Fatal Privilege

An avoidable death in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) has exposed the grotesque inversion of priorities that defines Indian governance. In Ambernath, a patient’s life ebbed away as an ambulance stood waiting not for a citizen, but for a politician who happened to be Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The vehicle, belonging to Chhaya Sub-District Hospital, had been dispatched for the Deputy CM’s visit to inaugurate a local theatre named in memory of Shinde’s mentor, late Shiv Sena leader Anand Dighe.

The family of a critically-ill resident, who needed to be moved to a larger facility for advanced treatment, found, to their consternation that there were none available. The only one that was had been commandeered for ‘VIP duty.’ As neighbours scrambled to find alternative transport, precious minutes slipped away and the patient ultimately died before help could arrive.

This is a scene that has been replayed not just across Maharashtra but across India with chilling regularity. The grim message it seems to send out is that the State’s apparatus bends not toward its citizens, but toward its political masters. An ambulance is a symbol of any State’s most basic promise which is to save lives. In Ambernath, that promise was broken for the sake of a ribbon-cutting.

What makes this incident more infuriating is that it occurred at a hospital already tarnished by scandal. Only a few years ago, sixteen patients there were reportedly administered the wrong injections. That such a facility could again become the site of negligence, this time compounded by political servility, suggests that inquiry committees are hollow rituals designed to quell justified public anger.

While Shinde certainly did not have personally ordered the ambulance’s diversion, the ruling Mahayuti administration bears responsibility for the culture that enabled it. In Maharashtra, as elsewhere in India, a ‘VIP movement’ has become a regrettable euphemism for the suspension of ordinary life. Often, traffic is halted at the expense of the citizens whom politicians are sworn to serve. Citizens are treated as obstacles, not constituents.

That a person dies because the state’s ambulance was reserved for a man inaugurating a theatre should shame every public servant who has ever signed off on such misuse of public resources. Yet, if history is any guide, the inquiry will conclude quietly, the officials will be reshuffled and the news cycle will move on. The only thing certain to remain unchanged is the hierarchy of privilege.

If India wishes to call itself a welfare state, it must first dismantle its feudal reflexes. Public hospitals cannot be treated as logistical wings of political events. Ambulances must never be diverted for ceremonial duties. Above all, accountability must travel upward, towards those in positions of authority who permit such dereliction to occur.

This death was a consequence of a system where life has become a dispensable prop. Until that changes, India’s hospitals will continue to serve power before patients.