Does God abandon us to suffer after we come into being on Earth? I think as human beings we are not able to accept this fact generation after generation. So, our minds are ceaselessly working to disprove the fact that we are destined to suffer. We invent new faiths; get reformed for sometime, kill people in the name of faith, fight with others to maintain the "purity" of faith. We invent ideologies, technologies to lead a better life.  

Like most, I had a sheltered childhood - filled with certainties, affection and care. When I got into college - I became aware of the cruelties that go on around us every day. I was attracted to an ideology that promised to create a society of human beings free of all frailties that make us cruel to each other. I soon outgrew that illusion. But my internal struggle has taken a toll of my creative energy.."to be or not to be", "taboo vs temptation", "hate vs should love all".............

Some of the internal struggles have left me pyschologically scarred. Why do I have to fight the "evil" within? Did I come into this world programmed with these evil tendencies?

I can escape .... and there are many "paths" available. But the essential suffering cannot be escaped for long time.

Did I make sense so far?

The mocking eyes laughed at me - "So you thought you were doing so well". I look at him through the veil of helpness all around me. Those eyes appear from nowhere and at times unrexpected. But they are so right in their mocking.

Our cocconed lives remove us from the realities so much that we do not realise the struggles of our brethren until one of our loved ones face such a situation.

"Help me out" - I pleaded with those eyes. It just laughed and asked - "Do you think life has any meaning?". I had stopped thinking about this question since my early twenties. I thought it was futile to frame an answer to this question. I believed there is no single answer to this question. Now, I am forced to answer the question.

My struggle continues...

Every now and then we read reports about equipments worth crores lying unutilized in Govt. Hospitals. On the other hand there are "privatisation" zealots that constantly harp on costs of public health care and want governnment to retreat from the sphere of health care altogether.

Our politicians and their cheerleaders from the "intellectual class" lose no opportunity in reminding us of the impending greatness that is going to be thrust on our nation. An economist-lawyer informs us that we will become middle-income country by 2012. Amidst all these shameless claims and out-claims, the cause of the vast masses that do not have access to basic health care gets lost.  

If a society does not take up the responsiblility for providing basic survival needs then we need to ask whether we want to go back days when fire services and police services were available to those people who could afford to pay. 

I think we have not harnessed our technical and innovative geniuses to come up with solutions that would make our public health care processes and instituitions more transparent and responsive.

Remember the long-winding queues in front of railway counters in pre-computerisation days. The computerisation efforts would not have been effective if the general public had access to real-time status of seat availability. Once you publish information the possibility of corruption gets reduced.

I am not sure what NICs and other vendors are doing for government hospitals. Is it not time to put in place an IT application that would show the status of every equipment available in a hospital and/or maybe hospitals in near vicinity to the users. Would that not make the hospital management more careful about allowing equipments to lie around unused?

Is it not time for Central Government to start an instituition on the lines of C-DAC to develop affordable technology solutions for health care? I am sure such an instituition can leverage the local genius and come up solutions for our huge country.