Opinion Where are they now?

The CPM is fuming at the media and civil society for ignoring the attacks on its cadre by the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.

September 7, 2011 02:02 AM IST First published on: Sep 7, 2011 at 02:02 AM IST

Where are they now?

The CPM is fuming at the media and civil society for ignoring the attacks on its cadre by the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. The editorial in Peoples Democracy argues that,just months ago people in numbers that were exponentially larger than those who collected at Ramlila Maidan marched to Parliament at the call of the central trade unions protesting against inflation and corruption. The only reference in the mainstream media to this huge mobilisation was the traffic dislocation that this caused in the capital: The electronic media decides its content on the basis of TRP ratings and not on the worthiness of the news. Showing the wretched of the earth protesting price rise and corruption may not influence TRP ratings positively. It talks about the virtual blackout of the news by the mainstream media of a dharna staged here to protest the attacks in Bengal.

Listing out details of the attacks,it says:Despite such serious and unacceptable attacks on democratic rights and civil liberties,not a whimper was heard from any section of the so-called civil society… These very luminaries were in the forefront,in collaboration with the Maoists,in highlighting the blatantly fabricated attacks against the Left Front and the state government on the issues of Singur and Nandigram. Now,given the seriousness of these attacks in Bengal,they choose to remain silent. Need anything more be said about their ideological predilections?

Congress softness

CPI weekly New Age wonders: The BJP is supporting all economic measures being taken by the UPA 2 government under the dictates of international finance capital that will ruin the national economy. Is Congress paying back the BJP by soft-pedaling the involvement of Sangh Parivar in cases of bomb blasts and terrorist attacks? It argues that any honest government should have started releasing and rehabilitating all those Muslim youth who were falsely implicated in several cases of bomb blasts and terrorist attacks and prosecuted those police officers and investigating agencies who cooked up stories of Muslim involvement in the bomb blasts.

Medical news

An article in Peoples Democracy claims evidence is emerging that social health insurance schemes largely premised on private provisioning fail to ensure universal access. It quotes a study published by the Public Health Foundation of India examining data from the three largest social health insurance schemes in India,which explicitly separate financing and provision of health care,and allow beneficiaries to access care in accredited facilities in the private or the public sector.

In practice,an overwhelming majority of the accredited facilities are in the private sector and the study has found that the average cost of hospitalisation in these schemes was extremely high. The article says this indicates that private providers not only benefit from these schemes by securing a captive market,they also over-charge,possibly with the participation of the administrators of the schemes: What such evidence implies is that an increase in public expenditure on health care which is not accompanied by expansion of public health services,further strengthens the private sector (especially the large tertiary care sector that increasingly is constituted of corporate-run hospital chains) which already accounts for 70 per cent of health care in India. That the health care system in India might follow this route,is not an empty threat.

Compiled by Manoj C.G.