INDIA: Tens of thousands of sick and ailing patients desperately awaited treatment at state-run hospitals across India yesterday, as the nationwide strike by doctors paralysed health services for the fifth consecutive day.
Doctors and medical students blocked roads as protests spread to more than 40 cities against the government's controversial affirmative action programme that seeks to more than double quotas for lower caste students in state-funded medical, engineering and other professional colleges from 22.5 per cent to 49.5 per cent.
"There are no doctors to attend to my son," said Falgun Dave, a retired government official in Ahmedabad, a large commercial city in western India. He was trying frantically to get treatment for his son injured in a motorcycle crash. "I asked some junior doctors to help me but they refused as they are on strike," he said outside a state-run hospital's emergency unit. Others were forced to retreat to lesser equipped but more expensive private hospitals which were becoming overcrowded.
In the capital New Delhi, where patients, many of them in need of urgent attention, overflowed in already overcrowded hospitals, doctors rejected the government's offer of increasing the number of seats in state-funded professional colleges to accommodate its contentious affirmative action programme. More than 100 students from five of the city's medical colleges have been on hunger strike for almost a week while many others have shaved their heads as a traditional symbol of mourning.
"We are opposed to any kind of reservations," said Anil Sharma, spokesman for the Resident Doctors' Organisation after human resources development minister Arjun Singh reiterated that the government remained committed to enlarging quotas for lower caste students in state-funded professional colleges.
Mr Singh told parliament on Tuesday that the government would take "an appropriate decision . . . without in any way diluting its commitment" to its affirmative action policy, further exacerbating the stand-off between the opposing sides.
Government sources said the proposal would be implemented in phases to cushion the effect.
Meanwhile, in an effort to defuse the crisis the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, announced the establishment of a four-member committee to examine the quota issue, but provided no timeframe for it to present its conclusions. The striking doctors dismissed the prime minister's offer as a delaying tactic to neutralise their agitation.
"Kill me before you kill merit," read messages on T-shirts worn by striking doctors in Delhi, who demanded that merit be the sole criterion for admission to professional colleges.
Lower caste aspirants need lower admission marks and support the reservations on grounds of inadequate opportunity.
In 1990 many upper caste students burned themselves to death to protest a similar move to reserve more seats in educational institutions as well as government jobs for lower castes, leading to the collapse of the federal coalition government.
And though Indian politicians publicly condemn the caste system as "regressive" and "invidious" they have, over decades, perpetuated it by contesting elections with an eye on the caste affiliation of their voters.
Caste also dominates the lives of educated and upwardly mobile Indians, defining their social arrangements, marriages and food habits.
The affirmative action policy, introduced at the time of independence from colonial rule in 1947 to better the lot of the lower castes and underprivileged communities, has been cynically hijacked by political considerations and has provoked bitter clashes between social groups.