“A democratic government should not be too sensitive to helpful criticism as it always exercised a healthy influence on it. The aim of the government publicity organisations should therefore be to stimulate public interest to invite constructive criticism so that the government machinery (is) profited by it”.
–Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the first issue of the Information Magazine
brought out by the Madhya Pradesh government.
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The story of consultants
There had been many enigmatic episodes in the ESI Corporation during the period from 2007 onwards when the idea of medical colleges was conceived all of a sudden and executed with extraordinary alacrity causing surprise as well as disbelief. A few such episodes have, already, been dealt with in certain ‘Posts’ in this website. The episode of appointment of a person from outside as Consultant for setting up the Medical Colleges with the functional designation as Advisor (Medical Education) is discussed now.
Readers are aware that the ESIC authorities took steps to set up so many medical colleges, sanctioned large projects for construction of the buildings for those proposed-medical-colleges and incurred huge expenditure for doing spade work to commission those medical colleges even before the ESI Act authorised them to do so. So many consultants were appointed. Some of them started criss-crossing the country allegedly for their work and availing themselves of extravagant facilities. In sharp contrast, another set of consultants did not move out of Delhi even to see the buildings for which they were going to prepare remodel projects, in spite of the fact that the outlay for their projects was running into crores and crores of rupees. All, before any amendment.
