Tuesday, April 22, 2025

It was over four decades back that the news of Dashrath Manjhi, a villager from a remote part of Bihar, breaking a mountain to create a path had captured the imagination of the country.

It was over four decades back that the news of Dashrath Manjhi, a villager from a remote part of Bihar, breaking a mountain to create a path had captured the imagination of the country. The fact that he was poor and belonged to a landless family of ‘mahadalit’ category only added further to the inspirational legend of Manjhi who has been called The Mountain Man. From the Chief Minister to the Prime Minister, Manjhi received praise from many highly placed sources in the country.

What really proved inspirational for many people was the fact that at the age of 26 a poor youth took upon himself the impossible looking task of breaking a huge mountain to the extent of carving out a life-saving path that thousands of villagers needed urgently. He toiled tirelessly for 22 years (1960-82) and finally succeeded in his objective. Acclaim followed, but instead of just basking in glory he continued to work tirelessly for betterment of his village. This writer recently visited the village of Manjhi (Gehlour in Gaya district) to talk to villagers to better understand the legend and legacy of ‘the mountain man.’ He was a follower of Sant Kabir, the bhakti movement’s famous poet-saint of medieval times, who has remained one of the strongest and most revered voices of spirituality based on justice, truth and non-violence, and leading a simple and pious life free from all hypocrisy and falsehoods.

People from the Manjhi community to whom I spoke told me that whenever they went to mountains they found him at work just carrying some sattu in his bag, a legume-based powder which could give some energy and coolness when mixed with water. In 1960 Dashrath had gone to work on the mountain and his wife Phalguni Devi injured herself badly while carrying food and water for him. Looking at her injuries, he took a pledge to create a path in the mountain that may become a life-saver for people. This would give a safe path to everyone going to the other side, and in addition would bring closer the health, educational and other facilities of the nearest town to the people on this side of the mountain (the distance could come down from about 55 km to about 15 km).

Contrary to some published accounts, several villagers told me that Phalguni Devi did not die from these injuries but instead continued to be helpful to her husband and the pledge he had taken. She died some years later. Using the simplest tools like a hammer and a chisel, Manjhi embarked on his great journey that was to be completed in 22 years. Initially people ridiculed him and some even called him ‘mad’ for taking up such a huge task. Undaunted, he continued this work on a regular, daily basis. We must not forget that he came from the poorest community and had to also earn his livelihood to support his four-member family (which included a son and a daughter).

Initially most villagers had ridiculed or neglected Manjhi, but once his work of a few years started showing signs of leading to success, some villagers also started lending a helping hand now and then. Finally, in 1982, Manjhi succeeded in creating a path which was wide enough for a bullock-cart to pass. Later the government helped to widen this and build a proper road. Manjhi now decided to go and meet senior government officials in Delhi to take up several development works much needed by his village and neighboring communities. Education and health were emphasized by him. However as he could not buy a rail ticket he was asked to get down from the train after covering a short distance.

He now decided to walk to Delhi along the railway track, hoping that this would perhaps draw even more attention to his objective of promoting development work in his village and neighboring villages. An elderly farmer of a neighboring village told me that Manjhi had managed to meet the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi and had shared with him a press clipping of this. Later Manjhi also went to meet the Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar who gave him a lot of respect. However despite his increasing fame, Manjhi retained his simplicity. A local teacher, Virendra Paswan, told me that when he was on a train word spread of his presence and there was a rush of people just to catch a glimpse of him. However, Paswan said, even at that time Manjhi was wearing a dress made from a jute sack, as he often did earlier too. In 2007, Manjhi was admitted to AIIMS hospital in Delhi where he breathed his last on August 17.

A memorial and gates were constructed in his village in his honour. However, the people of the Manjhi community and other landless and poor Dalit community members continue to live in this village in great poverty and several of them told me that even their housing situation is precarious. The government needs to do much more to help them with a sense of urgency. Meanwhile the SBI Foundation has taken up an admirable initiative called SAMMAAN with implementation assistance of Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra to honour the memory of Dashrath Manjhi in the form of many-sided efforts in his village to improve education, health, infrastructure and livelihoods that have been widely appreciated. I visited three settlements of the Manjhi community here and villagers expressed their appreciation of the good work done by the SBI Foundation.

