centuries.