Doctors go on strike over affirmative action plan in India

Kamil Zaheer:

Desperate patients crowded makeshift treatment centres in India on Tuesday as protests by thousands of medical students and doctors continued against a government plan to raise college quotas for lower castes.

Amid the protests, TV footage showed a woman writhing on the floor in distress in a hospital compound in the central city of Bhopal as her worried husband looked for medical aid, underlining how poor patients were suffering.

The government said it would push ahead with the controversial move that will see nearly half the seats in the state's top higher educational institutes, including medical colleges, reserved for lower castes and tribes.

But it tried to mollify critics by saying it could consider increasing the size of the institutions to preserve seat allocations for non-quota students competing on merit.

"We are looking at the issue with an open mind and heart and whatever suggestions come, like increasing the number of seats, we will take into account and take a decision," Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh, seen as the architect of the latest quota move, told parliament.

A similar move in 1990 to reserve more government jobs for lower castes caused many upper caste students to immolate themselves, increasing overall caste tension.

In Kolkata, thousands of junior doctors and medical students, many in white gowns with stethoscopes around their necks, marched in the eastern city, shouting "Down with reservations" and "Consider merit only." Classes in medical colleges were shut.

Far west in Mumbai, India's business capital, dozens of pro-quota medical students and lower caste activists were detained by police after they tried to protest on the road.

They were part of around 250 supporters of the government move. Some of them said affirmative action for the historically underprivileged was part of the Indian constitution.

"What one is entitled to, one should get," Ganjanan Kale, a pro-quota student, told Reuters.

Others held up banners saying: "Give us a chance to prove ourselves."

At present, government-funded colleges have to allocate 22.5 percent of their seats to the so-called Scheduled Castes -- formerly untouchables -- and tribal students, who are eligible for admission with lower grades.

The government's latest move proposes an extra 27 percent for other lower caste groups.

The anti-quota protests, led by upper caste students and junior doctors, have hit medical services in several Indian cities.

In New Delhi, exhausted patients slept in the heat outside hospitals waiting for treatment and had to attend disorganised makeshift medical camps set up by striking doctors and interns.

"No one was in the OPD (Out Patient Department). They (doctors) told me to sit in the park and said I will be operated tomorrow," Ram Dev, a patient with lung problems told NDTV television news, as he sat in the summer heat.

Though caste discrimination is banned in India and punishable by law, lower caste groups still face prejudice, harassment and even violence in rural parts of the country and smaller towns.

Strike hits Delhi health services