At the same time they repeatedly drew attention to their continuing poverty and their dependence on migrant labour. They have to regularly go to brick kilns to toil in exploitative conditions in distant parts. Their housing situation has become precarious as they face eviction threats. There is an extreme shortage of water for almost six months in a year, if not more. The condition of other Dalit and poor communities like Ravidasis is also dismal. The government and society need to do much more to help the community of Dashrath Manjhi as well as all other Dalit and weaker sections in this village and neighboring areas to honour the legacy of the Mountain Man.

BHARAT DOGRA

Source: The Statesman, 16/04/25D

Disabled Health Care

Eighty-two per cent of the persons with disabilities in the country do not have any health care protection despite the claims of the government to the contrary.

Eighty-two per cent of the persons with disabilities in the country do not have any health care protection despite the claims of the government to the contrary. Forty-two per cent of them are not even aware of the central government’s flagship programme for people’s health, Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (ABPMJAY), according to a recent national survey by the Centre for the Promotion of Employment for Disabled People.

The number of persons with different kinds of disabilities in the country is enormous, 26.8 million or 2.21 per cent of the population as per the 2011 census. While the next census, which was due in 2021 but postponed to this year, can provide the most dependable update since it covers the entire population, other studies, which, too, cannot be ignored since they are based on scientific statistical sampling methods, have shown a marked increase in this number; the NFHS-5 (2019-21) reported it to be 63.28 million people, equivalent to 4.52 per cent of the population.

This is not to say that those already covered under some government-sponsored schemes are getting hassle-free healthcare. The overall health of the health sector is not well. The experience of the enrolled suggests that many of the hospitals empaneled refuse the treatment with great impunity; the needy have either to pay, if they can, out of pocket or go without treatment if they can’t, and live or die with the disease.

The Ayushman Bharat scheme, wherever it is accepted, covers only in-patient costs, not the out-patient services that comprise a significant 80 per cent of healthcare needs. Another issue is massive corruption at different levels in the implementation of the scheme, as observed by the CAG in one of its reports. Coming to healthcare in general, the pure commercial interest and market force philosophy takes precedence over the public health responsibility of the government. The health infrastructure is neither adequate nor suitable for the masses of people in the country. It encourages private profits and helps private insurance. It has a poor 1:1,500 doctor-to-patient ratio and 1.7 nurses to 1,000 people as per IBEF’s observation. However, other official claims dispute this; in response to a parliamentary question, the minister of state for health and family welfare said this ratio was 1:836 doctors ~ more than the WHO standard of 1:1,000.

It seems that the government calculated the ratio based on the 13,86,000 allopathic doctors registered and 5,65,000 lac Ayurveda, Unani, Homoeopathy practitioners, etc. to inflate the numbers. The dimensions of the health sector neglect are multifold. The health care public spending in India as a percentage of its GDP is set at 1.9 per cent in 2026, whereas other countries the world over are already spending between 5 to 12.5 per cent of their GDP. The US, for instance, spent 16 per cent in 2023, and the OECD countries spent 9.2 per cent in 2022.

The private sector in India dominates health care in many ways. It accounts for 58 per cent of the number of hospitals.

The sector employs 81 per cent of the medical professionals. By 2022-23, there were 43,186 private hospitals with 1.18 million beds and 29,631 ventilators. The macro data doesn’t reflect the true picture because there is a wide gap between rural and urban areas in the availability of hospitals and doctors. Also, there are regional imbalances. For instance, Maharashtra has the highest number of allopathic doctors (2.10 lac), followed by Tamil Nadu (1.49 lac) and Karnataka (1.41 lac) as per 2024 data; that means more than 38 per cent of the allopathic doctors in India are concentrated in three states.

The inefficient and inadequate health care is deepening and widening the poverty in India. Due to heavy out-of pocket spending, an estimated 7 per cent of the population ~ about 10 crore ~ falls below the poverty line every year, as a Niti Aayog report asserts. Besides high medical costs, people have to put up with unethical medical practices by unscrupulous players in the system because there is no effective mechanism to stop them. Look at some of the most disturbing practices reported on and off in media. This is only an exemplary, not an exhaustive list:

* Unscrupulous hospitals accept patients not based on their severity of disease and urgency for treatment but on their paying capacity; those with disease but no money are kicked out while those with sufficient money but no disease get unnecessary treatment.

