Photos from May 2011 issue of Grahaka Patrike

 (B.V. Shenoy)
MGP members met the SE of Mysore City Corporation, the EE of Karnataka Water Supply and Drainage Board and officials of Vani Vilasa Water Works to find more information on the present water crisis in Mysore.

(Vasanthkumar Mysoremath)
Mysore University recently held public hearings on the proposed cutting of 164 trees on the Manasa Gangotri campus to build a biodiversity centre and a hostel. Several MGP members attended the hearings and voiced their objections.

(Vasanthkumar Mysoremath)

MGP in association with the Institution of Engineers (Mysore Local) and the Indian Institute of Public Administration conducted a seminar on the Jan Lokpal bill. Maj.Gen.(Rtd.) S.G. Vombatkere of MGP was one of the main speakers.

Letter to MCC Commissioner opposing Road widening

The following letter was just now handed over to the Commissioner of MCC.

To

The Commissioner, Mysore City Corporation

Mysore

REQUEST FOR MOST IMMEDIATE ATTENTION

Subject: TREE-FELLING AND ROAD WIDENING

Sir,

1. Mysore is a Heritage City. The heritage of Mysore is not only in its beautiful buildings and the culture of arts-and-crafts and dance-music-drama, but also in its planned avenues with shade and flowering trees, parks with trees, and lakes.

2. However, "trees which provide shade, mitigate the extremes of climate, render aesthetic beauty, purify the polluted atmosphere, and mute the noise, have been one of the first casualties of pressure on space in our cities and towns". The text in quotes is reproduced from the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Karnataka Preservation of Trees Act, 1976. According to one estimate, Mysore City has lost around 2,000 trees in the past four years, many of them roadside trees.

3. We understand that many roads within the area of Mysore City Corporation are being widened, and as a consequence, hundreds of trees are earmarked for clear felling. We object to this on grounds of environment, particularly in terms of Article 48A and Article 51A of the Constitution of India that require the State and the individual to protect and improve the environment, and preserve our rich heritage.

4. We do not deny the need to create urban infrastructure for easy movement of vehicular road traffic which is becoming increasingly congested. However, we believe that the infrastructure needed to be created for a long-term solution is an efficient public transport system that will largely replace the use of private vehicles which cause the congestion. Merely widening roads that will soon get filled with vehicles and bring back traffic congestion, is only a short-term solution that has serious disadvantages such as less space for pedestrians who walk on the road (thus more accidents and less space for vehicles), loss of roadside trees, increased air pollution and flooding during rain. This thoughtless road widening also goes against the recommendations of the National Urban Transport Policy, which calls for "a more equitable allocation of road space with people rather than vehicles as its main focus", and "encouraging greater use of public transport and non-motorized modes".

5. If road widening is being done to encourage tourism, it may kindly be noted that tourists visit Mysore for its heritage which includes the tree-lined avenues, and not for roads on which they can drive at speed without seeing much.

6. With the above background, we request that the following details w.r.t. road widening be made public by posting them on the MCC website immediately:

(a) Names of all roads proposed to be widened, specifying in each case,

(1) length in metres from which place to which place,

(2) widening from what (existing) width to what width,

(3) technical specifications of widening.

(b) Same as above but separately for the so-called Raja Marga.

(c) The officially stated purpose of widening the roads.

(d) The Authority that has (or Authorities that have) approved the road-widening works, with date of approval.

(e) What public consultation (with dates) has been carried out w.r.t. to the road widening works.

(f) Number and type of trees road-wise, for which permission for cutting has been sought from the Forest Department, with date on which permission was sought.

7. We earnestly request that the details above be provided without our having to use the RTI Act. In fact, as you are no doubt aware, according to Sec 4(2) of the RTI Act, "it shall be a constant endeavour of every public authority to take steps in accordance with the requirements of clause (b) of sub-section (1) to provide as much information suo motu to the public at regular intervals through various means of communications, including internet, so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information", [emphasis added]. Therefore, the details now requested should have been placed in the public domain much earlier.

8. In the meanwhile, we request you to order an immediate stoppage of tree-felling for road widening until the issue is publicly and comprehensively discussed.

Yours faithfully,

Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd), H.R.Bapu Satyanarayana, Dr.T.N.Manjunath, E.R.Ramachandran, Madhuri Thathachari, Dr.R.Chandra Prakash, M.B.Srinivas, Shankar Sharma, Syed Tanveeruddin,B.J.Rao, N.S.Chakravarthy, Dr.H.A.B.Parpia

Are Telephone Problems Covered Under Consumer Protection Act?

Till recently, telephone problems (defective billing, illegal charging for song downloads, illegal disconnection, etc.) could be taken to consumer courts and justice obtained quickly and inexpensively. The National Consumer Commission's website makes this explicit: "The provisions of this (Consumer Protection) Act cover 'goods' as well as 'services'....The services are in the nature of transport, telephone, electricity, housing, banking, insurance, medical treatment, etc."

