Seven Hills Hospital seems to be the latest of the innumerable scams which have hit Mumbai of late. Here too we seem to have the deadly mixture of politicians, bussinesmen and possibly even criminal elements. The management is clearly close to the Congress Party. How else could they get the President of India inaugurate the hospital? Moreover, there are rumours that the NCP is also involved. The Congress Govt. in the state has been quite enthusiastic in implementation of the Rajiv Gandhi Arogya scheme, and one of the main hospitals roped in is Seven Hills.The Magantis are big businessmen in Andhra and elsewhere. The Medical Director is the daughter of a very rich man. He owns Soma enterprises which has got many lucrative contracts in the building of highways , etc. There are rumours of them being close to the Reddy brothers of the illegal mining scam. Anyway they are close to Avinash Bhosale, the infamous builder from Pune who was criticised of cheating CIDCO of several crores as reported in Mumbai Mirror.
Now they are using the Rajiv Gandhi Arogya scheme to get poor patients into the hospital and get reimbursed by the Govt. for their treatment. They also seem to be delaying the implementation of its agreement with the BMC to provide 20% of its beds as free beds to the poor. They have been pretty frank in this matter by saying that they could have implemented their committment if they had started functioning in a smaller way by using the 200 bedded building constructed by the BMC and invested just 60 crores and allotted 40 beds for the poor. Instead they thought big. They planned for a 1500 bed hospital. Rich people think big but also tend to be greedy. And greed has no ends. So they built a 1500 beded hospital.
In all probability, they also planned to open a nursing school and a medical college. Medical Colleges in India are great sources of money. Most private medical colleges charge nearly Rs.50 lakhs per student and much of it is underhand. People quote in crores for postgraduate seats! That would have been sufficient to finance the treatment of poor patients. Of course the generous help of the Govt. through the Rajeev Gandhi scheme (as long as it lasts) would be of great help. But Medical Colleges need poor patients to experiment on. With the help of the Rajiv Gandhi scheme there would be a steady flow of such patients who would be available as the guinea pigs on whom the rich medical students (many of them NRI’s, I’m sure) would learn their skills! A perfect setup! In that case, hiring some of the best medical teachers in the city and some of the best clinicians, made sense. And one must not forget the proposed helipad.
How can one expect foreigners to travel through the congested roads of Andheri and Marol? They will be flown directly from the international airport to the hospital and given the luxurious treatment that they deserve. Of course, all this will come at a price but most foreigners come loaded with money. And this will help improve the financial reserves of the hospital (which at present seem to be depleted). And the lease of BMC (that is public} land for 60 years is a good enough time to get the best bargain for whatever has been invested. An open land of 17 acres is worth Rs. 1000/- crores in Mumbai, and when that land has been given on a lease for a relatively small sum, one is looking at a potentially very lucritave business. And sixty years is a long time. There may be problems now, but all problems can be sorted out with the right political connections and, of course, money.
Governments change, court cases can be kept pending, people’s memories fade. Look at the Hiranandanis. It took several years for the township to come up. They were given the land to build houses for the less privilaged. They did just the opposite. Nobody seemed to know and of those who knew, most preferred to look the other way and some even made small changes in the agreement without the public’s knowledge. Did the Hiranandanis hide in shame? Not to our knowledge. They were, meanwhile, celebrities of Mumbai, living the high life, with regular page 3 appearances in the TOI. In fact they may have even frequented their temples and thanked God for His generosity! Dr. LH Hiranandani was honoured with the Padma Bhushan! But now, even after the truth has come out and is in the public domain, the Hiranandanis continue being pictured on page 3 of the TOI. That is the sad commentary of how we perceive honesty in our society. This is just one example of the people of Mumbai being taken for a ride. Are the Maganti’s of Andhra Pradesh hoping to do the same? Maybe, maybe not. Its anybody’s guess. But if it does happen we should not be too surprised.
We should ask ourselves whether we have the courage to stand up and be counted or that we allow ourselves and the less privileged among us to be taken for granted by a group of sweet talking businessmen and politicians.