* Doctors prescribe tests lured more by the kickbacks that diagnostic centres offer than by the need for such tests. They write a battery of tests codenamed “sink tests” with one or two ‘marked tests.’ Patients are charged for all the tests and blood samples, for instance, are collected for all of them. But the actual test is conducted only for the ‘marked test,’; fake normal results are given for the rest of the tests. The excess blood collected is thrown in the sink, so the name ‘sink’ tests.

* Patients are unnecessarily referred to other doctors just to get a cut from them; those who offer higher commissions get higher referrals.

* Prenatal sex determination tests are conducted defying the legal ban on it.

* Unnecessary surgeries are conducted on the gullible persons. The types of procedures to make money include hysterectomies, C-sections, cataracts, knee replacements, and lower back operations.

* Pharmaceutical companies supply expensive gifts and medical equipment to entice doctors to prescribe their drugs. Not only gifts, they also offer foreign trips and five-star accommodations to doctors and their families.

* Poor and illiterate people are used as guinea pigs for clinical trials. * The ambulance services are paid bribes for bringing emergency patients to private hospitals.

* Hospitals force doctors to generate monthly targeted revenue to justify their high salaries, whereby doctors play mischief by subjecting innocent people to unnecessary tests and procedures.

The Medical Council of India prohibits all these unethical practices, but they have little impact on the errant doctors and hospitals. The National Health Policy 2017, too, commits itself “to the highest professional standards, integrity and ethics”. These goals are not achievable without first halting the ongoing mindless commercialization of the health sector in India. While people are worried about grossly inadequate and inaccessible healthcare, the sector flourishes and provides the best facilities to those who can afford them in India and abroad.

The Indian Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) says the Indian healthcare market, which was valued at $110 billion in 2016, is poised to reach $635 billion (Rs.54.87 lac crore) level by the end of this year. It adds that the premiums underwritten by health insurance in the financial year 2024 (up to February) grew to Rs.2.63 lac crore (about $ 32 billion). The health segment alone accounts for a 33.33 per cent share of the total gross written premiums earned in the country. Indian medical tourism is worth $7.69 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $14.31 billion by 2029; about 6.34 lac foreign tourists came for medical treatment in India in 2023. With the above five lac international patients annually, India has found a place among the global leader destinations for international patients seeking advanced treatment.

All this suggests that India has a robust health sector and, given the will, it can be further strengthened and reformed to meet the comprehensive needs of every Indian. What we need is universal health care. What we need is the de-commercialization of the healthcare industry. What we need is to learn lessons from the damage market forces are causing to the health sector and public health. And what we need to do all this, at the cost of repetition, is the will. Delay will causes further damage, and that damage will be irreparable.

P S M RAO

Source: The Statesman, 17/04/25

In many tongues

India’s linguistic and cultural plurality is at the heart of its civilizational ethos. It is one of the few nations in the world where the Constitution itself recognizes 22 official languages in the Eighth Schedule, while thousands of other languages and dialects are spoken across its length and breadth.

This plurality has not only coexisted with national unity but has nourished it, weaving a complex and rich identity. In such a milieu, language is more than just a tool of communication; it is a bearer of culture, memory, history, and imagination. The role of language policy, therefore, becomes critical ~ not merely as a technical or administrative matter but as one with profound socio-political consequences. It is within this context that the Three-Language Formula, first introduced in the National Policy on Education in 1968, deserves a serious and renewed endorsement.

At a time when attempts are being made to prioritize Hindi in national and international forums, often at the cost of other languages, a reassertion of the three-language model is essential for preserving India’s democratic fabric and inclusive vision of nationhood. The Three-Language Formula, in its original form, was designed to promote multilingualism and foster national integration. The policy recommended that students in Hindi-speaking states learn Hindi, English, and a modern Indian language from the South.

Conversely, students in non-Hindi-speaking states would learn their regional language, Hindi, and English. The idea was to ensure that no part of India remained alien to another and that a certain degree of inter-regional linguistic empathy and cross-cultural literacy would evolve. The formula was not just pedagogical but profoundly political: it sought to strike a balance between unity and diversity, between the need for a link language and the necessity of safeguarding linguistic pride and regional identity. Yet, over time, the implementation of the formula has been inconsistent, and the intended spirit has often been subverted by partisan and centralising tendencies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the attempts to promote Hindi asad facto national language, whether through administrative directives, education policies, or symbolic gestures such as the expensive and largely symbolic bid to make Hindi an official language of the United Nations ~ a move estimated to cost over Rs. 250 crore and with little practical benefit. In 2022, India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to pursuing this goal, although Hindi is not am – ong the top ten most spoken languages in UN for ums and is not used in any significant mea – sure in global diplomacy.

