Posted in CII Journal December 2013 / January 2014
As India moves inexorably towards a globalised, corporate-driven reality, Praveen Gupta assesses the opportunities and risks associated with its subsequent increased need for liability insurance products
Knowing an author as a person is so different from knowing the person as an author. MS Sarna that I knew was an exceptionally calm and serene human being. Almost through with the ‘Savage Harvest’, the author has reinvented the person I thought I knew. I am not sure how I would have felt had I read these stories in original Punjabi. If only I could read Gurmukhi… But knowing the master craftsman Navtej’s delicate handling of his late father’s gems, I believe I would perhaps register the same intensity and frequency of goosebumps and tears.
Apart from their strong underlying emotive side, these stories also trigger diverse thoughts. How did a social fabric renowned for its ‘unity in diversity’ suddenly hit the boiling point? Why did the colonial masters not think through the end game of the partition? Was it an outcome of poor governance? Or, was it a logical extension of the infamous ‘divide and rule’? Thereby, was Radcliffe line one of their most callous acts?
If the empire failed, why did we choose to behave violently despite ‘an accursed political decision of departing rulers’? In ‘Hope’ the author when alluding to the Hindus and Sikhs migrating from the Northwestern part of the then-country makes a very profound observation. “They had been on the wrong side of the line which had been drawn to divide the country. To come from the wrong to the right side, to cross that bloody line, they had to pay a very heavy price; everybody’s fault was the same, but each one paid a different price.”
And then, regret its ‘sad’ demise? In ‘My Precious One’, Barkate says, ”What evil days are upon us? The days of the British Raj were so good, not even a sparrow could flap its wings out of turn.”
An interplay of rationality & irrationality
Like in the overall Partition theme, an interplay of irrationality and rationality manifests very intensely in all the stories. While violence is what one associates most with the sub-division of our sub-continent, let us also remember that its unfolding also heightened the conviction of non-violence in its most successful practitioner, the Mahatma. In ‘The Minor Gandhis’, the author brilliantly portrays the thoughts of Begma whose comatose son Sadeq gives up his life on hearing about Gandhiji’s assassination. “He did not want to live in a world where prophets of peace and non-violence were shot to death.”
How did such a calm and serene person deal with such levels of outrage; and despite it all, how did he still manage to stay calm and serene? After a voyage through 30 stories by the person I knew, I believe I finally had an inkling into the mind of the author he was. Unlike many of us he did not dramatise it, despite all its fury and bestiality he had the genius for always spotting a ray of hope in howsoever hopeless a situation. He could sublimate all his sense of anger, disgust and rather bury it deep inside his soul as he dealt with it.
His treatment of violence is generally not just subdued but a distanced theatre, as well. It is not the violent actions of his theme but the prose that inflicts the reader’s soul. It’s the artistry and not the wordsmith in him that turns the tide of hopelessness into hope. What seem like dire situations, as if by miracle, he tips them towards hope and optimism. The miracle is in his craft and more than the craft in his conviction that in the end humanity wins!
I believe all students of Modern Indian history who wish to deep dive into the subject of Partition and wish to get an authentic feel of the theatre must also ‘reap’ the Savage Harvest.
Published in the Journal of Insurance Institute of India in October-December 2013
“Clean slate for doctors on medical negligence? Are Indian medics incapable of making mistakes? The complete lack of data on cases of medical error seems to indicate as much”, reports Rema Nagarajan in TOI of December 23, 2013.
The starting point to address this malady is to diagnose how frequent and severe is it. With no data on incidence of medical errors and no authority tracking cases of medical negligence, one might be forgiven for imagining that the over 8 lakh (800,000) registered doctors in India are perfect professionals who never make any mistakes, writes Ms Nagarajan. Let us not forget the growing violent actions both in China and India, which have been alluded to in previous blogs, as a desperate attempt in trying to seek justice for the aggrieved.
“Recently, the parliamentary committee on health and family welfare expressed concern over the fact that there is negligible prosecution of medical negligence cases in India. But the committee’s observation draws attention to an even more shocking fact — there is no centralised collection of data on negligence cases filed in India or their outcome”.
State medical councils and the Medical Council of India (MCI) are supposed to maintain registers of all complaints filed against doctors, their status and the outcome of such complaints. But till today, the MCI has not bothered to put together regional data to build a central database for the nation. This means that the magnitude of the problem of medical negligence remains ignored in India notes Ms. Nagarajan.
“All members of the MCI are medical professionals and whenever any complaint of medical negligence or violation of code of ethics is brought before the council, such cases are decided by the medical professionals themselves. There are reports that the medical professionals probing into the allegations of medical negligence are very lenient towards their colleagues guilty of negligence and none of them is willing to testify another Doctor as negligent,” stated the report adding that the impact of this arrangement was that the prosecution in medical negligence cases by the MCI is dismal, highlights the author quoting the parliamentary committee’s recently submitted 73rd report on the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill 2013.
