NEW DELHI // On a recent winter night in the Indian capital, eight-year-old cancer patient Habiba Khatun huddled with her mother against the cold on the floor of a unused bus.
Habiba, who has a malignant tumour in her right eye, has been sharing the bus with about 30 other patients for a week while she receives treatment at the state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
“We know this bus is not the best place to live. But we are poor and what option do we have?” Habiba’s mother asked, as her daughter, who has undergone 12 chemotherapy sessions since she was two, sat nearby.
“It is at least better than living inside public toilets or out in the open,” she said.
Like hundreds of others, the pair travelled from a rural area – a village in Uttar Pradesh state – for daytime specialist care at AIIMS, where treatment is relatively cheap and often free, before being turned out of its overcrowded wards at night.
The capital’s steep hotel and rental prices force scores to sleep on pavements around AIIMS, India’s most prestigious public hospital.
With temperatures dropping at night to around four degrees, the newly elected Delhi government this month donated seven old, public buses for use as shelters outside AIIMS and other hospitals.
For mother-of-two Sulochana Lodhi, the buses, which have been stripped of their seats so patients can sleep on the floor, are a “blessing”.
The 30-year-old has needed multiple surgeries and other treatment after burning her tongue, throat and stomach as a result of drinking acid in an attempted suicide last June.
“The bus is dirty and it reeks of urine and vomit,” said Ms Lodhi, as she explained that she tried to end her life after being “tortured” by her in-laws at their home in rural Guna in Madhya Pradesh state.
“The bus is of course not an ideal place. But I am glad I have a roof over my head,” she said.
Tubes that stick out of Ms Lodhi’s heavily bandaged stomach from her most recent treatment make lying on the bus floor difficult. But the bus is much better than the pavement that she has been forced to use in the past.
“Earlier, the street dogs would trouble us and sometimes it would start to rain suddenly in the night. It was horrible on the streets.”
A lack of beds in government hospitals for its large numbers of patients has long been a problem in India.
Public spending on health in the world’s second most populous country is just four per cent of GDP, less than Afghanistan’s, according to the World Health Organisation.
A decade of rapid economic growth has allowed the national government to boost health spending for poor and rural communities. But the public health system still falls far short of meeting the needs of its 1.2 billion people, according to a 2013 Oxfam report.
Prerna, a non-profit group tasked with running the shelters, estimates that about 4,000 patients live in the open outside various government hospitals in New Delhi alone.
“We look after four buses outside the AIIMS hospital and they are all jam packed,” said Palvinder Singh, director of the charity.
“There are limitations on living inside buses. You can’t cook and you have to travel to the nearest public toilet.
“But people inside are still happy, and more and more want to be accommodated in there,” he said.
* Agence France-Presse
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Jawbone Press
Milestones on the road to union
1970
October 26: Bahrain withdraws from a proposal to create a federation of nine with the seven Trucial States and Qatar.
December: Ahmed Al Suwaidi visits New York to discuss potential UN membership.
1971
March 1: Alex Douglas Hume, Conservative foreign secretary confirms that Britain will leave the Gulf and “strongly supports” the creation of a Union of Arab Emirates.
July 12: Historic meeting at which Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid make a binding agreement to create what will become the UAE.
July 18: It is announced that the UAE will be formed from six emirates, with a proposed constitution signed. RAK is not yet part of the agreement.
August 6: The fifth anniversary of Sheikh Zayed becoming Ruler of Abu Dhabi, with official celebrations deferred until later in the year.
August 15: Bahrain becomes independent.
September 3: Qatar becomes independent.
November 23-25: Meeting with Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid and senior British officials to fix December 2 as date of creation of the UAE.
November 29: At 5.30pm Iranian forces seize the Greater and Lesser Tunbs by force.
November 30: Despite a power sharing agreement, Tehran takes full control of Abu Musa.
November 31: UK officials visit all six participating Emirates to formally end the Trucial States treaties
December 2: 11am, Dubai. New Supreme Council formally elects Sheikh Zayed as President. Treaty of Friendship signed with the UK. 11.30am. Flag raising ceremony at Union House and Al Manhal Palace in Abu Dhabi witnessed by Sheikh Khalifa, then Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
December 6: Arab League formally admits the UAE. The first British Ambassador presents his credentials to Sheikh Zayed.
December 9: UAE joins the United Nations.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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