Bihar….The abandoned state.
Everyone has a preformed notion about the state. Bihar is at the bottom of the list for anything you can think of in India except “Babus”.
I landed in Patna to find out that they have a single gate for exit after deboarding. And there’s no bus to carry you off from the runway. The moment you deboard , you start walking on the runway to the departure cubicle where auto walas surround you asking for rides. The posters of UPSC coaching centres greeted us.
We went through the city to our hotel. The hotel reminded of the etiquettes and ambience of the 90s.
In the morning we started our journey for the camp. I wondered how the state manages to function with such infrastructure and governance. My ride through the city gave me enough insights about the corruption, religious and political influence on the city and its people. Loudspeakers playing bhajans and azaans, crumbling old delapidated buildings, hanging knotted cables, under-construction bridges, autos overloaded with humans as resources, sea of pedestrians with no means of transport .
When the car entered the hospital campus, the scenes were not very heartwarming. The sight of patients in stretcher beds in EMR to helpless, clueless patients outside the hospital in campus waiting eagerly for some treatment was testament to the corruption in the government health care system. The chaos was deafening. The hospital building was newly constructed but there was a stark evidence of corruption, pathetic planning, poor built quality and zero maintenance intent.
As I walked into the echo room , to my utter disbelief they had the best echo machines available. They had brand new Philips Epic CX with 3D probe and Affinity echocardiography machines and a team of hard working and immensely dedicated nursing staff. We managed to screen 848 children with echocardiography in just 3 days with their support. The optimism and the undaunting efforts the staff gave despite neglect and adverse conditions was encouraging.
The Ganga river view from the hospital balcony was mesmerizing. The holy and majestic Ganga dwarfs everything in comparison.
Later in the evening there was a light drizzle and the city was partly submerged which made me wonder if there was ever a drainage system in Patna. Driving back to hotel today, I witnessed armies of young hardworking people slogging to meet ends, old emaciated fellows pulling rickshaws, hawkers on filthy footpaths selling food. Hoardings described the city mood with large banners for scheduled “adhiveshans and sammelans” and political parties mutilating the walls with graffitis and life size portraits.
There’s so much words can’t describe.
Patna feels like a pre historic city. The journey felt like a time travel decades back to what India was described by Britishers. Sadly, the socio-economic indicators of the developed parts of the country and Bihar are widening and no visible impactful attempt to reverse this seems to be anywhere in sight. Healthcare in India has been a low priority subject despite the universal acknowledgment that it is one of the most significant social infrastructures in any country.
There’s so much better we can do. The poor hardworking people deserve better lives and better governance. At 3.8% of its total expenditure, Bihar spends one of the lowest in the country on health. I hope Bihar someday climbs some of the lists. A state with close to 130 million people who migrate to other states in the country for menial jobs so that they can give hope to the next generation despite all the odds is the abandoned state of India. I sincerely hope Pataliputra regains it’s lost glory. The best I can do at the moment is to treat the poor kids with heart diseases.
I hope I can do much beyond that.
– Pavan
