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Rajan Gandhi What is the condition of medical resources in India and the answer is definitely a shortage of doctors, nurs- es and paramedical staff. On an average we have one allopathic doctor for every 1,800 people, rural and urban combined. We have 32,000 undergraduates pass- ing out each year seeking post graduation seats, which are 10,000 in number. A lot of undergraduates who have completed MBBS are therefore left disappointed. AIIMS and PGI are the main medical face of the country and do invest significantly in training and research, areas in which very few private institutes invest. At AIIMS approximately 650 teachers, all super spe- cialists, put in 36,000 hours a year to train the genera- tion next of Indian medicine. MBBS students rub shoul- ders with the veterans for 1,000 hours of clinical experi- ence, getting their hands dirty in the 120 laboratories up to six hours a week, with 71,827 books, 568 digital data- bases and over 80,000 journals in the library; they burn the midnight oil along with their teachers publishing the largest quantum of medical research in the country. An institute where the best medical minds come together to understand mechanisms of diseases and thus evolving trail blazing therapies. Recommended by Bhore Committee in 1946, piloted by India's first health minis- ter, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and funded by New Zealand under the Colombo Plan, the foundation stone was laid in 1952. Although envisioned as a referral, over the years it has grown to be India's busiest hospital with 25 lakh outpatients, 1.5 lakh inpatients, 1.8 lakh emergencies and 1.31 surgeries a year-catering to prime ministers as well as to the common man. It's a unique journey of clin- ical milestones and research breakthroughs. Students here are challenged to dream, to aim for the stars and to put their heart into. Similarly, PGIMER, Chandigarh, an institute which came up in 1962 under the responsibility of the Punjab government and in 1967 was designated an institute of national importance and since then is governed by an act of parliament. From computerization of labs to introduction of a token system at OPDs and placement of information kiosks in all buildings, PGIMER has become more patient-friendly .The tertiary care insti- tute of PGI, which receives about 10,000 patients daily, has adopted a hospital management system with 20 integrated software modules, covering the general OPDs, specialties, super-specialties of about 80 wards. Under ADT (Admission, discharge and transfer) mod- ule, nurses in all 80 wards have been keeping an elec- tronic tracking of patients from the point of admission, acceptance in the wards, transfer from one ward to another, until their discharge. An SMS facility for informing patients when their reports are ready to be accessed from the web is very much part of present day PGI. The institute has connected all radio-diagnosis machines to the network in order to give access to MRI and CT scan images in OPDs which is going to help doc- tors in better patient management. The resident staff is dedicated with backpacks, accented English and passion for work. PGI mainly runs on the strength of its resi- dents in ICUs, emergency, and wards. Now come to our own GMC, also established way back in 1973 and shifted to Bakshi Nagar Building in 1993, right now five teaching hospitals namely, Medical college hospital, CD hospital, SMGS hospital, Psychiatry hospital and Dental hospital are associated with GMC Jammu with total bed capacity of 1700. There are 800 doctors including faculty and residents, 1000 Paramedical Staff including supervisory staff, 1500 Class-III and IV employees working in the college and its associated hospitals, but not withstanding the claims of the Government to improve the medical facilities in the State ,situation is really dismal. Shortage of staff on every front, the State Government for years together has failed to fill up the vacant posts in the GMC faculty despite knowing fully that Medical College Jammu is always overburdened with the rush of patients. Leave alone the establishment of full-fledged trauma centre at GMC Jammu even in ordinary accidental cases people prefer to go to PGI, CMC, AIIMS and Amritsar for spe- cialized ortho surgeries due to lack of services at GMC. Public prefer to look for these institutes along with pri- vate hospitals like Fortis, Vedanta, Escorts etc for even minor heart or other ailments- trusting more of these hospitals for obvious reasons. Seriousness of the author- ities can be gauged from the fact that there is no biomet- ric attendance system right now in place on a silly pre- text that all employees are not having aadhaar registra- tion with the result