Plan panel, Health ministry spar over PPP in health

A new public private partnership (PPP) model, similar to the Apollo Hospital in Delhi, has caused a spar between the Planning Commission and the health ministry. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 22, 2011, 21:25:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A new public private partnership (PPP) model, similar to the Apollo Hospital in Delhi, has caused a spar between the Planning Commission and the health ministry.

The Planning Commission has proposed that the private developer will get land free of cost and in return, they will have to provide eight bed wards free of cost for the below poverty line families, who will be covered by a composite government run health insurance scheme.

However, the single and twin sharing wards will be available at the rates to be decided by the private player with the government having no role to play in its price fixation.

Giving so much of independence to the private player is an issue of concern for the health ministry.

“The government should have some role to play in overall management of the hospital as the most costly element of the entire project, the land, will be provided free of cost,” a senior health ministry official said.

Keeping the government out of the management, the ministry officials believe, will mean no role in even managing the beds reserved for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families.

“We know that in Delhi the beds meant for BPL families are mostly shown as booked,” an official said, while adding that the PPP model tilts the balance in favour of the private parties.

Such was the ministry’s opposition that it did not attend a meeting called by Planning Commission to discuss the PPP model with the state governments.

The plan panel, which has been working on PPP model on health for last two years, defended its decision to go ahead with the meeting despite ministry’s opposition saying its mandate was to discuss new ideas with the implementing agencies.

But, promoting PPP model for health and education has not been easy for the plan panel. Earlier, the HRD ministry had opposed the panel’s PPP model for 2,500 model schools to be opened across the nation.

The finance ministry has objected to the panel discussing the PPP models directly with the implementing agencies saying it was impinging on its territory and had even written in this regard to the Cabinet Secretariat. The PPP is under the administrative control of the finance ministry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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