Recently, a pregnant woman in labour and her six-year-old daughter managed to reach the government hospital at Tumakuru. The staff, two nurses, and the lady doctor refused to admit her because she did not have an Aadhaar card and a Thayi (mother, in Kannada) card to avail maternity benefits. They told her to go to a government hospital in Bengaluru. This was because the Tumakuru hospital was meticulously observing “rules”, but Bengaluru hospitals were not!
The woman did not have money, nor time perhaps, to travel to Bengaluru. She went back to her one-room shack and gave birth. But she had twins, and with no one to help her except her six-year-old daughter, she developed complications, and the second baby boy was born dead. Soon, both the first baby and the mother, too, died. Her six-year-old daughter, the only witness, did not understand anything, except that her mother was very sick. The woman and her husband were daily-wage workers from Tamil Nadu. The husband had died two months earlier. She was probably trying to get some work under what the maistry called the “MAREGA” scheme. But obviously, she could not work in her condition and so had no money. And she died after the doctors refused to admit her for lack of Aadhaar and Thayi cards. Her name was Kasturi. Ironically, Kasturi in Sanskrit, is the deer-musk, which has medicinal properties to cure diseases. In her case, it became a misnomer, it did not save her. She died a terrible death along with her new-borns.
Hippocrates Oath
Hippocrates, who lived in Greece in 5th century BC, advocated the practice of ethical medicine. The Hippocratic Oath, with its primary dictum “First, do no harm”, is still commonly sworn by those entering the “noble” profession. Among other things, the oath says, “I will offer those who suffer, all my attention, my science, and my love. I will never hurt my suffering friend, because life is sacred. I pray that the attention I give to those who put themselves in my hands be rewarded with happiness. And in honour of the knowledge I have received from my teachers, I swear to care for anyone who suffers, prince or slave. If I ever break this oath, let my gods take away my knowledge of this art and my own health.
Darwin and the missing link
In the theory of the evolution, it is commonly believed that there is a “missing link” of fossil evidence between ape and man. Darwin stated that man, despite his noble qualities, god-like intellect, and exalted powers, bears the indelible stamp of his lowly origin in his bodily frame.
He allegedly delayed his seminal Origin of Species by 23 years due to fear of ridicule and condemnation from “believers” of the idea that humans descended from monkeys; however, the “missing link” of an intermediate stage of ape and man, or proto-man, became a serious search for this human to avoid the shame of having a monkey as Man’s immediate ancestor.
Unfortunately, the missing link was never found. That is because the scientists are looking in the wrong places. The missing link is very much visible. It thrives in Tumakuru’s Government Hospital, where proto-humans with no mind-development are paid to turn away pregnant women to die. Even the great Darwin may have erred in saying that such an emerging human still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin, because in the primate or any mammalian species, no pregnant female is consciously allowed to die, Hippocratic Oath or not. Yet, we have such instances in Karnataka.
If you think this is an isolated incident, you are wrong. A newspaper report on November 27 shows that in the health centre at Bidadi, Ramanagaram district, two lady doctors demanded a bribe of Rs 6,000 from a garment factory worker to discharge his wife after she had delivered a baby. The hapless husband’s pleas to them to accept Rs 2,000, which was all he had, was firmly rejected by the doctors for the reason that, “If we agree for you, everyone in the ward will come with the same request. We cannot be partial!” An ayah at another hospital named after an empress charges Rs 1,000 to show the new-born to the mother, but only Rs 500 if it is a baby girl.
The 10 per cent Society
The Pew Research Centre (PRC) is a fact-tank, unlike the think-tanks that are funded by myriad lobbies. Collecting data from government reports, the PRC published a study in 2021 on the Covid-caused loss of income for the middle-class and the poor in developing countries, especially in China and India. In it, you can find the official data on the middle class: 6 per cent of Indians have passports, 5 per cent have credit cards, 4 per cent are income-tax assessees, 3 per cent have stocks and shares, and 2 per cent own motor cars.
According to World Bank figures, people with a purchasing power parity (PPP) equivalent to an income of $50 per day (approximately Rs 4,000 per day or Rs 15 lakh annually) are considered middle class. According to government data and PRC reports, about 9.5 per cent of Indians have this level of income. So, about one-tenth of India’s population has purchasing power, which drives Keynes’ Effective Demand, which runs the economy. For the balance 90 per cent, GDP, growth rate, Sensex, airports, clubs, malls, and e-commerce giants have no meaning. Of this 90 per cent, the lower slabs contain millions of Kasturis.
After 75 years of independence, Kasturi, pregnant with twins, died a dog’s death because the doctors refused to treat her. They will go unpunished. The politicians who ordered their suspension pretend to be ignorant, claiming that in government, not even a peon can be dismissed, let alone life-saving doctors and angelic nurses.
So, Kasturis will continue to die uncared for, unknown, unmissed, and unnoticed. She was all of 35. The State, the very institution pledged to protect citizens, killed Kasturi, violating the Social Contract. And we, the other 10 per cent, the Neta-Babu-Bania-Qazi-Paparazzi cabal, will shrug and carry on.