“Poor
doctors,” I said.
“Oxymoron,”
said Shri Husband.
“Means?” I
asked. He uses big-big words when he wants to flummox me.
“Why are you
saying ‘poor doctors’ anyway,” he said. Shri Husband asks back-questions when
he doesn’t want to reply to something. It’s more the rule than the exception.
“The
government is making it difficult for them to go abroad,” I said. I’m cautious
when I make such statements because he always want to know where I read or
heard about it, the facts, the statistics, any reliable source, etc. (Yes, it drives
me nuts, but what to do; they say marriages are made in heaven. I’ve nothing to
prove it, but when I stated this once, Shri Husband asked: “Who’s ‘they’?” Can’t
win with the Great Questioner.)
So
he snatched the news report that I was reading, about doctors being discouraged
from leaving India, read it for himself and, in a rare moment of agreement with
me, commented: “True, poor doctors. It’s an unfair deal.”
I
was so excited that he’d actually concurred with what I’d said, that I blurted:
“Yes, no? Yes, no? Poor doctors, see?” That annoyed him and thus began that day’s
cold war. After the mandatory five minutes silence, he started his tirade.
“I
don’t see why only doctors should be targeted to work in rural areas or for
lesser salaries or in abominable conditions,” he said.
“Abominable
means?” I asked, getting a horrid look from him.
Bai
Goanna, arbitrator, friend and nose-poker reacted: “Ceilings that leak, toilets
with blocked plumbing, rats in cupboards, no drinking water, things like that.”
Shri
Husband, irritation reduced by a degree, snapped: “Also, no basic medicines
available for patients, no nurses/technicians or other trained professionals to
help out, poor hygiene in examination rooms—if such rooms exist--, rusty
trolleys, dim bulbs, ancient wheelchairs, no way to transport ill patients from
Primary Health Centres to bigger hospitals…in most parts of India, the scene is
grim.”
Abba,
I thought, lecture-baazi shuru. I was correct.
He
pontificated: “…that’s not all, the cost of fees through medical college, the
amount of time it takes to gather knowledge, the difficulty of becoming a
specialist, the no-reward-for-merit future…”
“It’s
worse than I imagined,” I sighed.
“And
you wonder why they don’t want to be forced to stay in India?”
“They
should stay back and help to improve the situation,” I said energetically,
giving another point of view. “They are the upper strata of society, the
thinking, elite class, they are the ones who should tackle the evil and let
good win. It’s a noble, life-saving profession, no?”
Shri
Husband suddenly went silent. I wondered what I’d said wrong. Bai Goanna broke
the silence and said: “It’s the same story with all professions, yaar.
Teachers, soldiers, professors, engineers… How can you say which one’s superior
to the other? I mean without primary school teachers, we couldn’t have any
doctors, right? Without ward-boys and nurses, no hospitals could run, right?
Even taxi-drivers are important.”
“But,”
I argued, changing tack again. “The government isn’t saying anything about
stopping the others from leaving the country, no? This report says only about
making it difficult for doctors to leave the country.”
Shri
Husband added: “That’s true. There’s nothing stopping good plumbers,
carpenters, electricians, tailors, physiotherapists, hotel industry
professionals, even Information Technologists from leaving the country. It’s
unfair to have this pressure only on the medics, just because it’s considered a
life-saving, noble profession, especially because quite often the doctors do
the jobs of the ward-boys and nurses in many places, in order to treat the
patients under their care.”
What-to-do,
we thought, as if the burden of saving the country and its skill bank lay on
our three shoulders. Think of an industry and its human ‘products’ wished to
leave the shores. Bureaucrats take sabbaticals to do post-graduation in
terrorism/culture/liberal arts studies at universities abroad. Agriculturists,
nuclear scientists, creative writers, classical singers, Bollywood stars, even
priests who conduct Hindu marriage/death ceremonies fly across the oceans when
opportunity beckons. Therefore, not fair to the medics. We agreed. Wordlessly,
of course; agreements are so rare in my home, we run out of words when we do
agree. But when our thoughts match, we sort of know what’s going on in the
other’s mind.
On
FB, my second source of information, the first being Google, a very long thread
of rants by doctors was interesting. A number of them posted on their own and others’
walls that lay people ‘just (didn’t) understand what doctors went through’ and
how the medics worked ’unbelievably long hours with erratic meal timings’. I
thought, if one eave’s dropped on the conversations of pizza-deliverers,
soldiers, traffic constables and labourers on construction sites, there would
be similar opinions. (Come to think of it, would there ever be a ban on migration
of pizza-deliverers, etc.? Which country
would want their inexpensive labour? Once upon a time when the UAE was being
built, those types exited India in hordes to build roads and skyscrapers, but I
can’t think of any country right now that would want persons possessing such
‘skills’. Whereas the medics, they’re always in demand in countries abroad, so
it seems.)
“If,”
Shri Husband debated aloud, “Medical professionals including nurses, therapists
and technicians are allowed to go abroad permanently, who will look after us, our
rural population?” Then countered it himself: “Why single them out? After all,
the government spends a lot of money on subsidizing a lot of higher education,
in many streams. Poor doctors.”
Bai
Goanna was brave enough to stop Shri Husband’s soliloquy: “You said poor
doctors was an oxymoron. Because there are some doctors who become rich
unethically. You said something about abominable conditions. You went on and on
with this on-the-other-hand talk…”
And
thus began a quarrel afresh on a happening Sunday morning.
Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in
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