Public Hospitals
in India

Dr.
Shriniwas
Kashalikar


Since the public services and especially public health services, affect most of us, it is essential to find out the root causes of their deficiency and try to deal with them. This is one of the intellectual measures of stress management and benefits every individual concerned.

The causes of degeneration of quality of public health services in public hospitals in India; is the prevalence of the two concepts on which these institutions work. These concepts are, free medical care and economic dependence of these institutions on the government revenue and donations.

FREE MEDICAL CARE
The free medical care gives rise to parasitism, beggarly tendency, meekness and irresponsibility towards personal and public health amongst the patients.

The free medical care creates a special and extremely favorable situation and golden opportunity for the powerful, rich and famous individuals to exploit the government revenue and tax payers’ money.

The free medical care leads to zero returns and subsequent deterioration in the facilities given to patients and employees.

The free medical care associated with perpetual absence of returns leads to unjustifiably low salaries, delay in filling the vacancies, excessive working hours and duties, and delay in promotions.

This state of affairs demoralizes the sincere and dedicated employees and promotes irresponsibility, lethargy, absenteeism, corruption etc.


ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE OF THESE INSTITUTIONS ON THE GOVERNMENT REVENUE AND DONATIONS
The public hospitals are not self-sufficient and do not have any productive/commercial projects to support them. Naturally since there are no returns either from patients or from any other source, for what is spent, the public hospitals are always in loss.

This has lead to inadequate progress in terms of inadequate facilities, inadequate salaries, inadequate employment in terms of number of employees in almost every category, protracted duty hours, worsening working conditions, worsening of staying conditions for the employees and crowding of patients due to huge patients/employee ratio.

All these factors have lead to deterioration of the quality of medical care. In fact because of this a large number of lower middle class and even poor patients turn to private practitioners, consultants and hospitals.

This deterioration can be overcome by trying to make the public hospitals self-sufficient. For this, the concept of free medical care has to be replaced by more just system of payment. This would bring adequate revenue to ensure progress in terms of adequate facilities, adequate salaries, appropriate employment which could ensure normal duty hours, improvement in working conditions, improvement in staying conditions for the employees and preventing excessive and many times [because the services are free] unnecessary crowding of patients.

One may raise the objection that this is difficult to implement in case of very poor, helpless, unsupported patients.

It is very true that no sensitive and sensible individual would think of doing it as well. These patients who are in agonies, in emergencies, or helpless etc. should be made exception and a separate arrangement can be made for them. But in most other cases the problem can be overcome by making provision for payment through “services” or soft loans.

Another way to make the public hospitals self-sufficient is by buttressing them with productive / commercial projects. One can think of more innovative plans as well.

This is important because:
A] it would inculcate a sense of responsibility towards one’s own health, towards public funds, towards public services, amongst everyone including the patients.
B] it would generate the sense of accountability, satisfaction and fulfillment amongst the employees
C] It would ensure optimal progress in medical care especially in terms of holistic approach
D] It would improve the lives of patients as well as employees
E] It would make the revenue hitherto squandered on free medical care available for other developmental work thereby facilitating national progress.
F] it would reduce the corruption born of out of injustice
G] it would reduce the crowding and degeneration of private medical care.

DR. SHRINIWAS KASHALIKAR

FREEDOM FROM
GOD

DR.
SHRINIWAS
KASHALIKAR

God and His worship have been a part of human civilization for millennia. In fact many philosophers and seers consider God to be unanimous with truth, rather, absolute truth.

However for an ordinary person like me faith in God appeared to be paranoid! I never could really understand or appreciate why an individual should suffer the burden of this belief or faith in some other entity alien from himself or herself.

In addition, God and everything associated with God insisted on surrender; unquestioning and unconditioned surrender!

The freedom of an individual and his or her behavior, emotions, thoughts and reasoning were brutally challenged in these “God” phenomena and stories and doctrines associated with them.

I observed that suppression of such reasoning lead to thriving of coercion, oppression and exploitation.

My urge for freedom, rational thinking and my conscience thus felt suffocated in everything associated with God.

But it was not easy to overthrow the overwhelming influence of religious and pious activities and their deep impressions from the early childhood. This was also because, everything sublime, selfless, subtle, serene and supreme also; was associated with God and related phenomena.

In the course of time, I came across the theory and practice of NAMASMARAN and realized that there is no necessity to believe or disbelieve God. What is important is practicing NAMSMARAN like we practice bath or brushing. The objective change common to individual and the universe become self evident. The imagery; both atheist and theist begin to disappear.
The prejudice about theist or prejudice about atheist disappears. In fact all prejudices disappear!

You may not believe in anything I have shared here. It is up to you to verify if the chasm between ideals and practices of human beings can be narrowed through NAMASMARAN.

DR. SHRINIWAS KASHALIKAR

Importance
Of
Managing Stress

Dr.
Shriniwas Kashalikar


The only way of effective stress management is to understand the nature, causes, dimensions, mechanisms, effects and principles of management of stress. Basically this involves improvement in cognition, affect and conation. In other words, this involves improvement in our views, our feelings and our actions. In my book, “STRESS, UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGEMENT, A WAY TO TOTAL WELL BEING”, I have discussed these things.

But having studied the basics required in stress management one looks forward for greater efficiency.

For more effective management of stress, management of conceptual stress is essential and for that, further improvement in views, feelings and actions is essential. For this, it is imperative to study issues, which affect private as well as public life and especially those issues, which are pertinent to our fields.

Please remember, without evolving views, feelings and actions with respect to issues in individual as well as social life, pertinent to your field, stress in general and conceptual stress in particular can not be managed effectively.

Unfortunately many of us try frantically to manage stress [and conceptual stress], without this understanding and as a result, create and perpetuate misery for themselves and the society. All short cuts marketed under the disguise of stress management can at times be temporarily useful but ultimately prove useless and even counterproductive in personal and social life.

Now let us see why effective stress [and conceptual stress] management is essential.

Every one of us has stress. Thus a student may have stress of examination or competition and a doctor may have a stress of treating a difficult disease. A farmer may have stress of drought and a mill worker may have stress of lay off. A Prime Minister of a country may have stress of a crucial decision making such as nuclear testing, dealing with religious sentiments or flak from media etc.

It has to be appreciated that just as the causes of the stress vary, the implications of the stress also vary.

Thus the adverse effects of the ineffective management of stress in individual life as well social life vary. Thus the student may avoid appearing for examination, the doctor may shirk from his duty, the farmer may commit suicide and the mill worker rendered jobless may be forced into illegal underworld activities. The wrong decision of a Prime Minister may influence not only his life but also that of the generations after generations of one or more countries, in adverse ways.

This clearly illustrates that the adverse effects of stress are not restricted to one’s own body and one’s own family. The ineffective management of stress by political leaders, industrial leaders, union leaders, media leaders, religious leaders and in general people involved in decision making can adversely affect various walks of life and even the future generations directly or indirectly.

This is comparable to most dangerous and rapidly spreading pandemic infectious disease. The patient suffering from such infectious disease, if does not undergo proper treatment, then he/she would harm himself/herself as well as the others.

Effective management of stress [and conceptual stress] therefore, is vitally important for one’s own well being and that of the society as well!

Dr. Shriniwas Kashalikar