Bhopal Notes:: 40 :: Inadequacy of healthcare in Bhopal

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Hamidia Hospital Registration area - a much thinner crowd than what we came across

Being retiree of the Central Government I am a beneficiary of the local dispensary of Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS). This somewhat detaches me and others like me from the system of state government healthcare. I said “somewhat” as we too are not entirely free to seek healthcare from any quarter. The check is applied when new medicines or investigations are prescribed or hospitalization is suggested. At that point of time, unless there is an emergency, we have to go to a local State or Central government hospital for the necessary recommendations by a specialist. Bhopal CGHS has six doctors but none of them is a specialist. 

Such an occasion arose recently and my wife and I went to the Hamidia Hospital to visit the Orthopaedic out patients department (OPD). We were horrified to see the crowds at the registration area. There must have been around 500-700 people waiting for registration. Huge queues stretched from the general, women’s and senior citizens’ counters. Since both of us could not have stood all that while for registration because of our age and skeletal problems we decided to call it a day deciding to try our luck at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a central government institution.

 We had been there once earlier about two years ago and were able to visit the OPD of an orthopaedic surgeon even though we reached the distant place around 10.00 AM. We reached this time too around the same time only to be told that registration had been closed at 9.00 in the morning after commencing at 8.00AM. The man at the counter told us that only 40 out-patients are registered because of limited availability of doctors and people wait outside from 3.00AM onwards. The counter officer suggested to us to try online registration. My wife tried that too to find to find to her shock that no orthopaedician was available till March 2017.

 Compelled as we were, we visited the private clinic of a senior orthopaedic surgeon of the Hamidia Hospital whose recommendations were promptly acted upon by the CGHS. The only difference was that we had to pay the government orthopaedician a tidy consulting fee for his labours in his private clinic. The CGHS does not act upon prescriptions of specialists from its own empanelled private hospitals in identical circumstances but, surprisingly, the medicinal and diagnostic recommendations of a government doctor made from his private clinic are somehow considered sanitised enough for it to act upon.

Such are the rules, call it hypocrisy or what you will. Another anomaly is that while one can avail of the treatment of an empanelled private hospital as an in-patient but one cannot do so as an out-patient. A specialist there is good enough to deal with any number of serious and life-threatening diseases involving costly investigations or surgical procedures but their recommendations/prescriptions handed out from their OPDs are not acceptable. That probably is because of governmental distrust of private hospitals because of their frequently reported unfair, greedy and exploitative practices. But, I am digressing.

My point was different. What I was aiming at was the utter inadequacy of the governmental healthcare system in Bhopal. The crowds for registration at two hospitals are indicative of that. One would be surprised if things happen to be different in other urban centres of the state. For that matter even the Red Cross Hospital which earlier used to appear better provided these days wears a look of inadequacy. There too a large number of patients were seen waiting for attention of a medicine man. Either that or there is total breakdown of public health that produces huge number of patients crowding around government hospitals where treatment is much cheaper. Those who can afford can go to corporate hospitals to get treated and/or looted but the poorer sections do not have that alternative or option.

 This is what is happening in an urban area – the capital of the state; what happens in the rural and remote areas is any body’s guess. Only sparsely distributed health centres, with inadequate number of physicians/surgeons and para-medics, attend to the needs of hundreds of thousands as out or in patients. Over-population, illiteracy and lack of awareness about sanitation and hygiene give rise to heavy incidences of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Deaths are frequent; not being rare, unlike elsewhere life is cheap here  No wonder, the likes of Dana Majhi have to admit his wife in a hospital 10 kms away and then walk back home lugging her on his shoulders after she unfortunately dies.

Two governments, one each of the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, have had uninterrupted runs of 10 years each in the state, yet apparently they did not do a thing to improve the healthcare system of the state either in the rural areas or in its urban centres. Bhopal, for example, has a handful of government hospitals for a population of more than 20 lakh (2 billion).  At best there are only half a dozen government hospitals if you leave out the ones like those of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd., Railways, Army, and the ones meant for victims of Gas Tragedy of 1984 etc. The city has expanded practically on all sides and all this must have taken place with the approval of the relevant government agencies. But there is hardly any government hospital that was planned for or built in these extended areas. One wonders what the Town and Country Planning organization and the department of urban development/administration or, for that matter, the department of health were doing. Apparently, the state progressively withdrew itself from its obligation of providing healthcare to a burgeoning population at reasonable costs and left avery large section of the population at the mercy of the rapacious corporate and other private hospitals. They hardly can afford the jacked up costs of such hospitals’ consultants’ fees or of medicines from their in-house pharmacists, or, for that matter, the numerous investigations that they mostly have conducted for raising their own revenues.

