***Doctors, KPME Act And The Paradox Of Righteousness***
It is said that, “even when the battle is lost, the learning from it should not be lost”.
I was wondering what the learning was from this recent fight over KPME act. At one side we had obstinate political figures exercising their brutal powers in a vulgar display of “how they can teach a lesson” to doctors. On the other side were the private doctors who felt that the fight has to be through strikes and counter-threats. As a proverb goes, when the elephants fight, it is the grass that’s destroyed. In the fight between system and doctors, it was obvious who the grass was.
In a civilized democracy, there should be nothing called strike (or in our lingo – Bundh). This incidence reiterated the fact that we are neither civilized enough nor a mature democracy. At best, we are quasi-civilized mobocracy, wherein only numbers speak. More rustic, mindless and violent the mob, faster is the remedy. That explains why doctors took so long to get some reply from system.
The display of well behaved numbers did not do the trick. On the contrary, closing down the services and causing inconvenience to the public translated to action.
The clichéd expression “draconian” was used consistently, even when people who used that term were unsure of its meaning! Yes; KPME act sounded more like the Athenian laws of ancient times. But, we live in different times although our political leaders might not have changed much.
“What was the alternative we were left with?” asks the doctor community. The apex court opined that the doctors should have waited until the said act was tabled, debated, passed, approved by governor and then implemented – when it could be challenged in the court. Yes; that is how the events work in utopian system. But, in our nation, we know how events unfold, including legal options.
It takes a diamond to cut a diamond. But, that is when both the parties are diamonds. But, how to fight combination ignorance, ill-information, bloated ego coupled with stupendous power the democracy gives?
There was no precedence for fight, no proper brainstorming, no identification of proper leaders, no consolidated effort involving those who could make a difference – technically, no proper strategy from the other side. When fighting a brute force, it is not an equal and opposite bestial power that always works. It could have been more tact and less feral. But, no. Its physics for rescue with Newton’s third law.
Those who supported the agitation had multiple reasons to do so. But, not everyone concurred with the way it was fought. Those who kept quiet did so because they had no better modus operandi; they were not heard; they lacked the approach to make their opinion matter; they did not want to sound against the populistic mood; they did not want to act against “unity”. In short, they had to suppress their sensibility for the perceived “larger good”.
Those who are simmering against the media for not behaving impartial must have re-learnt how media functions in this glorious nation. The fourth estate in India plays for galleries. They work for ratings and eyeballs. They don’t survive unless they sensationalize. All this happens at the cost of proper sense and nobody is bothered. The visual media does not mind giving daily hourly slots to some stupid sounding self-proclaimed astrologer than having a meaningful debate with experts in the issue. They could have got law-makers, advocates, doctors, human right activists, civilians – together for a debate and discussion. They did not; they would not either. This is the present scenario of media in India. Lesser said, the better.
Probably nobody even bothered to make a root-cause analysis of what transpires to common citizen in this fight. Most of the public was ill-informed (pun unintended). Those who supported the Act had no idea what would be the short term and long term benefits and losses of this act.
Even today, what lures the Indian masses is “saving the money”. A society infested with people which buys anything because it is at a “huge” discount and which votes anyone who pays them hard cash or free stuff during elections, it would be too much to aspire. A big chunk of sensible part of public, as usual, kept seriously quiet – just like they don’t go to polling booths to vote.
Healthcare is not a luxury. In a country with huge population of people who don’t visit hospitals until it’s really serious, the inconvenience is gruesome. Despite the level of public ignorance, the onus of treating them is on healthcare providers. For most of the doctors, money is a secondary priority during emergencies. For many doctors, money has not scaled to top rank in their entire career. But, public hardly realizes that. Nonetheless, one cannot discount the fact that some fellow human being got troubled in a fight which was fought in his name but he had no role to play in it.
The paradigms were so apart. Government felt that it has reasons to straighten up the private healthcare. Doctors felt vindicated that the statutory body which cannot even manage its own hospitals is trying to pass the blame onto someone better. Each had its perceived righteousness in its place. Paradoxically, neither saw the negatives of their own shadows. Worst; more powerful of the duo was too proud even to lend an ear.
The inevitable fate of common public, which ranges from those having hand-to-mouth existence to those earning in eight digits a month, suffered the fruits of this ego-clash.
What is the learning from this battle? None that solid to get etched into our psyche. Did we get any better in handling a similar situation in future? Probably not. Would the strategy for a future war-like situation any better? Unlikely.
In this case, we are not sure if the battle was won or lost. But there was no lesson from it to lose.
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