A fraught week has ended with a bout of romantic euphoria from Nabanna to NRS on Monday evening.
The agreement between the Chief Minister and restive junior doctors is rather unlikely to be a permanent settlement, however. On the part of Mamata Banerjee, it was a dramatic mood-swing from Friday’s near-abusive tenor of her interaction with doctors at SSKM ~ an unaffected venue ~ to Monday’s spirit of accommodation.
She even conceded the junior doctors’ eleventhhour demand and agreed to allow the TV crew inside the conference room for a live telecast of the jaw-jaw… that has averted a “war war”. The belligerence on either side of the fence appears to have abated for now.
In the wider canvas, however, the issues at stake are much too deep-seated for a rough- and-ready prescription. It has been a detente at best, one that will hopefully uphold the value of the Hippocratic oath, and thus make it obligatory for doctors to attend to the sick and the dying. A patient visits a hospital for treatment, not to countenance closed gates.
Ironically enough, the doctors have agreed to call off their week-long cease-work on a day the medical fraternity across the country had observed a strike ~ an anathema in any civilized society. The health system has been jolted to its foundations and services, most particularly in the OPDs, cannot be normal in the aftermath of the resignation of no fewer than 500 state government doctors ~ perhaps an unprecedented development anywhere in the world, including sub- Saharan Africa.
Both sides have betrayed the soul of irresponsibility. The crisis doesn’t lend scope for punctured egos, and it would be a remarkably sensible gesture if these doctors now withdraw their resignations. It is fervently to be hoped that the clash of egos has ended.
The deadlock would not have dragged for as long as it did if both sides had betrayed a measure of flexibility. Blurred was the distinction between the time factor and emergency healthcare. Trashed in the process is the lofty concept of the Human Development Index. Just as the Chief Minister took 72 hours to respond to the stalemate, she took seven days to visit Dr Paribaha Mukherjee, the NRS junior doctor now nursing a neurological injury.
This was the principal demand of the doctors on June 10, the day public healthcare was thrown out of joint. The recital of woes by doctors at the meeting made it pretty obvious that hospitals both in Kolkata and still more in the districts are hobbled by an appalling dearth of infrastructure, notably the doctor/patient ratio which is perilously skewed.
No less critical is the inherent insecurity, in which was embedded the mob fury at Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital on 10 June. A week is a long time in healthcare.