It is only now that the state elections are approaching that the state government is talking of augmenting the healthcare facilities. They have said that the Hamidia Hospital is going to have as many as 2000 beds. One wonders whether its rusty and creaky administrative organization would be able to manage such a huge establishment when it cannot manage the same hospital with 500-odd beds where replacing a broken-down old lift takes more than a year. It also does not have either a MRI machine or a CT scan machine. The machines that were reportedly procured for conducting angiography have hardly been put to use.

The government is also asking the Centre to transfer the Bhopal

AIIMS OPD

Memorial Hospital & Research Centre (BMHRC) to the state. It was a very well built hospital with well-qualified physicians and surgeons with the funds provided from the (measly) compensations paid by the Union Carbide Ltd. After the Trust that ran it was wound up it was tossed from one agency of the department/agency of the Health Ministry at the Centre to another that broke its back bone and landed it in an unholy mess. The mess that was created

was a fertile ground for the local corporate hospitals to poach its qualified and experienced specialists on payment of astronomical salaries. The mess continues and in this mess the state government wants to wade in mainly because of the hospitals excellent property. If ever the state government happens to control it the mess will be bigger and it may run as a close second to the messy Hamidia Hospital

Surprisingly, the government is aiming at big establishments when the needs are of smaller units located in various newly established localities. These could be like general hospitals providing the rudimentary first level of medicinal or surgical treatment. Every sick person need not visit a multi-speciality hospital as a large number do not need the attentions of specialists. Perhaps this way the patients would be treated in a better manner and the physicians/surgeons would be able to pay greater attention taking their time in examining and suggesting treatment to them The dreadful amount of waiting that common sick and suffering people have to undergo under present conditions need to be immediately addressed. Whether the government is able to do it will have to be seen. We may have to have a long  wait for its reaction too.

*Photos: from internet

Green Park, Kanpur

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Green Park, Kanpur

Green Park at Kanpur where the 1^st cricket test match between New Zealand and India was played is being  mentioned as one of the original test centres of India. This is not correct. The original test centres were only four – all in the four metros of Mumbai (then Bombay), Chennai (then Madras), Kolkata (then Calcutta) and Delhi (only if Delhi could be reckoned as a metro then). I distinctly remember in 1948 the touring West Indies team played five test matches in India at Brabourne Stadium, Bombay, Ferozeshah Kotla, Delhi, Eden Gardens, Calcutta, Chepauk, Madras and again at Brabourne Stadium Bombay. Bombay got two test matches, both were played at Brabourne Stadium for the simple reason that Wankhede Stadium had not been built till then. The second test too was allotted to Bombay, presumably because no other centre was available where a test could be played. Besides, Bombay used to be the headquarters of BCCI.

Green Park was nowhere in sight in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was perhaps because of the efforts of Maharaj Kumar of Viziangaram, popularly known as Vizzy, that Kanpur became a venue. He used to reside in Benaras and when he became president of the Board from 1954-57 he swung it in favour of Kanpur. For a number of years Green Park used to have matting wickets – not the turf ones that were available in the four metros. In 1959, I remember, India won for the first time a test match against Australia and the venue was none other than Kanpur where for the first time a match was being played on a turf wicket. Jasu Patel, an off spinner took 14 Australian wickets in the match. Late Richie Benaud, who had captained the Aussie side, had described the Kanpur pitch as a mud heap – probably because it was a dusty turf.

Perhaps, Rajiv Shukla, the UP Cricket Association chief, got the match away to Kanpur. Actually, it should have been the privilege of Mumbai to host the 500^th Test match and in that event it would have been appropriate to have it played at the Brabourne Stadium.

*Photo: from internet

Our life, our times :: 3 :: Our uncouth rulers

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The other day a very shocking report of a professor being crudely talked to by a petty politician appeared in the newspapers. It was nothing but a despicable act on the part of a Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) who was invited as a guest in a felicitation programme at an educational institution where a minister of the state government and a Member of Parliament (MP) too were present. The crime of the professor was that in the vote of thanks he raised he made mention of every dignitary except the MLA. Annoyed, the MLA crudely called out to him and spoke to him in a very unseemly and uncivil manner asking him as to why his name was not mentioned.

