Profession or Commerce?
Doctors and teachers, once held in the highest esteem for their service to society, have become the new mercenaries in India. Both these noble professions have been demeaned by the current breed of money hungry medical and academic practitioners today.
In India, teaching, particularly in schools, is not the preferred profession of the brightest academics. Instead people take it up for the weirdest of reasons. Women have a tradition of preferring this profession for the convenience of timings and vacations. For others, it is often the last career option, after being rejected in the selection rounds of other, more preferred, corporate or administrative positions. So we have a situation in which most school teachers are either frustrated wannabe scientists or historians, mathematicians or linguists. Since teaching is not their first love, how can they withstand its rigours and challenges?
Most teachers are an over-burdened lot, with 40-50 students to manage in one class. So compassion and sympathy goes out of the nearest window. Students who don't conform, or who learn at a different pace, are the easiest targets of the anger and frustration of unwilling, overburdened teachers. By terrorizing them with threats and prejudiced treatment, teachers try to make them toe the line. And also pay them for extra tuition for what should normally be covered in school.
Daniel Goleman, the renowned emotional wellness expert, has stressed the need for caring and compassionate classrooms as the need of the hour. Forget caring, most average school teachers do not show the minimum affection or understanding for students lagging behind. And we still have horror stories of corporal punishment coming in.
While teachers can be still exonerated for poor salaries and lack of growth opportunities, no such concession can be made for the mercenaries who go by the name of doctors. From prescribing unnecessary medication in order to favour pharma companies, to taking 'cuts' from diagnostic centres, from browbeating patients into getting admitted to expensive hospitals, to recommending the costliest of treatments, they do it all in the name of medical assistance. No scruples or consideration shown towards either the patient or his/her kin, they go on merrily filling their own coffers and those of the ';medical centres' they are attached with.
Shocking cases of negligence come pouring in when one starts discussing the lapses of even well-known doctors. The unholy nexus of multi-national pharma companies and doctors ensures that all sorts of 'specialists' make a scapegoat out of the ailing without batting an eyelid. What do you say about the hand that heals when it becomes the hand that steals?
Will we ever be able to restore these two professions to their former glory? I have my doubts......
In India, teaching, particularly in schools, is not the preferred profession of the brightest academics. Instead people take it up for the weirdest of reasons. Women have a tradition of preferring this profession for the convenience of timings and vacations. For others, it is often the last career option, after being rejected in the selection rounds of other, more preferred, corporate or administrative positions. So we have a situation in which most school teachers are either frustrated wannabe scientists or historians, mathematicians or linguists. Since teaching is not their first love, how can they withstand its rigours and challenges?
Most teachers are an over-burdened lot, with 40-50 students to manage in one class. So compassion and sympathy goes out of the nearest window. Students who don't conform, or who learn at a different pace, are the easiest targets of the anger and frustration of unwilling, overburdened teachers. By terrorizing them with threats and prejudiced treatment, teachers try to make them toe the line. And also pay them for extra tuition for what should normally be covered in school.
Daniel Goleman, the renowned emotional wellness expert, has stressed the need for caring and compassionate classrooms as the need of the hour. Forget caring, most average school teachers do not show the minimum affection or understanding for students lagging behind. And we still have horror stories of corporal punishment coming in.
While teachers can be still exonerated for poor salaries and lack of growth opportunities, no such concession can be made for the mercenaries who go by the name of doctors. From prescribing unnecessary medication in order to favour pharma companies, to taking 'cuts' from diagnostic centres, from browbeating patients into getting admitted to expensive hospitals, to recommending the costliest of treatments, they do it all in the name of medical assistance. No scruples or consideration shown towards either the patient or his/her kin, they go on merrily filling their own coffers and those of the ';medical centres' they are attached with.
Shocking cases of negligence come pouring in when one starts discussing the lapses of even well-known doctors. The unholy nexus of multi-national pharma companies and doctors ensures that all sorts of 'specialists' make a scapegoat out of the ailing without batting an eyelid. What do you say about the hand that heals when it becomes the hand that steals?
Will we ever be able to restore these two professions to their former glory? I have my doubts......
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