Nov 04
One of the biggest issues we face in our cities as to today is the problem with regard to our sorry state of municipal services. The level of services varies from city to city, but some of the biggest problems that people currently face are examples of sorry state of sewage and cleanliness, poor condition of roads and streets, inadequate sanitation and garbage collection, poor upkeep of our current infra-structure. These problems can be attributed to bad governance, bad leadership, corruption and sheer laziness. Many times, citizens suffer because of this, and because of lack of responsibility, are unable to do much about this poor condition of municipal services. However, the courts are always a way to get justice, even if it takes a decade to do this:
CHENNAI: The Madras high court has directed the Chennai Corporation to pay compensation of Rs 1 lakh to the parents of a child, who drowned in a storm water drain negligently left open by sanitation workers. Pointing out that the 18-month-old Venugopal died over 10 years ago, Justice Chandru decried the Chennai Corporation for having failed to submit its reply to the court in a timely manner.
He directed the civic body to pay the compensation amount to the child’s parents within four weeks, and warned that any failure in this regard would be viewed seriously by the court. “Insofar as the death of Venugopal, the Chennai Corporation is squarely responsible. Because of their negligence in not keeping the storm water drainage in closed condition, such an incident had happened. The minor Venugopal cannot be expected to know the danger of the stormwater drainage kept in an open condition,” he said.
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Nov 04
The conversations about the United States economy always carries a feeling of impending doom. This despite an economy which today generates US 50,000 per capita GDP. United States is an unbelievably rich country with net worth of about US 60 trillion and annual GDP of US 14 trillion +.
Yet the conversation is always about lack of savings, deficits and on and on…but to view something completely different here is an excerpted section from the BEA: on the United States business with the rest of the world (ROW) including payments on US Bonds.
($ billions) Income from ROW Payments to ROW Net
2001 322.4 278.8 43.6
2002 305.7 275.0 30.7
2003 336.8 280.0 56.8
2004 437.5 361.4 76.1
2005 573.5 480.5 93.0
2006 725.4 647.1 78.3
2007 861.7 759.3 102.4
USA has a Net international investment position of -$2.4 trillion…made up of $20 trillion of foreign investment in the US and $17.6 trillion of US investments in the Rest of the World.
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Nov 04
Modern medical care can be very expensive. We have managed to push the boundaries of medical care much further in the recent years, and are able to diagnose diseases much better than just a couple of decades ago. As a part of this, we have much better equipment, much better diagnostic techniques, and a much higher level of specialization of the medical sciences. However, one direct result of this is that a lot of medical treatment has got more expensive; this is compounded by the fact that medical services are now increasingly privatized with the providing of medical services becoming a for-profit business. Along with these higher fees comes additional responsibility for these services, and also sees more patients hauling up these medical services for compensation if the treatment has not been correct:
NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Saturday directed Max Hospital to pay a compensation of Rs.150,000 to a patient for not properly diagnosing him as a result of which he had to be shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Delhi State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission headed by Justice J.D. Kapoor observed that according to medical literature, sodium level below 120 mg per litre is dangerous and injection Lasix should not be given at all.
The doctor, who administered the injection, was negligent for not monitoring it before giving the injection, the commission said
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