This happened in front of numerous people, including students. Running down of a teacher in full public gaze is something extraordinary and only the present-day politicians, hungry for power, pelf and publicity, can do it. This only shows the culture in the midst of which he was nurtured where no premium was placed on education or respect for those who were imparting knowledge and understanding to others. That the minister and the MP, superior elected political functionaries than the MLA, kept quiet and did not administer a public rebuke to him, too, was strange but was, perhaps, dictated by political necessities. It should, however, have been the duty of the minister to educate the MLA about how he should behave with a professor, a guru in Indian Hindu traditions which the BJP politicians constantly keep harping on these days, and how he needed to be revered and respected. For all one knows, perhaps they too are unaware of the age-old practices in dealing with those who were teachers, regardless of their level.

In our time we have seen how the students used to revere their teachers. My father was a professor in the college at Gwalior. Because of his educational attainments, his conduct and his ways with the boys and girls in the College he used to be highly respected. For years together he remained in-charge of all sporting and students’ union activities. His illustrious students like UN Dhebar, a former Congress general secretary, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former prime minister, would touch his feet whenever they came across him on the streets or elsewhere. To top it all, in pre-independence era, my father and a couple of other professors had occasion to go and meet the Maharaja of Gwalior in the latter’s office in Jayavilas Palace. As they were ushered into his presence Maharaja left his seat and stood up. In those feudal times this was something unheard of. He was the sovereign and the supreme ruler and all his subjects regardless of their rank bowed before him. His huge gesture only showed his breeding. Again, at Jabalpur my mother was taken to a function by my friend who used to be the Additional Collector. As she sat down, a man sitting on the dais climbed down and came straight to her sitting in the front row to touch her feet. She could not recognize him. It was Late Justice Shiv Dayal, Judge of the Jabalpur High Court. He told my friend that she was his “Guru-Ma” as her husband used to be his professor. Those were the days when the tradition of Guru and his pupil was maintained without making any song and dance about it like they do today. Today it may look or sound very esoteric but in those good old days these practices were normal and were observed as a matter of course.

Our venal, crude and half-educated netas to whom courtesy and tculture are alien have dumbed down everything, including the standards of behavior. As education was extended to the hinterlands of the cities with more and more schools being opened the standards of education were progressively diluted as the governments failed to correspondingly increase the number of quality teachers. As the new generations of untrained teachers were not equipped to deal with the children in schools, the standards of education as also children’s behaviour saw a continuing decline. Products of schools and colleges were as good as half-educated, country louts, particularly those who came out of government schools. Paying school teachers a pittance, too, did not help – the amounts sometimes are less than those of a government peon. Struggling and living from-hand-to-mouth existence, they are not able to maintain a dignified life in front of their wards. What is worse, these netas think nothing of them – themselves being riff raff, they take the teachers as such – behaving as if they are the lords of yore. Keen on self-publicity and making money on the side they have done nothing to improve matters relating to education in rural areas. No wonder education at the ground level is nothing whatsoever to write home about. Things have so drastically changed for the worse over the last sixty to seventy years. The government schools and colleges have become decrepit and unpopular which even the so-called economically weaker sections of society do not prefer to put their children in them

Earlier, a man’s education and his values were admired and respected. School teachers and college professors never had enough yet they were highly respected, the more brilliant, cultured and committed they were the more the pupils would have regard for them. The thing have become different today. People worship money and power, seemingly, shunning all societal values. No wonder one can see a keen race to make more and more money any which way – ethical or unethical – as that brings power and position of influence in society. A man’s money power can swing many things in his favour or in favour of those who are his boot-lickers. He can actually go lording over others regardless of his intrinsic worth.

 No wonder, the government is busy chasing unethical money the colour of which is black, the money that has severely damaged the country’s ethical and cultural value systems – with the venal netas being avid participants in the process.

*Image: from the internet

Nehru thwarted two winnable wars

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Earl Mountbatten, Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten

Aroop Raha, the Indian Air Force chief recently articulated his disappointment that the country’s air power was not fully utilized during the first war with Pakistan in 1948. Likewise, he said, the airpower was not used during the 1962 war with China.