supporting staff busy with their own patients, technicians running their own laboratories and senior doctors keeping their patients waiting for hours together. PGI - Chandigarh is able to generate every year 50 crore on account of extra service they are providing to patients who can afford and the money so collected is pumped back to the institute for welfare of poor and staff. Long back similar kind of activity was started at GMC also under Col. Chopra Nursing Home, but since had been closed reasons better known to authorities.GMC and associated hospitals can start evening paid OPD's with retired and serving doctors and other staff at a reasonable fee to ease the daytime pres- sure of OPD's and relief to working class .With literally no expansion of faculty residential quarters - doctors are residing at their own houses or rented accommodations and as such on call emergency cases suffer. Similar is the case with students, with increase in number of sanc- tioned strength no additional boys or girls hostel are available right now and students are left to arrange on their own at the cost of their studies. The prevailing state of affairs in the Medical College has resulted into the problems to the patients coming for treatment here from far-flung areas of Jammu region who have no other option but to go to private clinics of these very doctors. The failure of State Government to make the GMC Jammu functional prop- erly puts a question mark on Government's sincerity to establish five more Medical Colleges; foundation stone of three colleges has already been laid and almost defunct Super Specialty Hospital. Leave alone the com- mon masses; the very fact that a case of dengue of son of a ruling party senior MLC could not be handled proper- ly at GMC and the case is very much in the court of law speaks about the stark reality. All private hospitals in Jammu invite leading- renowned specialists from other leading private hospi- tals for running OPDs as well as specialized surgeries and as such why can't our own GMC collaborate with leading government hospitals like AIIMS, PGI and oth- ers for opening of trauma centre's as well as perform specialized surgeries and treatment. This will not only give a big relief to the masses but will provide faculty and students to learn from the best in their respective fields with latest techniques. Politicians from all parties can unite on this issue and demand for this special ges- ture from the Centre. This will be true implementation of special status of the state. With serpentine queues at different counters, criti- cally ill patients stretched on cold, metallic trolleys in the emergency, and harried droves swarming every inch of space in the OPD, GMC intimidates even from a dis- tance. Young resident doctors scurrying through the maze, some of them working tirelessly, dispatching some to other destinations as well as taking in their stride patients who lost the fight in the course of the night, it is surreal to watch the spectacle unfold in an indeterminate zone of life and death. With families sleeping under the trees on cold winter nights teaches fortitude, birds on those trees bursting into song at sun- set are a lesson in the mosaic of joy and sorrow, music and mourning which are absorbed in the corridors when the dead are wheeled out and the sick wheeled in. A sense of resigned calm settles on the faces of surround- ings but who cares as the "death bed" is being cleaned for another patient, the routine goes on and on. "Nobody thinks or feels or cares anymore; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own." Bollywood is known for making extravaganzas, full of glamour and glitz in larger than life canvases. But of late, it’s the simple stories set in small towns that are making news- and money, finds Shoma A Chatterji Bollywood cinema has forever been linked to the glitz and glamour that metros and big cities exude with extravagant sets, designer clothes and of course, hit music adding to the narrative and the characters. If it were outdoor shootings earlier they were in the beauti- ful Kashmir valley or at the most, Goa. Now the trend is, the more exotic the better, with plots stretching to some foreign locale in Europe or America. However, despite all this chutzpah, recently some of the big budget films have flopped while quietly, films set in some small Indian town with ‘regular’ peo- ple that are making it big at the box office. It is also a reflection of a changing taste and a more discerning audience. Two recent films come to mind in this context. Bareilly Ki Barfi and Shubh Mangal Saavdhaan. While the former is set in Bareilly near Lucknow, the latter has been shot in Haridwar on the banks of the Ganga, Bareilly Ki Barfi has protagonists who speak in a lan- guage any common