Upset with the secrecy surrounding agreement signed between the 105-year-old Parsee General Hospital in Cumballa Hill and hospital chain Medanta, a section of Parsis haves demanded it be made public. The agreement, signed last month, was kept under wraps before community media picked it up.
With annual losses of over ₹10 crore, PGH, a hospital exclusively for Parsi patients, hopes for a revival through the tie-up. Lawyer Rayomand Zaiwala said, “We deserve to know what kind of agreement has been signed. I don’t have a problem with a cosmopolitan hospital coming up, but I want to be sure this community asset is not under any kind of threat due to this.” Agreeing with Mr. Zaiwala, Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Yazdi Desai said, “The community has a right to know what benefits they will receive by letting go of PGH’s Parsi covenant.”
Some say the shrinking community is not new to bickering, and has lost out due to this. Community member Homi Dalal said, “Medanta is not grabbing land from PGH. If they step in, it’ll only mean that a dying hospital will get a new life. There’s no need to create a controversy over the issue.”
Mr. Dalal says the fate of the Parsi Lying-In Hospital (PLIH) in Fort exemplifies the ills of infighting. Some years ago, Krimson Health Ventures, a health services agency, had entered into a lease agreement with PLIH to restore and convert the heritage building into an orthopaedic and spinal super-speciality centre. The estimated cost was ₹100 crore, and well-known medical specialists including Arun Mullaji, Sonu Ahluwalia and Alok Sharma had come on board.
The BPP trustees, though, felt the PLIH managing committee didn’t have the right to lease out the property, and went to court. Five years down the line, Krimson Health backed out, saying they would look for a new property. “Ultimately, it was the community’s loss. The building continues to be vacant. Community members should stop making an issue of everything,” Mr Dalal said.