But in a decision that shocked the consumers, the Supreme Court ruled on 1-9-2009 (III(2009)CPJ 71(SC)) that consumer courts can not decide disputes relating to telephones - either landlines or mobiles. As a consequence of this ruling, almost all the consumer courts (including Mysore District Consumer Forum) are now rejecting complaints against deficiency in service by telephone companies.

The logic behind the Supreme Court order is as follows:

1. Rule 413 of the Telegraph Rules, 1951 provides that all services relating to telephone are subject to the Telegraph Rules made under the Telegraph Act, 1885 (TA). So telephone disputes are covered by the TA.

2. Section 7-B of the TA states that all disputes concerning any telegraph line, appliance or apparatus shall be determined by an arbitrator appointed by the Central Government. Therefore all telephone disputes shall also be determined by the same arbitrator.

3. A special law always overrides a general law.

4. TA is a special law and so it overrides Consumer Protection Act (CPA) which is a general law.

5. Therefore, even though CPA provides for determination of telephone disputes, it is overridden by the TA and so loses jurisdiction in telephone disputes.

But this order of the Supreme Court seems inconsistent with previous Supreme Court orders and accepted legal principles and so it is not a precedent to be followed by consumer courts. These inconsistencies have been beautifully explained in a decision given by Ferozpur (Punjab) District Consumer Forum on 11-9-09 (i.e., 10 days after the Supreme Court order) in a dispute concerning mobile phone service. It is amazing that President Sanjay Garg and Member S. Tarlok Singh of the Ferozpur DCF could go through the decision of the Supreme Court and come out with this detailed and excellent analysis in less than 10 days. The main points of the Ferozepur DCF order are:

1. The argument that CPA is a general law is crucial to the Supreme Court decision. But the Court does not explain why it is a general law. Applying the yardstick (repeatedly asserted by the Supreme Court itself) that only decisions given after a thorough discussion set a precedent, the present order of the Court is not a binding precedent and need not be obeyed by the lower courts.

In fact, it can be argued forcefully that CPA is not a general law. It applies only in disputes in which the consumer element is involved and hence is a special law. Therefore, it need not be overridden by another special law, namely, the TA.

2. To regulate the telecom industry (including the phone industry), the Parliament has passed The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997. According to Sec. 14 of the Act, the government shall establish a tribunal to deal with telecom disputes. But consumer disputes coming under the CPA are excluded from the purview of the tribunal. So when a consumer approaches a consumer court with a phone problem, CPA gets precedence.

3. It is a settled law that where two interpretations of law are possible, then the one favouring the consumer is to be taken. To direct a poor consumer involved in a petty dispute to approach the Central Government for appointment of an Arbitrator for relief would be a denial of justice, especially when the legislature has enacted a consumer friendly legislation for better protection of consumer rights.

4. Several special acts have established dispute redressal mechanisms. In deciding whether such disputes can also be taken to consumer courts, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that unless there is a specific bar on their jurisdiction, consumer courts can take up such cases. For example, Cooperative Acts of various states specify that disputes concerning cooperative societies SHALL be decided by the Registrar of cooperative societies. But they do not explicitly bar other fora from adjudicating on the disputes. In one such case, the Supreme Court decided (2004 (1) CLT 456) that consumer courts have the jurisdiction. It said that since the purpose of the CPA was to protect the consumer and since its provisions are in addition to and not in derogation of other laws, the provisions CPA must be interpreted broadly, positively and purposefully to give it jurisdiction, unless there is clear bar.

Arbitration clauses in many contracts mandate arbitration under the Arbitration Act. But even in such cases, the Supreme Court has held (III (1996) CPJ 1 (SC)) that consumer courts can deal with the case since they can give relief from the cumbersome arbitration proceedings and the Arbitration Act does not specifically bar the jurisdiction of other fora.

But in the case of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, the Act states that Motor Accident Claims Tribunals shall decide claims connected with motor accidents (Sec. 165) and specifically bars the jurisdiction of civil courts (Sec. 175). In such cases, the Supreme Court has ruled ((1995) 2 SCC 479) that consumer courts do not have jurisdiction since there is a specific prohibition.

Since the TA does not specifically bar the jurisdiction of other fora, consumer courts can adjudicate phone disputes. The present decision of the Supreme Court with regard to telephones appears not to have considered these earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.

In addition to the above inconsistencies raised by the Ferozpur DCF with reference to the Supreme Court order, there is one more. Section 7-B of the TA states that all disputes concerning any telegraph line, appliance or apparatus, (i.e., hardware only) shall be determined by an arbitrator. But phone problems such as defective billing, illegal charging for song downloads, etc. are not hardware problems and so Sec. 7-B of the TA does not apply to them. Hence they can be dealt with by consumer courts.

Dr.T.N. Manjunath, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Is Diagnosis A Source Of Disease?

