Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 15, 2006
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/4432.html
Introduction: If police brutality on Honda
workers made the Left see red, why this calm about doctors being beaten up?
As the stir launched by medical students over
quotas threatens to spread-with junior doctors having joined in, and the Indian
Medical Association calling for a nationwide medical shut-down today-an intriguing
question raises its head: why are Left parties, usually so very eloquent about
police brutality and high-handedness, maintaining a discreet silence over
what was clearly a gross over-reaction on the part of the police in its handling
of striking medical students in Delhi and Mumbai?
Whether one agrees with the stance and tactics
of the doctors and medical students-and there can be little doubt that their
strike action have caused great hardship to those in dire need of medical
care-surely such brutality on the part of the law enforcers was totally unjustified
and completely indefensible? Last year, when the striking workers at the Honda
factory in Gurgaon were similarly subjected to police brutality, the outrage
from the Left was palpable and eloquent and the Haryana government was forced
to run for cover. Rightly so. In this day and age, in a democratic and reforming
India, there must surely be more civilised methods of responding to public
protests and agitation than the uncalibrated and unthinking use of the blunt
end of a lathi? Surely, the police should have known that these young men
and women they were attacking were not any great and imminent threat to state
and civilisation?
As for the UPA government, it can no longer
afford to shut its eyes on this gathering storm created by HRD Minister Arjun
Singh, and hope that it would just go away in time. It needs to think through
the conundrum over quotas that presently confronts it, and come up with a
convincing response to the doctors' dilemma. And, while it is about it, it
should also rein in its rampaging men in khaki.