This is not just a waste of re s – ources; it also sends a troubling message about whose languages are considered prestigious and whose are not. While symbolic recognition of Hindi has its place, the attempt to elevate it over other Indian languages undermines the federal spirit and pluralism enshrined in the Constitution. Tamil Nadu, for instance, has historically resisted the imposition of Hindi. The anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s were not merely linguistic pro tests ~ they were assertions of cultural autonomy, of a refu – sal to let a centralized idea of India override regional identities. These agitations significantly shaped the state’s political landscape and resulted in Tamil Nadu consistently opting for a two-language formula ~ Tamil and English ~ in schools, refusing to introduce Hindi as a compulsory subject.

Their stand, rooted in the broader Dravidian movement, reflects a legitimate anxiety that the privileging of Hindi would erode linguistic diversity and marginalize non-Hindi speakers in the national discourse. Language is not just about words; it is about access, dignity, and power. In a multilingual society, any attempt to impose a single language risks disenfranchising those for whom that language is not a natural medium of expression. Consider the judiciary, where, despite constitutional guarantees, most proceedings occur in English, and in many states, the dominance of Hindi in administrative exams and processes makes it harder for candidates from non-Hindispeaking regions to compete fairly.

Even in digital India, where translation and access technologies are rapidly evolving, the linguistic divide persists. Children in many rural regions still struggle with basic reading comprehension when taught in languages unfamiliar to them at home. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 attempts to revisit the Three-Language Formula by allowing more flexibility and emphasizing mother tongue instruction until at least Grade 5. This is a welcome move in principle, backed by research from UNESCO and neuroscientists that children learn best in their mother tongues during early developmental stages.

However, the policy stops short of mandating the three-language formula uniformly and leaves many decisions to states, leading to inconsistent application. Furthermore, the NEP’s wording leaves space for the central government to push Hindi subtly under the guise of promoting Indian languages. Rather than letting language become a battleground for power, India should view it as a path to inclusive growth. A proper implementation of the Three-Language Formula ~ ensuring every student learns their regional language, Hindi or another Indian language, and English ~ can cultivate trilingual citizens.

These individuals can engage with their communities through their mother tongue, participate in national discourse via a link language, and access global opportunities through English.

Such a model fosters both identity and integration. Crucially, the formula must remain flexible, allowing for regional context, individual choice, and gradual adaptation. The goal is not uniformity but meaningful multilingual literacy. Beyond school education, the state should also invest in creating institutional ecosystems that celebrate and develop all Indian languages. This includes funding translation projects, encouraging multilingual publishing, supporting linguistics research in regional universities, and incentivizing film and media production in regional languages.

There is also a need to standardize orthographies and develop technology that can cater to Indian languages ~ keyboard inputs, voice recognition, natural language processing, and ma chine translation. The current domination of English and Hindi in the digital space can and should be countered by deliberate linguistic engineering that reflects India’s true diversity. The reassertion of the ThreeLanguage Formula also has global resonance. In an age of cultural homogenization and rising ethnonationalism, India can offer a unique model of how linguistic pluralism can coexist with a robust democratic state.

The European Union, for example, has 24 official languages and continues to operate effectively through a system of translation, education, and respect for linguistic rights. India, too, can strengthen its internal coherence by ensuring that all its citizens feel seen and heard in their languages. At its core, the question of language is the question of whose voice matters. The ThreeLanguage Formula is not merely an education policy ~ it is a vision of India that recognizes that unity is best forged not through sameness but through dialogue, translation, and mutual learning.

In rejecting the narrow nationalism of linguistic supremacy and embracing the Three-Language Formula, India reaffirms that its unity lies in embracing the full spectrum of its voices, not in suppressing them. The road to national integration lies not in mono-lingualism but in the generous accommodation of all languages and respect for individual choice. Only then can we live up to the promise of the Constitution ~ that of liberty of thought and expression, and the assurance of dignity to all communities, in all their mother tongues.

AMAL CHANDRA

The statesman, 20.04.25

Monday, April 07, 2025

Quote of the Day April 7, 2025

“I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.”
Florence Nightingale

“मेरी सफलता का श्रेय - मैंने कभी कोई बहाना न बनाया और न स्वीकार किया।”
फ्लोरेंस नाइटिंगेल

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