Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 24, 2006
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/4979.html
Introduction: The lack of concern shown by
ministers to the doctors' strike betrays a moral bankruptcy
It is now ten days since the medical students
of five medical colleges in the Capital went on an indefinite hunger strike
against the OBC reservations in higher education proposed by HRD Minister
Arjun Singh. While their action has struck a chord among their cohorts and
triggered a chain of supportive campaigns by students across the country,
the representatives of the political dispensation at the Centre have chosen
to display a conspicuous imperviousness to their pliant. The mandatory expression
of concern would have gone some way in lowering passions but the government
did not find it in itself to summon such a response.
Contrast this with the empathy that the Narmada
Bachao Andolan managed to garner not so long ago, even from those in government
not fully convinced about the rightness of its cause. A three-member ministerial
delegation visited the Jantar Mantar venue in New Delhi where Medha Patkar
was on hunger strike, high-level meetings were organised, a three-member fact-finding
ministerial delegation left for the Narmada Valley in great urgency, and the
Congress president herself expressed worry over Medha Patkar's failing health.
Certainly there is much about the current agitation by medical students that
is worrisome. The fact that it is causing great inconvenience and suffering
to those in desperate need of healthcare cannot be overlooked. But turning
a blind eye to it is also clearly no solution. A sincere attempt to reach
out to these disgruntled young men and women may have helped defuse some of
the gathering tension.
The two distinctly differing stances by the
UPA government to the NBA agitation, on the one hand, and that of the medical
students, on the other, reflect the cynicism of its political practice. It
is testimony, if indeed such testimony is required, of its general moral and
intellectual bankruptcy. Every political stance it takes, every public espousal
it makes, is carefully weighed in the scales of electoral acceptability. Since
the anti-reservations position lacks resonance in terms of crass vote bank
politics, its votaries are given no quarter at all. Such expediency cannot
make for the integrated political vision and inclusive governance that a country
as large and variegated as India demands.
