Token number 4193, a crumbled bit of standard government stationery with the numeric stamped on it in red ink, seemed almost at once a symbol of despair and hope for Maheshwari, a 54-year-old impoverished cancer patient.
Suppressed pain and exhaustion were writ large on her face as she patiently waited for her turn to meet Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the crowded pavilion at Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium, the venue of the United Democratic Front (UDF) government's mass contact programme on Thursday.
A highlight of Mr. Chandy's governance, the programme held forth to the public the promise of quick and compassionate settlement of their grievances. The promise drew people in thousands to the venue.
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Cancer patients, paraplegics, amputees on wheel chairs, adults laid low by dwarfism (a congenital medical condition) and cradled in their arms by relatives, incapacitated accident victims, differently abled children accompanied by their wards, kidney patients on dialysis, aged men and women, and hundred of others with lesser woes besieged the venue.
The heat and dust of the sun-soaked stadium and the clamour inside the crammed pavilion helped little to alleviate their predicament. In comparison, the nearby Palayam Junction seemed to be an oasis of tranquillity.
Every time the public address system blared out a token number, there was a rush towards the stage where the Chief Minister and his officials were seated. Some lost their tokens in the scramble and had to trudge back to the counters at the entrance of the expansive stadium to get another one issued.
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One Selvaraj misplaced his title deed. Saraswathi, hailing from Peroorkada, lost her 85-year-old mother in the crowd and had to seek police help. She had come to seek a berth in one of the State government's housing projects for the landless poor. A cancer patient lost his medical records. The Chief Minister and his officials seemed equally hard-pressed.
The police feared that the temporary stage on which he was seated would sag under the weight of the petitioners. They tried, often in vain, to hold back the surging crowd. It seemed everybody wanted an audience with Mr. Chandy at once.
Soon, Mr. Chandy positioned himself on the ramp of the stage to receive petitions. They came in hundreds, sheaves and sheaves of white paper. Officials clutched them in wads and passed it on to others who bundled them in questionable order. By 9 p.m., the Chief Minister had received 28,000 petitions.
The outreach programme crawled at a snail's pace through the day as Mr. Chandy took decision after decision, thousands of them executed with a stroke of his pen or a nod to his officials.
At least 20,000 petitions were ‘settled' on-the-spot and Rs.60 lakh distributed mostly as medical assistance.
If the smiles and profuse expressions of gratitude of the complainants were any evidence, many of them seemed to have benefitted from meeting the top political executive of the State in person.
Mr. Chandy would up his programme at 12.35 a.m. (Friday) after hearing all petitioners in person.
On certain complaints, he said the government would need to take policy decisions. Earlier, he called off his press conference stating that the people gathered could not be kept waiting.