According to People for Better Treatment (PBT), which was started by Dr Kunal Saha (he recently won the record settlement of over Rs 6 crore by the Supreme Court for the death of his wife due to medical negligence), hardly any doctors are found guilty by state medical councils.
For instance, PBT’s RTI enquiry found that just 515 cases were filed against doctors for either medical negligence or ethical violation in one decade (2001-10), barely four cases a month. And action was taken in just 9% — 15 doctors were removed from the council’s list of registered practitioners and 30 let off with a warning. In 91% of cases, either the case was closed or the accused let off, cites Ms Nagarajan.
“State medical councils mostly comprise doctors and most are not even functioning properly. The ones that function do not reveal any data on the complaints or their outcome,” says Dr Amar Jesani, editor, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. In Maharashtra the medical council was not properly functional for two decades. From 1990 till 2011, it remained mired in controversies regarding malpractices in the election of council members, goes on to highlight the author.
“We had a tough time trying to get data from the different state medical councils. Even with RTI, they give vague information. There is no price to be paid when council members shield doctors in cases that come before them as the public will never know what happens,” says Dr Saha according to the TOI report.
“In other countries, non-doctors like patients and social workers are mandatorily made members of the medical council and they are known as ‘lay members’ and on occasions they may even lead the council as was the case with UK’s General Medical Council,” pointed out the report recommending that the new, revised legislation ought to make it mandatory to have such members on the council. Ms Nagarajan has indeed hit the nail here. Trust all this does not fall on deaf ears.
Not only is this matter begging attention for a fair reporting and corrective actions, we also have a serious issue with rampant quackery and spurious medical qualifications that are a blot on a profession which ought to tread the holy ground with a Hippocratic oath.
Published in Indian Express on December 23, 2013: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/time-for-a-relook-at-insurance-cover-for-corporates-decisionmakers/1210637/0
Published in Journal of Insurance Institute of India, April-June 2013 issue:
Subodh Verma highlights the plight of ‘elderly left vulnerable by government pension ‘pittance’, TOI December 21, 2013.
Ageing, loneliness, healthcare and to top it all the lack of social security now potentially leaves an excess of 100 million Indians outside the safety network of pensions. A staggering number – far in excess of the population of most countries.
According to the report “there are estimated 10 crore persons aged 60 years or above in India as per Census 2011. If you take persons above, the number rises to over 14 crore. In Indian society, the elderly usually depend on their children. Over 30% male elderly and a staggering 72% of women depend on others – usually their children, NSSO 2006 report says. The government runs three pension programmes for the aged, handicapped and widows. The Centre and states together spent Rs 14,370 crore on old age pension in 2011-12; the centre’s share being just 34%. The ministry of rural development says 2.14 crore elderly people get old age pension. That’s just 20% of the total.
The report goes on to say that the Centre gives a ‘princely’ sum of Rs 200 per person while the states have to match it equally. Some, like UP, give only Rs 100 more. Assam adds only Rs 50, Tamil Nadu Rs 600. There are different income and age conditionalities in states. Gujarat has one of the lowest state contribution because it has Rs 24,000 as the maximum annual income for which pension would be given.
In some states, like all the southern, the minimum age is 65 years. Whatever be the case, the average monthly expenditure over the whole 60+ population is an abysmal Rs 124 per capita. The Pension Parishad demands universal monthly pension of Rs 2,000 for all those aged 55 years or above. This would entail a total expenditure of around Rs 2.31 lakh crore. If Rs 500 is given to males over 57 years and females over 55 years, as in Rajasthan, the expenditure would be Rs 27, 688 crores.
“If the government can pay Rs 1.16 lakh crore annually to its retired employees, then surely it should pay Rs 2.3 lakh crore to 14 crore elderly people (55 plus years age)” says Shankar Singh of the Mazdoor Kisan Sangarsh Samiti, one of the constituents of the Pension Parishad.”
The dilemma shall remain but something needs to be done urgently.
In an earlier story I had speculated that managing and breeding cetaceans in captivity may soon come within the purview of HR managers. Whether whales and dolphins will have the benefit of access to the likes of International Human Rights Commission or a separate set of laws and enforcement mechanism need to be codified? But here comes another landmark development relating to chimps – reported by Reuters – bringing them closer to legal recourse hitherto reserved only for the naked ape!
A U.S. animal rights group has recently filed what is supposedly the first lawsuit seeking to establish the “legal personhood” of chimpanzees, report Bernard Vaughan and Daniel Wiessner in Reuters. ” The non-profit Nonhuman Rights Project asked a New York state court to declare a 26-year-old chimp named Tommy “a cognitively complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right not to be imprisoned.”