Raha said that while the Indian Air Force (IAF) was used as a “bridge” to transport troops to Kashmir for several months but when a military solution was in sight India went to the United Nations” taking the “the moral high ground”. The statement is largely true. The Air Force was used when the situation became desperate with the Pakistani regulars and tribal raiders came as close as sniffing distance of the Srinagar airfield threatening to overrun it. Even at that crucial juncture the prime minister was hesitant. The books and documents that have now come out clearly show the ambivalence of Prime Minister Nehru.

According to the various documents of the period, it seems a meeting of the Indian cabinet had been called after the Kashmir Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession. Among those present were the Prime Minister, Home Minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, and Defense Minister Sardar Baldev Singh. Late Field Marshal Manekshaw, then a junior officer, was also present presumably to assist his Defense Minister. Towards the end of the meeting Manekshaw was asked to give his assessment of the situation in Kashmir which he did with precision. On hearing him, the consensus was India should intervene as soon as possible but Nehru was still in two minds and was wondering whether to refer the matter to the United Nations. That is when the Home Minister, Vallabhbhai Patel reportedly snapped at him asking whether Nehru wanted to keep Kashmir in India or let go of it. Nehru is reported to have said, “Of course, I would like Kashmir to stay in India”. The moment he answered in the affirmative Sardar Patel asked his assistants to fly the Indian army to Kashmir. Because of the delay in taking this decision most men in first few sorties were reportedly, gunned down on landing.

It is indeed surprising that throughout the campaign the Indian Air Force remained largely under-utilized. It took quite an effort for the Indian Army to slowly push back the invaders out of the Kashmir Valley though the Air Force did a commendable job of breaking the backbone of the invaders by strafing them when they were gathered in strength near the airfield. The Air Force did play its role in making the invaders run for their lives. But, that was about all for an offensive role of the IAF as it was mostly used for logistics – transporting troops and supplies. In doing so, too, it did some remarkable jobs like those of landing on an untested airfield built by 40000 refugees in a week’s time at Poonch and landing Dakotas on an airstrip along the Indus River in Leh at a height of 11000ft, a height where these planes were not supposed to fly. Hundreds of sorties were flown with troops and arms and ammunitions and in the return journey, especially from Poonch, they brought back thousands of refugees. Even the then Governor General, Earl Mountbatten had remarked that in his view it was one of the biggest airlift operations till then anywhere in the world

 Meanwhile, Delhi was getting impatient. Jawaharlal Nehru is reported to have once said that India could not be fighting this war for months or even years. Besides, the brutally cold winter was approaching and the shortage of arms and ammunitions was also telling on the operation. What is more, he was being advised by the Governor General to refer the matter to the UN. It seems the Prime Minister had expectations that a reference to the United Nations would settle the issue speedily. Unfortunately, that did not happen and it took the UN half a century to treat it as an unresolved dispute. On reference to it the Kashmir issue became a victim of the then prevailing Cold War rivalries between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union. The former had a stake in the State as it could provide a location from which they could keep an eye on the latter. The West, therefore, was never inclined that Jammu & Kashmir should merge with India. For them, for various reasons, Pakistan was a better option being tactically better located. That attitude seems to continue till today. At the UN they, therefore, weighed in for Pakistan and some very biased debates had taken place.

 What was most unfortunate, however, was that Nehru’s reference was made to the UN just as the Indian Army acquired the capability to throw out the Pakistani raiders from the State. Perhaps, under the influence of the Governor General the Army Headquarters issued an order not to initiate further operations without its orders. Some reports say that it was not Mountbatten but the US intervened and did not want India to recapture the lost J&K territories. Nonetheless, Mountbatten played a dubious (double) role. This was, therefore, not as much a matter of occupying “high moral ground” as of probably succumbing to pressure from a Big Power. So, a problem that could have been solved in 1948-49, thanks to Nehru, festers on and on till today and the country that was the aggressor has acquired in the meantime sharper teeth

It seems, Nehru’s incapacity to take independent decisions at crunch situations did quite a lot of damage to India. While in the Kashmir war of 1948 Earl Mountbatten led him up the ‘garden path’, during the 1962 war with China it was the US ambassador, John Kenneth Galbraith, who was his advisor. It was largely because of Galbraith that the Indian air power, much improved after the 1948 Kashmir Operations, was not allowed to carry our combat operations. Besides, there was a total absence of intelligence from the other side about the enemy’s capabilities in air warfare. Intelligence Bureau chief, BN Mullik, did not have any intelligence about Chinese Air Force establishments in Tibet. In fact, information was circulated about two Chinese air bases in Tibet which never existed and, probably, do not exist even today

