Sarkaari Hospitals ka experience

One of my friends let us call him AK got admission into an IIM. Being a sarkari institute there are some conditions to be fulfilled. One of them is physical and mental fitness certificate (or sanity certificate!) from a civil surgeon or its equivalent. This entails rounds to one of the many sarkari hospitals, as the ones from private practitioner are not allowed.

So began my not so long, yet a long journey through few government hospitals of the city for a work that was supposed to last few minutes. First was the Jaideva Institute of Cardiology. But there they declined stating that that is an autonomous institute. We left thinking that “Hadh hai … autonomous hua to kya hua … hai to sarkaari … and these stupid requirements of the Institute”. But we got the address of next location and continued our quest.

Next location was Sanjay Gandhi hospital for accident. The doctor had gone for breakfast and we were told to wait for few minutes. We kept on bugging the receptionist/ nurses/ any hospital staff every 5 minutes to ask whereabouts of the doctors. Finally after waiting for over an hour, the doctor was still not back from his breakfast. He must be a glutton! But we wondered that it was an Accident care institute. Putting an end to our patient wait we got the address of the next location where we could have our work done.

In a few minutes’ drive we arrived at the Jayanagar Hospital. We were directed from one ward to other, and finally directed to a place where we could have it done. The compounder took us to a doctor, who gave the fitness certificate, took Rs 50 as ‘fees’ (sans receipt … and taking money not by his hand, but asked it to keep at a designated place … probably we look like Tehalka.com’s employees). The compounder took 20 bucks as his fees for putting the doctor’s and hospital’s seal and our work was done within 3 hours!

No wonder that futility of all these formalities and evils of red-tapism, blended with the possibility of “fees” money driving the demand and supply of our economy dominated most of our discussions that day!