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By:

Rajendra Joshi

3 December 2024 at 3:50:26 am

Procurement first, infrastructure later

Procurement at multiples of market price; equipment before infrastructure; no accountability Kolhapur: Maharashtra’s Medical Education and Public Health Departments have been on an aggressive drive to expand public healthcare infrastructure. Daily announcements of new centres, advanced equipment and expanded services have reassured citizens long denied dependable public healthcare. Procurement of medical equipment, medicines and surgical supplies is reportedly being undertaken at rates two to...

Procurement first, infrastructure later

Procurement at multiples of market price; equipment before infrastructure; no accountability Kolhapur: Maharashtra’s Medical Education and Public Health Departments have been on an aggressive drive to expand public healthcare infrastructure. Daily announcements of new centres, advanced equipment and expanded services have reassured citizens long denied dependable public healthcare. Procurement of medical equipment, medicines and surgical supplies is reportedly being undertaken at rates two to ten times higher than prevailing market prices. Basic economics dictates that bulk government procurement ought to secure better rates than private buyers, not worse. During the Covid-19 pandemic, equipment and consumables were procured at five to ten times the market rate, with government audit reports formally flagging these irregularities. Yet accountability has remained elusive. The pattern is illustrated vividly in Kolhapur. The Dean of Rajarshi Shahu Government Medical College announced that a PET scan machine worth Rs 35 crore would soon be installed at Chhatrapati Pramilaraje (CPR) Government Hospital for cancer diagnosis. But a comparable machine is available in the market for around Rs 6.5 crore. A senior cancer surgeon at a major cancer hospital in western Maharashtra, where a similar machine was recently installed, remarked that the gap between what his hospital paid and what the government is reportedly paying was enough to make one ‘feel dizzy’. The label of a ‘turnkey project’ does not adequately explain a price differential of this magnitude. High Costs CPR Hospital recently had a state-of-the-art IVF centre approved at a sanctioned cost of Rs 7.20 crore. Senior fertility specialists across Maharashtra note that even a modern IVF centre with advanced reproductive technology equipment typically costs between Rs 2.5 crore and Rs 3 crore. The state’s outlay is reportedly approaching Rs 15 crore. Equipment arrived in June 2025 and lay idle for months owing to indecision about the site. Similarly, digital X-ray machines approved for CPR Hospital and a government hospital in Nanded; available in the market for roughly Rs 1.5 crore; were reportedly procured at Rs 9.98 crore per unit. Doctors in CPR’s radiology department, apprehensive about being drawn into potential inquiries, reportedly resisted accepting the equipment. One departmental head was transferred amid disagreements over signing off on the proposal. What’s Wrong These cases point to a deeper structural failure: Maharashtra has perfected what might be called the ‘equipment first, infrastructure later’ model. In any public hospital, the administrative sequence ought to be: identify space, create infrastructure, sanction specialist posts, and only then procure equipment. Compounding the procurement paradox is a parallel policy decision. On 20 December 2025, the state government decided to introduce radiology diagnostic services through a Public-Private Partnership model (PPP). Following this, an order issued on 6 February 2026 authorised private operators to provide PET scan, MRI and CT scan services at six government medical college hospitals: in Pune, Kolhapur, Miraj, Sangli, Mumbai and Baramati. CPR already has a 126-slice CT scan machine and a 3 Tesla MRI scanner, with another CT scan proposed. If the PPP arrangement proceeds, the hospital could simultaneously run one PET scan machine, two MRI scanners and three CT scan machines. Medical experts warn this could lead to unnecessary diagnostic testing simply to keep machines occupied, thus exposing patients to excess radiation while government-owned equipment gathers dust. A similar pattern was seen during the pandemic, when the Medical Education Department spent hundreds of crores on RT-PCR machines, only to award swab-testing contracts to a private company. Many of those machines remain unused today.

The Power of Her

Updated: Mar 6, 2025

‘The Perfect Voice’ celebrates strong, trailblazers in this series with stories of women who brave battles every day that serve as an inspiration to the next generation. We have daughters fulfilling their parent’s dreams, victims of domestic abuse rebuilding their lives and professionals dealing with the famous ‘mom guilt’.

Part - 2

Getting over the ‘mom guilt’

Resham Deshpande, Mumbai

Resham Deshpande

Brushing off pangs of ‘mom guilt’, Resham Deshpande flourishes in her profession as a dentist while balancing her domestic responsibilities


It was a routine and happy life with a flourishing career as a dentist, a doting husband and a sprightly daughter when suddenly fate had other plans for Dr Resham Deshpande. An illness in the family shook her and sent her happy life into a state of chaos — what followed were endless hours in numerous doctors’ clinics that needed manoeuvring through Mumbai’s traffic snarls, late nights and juggling work appointments and her home duties. “When I first went back to work after an almost three-year-long maternity sabbatical it took me a while to learn to juggle multiple roles as a mother, working professional, wife, daughter, and daughter in law. That mom's guilt is real!” she says. And then her father’s illness struck.


Even as the family settled into a routine, Deshpande’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, a report that left them all distraught. Her daughter was growing up and needed attention and Deshpande’s career graph was on an upswing. The troubles didn’t deter her resolve to balance her responsibilities. The journey ahead wasn’t easy. But she didn’t let the smile fade off her face. Few people around could guess at what she was going through.


Anxiety, sleepless nights and long drives from her Kandivali home to her parents’ doctors in Dadar left her exhausted. Her patients needed her attention even as Deshpande had to double up as a chauffeur for her daughter, ferrying her to classes.


She didn’t let the pressures and the worries pull her down. Instead, despite the growing demand on her time, the Mumbai-bred dentist enrolled for a course to update her knowledge. Sundays were spent attending online classes and travelling across the city for lectures and seminars. Few hours stolen between home duties and work were used to study and prepare for her examination. While acquiring new skills as a professional, the studies also helped take her mind off the fears and stress that her parents’ ill-health brought.


“Some days being a working mom is a struggle just by itself! With the added worries there was a point where I felt emotionally stretched so thin that I was perpetually exhausted and distracted at work and at home. So, studying a new skill at my age, felt like 'self-care' amidst the chaos around me,” she says. It helped.


In 2024, after months of having no weekends to unwind, Deshpande completed her ‘Fellowship in Orofacial Pain and Temporomandibular Joint Disorders’, an area of study that will help her expand her work as a dentist. “I've learned in the last couple of years that I choose my career to be as important a part of my identity as being a mother, wife and a daughter. My child deserves quality time and attention but I also owe my patients the best upgraded version of myself. I'm learning to accept that I have to step up or down from these roles from time to time as need be. My biggest motivation to excel in the last couple of years has been my teenage daughter. I hope to be a role model and embody the spirit of ‘I can and I will’ so that she can grow up to be smarter and more confident than what I am,” says Deshpande.

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