There was thus an ‘intelligence vacuum’. For fear of an imagined retaliation by China, while the IAF planes were made to sit on their bases, Nehru wrote, surprisingly without consulting the IAF, to Kennedy requesting for air cover for the cities in the plains. This the US was not able to provide because of several reasons including the then ongoing Cuban Missiles Crisis. The result was IAF’s own Toofanies, Mysteres, Gnats, Hunters and Canberras remained virtually mothballed in their Eastern bases while the Army was deprived of much needed air support. The denial to the air force of an offensive role was such an implausible negative action that it is being researched and debated till today.   

Raha, therefore, is not the only Air Chief to have highlighted this act of omission. Earlier, ex IAF chief Air Marshal AY Tipnis, too, blamed Nehru for not using the country’s airpower and the consequential debacle in the 1962 war. Likewise, Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal (Retd) NAK Browne had to say later that the outcome of the 1962 war would have been different had IAF been allowed an offensive role. But such messy situations tend to occur when, instead of defense chiefs, wars are fought, instead of defense forces, by politicians, more so of indecisive variety like Nehru. 

*Photo: from internet

A photo-blog :: Rural India

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Below there is a remarkable photograph which is lucid in its expression of the Indian rural life, including its patriarchy




















*The photo appeared in Down to Earth magazine

Bhopal Notes :: 39 :: Winds of change

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Upper Lake, Bhopal

Looks like winds of change are blowing across Bhopal, especially its iconic Lake and its sensitive surroundings that go by the technical term of “Catchments”. A news report yesterday gave the good news of the thinking in the MP government about changing over from chemical farming to organic farming on the  farms in the catchments of the Upper Lake. The government is not talking of persuading farmers for the switch but is talking of introduction, presumably, regardless of the consequences. This is what, apparently, came out of a meeting that was held by various governmental representatives with the local Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

 In fact, this should have been done long back. One wonders what the Bhopal Municipal Corporation, Department of Environment and the Department of Water Resources have been doing so far. They should have moved in the matter long back as it is well within their knowledge that fertilizers and pesticides were being used by the farmers in the catchments of the Lake. However, as happens in the governments all over the country, these matters vital for the prim maintenance of the country’s assets as also wellbeing of its people are lost sight of  - with, one might add, impunity.

The question of introducing organic farming was discussed in the Bhopal Citizens’ Forum years ago, may be seven to eight years ago. A letter was also addressed to the MP government as a sequel to that. But there was no action whatsoever although pollution of the waters of the Lake frequently came up in public discourses. None in the government seems to pay any attention to what people or groups or non-governmental institutions have to say in regard to various matters relating to public wellbeing. There is an air in the government of total proprietary rights to all knowledge and a kind of disdain for what they receive from sources that are unofficial. Hence such information or suggestion could well be ignored.

 I recall having read in the newspapers a few months ago that the government has decided to create an organic farming zone the location for which was the district of Dindori. That was well and good but I wonder whether the zone has taken off. However, in the process, it clean forgot of the catchments of the Upper Lake where organic farming is an utter need for providing purer drinking water to people to whom its water is supplied. Virtually everybody knows that the lake is highly polluted with the inflow of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, sewage and what have you. If the government could cut out one of these it would serve a great purpose. But, that is how it is with the government; each department seemingly works in a silo knowing little of whatever is happening outside it.

Introduction of organic farming in the catchments of the Upper Lake should not prove to be a big deal. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have been practicing it for about a decade now. They have also successfully tried neem-based pesticides and fertilizers which has led to job creation in rural areas. Enough evidence of the state’s success could be had from various sources. Hopefully the local government will go full steam ahead in implementing the proposal without incurring avoidable delay in finalising it.

