YOUTH FOR EQUALITY YOUTH FOR EQUALITY

Doctors’ strike, a national embarrassment!

By Sandeep Datta

As I was about to enter my kitchen at 11.45 at night, an SMS buzzed: “Ab tak 112!” It was one of my journalist friends circulating for the doctors’cause briefly indicating their plight. I stepped back and started visualising what our agitating doctors would be doing like at this odd hour of the dark and rainy night? Will they be enjoying a gala time in this romantic atmosphere with colleagues or filling their empty stomachs with delicious food in the hiding?

Well, for enjoyment sake I called up at AIIMS to verify how things were going on in reality. I was flabbergasted after talking to a few highly exhausted voices on phone. I was informed at least 22 agitating students and junior resident doctors were still there, protesting a gross injustice being done to them with a proposed bill by the Centre intended at ostracizing the meritorious doctors.

As most of us would switch TV channels to avoid “striking doctors”, they are living it in reality. They are suffering enormous pain with each passing hour as 112 of the 134 protestors have already collapsed braving the day’s heat in the open. Believe it or not but they showed their iron will for one week (read 2,41,920 minutes or168 hours), without a piece of bread. For a hungry a hungry stomach and fainting soul every moment matters.

The ones, who were persuaded to leave All India Institute of Medical Sciences, have left their struggle for others to continue. These brilliant doctors in the making know they cannot match social activist Medha Paktkar who showed how to turn a protest embarrassing for the Government. For, they are just like you or me or our brothers or sisters at home or in colleges.

By they way, how many of us would dare such a feet for more than 48 hours for our right? Many of us could feel the pangs of hunger if we had ever tried a fast at home. But this time, it appears a fast unto death for these budding doctors.

But who cares? We are not doctors. Why should we show support? They are not earthquake or flood victims. They are not either any of our family members. Isn’t it?

Really? Will good doctors benefit us in the long term or anybody else’s family? Aren’t these individuals those “saviours” who would ultimately stand as an iron shield between life and death of any of our beloved family members in emergency? They are the ones whom we would look forward to as God’s ultimate help. But how callous our political leaders are turning out to be? Although it is the VVIPs like our politicians who would desperately search for the best trained hands in medical fraternity. For, they can’t chances with any quota-tagged doctor of suspicious academic ‘excellence’.

If we have ever got benefited by a doctor, it is time to show gratitude. After all it is not Union Minister Arjun Singh who would get treated by a doctor from an OBC (or, other backward class) category, it would be us or our family. If we failed to express our solidarity to these suppressed doctors today, we would only be ensuring a tragic careless death by any raw hand of an OBC doctor in near future?

Let’s rise to the occasion like an awaken society and support these doctors lying on the road!

Anything’s possible! Just be united !

By Sandeep Datta, Email: sandeepdatta7@rediffmail.com