India’s rural urban divide is its own creation…
Khairul Rahman had to bring her ailing sister Amisha Khatoon all the way from the remote district of South Dinajpur in West Bengal
to New Delhi to get her treated or rather operated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Suffering from lung tumor, Amisha has been at the mercy of the discerning apathy of the AIIMS while Khairul continues to run from pillar to pillar to dodge all the subtle suggestions of shifting the patient from AIIMS to some private nursing home (or private ward as is often termed over there) where the doctors would be too willing to get her operated albeit at a price, even though nothing in writing is ever given to him for obvious reasons. While Amisha’s life continues to hang in perpetual limbo, question remains as to whether Khairul would eventually be able to cut through the labyrinth of red tape, indifference and the unofficial, unwritten discrimination that happens towards the helpless and hapless. One then wonders why on earth a country of India’s size, stature and hype, should have only one AIIMS like hospital? Or given the incredible rush of patients from across the country in addition to the Herculean burden of keeping the army of ailing VVIPs happily healthy, can the doctors of AIIMS be completely held responsible for their apathy? Khairul is no exception. There are millions like him who wander everyday, fight and lose everyday in their quest to seek what is legitimately their due rights in a country which would any day love to champion the cause of socialism and call itself a welfare state. Well, welfare does happen only if one comes in the right kind of vehicle or has the right kind of connections. Khairul may have no idea as to what Human Development Index of UNDP is and why India has been ranked so low in that but, he is the ultimate reflection of that low ranking. And ironically it is the same reason why the Indian cities have been imbibed with slums.
For close to forty years when India preached and practiced socialism, her entire development, ironically, remained urban centric. Thus good schools, colleges, hospitals and all the necessary infrastructures that are necessary to ignite economic activity in a region are all concentrated in urban India while rural India is left in the lurch. Add to this the perverse state control on agricultural output marketing and lack of reform in it which was the last nail in the coffin, which made sure that people from rural India with the slightest will to live and aspire would have to move to cities and live in ghettos. Thus slums were born along with the filth and dirt that comes with it. Ironically, India didn’t even work hard enough to develop her own cities either. Most of India’s cities are what were created by the British and are still running on infrastructures that were created almost a century back. So one wonders as to what exactly independent India has done in the last sixty years?
Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s proposal to set up six AIIMS like hospitals, which was announced in 2006, has not yet materialised while critical healthcare remains non-existent in rural India. Amisha is perhaps unlucky to be born in socialist India. Had she been in capitalist US or UK or in communist China, her social security number would have made sure that she gets a treatment which wouldn’t have been qualitatively too different than what the daughter of the head of the state of that nation would have received. Long live India’s socialism.
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2009
Khairul Rahman had to bring her ailing sister Amisha Khatoon all the way from the remote district of South Dinajpur in West Bengal
to New Delhi to get her treated or rather operated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Suffering from lung tumor, Amisha has been at the mercy of the discerning apathy of the AIIMS while Khairul continues to run from pillar to pillar to dodge all the subtle suggestions of shifting the patient from AIIMS to some private nursing home (or private ward as is often termed over there) where the doctors would be too willing to get her operated albeit at a price, even though nothing in writing is ever given to him for obvious reasons. While Amisha’s life continues to hang in perpetual limbo, question remains as to whether Khairul would eventually be able to cut through the labyrinth of red tape, indifference and the unofficial, unwritten discrimination that happens towards the helpless and hapless. One then wonders why on earth a country of India’s size, stature and hype, should have only one AIIMS like hospital? Or given the incredible rush of patients from across the country in addition to the Herculean burden of keeping the army of ailing VVIPs happily healthy, can the doctors of AIIMS be completely held responsible for their apathy? Khairul is no exception. There are millions like him who wander everyday, fight and lose everyday in their quest to seek what is legitimately their due rights in a country which would any day love to champion the cause of socialism and call itself a welfare state. Well, welfare does happen only if one comes in the right kind of vehicle or has the right kind of connections. Khairul may have no idea as to what Human Development Index of UNDP is and why India has been ranked so low in that but, he is the ultimate reflection of that low ranking. And ironically it is the same reason why the Indian cities have been imbibed with slums.For close to forty years when India preached and practiced socialism, her entire development, ironically, remained urban centric. Thus good schools, colleges, hospitals and all the necessary infrastructures that are necessary to ignite economic activity in a region are all concentrated in urban India while rural India is left in the lurch. Add to this the perverse state control on agricultural output marketing and lack of reform in it which was the last nail in the coffin, which made sure that people from rural India with the slightest will to live and aspire would have to move to cities and live in ghettos. Thus slums were born along with the filth and dirt that comes with it. Ironically, India didn’t even work hard enough to develop her own cities either. Most of India’s cities are what were created by the British and are still running on infrastructures that were created almost a century back. So one wonders as to what exactly independent India has done in the last sixty years?
Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s proposal to set up six AIIMS like hospitals, which was announced in 2006, has not yet materialised while critical healthcare remains non-existent in rural India. Amisha is perhaps unlucky to be born in socialist India. Had she been in capitalist US or UK or in communist China, her social security number would have made sure that she gets a treatment which wouldn’t have been qualitatively too different than what the daughter of the head of the state of that nation would have received. Long live India’s socialism.
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2009
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