Doctors will decide what they want to do next. I want to ask you, where does the West Bengal government go from here on? The fact is that today the Supreme Court has asked it every tough question that citizens of India... I have been asking them for the last 12 days. And to my mind, and I saw the proceedings, it seems that the West Bengal government didn't have answers to basic questions.
Like, if a body is discovered of your own student at 9 a.m. in the morning, you are filing an... FIR at 11.45 PM? This is your own student, raped and murdered within your own premises. You file an FIR after the entire day is gone.
Why will we not believe that there was a cover-up? Well, there is no doubt that there has been a great amount of mishandling and miscommunication on the part of the authorities at RGKAR in the first instance. and then whatever the local politicians who came out in support of the principle. But the Supreme Court has asked the pertinent questions. In the meanwhile, the investigation has been transferred to the CBI.
And as you yourself have said, most of the things that can and ought to have been done have now been done. As far as the West Bengal government is concerned, this is... an incident which has shaken the at least the city of calcutta if not the state what it does politically it is for the for the government to consider see i i was there at the nirbhaya protests in jantar mantar when i saw mrs sheila dixit come there personally light a candle despite all the hooting and everything and then a couple of years later when the elections came Nothing could really save the Congress in Delhi at that point of time.
What the political response is, how it is digested by the people of that state, those are questions in the future. Right now, what the court is concerned with is an honest and speedy investigation, systemic steps to ensure that there are no repeats. Thirdly, as Dr. Bagay pointed out, how do you make the conditions, the working conditions of doctors safer?
There are two aspects of it. One is, of course, the sexual aspect of it, which the women doctors and the women health workers face. There is also the question of violence against doctors in general. Whenever a patient dies or something happens.
The relatives of the patients often beat up doctors. In respect of that, there is a comprehensive law which came into force during COVID, but which need not be COVID specific anymore. It needs to be widened.
What is the response of the younger doctors, the residents who are now on strike? Because the entire system depends on the hard labor put in by the youngest of doctors. I have my brother as a doctor.
I've seen how the system operates and they are the foot soldiers. You need they need to be assured they have possibly gone beyond the stage of saying of believing people who say, trust me. But at the end of the day, when the highest court has intervened, has passed directions which will come into play and will be effective soon. I. do not think that there is a point in continuing the agitation beyond a certain period.
Yes, there has to be some time for grieving. There has to be some time for everything to be expressed. But at the end of the day, they are as much part of the system and they will in turn go on to lead the system.