Crippling AIIMS

Before examining the merits and demerits of the actions of the two antagonists in the AIIMS face-off""Health Minister A Ramadoss and the former AIIMS director, P Venugopal""certain realities need to be noted. The country's premier medical institution is not what it used to be. There has been a steady decline in research work and an exodus of faculty, while sections of the current faculty have been at loggerheads. Because of the poor quality of public health care available elsewhere, the country's apex referral hospital gets a stream of patients who should not go there. There is thus a hopeless overload, stretching resources. A recent attempt to raise user charges has had to be reversed. Indeed, AIIMS's situation underlines a key national failing""the inability of our rules to let publicly funded academic institutions run professionally, with substantial autonomy.

The rot at AIIMS has neither begun with Dr Ramadoss, nor will it end with the departure of Dr Venugopal. The latter and some of his predecessors must share a part of the blame for the decline, and the minister needs to be condemned for making things worse. Since popular sympathy is likely to be in favour of Dr Venugopal, and rightly so, it may be useful to first list how he could have conducted himself better. He must know that a government officer, which he is, cannot openly criticise his superiors. He should have resigned before doing so. There are public proprieties which have to be maintained and to fail to do so is to invite humiliation. Also, AIIMS under him was not running well and a section of the faculty was in open revolt over his style of leadership.

The transgressions of our political leadership are of course much worse. Dr Ramadoss's initiation in Tamil Nadu's caste-based politics has not prepared him for guiding the country's medical research. He acted opportunistically and destructively by making an overtly political and partisan visit to the institution during the junior doctors' strike against new quotas, when he should have tried to calm tempers and build bridges. Perhaps the most disappointing is the role of the Prime Minister and the Congress leadership who have studiously kept aloof. This government cannot survive without the support of the PMK-DMK combine but that is no reason for doing nothing to restrain the minister. This strategy will enable the government to survive for some time but the future of the country will be bleak if institutions like AIIMS get into a process of terminal decline.