man or woman would recognise in the Indian milieu while the romantic story builds up. Shubh Mangal Saavdhan is set mainly in Haridwar, one of the holiest cities in the country, with all its colour, hustle -bustle and temples. But the subject is far from the usual romantic ‘boy gets girl’ set in a pious ambience. Rather, it deals with the rather delicate sub- ject of erectile dysfunction many men suffer from, a sub- ject that has never been dealt with in Bollywood before. The common thread that binds these two films, apart from the small-town ambience, is Ayushmann Khurrana who projects the image of a small-town boy convincing- ly. His charm was equally evident in an earlier ground breaking film Vicky Donor where he was a sperm donor for couples unable to conceive. Earlier Khurrana impressed with his boy-next-door look and acting (once ably portrayed by Amol Palekar), in Sharat Katariya’s Dum Lagake Haisha. A sleeper hit, it was shot in Haridwar too. The endearing story has school drop-out Prem and his educated ‘fat’, mis- matched wife Sandhya (Bhumi Pednekar) who struggles to find love and acceptance but staunchly refuses to go on a diet to please him. Finally, good sense prevails to make for a happy end- ing. It touched a chord with the so-called ‘common’ peo- ple for whom all those ritzy locales are as if from some dream sequence. For a change these films seemed ‘real’ and that’s how they became hits. Small town and bold sub- jects dealt with sensitivity but entertaining nonethe- less, are the USPs of these films thereby beating some big Bollywwod films hol- low because of weak story- line. Even if some big budget films from the fac- tory do moderately well, the returns are not upto it. The lure of reaching the 100 crore club could be their aim but often, they leave the audience cold. The other noticeable aspect of these so-called small town oriented stories is that the women in suburbia and villages are also different from the image of ghunghat- wali beings overshadowed by men. Here the leading ladies are smart, intelligent and – and not necessarily in the mould of ‘moral’ guards of the society. They are bold enough to try and lead life on their own terms, belying the ‘cute and shy’ myth of the small town girl once and for all. After all, small towns are not excluded from the influence of globalisation on the one hand and the informa- tion highway on the other. Arrah is a little known district of Bihar. Anarkali of Arrah pushes the borders of performance and genre to tell the story of a gutsy woman called Anarkali who is a stage dancer. She tries her best to live life on her own terms and is not ready to sleep for money if she does not want to. The film did not do too well commer- cially but will be remembered for its wonderful per- formances and the aggressive storytelling. In his well-researched paper, Provincialising Bollywood? Cultural economy of north-Indian small- town nostalgia in the Indian multiplex, Akshaya Kumar states: “The small-town may have gradually become more form than content, it might have also become the anchor of a cinema located elsewhere – which would mean a body of films that shun the label ‘Bombay Cinema’.” He adds that Dabangg re-establishes the tricky but magnetic relationship between Bollywood and the small-towns of north India, yet not without a critical take on them. It illustrates an enthralling performance that borrows from the tradition of spoof as much as it does from impersonation. All the women in Dabangg from the mother of Chulbul Pandey through his wife and the other item girl are any day, bolder and brasher than their big city counterparts. Even Bareilly Ki Barfi , heroine Bitti Mishra (Kriti Sanon) would rather run away from home to find her dream writer than marry according to her mother’s choice and in Dum Lagake Haisha Sandhya would rather leave her in-laws’ house to take up a job as a teacher than give in to unrealistic demands. These characters are etched from real life dramas and are not like distant dream girls. Definitely, the small town has made its statement in big, big, Bollywood. And people are taking notice. (TWF) SUNDAY, OCTOBER 01, 2017 INTERNET EDITION : www.dailyexcelsior.com/magazine A decent paisa-vasool..Page 4 The Building Blocks.....page2 Bollywood's small town winners -Excelsior/Rakesh “The small-town may have gradually become more form than content, it might have also become the anchor of a cinema located elsewhere – which would mean a body of films that shun the label ‘Bombay Cinema’.” GMC JAMMU A LONG WAY TO GO The prevailing state of affairs in the Medical College has resulted into the problems to the patients coming for treatment here from far-flung areas of Jammu region who have no other option but to go to private clinics of these very doctors.
