As important as the nationalization of the commercial banks by Indira Gandhi in 1969 is the current need to nationalize healthcare—which means that private hospitals should be brought under the purview of the state. The state hospitals are generally believed to be a veritable nightmare. However, when I visited the state-run Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad fairly recently to check on an ill neighbor who could not afford corporate treatment, I was impressed by the general behavior of the young doctors and realized how much more the poor could gain by being given the opportunity of free healthcare. This hospital had the potential of being a very good hospital with a little more support from the government and the public at large.
I also had a similar opportunity to be visiting corporate hospitals such as the Yashoda (the other well-known ones are Apollo, CDR, CARE etc.) and a couple of other private hospitals. That they’re all the “same” is the thing I usually get to hear. You pay and pay and pay and you get treated. Otherwise you just let yourself die. No pay. No treatment. More pay and too much treatment—is the logic of how these hospitals function.
That private hospitals would turn into something as bad as the current state-run hospitals is a myth propagated by the crooks running the private hospitals. That’s simply not true. That which is “bad” in state-run hospitals is something that can be changed provided we’ve the will to do so. If you cannot enter a state-run hospital—thanks to the lack of cleanliness and hygiene and the minimum basic attention—it’s merely because of the conditions over there and nothing more than that. Not to worry, you do get patronized and treated pretty badly by the staff and the doctors in corporate hospitals as well. I know this for a fact.
For an equally important reason I believe that education must be nationalized because we can create an Indian nation by educating the masses with a basic understanding of history and culture and giving the poor an opportunity to play a real part in social and economic development. Westernization of the kind the upper classes crave for in this country cannot be a platform to nation-building.
I’m not finished with the corporate hospitals or those doctors who are more to be feared than leeches in a human body. A deeply religious man like Gandhi said that he was inclined to atheism after reading Manusmriti (Laws of Manu). Go to a corporate hospital where patients are treated like objects and tell me if you are “inclined” to believe in a God who is just and compassionate. At the end of “The Head-Gardener’s Story” by Chekhov, a character says that God “rejoices when people believe that man is His image and semblance, and grieves if, forgetful of human dignity, they judge worse of men than of dogs.” The issue is not about God but rather about how “forgetful of human dignity, they judge worse of men than of dogs.”
The “human dignity” of a patient is lost in a corporate hospital. He or she is judged as “worse” than a dog and more so if they happen to be poor and helpless. The doctors have turned into a class unto themselves with too much power. The cold, heartless, rote learning process of becoming a doctor is where you “know” all the facts but you haven’t learnt to be human. It’s about money and more money and prestige that is totally false. The kind of looting that goes on in private hospitals is unbelievable. Forget about believing in a God or religion. You stop believing in yourself, humanity, common decency, culture, civilization and everything else. You become cruel and cynical like the doctors themselves who’ll not touch the body of the patient unless paid an advance.
The patient is vulnerable and the unkindness of a doctor is unforgivable. This is not just about individual unkindness. These are about criminal hospitals that rob your entire lifetime savings in one go. The corporate hospital like the corporate everything else is an evil that needs to be fought. It’s a disease on the social body and the immediate cure is nationalization. This disease spreads like a wild fire to destroy the society we live in.
I remember going as a boy with my father to the 5-rupee local doctor—this was in the 70s. He was a brilliant young doctor. Apparently, these days he takes 50 rupees. It was a multipurpose kind of a thing. We did not have to be tortured with all those countless tests because we suffered from flu or an upset stomach. You just have to go to him once or twice and you were cured. These days I go to an equally brilliant pharmacist who in my view ought to be a doctor. If every time I fell ill I went to a corporate hospital, I would have to sell my organs to pay for the treatment. Sometimes the treatment could be simple because the ailments are simple, too, is the point I’m trying to make.
The corporate hospitals scare the life out of a patient as part of the milking process. Most of the drama of treatment that goes on is just to empty your pockets and to fill theirs. The title of the drama is always the same: “How to suck the blood of the patient the quickest way possible.” The corporate hospital is a devil that needs to be exorcised and the doctors are a class of vampires in charge of the blood bank. We’ve given them power they don’t deserve and respect they haven’t earned. They’re no different from the beat constable on the road harassing the poor rickshawwallahs. The doctor is a similar kind of a bully except that he is a much bigger thief than the poor constable.
The nationalization of healthcare and education is vital if we must enter the future as a society and a nation. Sickness is a human condition. Human dignity is what a person is born with. An awareness of this dignity ought to be more so when it comes to the body of a patient. We’ve to give the “sick” body love and genuine care that we give to a new born child because it could be any one of us who is in that situation including the owners of the blood-sucking hospitals or the vampire who became a doctor. A society that treats a human being like a dog because he or she is weak and vulnerable doesn’t deserve to exist as a society or a nation. We’ve a choice to make: Should we allow the corporate hospitals to continue as they are or should we nationalize them as a first step in the process of achieving social justice? I’m not waiting for an answer.
Prakash Kona is a writer, teacher and researcher who lives in Hyderabad, India. He is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.
