Doctors’ Agitation: Then and Now

What started as a localised street protest by the civic society, somewhat sporadically, against the horrific rape and murder of a post-graduate trainee doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata in response to a “Reclaim the Night” March call on social media, a month ago, shows no sign of abating. With every passing day more and more people from different walks of life are joining the ‘we demand justice’ movement in their own way to voice their agony and anguish against the system. Even Kolkata’s rickshaw pullers joined the march with their carts. People of all ages turned out in their hundreds of thousands to show they will not be deterred from seeking an end to the authority’s profound injustice done to a young doctor who was on duty and that too in a government hospital. The junior doctors’ agitation has made the political parties, left and right alike, irrelevant and ensured the fact that ordinary people–not politicians with the dubious distinction of being called opportunist–can force the government to sit across the table. How doctors in government hospitals work in oppressive conditions beggars description. They are to cope with gruelling shifts, abuse from the public and subpar security everyday because of poor infrastructure and inadequate government budget on health.

Forty years ago, more precisely in 1983 junior doctors launched a massive movement under the banner of All Bengal Junior Doctors’ Federation demanding in the main better working conditions and improved healthcare delivery service. They had some basic demands as well as some immediate demands to address the chronic problems hospitals and doctors were facing to keep the medical establishments going. Actually, they prepared their charter of demands on the basis of a survey of medical colleges and hospitals done by the Medical College Students Union and Democratic Students Association in 1979. The CPM-led Left Front government refused to recognise the junior doctors’ organisation. Ironically, today they are talking in so many voices about the plight of junior doctors who are fighting for a cause while organising rallies and sit-ins supporting the agitators. The hospital scenario has not changed much since the 1980s. The left rulers too unleashed a reign of terror on the protesting junior doctors while victimising the leading figures. Then they floated an organisation of their own under the name and style of Junior Doctors’ Council to break the movement from within. The Marxists know these tactics better than anyone else. The 1983 strike by junior doctors will remain a path-breaking milestone in the medical annals of Bengal. These junior doctors are the backbone of government hospitals. They matter in a big way even in Britain where their strike hit the headlines internationally very recently when they resorted to strike for a reasonable pay rise. At the end, they won.

As writers, actors, poets and professionals came out today to protest injustice, they came out in large numbers and took to the streets in those days too to support the agitating junior doctors. Poet Birendra Chattopadhyay wrote a fine poem in support of the agitation in the Bengali magazine ‘Kabikantha’. Every people’s movement enriches the progressive literature of the time. This time too new slogans, artistic composition and street dramas are emerging. The ruling Marxist left of yesteryears like the current rightist dispensation was equally insensitive and adamant to the cause junior doctors were fighting for and didn’t hesitate to terrorise the protesters.

At the time of writing junior doctors were still on sit-ins at the gate of the health department building, to press their 5-point charter of demands, the most important being the safety at workplace, despite the Supreme Court’s directive that they must join duty by 5 pm of September 10. They continued their stir after 5 pm virtually ignoring the court directive. For one thing, protesters are totally disappointed with the proceedings at the apex court but they are more worried about the rider associated with the ruling that the government would be free to take disciplinary action against the strikers if they fail to return to work by the deadline fixed by the court.

10-09-2024

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 13, Sep 22 - 28, 2024