Land for ESI medical college has been alloted at Bharatpur near IMA in Bhubaneswar. What Next? How to go about getting an ESI medical college to Rourkela?
Following is from Samaja.
Sambada pinpoints the location as "near Institute of Mathematics & Applications."
Overall the only new part here is the exact location of the land as when we started our campaign for ESIC medical college in Rourkela (in the end of August) we already knew that land had been allocated in Bhubaneswar.
So what do we do now?
Following are my suggestions.
- We need to continue pushing our case through emails, faxes, letter writing campaigns, ground level actions etc.
- We need to get the MLAs from the Rourkela area involved. They need to meet the CM and make the demands. Alternatively or in addition some civil society group needs to get an appointment with the CM and convey the demand for an ESI medical college in Rourkela.
- The MLAs around Rourkela and email/phone of some of them that I could find are:
- Rourkela – Sarada Nayak (BJD) sarada59@rediffmail.com
- Biramitrapur – George Tirkey (Independent) 0674-403599; 0661-643282
- Raghunathpali – Subrat Tarai (BJD)
- Rajgangpur – Gregory Minz (Congress)
- Bonai – Bhimsen Choudhury (BJP)
- Sundergarh – Jogesh Singh (Congress)
- Talsara – Dr. Prafulla Majhi (Congress)
- Kuchinda – Rajendra Chhatria (Congress)
The MP and ex-MP who can also meet the CM are:
- Hemanada Biswal – 09937350289
- Jual Oram – jualoram@rediffmail.com, jualoram@hotmail.com
- When these groups meet the CM they also need to have alternative proposals and an alternative set of demands. (This is in case the CM’s first response is that the land has been allotted and it can not be shifted at this stage.) Shifting of location once announced is extremely difficulty and a political hot potato. That is because if something is shifted from location A to B there will be people in A who will complain and no politician would want to do this. When A is Bhubaneswar it is even harder. (I also think that demanding shifting is not a good idea unless it is done by people of A. That is because it unnecessarily pits people of A against people of B. We on purpose never did it in case of NISER or IIT and as a result received political support from MPs and journalists of other states.)
- However, asking for an ESI medical college in Rourkela does not necessarily mean shifting the one announced in Bhubaneswar. The people meeting the CM, and at some point in our campaign, we should more forcefully point out that in other states in addition to the undergraduate medical college of ESI, 1 or more other locations will have post-graduate courses and in Karnataka there will be two ESI medical colleges. If we are able to convince this to our CM and if he demands to the center that ESI establish another medical college in Rourkela or at least PG teaching at its hospital in and around Rourkela then the chances of success are much high. But this need not be done now. We may continue with our current approach (with less badmouthing of Bhubaneswar) for some time. In this I suggest the approach and tone in here rather than the tone in the petition.
- Whether it is demanding something from the center or getting something for a region in Orissa, getting the CM on our side is most important. From past experience the best approach for getting something for a region in Orissa has been for a delegation of MLAs to meet the CM. Hence the list of MLAs above.
- With respect to fighting for Rourkela this should be just a beginning. The MLA delegation when they meet the CM should also ask the CM for
- a general state university and
- to push SAIL to establish a medical college and a engineering college, as it is doing in Bokaro. There are some technical hurdles but effort is on to overcome them. SAIL is up for its mine renewal in Orissa. See here and here. So this is the right time to do it. If SAIL Bokaro can make a medical college in Bokaro why can not SAIL Rourkela in Rourkela.
- These could be the alternative proposals that the delegation can propose to the CM.
10 comments September 20th, 2009