In an article last week in the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the prestigious Dartmouth University (and the author of "Over-diagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health"), draws attention to the strange fact that in modern medicine, diagnosis itself has become a source of disease. The criteria of what constitutes sickness, the rules which define abnormality are constantly being stretched so that more and more people are being declared sick. People who would not have been considered sick a few years ago are now being considered sick for the same diagnostic measurements. For example, a fasting blood sugar level of 130 mg/dl was not considered to be diabetes before 1997, but it is now. The same reduction of thresholds (which separate the normal from the abnormal, from the "well" to the "sick") is true of all other common diseases such as high blood pressure, osteoporosis, heart disease, cancer, etc. As a result, the number of normal people made "sick" by diagnosis and the attendant medical expenditure are skyrocketing. It appears that many normal people who felt perfectly well before the diagnosis feel less well after they are diagnosed as "sick". Thus diagnosis is introducing more "dis"-ease among people!

People who have been declared "sick" by the mere reduction of thresholds have a very low probability of experiencing their "disease" in their lifetime. Nevertheless, modern medicine puts them on treatment. Benefit of the treatment is minimal for these marginal patients, but they incur the full risk of the negative effects of the treatment. Reduction of the threshold in bone density has resulted in innumerable normal women to be diagnosed as suffering from osteopenia (which is a precursor to osteoporosis). One common treatment for osteopenia can lead to ulcers in the gullet and may even make bones more brittle with long-term use. Similarly, reduction of the threshold in the PSA test has resulted in innumerable normal men to be diagnosed as suffering from prostate cancer and the common treatment for prostate cancer leads to impotence, and bowel and bladder problems. Thus the reduction of thresholds is leading to treatments that may be worse than the disease.

Dr. Welch points out some reasons for why more and more normal people are being made "sick" by diagnosis. Money is the biggest reason. The more patients there are under treatment, the more profitable it is for the doctors, the hospitals and the drug companies.

Another reason is that doctors get frequently sued for failure to diagnose and failure to treat, but one rarely gets sued for over-diagnosis or over-treatment. So over-diagnosis and over-treatment are safer options for the doctor.

Anitha Sridhar, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Yadavagiri Reservoir Roof

A portion of the roof of the Yadavagiri water reservoir collapsed on 26-4-11. After photos of the collapsed roof appeared in newspapers, work has been going on to repair the roof. It is almost complete now. Corrugated sheets have been placed over the opening left by the roof collapse so that dirt and birds can not get into the reservoir.

One observation on the repair. Curing was done on the repair on the top of the reservoir, but not on the repair of the sidewall. I do not know if they used some special concrete mix for the sidewall which does not need curing.

But this is a temporary solution at best. The entire roof needs to be replaced before other sections of the roof collapse causing possible loss of life. It is seen in the photos that there are white stripes painted all over the roof. It appears that these stripes are attempts to fill in cracks in the roof. Photo 1 shows that the roof has broken off just along these stripes indicating that there were cracks underneath the stripes. Since there are stripes all over the tank roof, it is likely that there are cracks everywhere. If the entire roof is not replaced, more and more cracks will get wider and more and more sections of the roof will collapse as it happened in Vijayanagar Central Storage Reservoir.

K.M.Chaithanya Prasad, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Mysore's Water Crisis - Some More Facts

It is not easy to get the real story behind Mysore's drinking water problem. We met JUSCO's representatives, but we could not meet Vani Vilasa Water Works officials, however hard we tried. When JUSCO's version of the water situation appeared in the media, MCC Commissioner asked the department officials to meet us and explain their side. As a result, we could meet the SE of MCC, EE from Karnataka Water Supply and Drainage Board and officials of VVWW including the EE and got some more facts on the water crisis. JUSCO officials also attended the meeting.

Now meters have been installed on all the mains bringing water to Mysore from Kaveri and every one agrees that Mysore is getting more than 190 million litres a day. This is more than sufficient to meet the water needs of Mysore. But distribution problems are preventing many of us from getting our fair share of the water.

These problems are threefold. Firstly, overhead tanks have been built all over the city to supply water to the customers, but there were no pumps to pump water from the main reservoirs to these tanks. The pumps are being installed now and the work is expected to take about three months.

But the installation of the pumps will not end our water problems. The pipes which supply homes from the overhead tanks need to be replaced since there are leaks everywhere and an enormous amount of water is being lost every day.. JUSCO will be replacing 1700 km of pipelines in the coming months.

In addition to replacing the leaky pipelines, one more thing needs to be done. There are a lot of illegal connections, connections without meters. These connections are stealing a vast amount of water without generating any revenue to MCC. In many cases, they are responsible for the shortage of water for other consumers. These illegal connections have to be eliminated. There are powerful vested interests which would want to maintain status quo and it would be a test of the will of MCC and JUSCO.

When these three tasks are accomplished, Mysore may get 24x7 water supply. This work is being done in phases and water supply in some areas of the city may improve before others. To keep the public up-to-date, JUSCO has agreed to provide frequent detailed updates on the work progress and MCC has agreed to put this information on its website. The residents of various wards can check the MCC website and get a better picture of when their water problems will be solved.

Sreemathi Hariprasad, President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat