Doctors’ agitation for justice to medic caught in a bind | Arun Srivastava

Doctors’ agitation for justice to medic caught in a bind with CBI taking to unmapped path for benefit of its political masters

From Arun Srivastava

With the withdrawal of the month-long agitation of the junior doctors, a polemical evaluation has started in the political and social circle of the state about its success and to identify the real beneficiary of the movement. The academics, intelligentsia and middle-class icons, who had supported the agitation are also busy introspecting and analysing the real nature of the agitation and what actually motivated them to join the ranks of the agitators.

An incision of the month-long event would make it explicit that the list of the losers in quite lengthy, but the number of gains is quite trivial rather negligible. Doubts are being expressed whether the woman medic would at all get justice. Whether the CBI which has been entrusted by the Calcutta High Court to investigate the crime will do justice to her, or it would linger the case to make it irrelevant and people losing interest.

The civil society and junior doctors have made the demand for justice to Abhaya as the key issue, but now there is no doubt that the entire exercise has proved to be inefficacious. People nurse the feeling that the snail’s pace with which the investigation is proceeding, would take more than a year to complete. Otherwise too the credentials of the CBI has always been suspect. They recall CBI had consumed seven precious years in the case of Delhi’s Nirbhaya. Civic worker Sanjay Roy is the only culprit. Incidentally he was identified by the Kolkata Police. Later CBI took charge of him.

CBI had not arrested any other person in the rape and murder case. It has taken an entirely different rout; trying to identify the corrupt persons and how a health mafia has been operating in the state. Its entire effort is to make the people of Bengal believe that if Mamata government had not patronised corrupt officials and doctors, and has provided a clean and transparent governance, the medic might not have become the victim.

Ironically on the medic front, it has not made any significant success. CBI sources even confirm Kolkata Police’s view that there is no evidence of any other attacker other than Roy, who has already been arrested. Question is being asked why he used to loiter around in the hospital. This is certainly not new for the present day hospital industry. People like Roy work as touts in the hospitals.

In the Supreme Court hearing on 22 August, the Kolkata Police submitted a detailed minute-by-minute report on the events of 9 August when the trainee doctor’s dead body was discovered. Every action of the police was videographed and those videos were submitted to the court. The Apex court asked some tough questions during the hearing but in the end, it appeared satisfied with the Kolkata Police’s detailed submissions. The fact that the Kolkata Police was confident enough to make a minute-by-minute submission shows that their investigators had little to hide.

After taking over the investigation the CBI had put Kolkata police in dock and indirectly blamed it for not conducting the preliminary investigation seriously. But surprisingly the CBI, if the sources are to be relied, conforms Kolkata Police’s view that there is no evidence of any other attacker other than the accused. But instead of prosecuting Roy, at the instructions of its political masters, the agency is busy preparing a detail report on “ larger conspiracy” to frame the political adversaries of its masters.

For Marxists the sordid incident has come as a boon to recover some ground it has lost among the Bengali middle classes. Doctors with CPM leanings who have been marginalised within the system since 2011 have suddenly become prime-time regulars, sparing no opportunity to target the government. They targeted the health delivery system more than focussing on justice to medic. Under a design they digressed from the fact that the erosion in Bengal’s health system began much earlier; in fact during the CPI(M) headed Left Front rule.

Worst victims have been junior doctors. Initially the saffron oriented doctors had led the agitation. But soon the left supported doctors took control of the show. Ironically the venom spitting junior doctors nonetheless stand exposed. People came to realise that on the name of justice to medic, the junior doctors are being used by the BJP and CPI(M).

They have apparently been demanding justice for medic, but in real sense have been involved in proxy war. Initially they hit the streets at the instigation of the RSS and BJP, later the left supported junior doctors took the command of the agitation. While the civil society agitators talked of gender equality and social security, the doctors laid the foundation of their agitation on Mamata’s resignation. The activists of the civic society could not identify with the shift in the agenda and nature of the agitation of junior doctors. This shift in the strategy in fact disillusioned civil society activists and soon they withdrew from the scene.

RSS which was facing a massive erosion of its support base amongst the Bengali population in the urban areas tried to use the incident to rope in new faces. As usual it used the cadres of its Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to reach out to the people. It floated Paschimbanga Chhatra Samaj supposedly an unregistered apolitical student group to reach out the middle class. The three student leaders, Prabir Das, Subhankar Haldar and Sayan Lahiri, who led the movement were the RSS cadres. Samaj had three demands, justice for rape-murder victims, capital punishment for the culprits, and Mamata Banerjee’s resignation. They took out massive rally, ’Nabanna Abhijan’, demanding the resignation of Mamata Banerjee.

The worst victim of the agitation has been the Marxists. Marxists who had jumped on the bandwagon of the RSS and BJP, in the hope that they will succeed in retrieving some lost grounds lies shattered on the streets of Calcutta. With their support base plummeting to five per cent in the recently held Lok Sabha election they decided to exploit the rape and killing of the medic for raising their support graph. But they miserably failed. Imagine why the huge upsurge of people, around 20 lakh, which had hit the Calcutta streets in the night of August 14, suddenly withdrew into their shell. They dissociated from the agitation. Only some committed left supporters kept their association.

While the Marxists utterly failed to make a positive inroad in the middle class people, notwithstanding gaining some support from them, they had no clear perception of how to make the people what they say and rally behind them. Marxists are prone to commit historical blunders. This time too they committed the same blunder. Reason was obvious. They lacked imagination and suffered with political and ideological bankruptcy. The fight which was launched demanding justice for the victim women, acquired the character of fight against Mamata. People could look through their design. They were not for the medic, instead they were following a political script.

