top of page

By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

Fatal Negligence

Newborns dying in a fire inside a government hospital is a devastating indictment of a system that is supposed to protect its most vulnerable patients. The Amravati District Women’s Hospital tragedy, where a blaze killed three infants, joins a long list of preventable institutional failures. Thirty-nine babies were inside the three-compartment facility when the fire erupted after a ventilator in the neonatal unit caught fire. Thirty-six were eventually rescued. Parents and eyewitnesses have...

Fatal Negligence

Newborns dying in a fire inside a government hospital is a devastating indictment of a system that is supposed to protect its most vulnerable patients. The Amravati District Women’s Hospital tragedy, where a blaze killed three infants, joins a long list of preventable institutional failures. Thirty-nine babies were inside the three-compartment facility when the fire erupted after a ventilator in the neonatal unit caught fire. Thirty-six were eventually rescued. Parents and eyewitnesses have alleged that the fire alarms did not sound and the automatic sprinklers failed to activate even as the district administration has said the hospital underwent regular fire audits and had applied for this year’s audit. An audit is meaningful only if it establishes that equipment works when lives depend on it. Maharashtra has already witnessed the deadly consequences of fire-safety failures in public hospitals. In 2021, eleven Covid-19 patients died in a fire at the Ahmednagar district hospital even though a fire audit conducted months earlier had recommended a firefighting system. The Amravati tragedy demands more than the familiar ritual of a high-level inquiry, compensation and promises of “strictest action”. The announcement of ex gratia payments cannot compensate parents who have lost a child they had barely begun to know. The investigation must establish not merely what ignited the fire, but why it was allowed to become fatal. Was the ventilator properly maintained? Were electrical and medical devices routinely inspected? Did alarms function? Were sprinklers operational? Was the NICU appropriately located and equipped for evacuation? Were staff trained and drills conducted? And most importantly, who was responsible for ensuring that every safeguard worked? There is another troubling detail: the neonatal unit was reportedly housed on the third floor, rather than at ground level, and questions have arisen over whether the unit was part of the building’s original plan. The state has built an elaborate architecture of laws and child-protection standards which seldom matches the situation on ground. Whether in government hospitals, schools or anganwadis, safety has become a box to be ticked rather than a responsibility to be lived. The most vulnerable children are consequently left dependent not on systems, but on the vigilance and heroism of individual staff members. That is an appalling way to run the childcare infrastructure of one India’s most developed states. A NICU is perhaps the worst possible place for institutional complacency: its patients are immobile, medically dependent and extraordinarily vulnerable to smoke, heat and even brief disruption of life-support equipment. The government must ensure that the Amravati deaths do not become another entry in the grim ledger of hospital tragedies followed by inquiries, outrage and forgetting. The real test will be whether the state can prevent the next newborn from dying in a hospital that was supposed to save him.

Capital Dreams

Maharashtra has become the first Indian state to set up an Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) of its own. Dubbed ‘MahaInvIT, the initiative will transfer selected assets from the Public Works Department, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation and the Maharashtra Infrastructure Corporation into a new financial structure. The goal is bold: to unlock future revenues today and use them to fund new infrastructure such as roads and bridges.


In theory, the move makes sense. The state is adopting a model successfully used elsewhere. Infrastructure Investment Trusts, pioneered in the United States in 1960, offer a way to securitise infrastructure income and attract both private and public investors. India’s National Highways Authority (NHAI) embraced the idea in 2020, raising funds through its own National Highway InvIT. Maharashtra’s version mirrors that template.


It is meant to act as a bridge between the state’s infrastructure ambitions and its capital constraints. The state is no stranger to fiscal pressure, and the MahaInvIT could serve as a clever workaround: instead of burdening the exchequer with more borrowing, it turns predictable revenue streams from existing public assets into an investable product.


However, for all its innovation, the trust’s success will depend less on structure and more on execution. India has long suffered from the malaise of announcement-heavy, delivery-light governance. Grand plans stumble over bureaucratic inertia, delayed clearances and capacity constraints. Consider the NHAI InvIT itself. While it did manage to raise over Rs. 5,000 crore initially, questions persist about project quality, investor appetite and the time taken to bring assets on stream. Similar bottlenecks await MahaInvIT if the state does not ensure efficient execution and transparent governance.


InvITs are not magic wands. They require steady, reliable income from underlying assets, not something every public infrastructure project in India can guarantee. Revenue models for many roads and bridges depend on toll collections or annuity payments which can be susceptible to political interference or poor compliance. If investor returns fall short of expectations, confidence in the model could erode quickly.


Then there is the question of accountability. What happens if the trust fails to attract sufficient investment? Or if the projects it funds underperform? The governance framework must not only comply with SEBI norms but also go beyond them, ensuring transparency, performance benchmarks and independent audits. Maharashtra’s record on this front is mixed.


Still, the state deserves credit for stepping ahead of the curve. As India embarks on its next wave of urbanisation and infrastructure expansion, states will need to think creatively about financing. That, ultimately, is the question. Ambition is not in short supply. But will there be ground results? Without swift project clearances, robust governance and investor confidence, the trust merely remains a gesture of financial engineering rather than a catalyst for bulldozers and backhoes.


Comments

bottom of page