Two pictures and a news item caught my attention over the past week or so. First was that of defense minister A.K.Antony standing ramrod erect at a defense function even an army soldier bends down and adjusts his veshti so that he looks suitably dignified for the cameras. Another was of Lalu Yadav standing similarly erect as an RPF jawan bends down and fixes his shoes. Both of the pictures reminded me of the zamindar in old Hindi films going around his estate with a flunkey holding an umbrella up over his head to protect the zamindar from the rigor of the sun.
But the larger news was that of the medical establishment in Uttar Pradesh getting sheken up. Not because there is a sudden epidemic, not because the polio cases in the state refuse to go down despite unrelenting efforts or because of the cases of diahorrea or cholera or any nothing like that. No the case was simply this according to The Hindu which reports it in its September 18th edition – that the Chief Justice of India , K.G.Balakrishnan and his wife Nirmala were visiting Allahabad when the Chief Justice’s wife sustained some injuries on he arm as she was getting out of her car.
The honorable Chief Justice’s spouse did not have a stroke or a hear attack or any life threatening disease like that. She merely suffered from some injuries which have generally been described as minor. Of course, she like any one other common man or woman is entitled to medical treatment from the government no doubt. Only difference between them and the Chief Justice and his family is that when the common man typically goes to a government run health facility in U.P, he or she typically does not have any great expectations.
As recently as in June this year, doctors in Gorakhpur were grappling to deal with Japanese encephalitis which had killed over thirty children but this or the numerous other deficiencies do not make the State government stir. This merely goes on to show that India’s basic feudal structure of power has not changed much irrespective of who wields the power. In the medieval days, the assorted Nawabs, Zamindars and the Rajas did, then the British did, then the democratically elected higher caste ministers did, and then finally now even a democratically elected Ambedkerite Chief Minister does. The UP Chief Minister’s actions only go on to demonstrate that our feudal culture s so deeply entrenched that it does not matter who is in power, who ever is simply exercises it just as their predecessors have.
What is surprising though is even as all this was happening, and the CMO normally a powerful man in his own right in the government hierarchy was being pushed around and suspended along with three others and four other doctors were transferred, there is no record of the Chief Justice making any protest or gesture to indicate that the punishment being meted out was slightly on the harsher side for a malady which that touched him for a day when he happened to be in Allahabad for a visit but which is part of the life and routine of UP’s and the city’s residents as the only option they have. Instead of simply watching by as eight doctors’ careers were trampled upon because his wife did not get the attention she was requiring, could he not have diagnosed this as the symptom of a deeper malady?
After all if the Chief Justices’ wife does not get doctors to attend to her in time, what might be the fate of the common man? But instead of taking cognizance of the matter in a larger sense and asking the state government to undertake some reforms in the work culture of the state and carry out much needed reforms in the health sector, he was seemingly content with four doctors being suspended and four more transferred. But with in the framework of the “Off with His Head” feudal culture where people come and go but practices remain the same, not much has moved in centuries. So I guess, it was too much to expect that things would have been any different than they were.