Political response to Kolkata horror
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: August 19, 2024 -

INDIAN political parties and politicians indulging in blame games over anything and everything is a too familiar sight that needs no elaboration.

But the manner in which political parties and their hangers-on have responded to the horrific incident of rape and murder of a young female trainee doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9, is simply obnoxious, for lack of better vocabulary.

Even though the heinous crime has shaken the conscience of the entire nation and forced the doctors to go on a nation-wide strike; political parties, regardless of their ideologies, colours and flags, seem to have only one thing in mind - to seize the moment, exploit the situation and take political mileage out of it.

With each passing day, it is becoming evidently clear that the response of political parties and their leaders to the horrific crime is not to ensure justice to the victim by giving befitting punishment to the culprits nor to fulfil the five key demands raised by Indian Medical Association (IMA) which primarily focus on the safety of medical professionals at work places.

It is true that IMA had given the call for launching a nation-wide strike after a mob of unidentified people vandalised RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, which is the scene of the tragic incident, during a peaceful protest on August 14 night.

At the time of announcing the strike, IMA had also issued a statement making it clear that "The RG Kar incident has brought to the fore the two dimensions of violence in the hospital: a crime of barbaric scale due to the lack of safe spaces for women and the hooliganism that is unleashed due to the lack of an organised security protocol. Today both the medical fraternity and the nation are victims".

Unfortunately, it is this incident of vandalism and not the harrowing rape and murder of a junior doctor per se that the political parties are focusing on to engage in a slugfest of fingers pointing at each other.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (IM), which are in the opposition in West Bengal, have questioned the Mamata Banerjee-led government over the incident and demanded resignation of the chief minister, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has in turn blamed the opposition parties for trying to foment trouble in the state.

Stating that "The troublemakers were outsiders," chief minister Mamata Banerjee had even claimed that in the videos, she had seen "there were people with the Indian flag who were BJP (workers) and others with DYFI's red-and-white flag".

DYFI or Democratic Youth Front of India, being the youth wing of CPI-M, everyone knows where she is pointing her fingers at.

In addition to accusing opposition parties of attempting to defame West Bengal and trying to "make a Bangladesh here," the West Bengal chief minister has not even spared Congress MP and LoP Rahul Gandhi when the latter made a poston X talking about "the attempt to save the accused instead of providing justice to the victim" by posing "I want to ask the Congress too, many incidents take place in your states, what action do you take? Don't try to politicise the incident just for a few likes on social media and media footage".

In the heat of all these political blame games, it is sad to say that the main issue of ensuring safety of medical professionals while on duty and the outcry for enacting a central legislation to protect the health workers or bringing back the Health Services Personnel and Clinical Establishments (Prohibition of Violence and Damage to Property) Bill of 2019 have been brushed aside.

There may be complexity in the issue as public health and hospitals are state subjects under the Constitution of India, but it is also time to acknowledge the urgency of legal protection for people in healthcare, which is recognised universally as an essential service.