WHAT’S THE RELEVANCE OF YOGA FOR THOSE WHO ARE BEREFT OF BASIC HEALTH FACILITIES AND DIE ON ROADS

While the union as well as our various state governments are incurring a heavy expenditure on celebrating International Yoga Day making it an officially recognised event to derive political mileage through distributing expensive T shirts to millions of participants and advertisements of crores of rupees there are still areas in the distant rural sectors or even towns of the country where millions of people devoid of two ends meal and bereft of adequate medical facilities are compelled to die for want of basic medical treatments and medicines as well as non availability of mobile ambulance services or lack of treatment for critical illnesses.

I am not going far but talking just of Uttarakhand state which achieved separate existence as a full fledged state on November 9th, 2000 and even after last 18 years 32 lakh people of the interior villages have migrated to metropolises and towns out of the state in view of the lack of basic health avenues, medicines, treatments, jobs and educational faciities.

Not to talk of the condemned hospitals and health centres in the disctrict headquarters, even the Doon hospital in the state’s capital dose’nt have the provision for adequate delieveries of pregnant women who are compelled to deliever their infant either on the roads or at the hospital’s doorsteps. If we talk of the treatment or surgeries of critical illnesses like cardio vascular deseases, renal abnormalities or liver dysfunctions etc than we would rather be making mockeries of our own selves as even after the 70 years of independence and 18 years of getting separate statehood the Doon hospital still could not arm itself with such a dexterity to operate patients of these critical ailments. As a result the newly established high profile hospitals are minting excessive profits even from poor and hapless patients.

In the absense of roads and hospitals several patients die on the way while being transferred to the nearby hospital on a temperory carriage as below covering the distance of several kilometres comprising of a hapahazard way of steep height. On the one hand the state of Uttarakhand suffering from a massive fiscal deficit of staggering 44000 crores deviod of hospitals and adequate medical care is not ina position to provide state of the art ( technically sound) hospitals with free treatment and free medicines leading to umpteen number of deaths on the other hand the state chief minister and the union government is busy spending crores propagating Yoga as a brand for good health.

In fact if one looks at the excessive hard work of village women of Uttarakhand the amount of hard work she puts daily in domestic chores and struggle in daily life including day long hard work in agricultural fields it is no less than Yoga, rather far far more laborious exercises incomparable with what we aremade to do on lush green grounds of FRI Dehradun. Yoga is undoubtedly very necessar for good health of the citizens but prior to that its the moral and constitutional duty of those at the helm of governments to improve to soci economic lot of the peoole at the grass root level.

This ( Yoga celebration with vulger osentation) seems to be a highly hypocritical and topsy turvy kind of a situation which makes a diret mockery of the poor, economically marginalised and deprived classes of the society whoare still struggling at the ground level for their survival and sustenance even after 18 years of separatestate existence and 70 year of independence from the British raj of neo colonialists. What’s your take friends?