*photo: from internet

Our Life, Our Times :: 2 :: Progressive decline in finer feelings

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A photograph was recently published of a villager carrying his dead wife’s body on his shoulder while his daughter walked alongside crying all the way. The unfortunate incident happened somewhere in the interiors of the backward district of Kalahandi of the state of Odisha. The husband carried his wife’s dead body for 10 kms to his own village. Reports reveal that a hearse was denied to him as he was not in a position to pay for it. But not one person seems to have come to his help. He did not opt for the wife’s cremation in the town where he had taken her for treatment because, in all probability, he could not afford the involved expenses. Now a video of the same man carrying his dead wife has also been posted in the Facebook for a more traumatic effect on the viewers.

Soon after, a news report with a photograph also appeared of a man breaking the bones of a dead elderly woman to make it more compact for bundling her up and carrying her away, presumably, for cremation. This too happened in the interiors of Odisha. This was not the end of such weird incidents. There was yet another incident, this time in Madhya Pradesh, in which a sick woman was travelling in a bus along with her husband, his mother and an infant to a district hospital having been referred to it by a rural health centre. Unfortunately, she died on the way. When other passengers came to know about it they did not want to travel with a dead body. The bus was stopped and the man, along with the family including the dead woman, was made to get off the bus next to a jungle, virtually in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, in this instance there were two good Samaritans who were passing by; they got an ambulance for the family from the nearest health centre.

These three incidents bring out in bold relief how insensitive our people have become. There are numerous such incidents which are shown in the Youtube exhibiting insensitivity of Indians. The other day I saw a clip where a man walking close to the pavement of a largely empty Delhi street was knocked down by a three-wheeler delivery van. The driver got off the van only to check whether his vehicle had been damaged, cursorily looked at his felled victim and got into the vehicle to drive off. Other people – a walker, a cyclist, people in cars – passed by without giving the man so much as a sideways glance. Eventually when the man was taken to the hospital after loss of a good deal of time and blood he was declared “brought dead”.

People were not so insensitive earlier. In my younger days a few decades ago people passing by would come to assistance of a man or a child if he were to have a fall from even a bicycle. Once I was knocked down by a drunken two-wheeler rider on an empty street. My head hit the asphalted road and I saw a few stars in the firmament. The noise of the vehicle hitting the road brought the residents out of the nearby houses to inquire and render assistance. That they turned out to be family members of our family physician was only fortuitous. Fortunately, I was only lightly hurt and didn’t need medical aid. What we see today, however, is something entirely different. There is utter lack of concern for suffering people. To a certain extent, in the last few decades Indians seem to have been somewhat dehumanized. Rising poverty with rising population, with hardly enough to go around for everyone, has probably given rise to a self-centred society with all its accompanying evils. The lack of feelings of sympathy, leave alone empathy and, of course, the sheer lack of concern for others have become common phenomena and are frequently witnessed all around the country. No wonder, some people have raised the question whether we live in “Incredible India or Insensitive India”?

One might call it an ‘ethical deficit’ which seems to have slowly crept into the society. Everyone is absorbed in dealing with one’s own problems which sometimes may overwhelm one and take up all one’s mental and physical strength. True, life has become increasingly difficult for everyone barring a few rich but that does not or would not sanction absence of humanity among others. In fact, the middle classes, or for that matter even the lower classes, once upon a time, were known for the values that they had. Compassion, kinship consideration, understanding, kindness, sympathy, tenderness, generosity, sympathy, etc. are qualities that appear to be progressively diminishing from amongst Indians. Times have indeed changed. It is a more materialistic world now and finer feelings of life are probably suppressed or are deliberately prevented from surfacing as that would only deviate one from one’s own pre-occupations – and ethics could be damned.

Apparently, earlier people were nurtured and brought up differently. Even in the midst of insufficiency and poverty parents would constantly instill in children the values that were taken directly from mythology. In unlettered and poor homes all of this would come down from generation to generation by the oral tradition. Folklores, paradigms, mythical stories or stories from the epics came all the way down even to illiterate households through the word of mouth. All that seems to have been lost under the pressure of the current times, effectively demolishing the age-old value system.

The country seems to be the poorer for all that. Attitudes have changed and that has resulted in indifference to everything except what is of immediate concern of self. Besides, it has bred lack of sincerity in everything that we do – in our relationships, at our work place, in performing our allotted duties or whatever. There is a perceptible lack of commitment and, perhaps, that is what is keeping the country behind others in many spheres. Only a resurgence of ethical values may bring back the desired changes – in our feelings of kinship, feelings of sympathy and concern for our fellow beings.

*Photo:from internet