What is the difference between a bus owner and a doctor?

Vaccination at Viharamahadevi Park 

The horror stories are too legion to be repeated here – so and so contracted Covid-19, recovered and returned home only to die while sitting on a chair. Veteran journalist Elmo Gunaratne and his son were gone in a day, the son suffering a heart attack when he got the bad news about his legendary father. Even Mangala Samaraweera, at 65, seems too young to die. Faced with stark choices, the population is hunkering down, feeling besieged

The government’s goal is this – get everyone vaccinated as soon as possible, and then say ‘we have done our job. Now it’s up to you.’ It can even say that it imposed another lockdown on people reeling from the last mainly because of pressure from the medical lobby. 

But it won’t say that because to say so, it will have to lose face. There is a not so silent, hardly cold war between the government and the medical lobby, which is ironically enough state owned. The politicians may flatter themselves that they are above the bureaucrats; but, at least when it comes to the state medical sector, it’s the doctors who set the tune. This has always been the case.

Do some research and work out the number of days the GMOA has gone on strike over the past ten years alone to get what they wanted. No one is saying their demands are unjust. It’s the means that happens to be unjust, because they use their patients as hostages or bargaining chips. The only other lobby who are powerful enough to do this are the private bus owners

This government was elected with a record majority to set right just about every wrong committed by our governments since independence. Now, Covid-19 may be explained as an accident of history. If that is so, it’s an accident which badly dented and derailed the ultra-nationalist lobby’s claim that it can fast forward the country into the future (in a rapidly changing, globalised context) with the nation’s own resources. All you have to do to make this miracle is to galvanise the masses with repeated doses of heady ultra-nationalism.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Instead, the masses are being lined up for repeated doses of anti-Covid-19 vaccines. Many are going hungry. This morning, a bubbly radio announcer quoted a doctor as saying that taking a high protein diet will help ease the lot of those getting infected (still over 2000 cases a day). Many people can’t afford even vegetables. 

The evening this lockdown was announced, I went looking for a can of sardines. As there were long queues in front of all supermarkets and groceries with little or no social distancing (with the evident risk of possible infection) I found a grocery which wasn’t crowded and bought one at the exorbitant price of Rs. 360. How many people can afford to feed their families with meat, poultry, fish and eggs on a daily basis? (Obviously, minister Bandula Gunawardana is not the best person to answer that question). Another obvious thing is that we can’t survive without foreign aid, foreign trade, our Mideast labour and the precious dollars they bring us. So much for the demise of rupee nationalism.

With its nationalist agenda in tatters, the government and those technocrats and think tanks who worked so hard to bring it to power now have to face off with the doctors – many of whom worked hard for the same political goal because their agenda, too, is utopian ultra nationalism. But they are now faced with a monster not in the medical or political texts. Covid-19 is that monster. It has started infecting and crippling significant numbers of their ranks, nurses and other medical staff. Faced with this crisis, their solution is to pressurise the government to impose continuous lockdowns. 

The government has done everything possible to please them. It gave the medical profession a salary increase. It is quite justified given the risks that doctors and other medical staff take. But let’s not forget other ‘front line’ workers – the delivery people, postal workers, the police, security guards, public transport and supermarket workers etc – who are often working longer hours for less pay. Those who can work from home in this country are decidedly a minority. Seen in that light, every one deserves a pay hike. 

But neither the government nor the private sector can afford to do so. Therefore, the medical sector is really in a privileged position pay wise. I’m not assuming that every doctor is rich, with a channel service consultancy. There are thousands of doctors from urban and rural backgrounds who have to manage with their salaries. But, as a profession, they do have some privileges  which a policeman, postal worker or bus driver doesn’t have. And is there anything to say that a doctor’s life is more valuable than that of a poor girl from a tea estate fighting her fears daily at a supermarket counter? If the medical profession is short-staffed and short of equipment, it’s because increasing state spending for our hospitals has never been part of the nationalist utopia.

 In case of further lockdowns, the wealthiest people in this country should form a fund to help the poorest. I’m sure some of the good doctors so eager for longer lockdowns so they can save lives can contribute

Certainly, it costs the state much more to produce a doctor than a supermarket counter girl. But that’s a problem that Sri Lanka created for itself after independence, by creating a state monopoly on higher education. The doctors are a very powerful lobby who know they can always get what they demand. Do some research and work out the number of days the GMOA has gone on strike over the past ten years alone to get what they wanted. No one is saying their demands are unjust. It’s the means that happens to be unjust, because they use their patients as hostages or bargaining chips. The only other lobby which is powerful enough to do this are the private bus owners. They too, always get what they want. In this respect, there is no difference between our doctors and private bus owners, drivers and conductors.

Has anyone thought about how millions of poor or out of work people are going to survive? Even people with jobs find things very hard as it is. 

As I suggested a few weeks ago, in case of further lockdowns, the wealthiest people in this country should form a fund to help the poorest. I’m sure some of the good doctors so eager for longer lockdowns so they can save lives can contribute.