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Three Men, A Woman, And A War

A doctor couple I know has spent most of the last 15 years -- most of their professional careers, actually -- working in rural Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and now Orissa. Their patients have been some of India's poorest, unhealthiest citizens.

They have treated people suffering from rabies, malaria, diarrhoea, gangrene, leprosy and assorted other medieval diseases. Most of these people have no access to health care of any kind -- except what these two doctors and the health workers they train bring them by tramping on foot for kilometres over hills and valleys.

In one case that I wrote about for rediff.com two years ago, a teenaged Saora tribal girl had an inflamed boil on her hip. She was in a lot of pain, walking and sitting with difficulty. One of the doctors -- I'll call her Priya -- decided to lance the boil. That meant bringing the girl to Priya's makeshift clinic in the lush hills of Orissa's Gajapati district.

So we drove in a jeep to the girl's village to fetch her. The journey was a bone-rattling one hour over terrible roads. It was hard enough for the rest of us; we shrank from the thought of what it must have been like for the girl as she half-lay, half-sat on her seat. But she bore it without a sound, with even an occasional smile.

At the clinic, two helpers held the girl down on a cot. Priya picked up a knife and cut straight down into the boil, two deep cuts that formed a "X". Then she took a pair of scissors, slid it into the wound and separated the blades so they would tear the inner flesh and widen the incision. When it was wide enough, she removed the infected tissue and bandaged the wound.

No, the girl was not anaesthesized: such frills of 20th century medicine have not yet made the ascent into the hills of tribal Orissa. Really, Priya had no choice but to treat the boil this way.

That day, I remember marvelling at the strength of the girl. She went through the whole thing with only a few quiet whimpers. I marvelled also at the strength of Priya and her husband. They work in these conditions, deal with these situations, month after month, year after year. Uncomplainingly, untiringly.

There's a senior advocate I know at the Bombay high court. He has had a long, fruitful career at the bar. Like other senior lawyers have, he might have become a judge at some point. With its perks and comforts, it is a job many would lunge for without a second thought. Except for the unusual view this man has on being a judge. "I'll lose my independence," he says. "As a judge, you have always to consider both sides of a dispute, choose between them. As a lawyer, I like to argue one side thoroughly. No, I never wanted to be a judge."

Today, he has a flourishing practice. His clients keep him busy even though he wants to slow down and take on fewer cases. That's a nice place to be in today. But he has not forgotten the days of the early 1960s, when he was just another young advocate in Bombay. Just another young man struggling to make a living.

He had grown up in Goa. As many others did in those days, he might have chosen Portuguese citizenship and emigrated to that country. It was possible, it was easy, he knew several Goans who did it; but it was not for him. Instead, he stayed in Goa and took part in the fight for independence from Portugal. He kept up the struggle even after he came to Bombay in the late 1950s to make a living, until liberation came in 1961. Two years later, there were bomb blasts in Goa, set off by disgruntled Portuguese sympathisers wanting to spread terror in the state. For various reasons, this young lawyer was asked to join the team appointed to prosecute the men responsible.

He remembers that trial clearly, refers to it often. The way he speaks about it, about the liberation of Goa, you know how much it all meant to him personally and professionally. You know how those days, those experiences, shaped the kind of man he is today.

Another man I know joined the Indian Administrative Service just before Independence. His years in the IAS were filled with fascinating, challenging jobs: in Bihar, Punjab, Delhi, small-town Maharashtra, Bombay. It was decidedly not the fancy titles or official cars or beautiful government houses -- some truly beautiful ones -- that inspired him through his career.

No, it was the challenges themselves. "The reward I cherished was simply the opportunity to serve effectively," he wrote once: the opportunity to make a difference to people's lives. In the IAS, if you are willing to take and use them, such opportunities abound.

A respected retiree today, he too has not forgotten the days when he was a young man starting out in the IAS, fired with the idealism of 1947.

One of his first assignments was in Punjab, where he went to help cope with the vast crisis of Partition. There was a time when he and a few policemen were given the task of guarding a convoy of refugees. As the long line wandered slowly along a road in rural Punjab, this young officer strolled idly through the people and carts, over to the other side.

Here, there was terror. A gang of thugs was rushing towards the convoy, swords raised, yelling abuse, intent on murder. Without really thinking what he was doing, this still-callow youth, this still-green IAS man, rushed down the embankment at them.

Swinging his stick, making believe with his shouts that he had a huge force behind him -- which he did not, for his few men were on the other side of the road, oblivious to the goings-on here -- he rushed at them. Alone, he rushed at these armed thugs. But the tactic, heart-stoppingly foolish in retrospect, worked. The thugs turned and ran.

Why have I told you about these ordinary Indians? What do a doctor couple, a lawyer and a retired IAS officer have in common?

Well, last year they were all disgusted by the nuclear tests in Pokhran. This year, they are as disgusted that even after half a century, we would rather point fingers, fight a war, kill young soldiers, than find true peace with Pakistan. They have no illusions about Pakistan's intransigence and provocation, but find India's own intransigence just as dismaying.

The lawyer, in his considered way, even says: "We have ruined any case we might have had in Kashmir." They wonder: when will the bloodshed of this 52-year-old conflict matter enough that we will sit down to put an end to it? When will life matter enough?

And what do opinions like these make them? Well, last year they heard innumerable comments like this one, from a Bharatiya Janata Party minister called Lalji Tandon: "Everybody who opposed or criticised the nuclear tests conducted by India was in fact a traitor." This year, there are comments again. Like the one I got after a previous column offered thoughts somewhat like theirs on the Kargil war: "You are a f***ing moron and a traitor and you must die."

There you are. Traitors. Now you know.

Tailpiece:

1. To all those who wrote to remind me that Pakistan's treatment of Indian soldiers violates the Geneva Convention, here's a thought. India's treatment of people like those I wrote about last week -- Budhan Sabar and Pinya Kale and Shantanu -- violates the UN Convention Against Torture that India signed on October 14 1997. Just a thought.

2. In his last column, Pritish Nandy writes of Pakistan: "[T]hey cannot afford to give their people what we do. Freedom. This freedom has taught us many things. Which is why Indians all over the world are doing so well. We are the richest community in the US, in UK and god knows where else while Pakistan languishes at the bottom of every economic table, looking like a sad basket case."

A somewhat dubious comparison, to say the least. So as to be able to feel superior to Pakistan, Nandy compares the situation of Indians outside India, not to Pakistanis outside Pakistan, but to Pakistan itself.

Nevertheless, I have no objection if Nandy wants to feel superior to Pakistan. But it might interest him to know that India, too, languishes at the bottom of every economic table, in some cases just below Pakistan. A few examples:

Human Development Index Rank, 1996: Pakistan 134, India 135 (out of 174).

Real GDP per capita, 1993: Pakistan $ 2,160; India $ 1,240; all Developing Countries $ 2709.

Adult Literacy rate, 1993: Pakistan 36 per cent, India 51per cent, all DCs 61 per cent.

Underweight children under age 5, 1995: Pakistan 40, India 53, all DCs 30.

Primary school pupil-teacher ratio, 1992: Pakistan 41, India 46, all DCs 33.

(All data from the UNDP Human Development Report, 1996).

If Pakistan looks like a sad basket case, India, unfortunately, does too. Both countries have a tragic apathy towards the condition of their people. Therefore, it is meaningless to pat ourselves on the back for non-existent reasons. A little less such hypocrisy might help us address the dismal truths about India. In fact, a little less such hypocrisy might also help us understand how empty the word "freedom" is to hundreds of millions of Indians.

Dilip D'Souza