SOME CANNOT AFFORD EVEN THE BASIC TREATMENTS WHILE BUREAUCRATS AND POLITICIANS ENJOY THE LARGESSE

Today’s Indian Express had this news that should make us numb if we claim to be the civilized human beings.

In Assam’s Nalbari district, on Monday (September 23), a couple with their nine-month old daughter jumped into the Brahmaputra River as they could not afford the treatment cost of their daughter who had a hole in her heart. The body of woman has been recovered while father and daughter are yet to be traced. The wife was 28 and the husband 32.

It is futile to discuss and write on why the couple had to take this unthinkable decision. Ending life is no solution and such acts can never be endorsed by a sane mind. But it is equally true no one else can understand the excruciating pain the couple was going through.

How cruel circumstances can become? How ironical life can be?

Or we should say how ironical life has been made out to be – life of  poverty stricken Indians and life of those who are supposed to reach-out, help-out and bring these poverty-stricken people out of their misery.

This irony reflects in a recent development.

Earlier this month, the government of India, the bunch of people elected by the 'people' including the millions of the poverty-stricken with an expected responsibility to bring the poverty-stricken people out of poverty, decided to divert a proportion of the scarce public funds to make overseas treatment costs free for the IAS (Indian Administrative Service), IPS (Indian Police Service) and the Indian Forest Service officers. Until now, only Members of Parliament and IFS (Indian Foreign Service) officers were extended this largesse. And there is no upper ceiling to this.

It sucks. Isn't it parasitic?

Is this a democracy for?

Millions cannot afford even the treatment for the common fever and here, some are being treated so exclusively. When people have to travel for kilometers to reach a hospital (that is poorly equipped in most cases), why to send these fellows abroad on public money and that too, when almost every possible treatment is available in India? Why splurge, why waste, when the doctor-to-population ratio still remains critically low in India, a physician density of 6.5 per 10,000 of population against the global average of 14.2?

Why so?

Remember what the Preamble of the world’s most extensive Constitution says?

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a _1[SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

and to promote among them all

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the _2[unity and integrity of the Nation];

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

Yes, we, the citizens of India – but what this India is?

India of a few rich and the poor India of hundreds of millions?

Was it envisioned so 64 years ago?

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/