These non solutions

These non solutions

From Tuticorin to Delhi, populist governments sacrifice ease of doing business.

Let’s call it the Padmavat syndrome: if a militant enough group of protesters can be mobilised to try to ban a film, a factory, a hospital, what have you, then India’s political leadership will speedily set aside its professed desire to improve ease of doing business, and sacrifice it at the altar of ‘popular sentiment’. This week Tamil Nadu government has summarily ordered a permanent closure of Sterlite Copper’s plant in Tuticorin, disregarding far-reaching economic consequences. And up north Delhi government has proposed sweeping regulations that assume private hospitals are carpetbaggers who prey on patients’ vulnerabilities, disregarding how these regulations may foreclose several avenues of healthcare.

Even as questions are being raised about whether due process has been followed for sealing the Tuticorin plant permanently, chief minister EK Palaniswami says this has been done “in deference to the sentiments of the people”. But his is a highly selective and misleading representation of public sentiments. The plant gives direct or indirect employment to around 50,000 people and accounts for around 40% share in India’s annual copper production. Palaniswami government has suggested no measures to redress these job losses or the economic losses that will run to other businesses both upstream and downstream.

As for the Kejriwal government, its draft policy changes include that all doctors should preferably prescribe from the national list of essential medicines, which has only 376 medicines. If that sounds restrictive listen to this: when a patient dies within six hours of admission 50% of hospital charges should be waived. Wouldn’t this incentivise hospitals to either not admit patients who are in a critical condition or give them less treatment than needed? In their quest to woo ‘popular sentiment’ governments evidently don’t think through the consequences of their decisions, reducing their solutions to non-solutions at birth itself.

Of course polluting plants should be penalised and also errant hospitals, heavily so if circumstances warrant. But political decisions to willy-nilly slam them shut do not serve the larger public cause at all. Any government interested in providing affordable, quality healthcare must focus on improving public hospitals. And the goal of greener industry is best served by strengthening environmental regulators, not sidelining them. Finally, such politically motivated policy turns heighten risk perceptions for investors, shortening the supply line of both industry and hospitals.