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A country of Doctors & Engineers & Hartals

The nineties marked my growing up years. I recall, the best career option, the dreamed profession of both parents and their children was engineer or doctor. If you look around, you would see many families who have 2 kids, one a doctor and another is an engineer. Or, you would see many families with at least one engineer. In jobs market, both doctors and engineers are very much in demand.

Pandit Nehru started the IITs. Similarly, over the time, several prestigious medical colleges gained ground. The almost non-existent medical system in the country provides fertile area for doctors to make their mark and the IT industry has led to good jobs for a lot of engineers. It is therefore not very contentious to conclude that, these two professions have gained up a lot of respect in the Indian psychi as well as Indian society. They are looked upon with pride and achievement. Arts and humanities are slowly becoming extinct largely because they have not been able to capture the Indian imagination so well.

So why I am writing all this? Because of the two strikes that have happened in recent days.

One was by doctors of the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi
and another was by engineers of Air India, again in Delhi.

In the sixties and the seventies, when strikes were very common, they were mostly by workers and laborers. Now, we have very educated, people, using strikes, stopping work to get their demands done. In days of worker union strikes, often it was speculated that politicians or leaders or people with malicious interests mislead the poor workers. But what is happening here, is very strange as well as a threat to the Indian democracy that has already submitted itself to low intellect and mediocrity.

In both cases, we have people, well educated ones, employed by reputed, well known institutions. But should they be doing this? Should not a doctor or an engineer, who are seen in high esteem by the society, take some more moral responsibility?
Should they not at least look up for more better excuses to halt work.
The engineers went on strike for their management asked them to talk to them before speaking to media.
The doctors wanted better facilities.

Strikes or Hartals can sometimes be very necessary to wake up the management. But, should not these brilliant creamy layer of the society come up with more innovative ideas to make their points clearer? Should they not think about the fact that they do something that affects thousands of people every day.

Or does this rather primitive idea of raising your voice, gives us another aspect of the ever sinking morale and intellect of our nation...

Do pen down your views

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