AAP, promises
Sir: The AAP has promised 20,000litres of free water for each household per month. Pundits criticise free water supply will be misused and wasted by the public. If you take an average of 5 persons in each home, this works out to 133 litres per capita per day. But as per WHO norms, each person needs a minimum of 200litres of clean water a day. The water promised is only two thirds of the minimum requirement. Where is the question of wasting? The people who use abundant water supplied by municipal bodies at subsidized rates for irrigating their garden and washing the fleet of cars raise such question! AAP has stated in the manifesto that they would slash the power tariff by 50 per cent up to a certain limit and this would be done by charging extra from big consumers. The annual subsidy burden will be around Rs 1,000crore. Meanwhile, the distribution would be streamlined to minimise losses and subsidy burden. Without even bothering to read the manifesto, knives are out to demonise this subsidy. As regards construction of schools and hospitals, the elite asks as to from where the revenue will come. They can afford to ask this because they don’t need state schools and hospitals. But none of these pundits ask the following questions: (1) Where did the hundreds of thousands of crores of money come to construct the CWG infrastructure? (2) Where does the Rs 5.50lakh crore of money come that is annually doled out to corporate sector in the form of tax concessions? (3) Where did the astronomical amount of money come from to give Himalayan subsidies to create a jobless wonder called SEZ? (4) Where did the huge money spent by major political parties in 2014 General Elections and Delhi elections come from? The list of questions is only illustrative and not exhaustive.
Sankara Narayanan, BHUBANESWAR
Roads, claims
Sir: Union transport and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari has promised the nation that in two years’ time he would achieve a rate of 30 kilometres of road construction a day – that is, about 11,000km a year. All state governments put together make 56km of road a day that would add 20,000km of roads to our country’s vital infrastructure. Is this enough for a country of our size and population? Currently the average speed of a four wheeler on a national/state highway could be between 30-40km an
hour, which is abysmally low, keeping in view India’s ambition to become a global super power by 2020. The time taken for road construction projectd is very long and even very tortuous knowing the density of population that makes the land acquisition process for such projects a little cumbersome.
Bikash Choudhury, by EMAIL
It’s time to transform Orissa
Sir, The ruling BJD led by Naveen Patnaik claims to be the agent of change in Orissa but the human development indicators, presented by the Centre For Youth And Social Development, represent a grim picture of development in Orissa. Orissa government has failed miserably in providing basic amenities to its citizens. In the state there is one doctor per 9699 patients as against the national average of one doctor per 1800 patients! … In most of the rural/semi urban hospitals doctors are not available! Due to lack of basic healthcare facilities in the state most of the people from western and southern Orissa depend on the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state for meeting their medical needs. In the education sector also the state is lagging far behind. While the government is building infrastructures for providing education to students a lot more need to be done. In most of the schools, adequate numbers of teachers are not available. 6000 primary schools are being run from a single class room. 4000 schools are being handled by only one teacher. 2096 Anganwadi Centres are running without a single worker. If the government really wants development of Orissa then it must shun its populist measures; people of this state have given a huge mandate to the BJD, it must use the mandate to transform Orissa!
Bikas Kumar Jain, BOLANGIR
