The real truth and real culprits behind the tragic incident at the R.G. Kar hospital in Kolkata will probably never be known, going by the half truths and falsehoods which are dominating the narratives driven primarily by an overzealous social media.
It is unclear if evidence was destroyed by the time the Central Bureau of Investigation took up the investigation – the junior doctors’ agitation despite the Supreme Court urging them to return to work indicates there is reason for sustained outrage.
What has emerged so far is that the former principal – Dr. Sandip Ghosh – was perhaps associated with a coterie that was involved in various financial, and possibly other irregularities as well, while running the institution like a dictator. Speculation is rife that the murdered doctor probably got to know some of these illegitimate activities and refused to kowtow, and hence needed elimination.
But the rape and murder of the budding doctor was so brutal and so revolting that even the usually mild-mannered and all-accepting Bengali society whose sense of outrage has systematically been numbed by the mountains of corruption that the regime has so brazenly weathered so far, could take this no longer, and came out on the streets spontaneously to reclaim their nights and rights.
As is clear now, neither the police nor the political establishment acted in a manner which could inspire people’s confidence. The many deliberate lapses and brazen acts by the government – like reappointing the principal immediately after his resignation from R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, have lent a veneer of respectability to the many widely circulating theories of collusion between hospital, police and the Trinamool Congress leadership, and charges of attempted cover ups.
It may not be that the hospital was vandalised by marauders at the instigation of the ruling party, but intimidating people against challenging the tyranny of terror has been a time-tested and repeatedly used tactic of coercion – by both the previous and the current regimes. Violence is known to be a defining feature of Bengal politics.
In the face of rising public anger, the ruling party has now sided with the protesters, avowing sympathy and solidarity with them, demanding death penalty for the rapists – forgetting that it is a matter to be decided by the judiciary. Demands for killing or maiming the rapist demonstrated a pathetic lack of education about constitutional propriety and norms of a civilised society.
Of course, the word “civilised” has no meaning in a state that has been systematically lumpenised by brute force. When that failed to pacify people, there was an attempt to dilute the extraordinary nature of the crime to make it appear like one of many such crimes occurring everywhere everyday.
“It is horrifying to see that almost 90 cases of rapes occur daily throughout the country. This shakes the confidence and conscience of the society and the nation”, wrote the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, while her worthy nephew, TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee, pointed out that as the protest over the incident was going on, 900 rapes had been committed across different parts of India, “with 90 rapes reported daily, 4 every hour and 1 every 15 minutes”.
Since this was just one of the 90 cases that occur everyday, what is there to be so outraged about? It was just another such “ordinary” case of rape, this seemed to say.
A protest against the RG Kar incident. Photo: X/@cpimspeak
In Pericles, Shakespeare had said, “It is time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss” – that time is almost upon us. Many more diversionary tactics are likely in the days to come, to distract people till the anger fizzles out, in the absence of leaders, organisation and resources. Rulers know this very well, and they will just wait and watch till the storm blows over. Elections, after all, are as yet far away, and people’s memories are short-lived. Meanwhile what was purely a citizen’s movement has been hijacked by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, and the original spirit of the movement seems to have been lost irrevocably. In the ensuing political slugfest, the crime could well be forgotten by the time people go to cast their votes.
The fact, however, remains that this was not an ordinary crime. It was committed inside a hospital that provides succour and sanctuary to the sick, old and infirm. It is, in fact, the brutalisation of an institution, that too a hospital, under the watch of a regime that is now trying to legitimise itself under the pretension of legality, wearing a false mask to hoodwink people.
A mere look at the sorry state of Bengal today is tell-tale evidence of its steep decline over decades, of institutions which were once the pride of the country being decimated beyond recognition over the last 50 years. A state that used to attract talents to its famed educational institutions from all over the country now watches helplessly as thousands of students flee every year to educational hubs like Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, etc., never to return to a state that is synonymous with lack of opportunity, where the rule of law is replaced by the rule of hooligans.
Also read: An R.G. Kar Protest Is a Glimpse of What Bengal Has to Lose
If the Left Front dispensation had converted the state to a “party state”, the current dispensation has turned it into a “lumpen state” where parasites determine and administer the laws of society which a decaying society dares not disobey. Society has long ceased to exist as an organic entity, being reduced to a collectivity of individual interest-seekers who have forsaken the collective goals of preserving social order and individual integrity.
Turning a vibrant, knowledge-hungry, cultured society to a group of individual interest seekers serves the rulers well because then it is easy to buy their loyalties cheap. The many dole programmes run by the government that only bleed the exchequer but do nothing to address the real problems of economy are but only one facet of it. Take, for example, the much-touted Lakshmir Bhandar scheme under which now 2.11 crore women receive a monthly amount of Rs 1,200 each if she belongs to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes category and Rs 1,000 otherwise. Rs 14,400 crore has been allocated for the scheme in the current budget, not a small sum of money considering its huge opportunity cost and the additional burden it adds to the soaring debt of a state that has a debt ratio of over 40%, one of the highest among Indian states, interest on which alone consumes a significant part of the state’s own revenue. It has been sold as women empowerment, but can such a paltry sum empower anybody? Real empowerment can come only through education and employment – which appear to be beyond the government’s capacity anyway. Indeed, a tyrant regime will never seek to empower anybody, because empowerment of people means disempowerment of such a regime. What it does is to mortgage the state’s future for their narrow political interests.
There are many innovative methods of buying people and their votes, depending on who is the voter. Puja grants of Rs 85,000 – Rs 1 lakh from next year – to each of the 40,000 Durga pujas held by community clubs across the state at the cost of taxpayers’ money is targeted at the unemployed youth. When the need is to woo the so-called “buddhijibis” – poets, novelists, artists, filmmakers, sportspersons, etc. – to leverage the traditional Bengali respect for them, the tactic is to offer state patronage by way of position and honour.
It is not that people lack the intelligence to see through all this, but hitherto, they were fearful. Now as they begin to shed their fear to seek justice in a voice loud enough to shake the very foundation on which the regime rests, it is the regime that is now cowering in fear.
Govind Bhattacharjee is former Director General at the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. He is a commentator, author and academic. Opinions expressed are personal.