From the beginning the agitation was moving on a wrong path. They demanded justice for the woman medic, but somewhere it lost prominence. The corruption that grips the system and governance replaced the justice from the psyche of the people. Let me cite a very small incident to testify it. Coinciding with the efforts of the middle class women of , Dunlop Baranagar and Sinthi who were busy taking out protest rallies, election to the Baranagar—Bonhoogly cooperative society was held. Mamata’s TMC won all the 11 TMC and main opposition CPI(M) lost miserably. In 2019 the CPI(M) had defeated the TMC. Obviously it implied that the high pitch anti-Mamata agitation demanding her resignation had failed to have any impact on the voters. Even if they had lurking suspicion, they would certainly not had reposed their trust in CPI(M).

It is a known fact that the health care system and infrastructure is run and managed by the doctors. The junior doctors’ agitation primarily aimed at section of the doctors who are close to the TMC and Mamata. It is an open secret that doctors, like a common people, have their political priorities. They are members of the political parties and incidentally a big section of them contest elections. The stretching of the agitation also brought the issue of patronising it by some powerful people. People allegedly nurse the impression that some big houses and persons are pulling the string from behind. This feeling is simply strengthened by the material support, food, logistics, the agitators received during the strike.

The extent to which the rightist forces have inflicted psychological regimentation on the middle class is manifest in their raising the slogan of Fansi (capital punishment) to the rapists. The middle class has lost sensibility. It was also interesting to watch the doctors demanding Fansi for the rapists. This nature of demand at some level underscores the lack of class character of the agitation and also the class consciousness amongst the protestors. Naturally question arises how could Marxists support this inhuman stance.

The leftist leaders ought to have realised the impact of the failure of the agitation on the common people and more precisely on the public zeal to protest against the establishment. They should have done some kind of introspection before allowing the doctors to drag the agitation that why the 20 lakh people who had responded on the first day of the protest, suddenly preferred to withdrew. What went wrong? Why the people are averse to responding to a left oriented and supported agitation? The set back which the doctors’ agitation received also underscored that the Marxists have failed to comprehend the change of social attitude and psyche of the middle class in the post globalisation period.

The judicial observations and pronouncements make it explicit that the element of middle class sensitivity and protecting the class interest prevailed upon the ground realities. It is not that judiciary is unaware of the mode of CBI functioning. Only recently a Supreme Court justice reiterated the eleven year old phrase and described it as caged prrot. It is a known fact CBI always protects the interest of its political master. Even then the case was entrusted to it. Why? This in a way was expression of mistrust in the state police.

The CBI has failed to accomplish the mission. The nature of its investigation makes it abundantly clear that it has been using the medic case to frame Mamata rather than putting the rapist in the dock for punishment. A serious look at the investigation would make it clear that it has been hedging around the issue of corruption, which titillates the middle class.

The audacity of the CBI trying to dictate the state administration and the governance is also manifest in its petition to the Supreme Court casting aspersion on the judiciary in state. The CBI had alleged that the courts in the state are illegally granting bails and the entire judiciary is under hostile environment. The petition has angered Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal to such an extent that they were forced to seek to know from Additional Solicitor General of India SV Raju; "Mr. Raju what kind of grounds are taken in this? That all courts in West Bengal have hostile environment? Blanket averment that courts are illegally granting bail?. This is casting aspersions that the entire judiciary is under hostile environment."

On September 20 judges castigated the CBI for making "scandalous allegations" against the Courts in West Bengal while seeking transfer of the trial of the post-poll violence cases out of the State. Judges observed; "Suppose we transfer matters then we are certifying that there is hostile atmosphere over all the courts in the state and courts are not functioning. Your officers may not like the judicial officer or a particular state but don’t say that the entire judiciary is not functioning. The judges the district judges and civil judges and sessions judges can’t come here and defend themselves".

It is really astonishing that the Supreme Court is willing to believe the CBI’s conspiracy theory in the medic case and its allegation that some top persons are involved in it. There is no denying that CBI is preparing the ground for dismissal of Mamata government and slapping of the president’s rule. Nevertheless one thing is clear: the trust deficit in Mamata and her government, at least among a large section of the urban populace, is growing by the day. When the junior doctors insist on live-streaming proceedings, it is because they don’t entirely trust the government. The Marxists should have worked on a concrete and tenable ideological roadmap for making the middle class identify with any protracted struggle.

Yet another factor that harmed the agitation most has been the support extended to the agitation by the Governor CV Ananda Bose, the person who is already accused of molesting a Raj Bhawan lady employee. He had said he would not share any public platform with Mamata Banerjee in view of people’s outcry over the RG Kar hospital impasse. In a video message, Bose had also said called for socially boycott Mamata. He had said; “I will take proactive steps against her for violating Constitutional provisions. I have been flooded with questions and representations from various sections of the public of what action the Governor is proposing to end the present crisis in Bengal. I stand committed to the people of Bengal".

On the contrary people were heard asking why the agitators approached him seeking his help? To make matter worse, a BJP legislator Agnimitra Paul approached Governor Bose, enjoying the reputation of being a saffron flunkey and always eager to promote its cause and politics, with the request to order for a second autopsy of the woman medic of the R G Kar hospital. People took it as a cruel joke.