The lawsuit seeks a declaration that Tommy’s “detention” in a “small, dank, cement cage in a cavernous dark shed” in central New York is unlawful and demands his immediate release to a primate sanctuary. Chimpanzees “possess complex cognitive abilities that are so strictly protected when they’re found in human beings,” Steven Wise, the president of Nonhuman Rights Project, told Reuters.
“There’s no reason why they should not be protected when they’re found in chimpanzees,” he added. The lawsuit on Tommy’s behalf is among three the group is filing this week on behalf of four chimps across New York. The other chimps are Kiko, a 26-year-old chimp living on a private property in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two young male chimps used in research at Stony Brook University on Long Island, the group said.
Tommy’s owners, Patrick and Diane Lavery, and Stony university did not immediately return requests for comment. Kiko’s owners could not be reached on Monday. The Nonhuman Rights Project used its own research to find the chimps, and Wise first visited Tommy in October after reading a local newspaper article about exotic animals kept at the Laverys’ used trailer lot in Gloversville, New York, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.
“He looked terrible,” said Wise, who previously observed healthy, wild chimps in Uganda. “Hey looked like a caged chimpanzee – they don’t move, they don’t look at you. They look depressed.” The lawsuit states that chimps are entitled to a “fundamental right to bodily liberty,” which Wise told Reuters is the basic right to be left alone and not held for entertainment or research.
The lawsuit was filed at “the earliest point at which we have some reasonable chance at winning,” said Wise, a well-known animal rights activist and author of books including the 2000 title “Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals.” “These are the first cases in an open-ended, strategic litigation campaign,” he said. “We’re just going to keep filing suits.”
Nonhuman Rights Project in 2007 began a nationwide search for an optimal venue to file the lawsuits, Wise said. New York was ultimately chosen because of its generally flexible view of requests for a writ of habeas corpus, the centuries-old right in English law to challenge unlawful detention, he said. David Favre, a professor at Michigan State University College of Law and an expert on animal law, said it is the first habeas petition filed on behalf of an animal.
“The focus here is whether a chimpanzee is a ‘person’ that has access to these laws,” said Favre. The lawsuits come as medical authorities re-examine the employment of chimpanzees in research in light of new technology that renders the use of chimpanzees less necessary. In a decision applauded by animal rights groups, the U.S. National Institutes of Health in January said it was reducing its use of chimps in biomedical research, retiring most to sanctuaries. At the time, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins called chimps “very special animals” that deserve “special consideration.”
Stephen Gandel has recently reported in the Fortune magazine about SEC prosecuting a pair for ripping off the terminally ill, but the “victims” are telling a different story.
‘In mid-September the Securities and Exchange Commission said it had foiled what sounded like the most heinous financial crime since Bernie Madoff’s. A father and son in Lexington, S.C., had run a scheme that, according to SEC, targeted the financially strapped terminally ill, netting the pair $6.5 million from 44 individuals, milking them all the way to the grave. On the day the charges were announced, Kenneth Israel, a regional director at the SEC, said the Stapleses, both named Ben, “turned the misfortune of others into a profit-making enterprise for themselves.” But, bizarrely, others were benefitting from the Stapleses’ scheme – the very people the SEC alleges the pair were ripping off: the terminally ill and their heirs.
The reason the Stapleses could pull off a scheme that seemingly benefits everyone begins with corporate bond offerings and a little-known provision called a survivor’s option. If you buy a bond and die, your heirs are allowed to cash in the bond at face value immediately rather than having to wait until it matures. The survivor’s option is meant for estate planning purposes. On Wall Street some call it a death put. Issuers have used the provision to attract elderly couples – a key debt-buying demographic.
Starting in the mid-2000s, a small group of investors saw another use for death puts: Fissures that would eventually lead to financial crisis were starting to form, causing the price of some normally safe corporate bonds to trade at steep discounts, and the investors began recruiting terminally ill people to buy up the discounted bonds in joint accounts. When terminally ill died, the investors were able to cash in the bonds and turn a quick profit.
Among this group of investors who saw an opportunity in death puts was Ben S. Staples, an accountant. Brenda Eason, 51, said she heard of Staples from a co-worker of hers when her sister, Patricia, 41, was dying of breast cancer in 2011. Eason’s mother had died, and she had to scrape together money to pay for the funeral. Eason’s co-worker said she knew someone who could help her sister, who didn’t have health insurance. Eason and Patricia met Staples and signed up. A few months later another one of Eason’s sisters, Cheryl, 43, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Cheryl signed up with Staples as well. When Patricia and Cheryl died, Eason says that each time she received the $5000 Staples promised, which she used to pay for the funerals. She says she doesn’t see herself or her sisters as victims. “He gave money to people who had nothing at a time we needed it most,” Eason says.’
‘The SEC sees it differently. It appears from the complaint that the SEC’s main beef is that the Stapleses defrauded corporate issuers by saying these were joint accounts, while the SEC claims the terminally ill had no real control over the accounts. In the end, it’s difficult to pin down just who was defrauded.’
The Diversity Blog 