She said that both the Government and the people held the old indigenous system in high respect and that the Government thought it wise to enlist the aid of these thousands of indigenous practitioners and give them encouragement to study their own system better. I told her that I had read about the various short term courses of training of medical personnel and how she could substantiate them. In my own heart I was over joyed to find our views already in picture there, but in order to get more information, I put on the air of a stern scientific investigator. She told me that these were merely practical make shifts. Something had to be done at various level during the period of development of China to a full – fledged, highly developed country, and obviously, they had to choose between the essentially practical needs on one hand and academic desirability on the other.
Thus they have devised specific courses for specific purposes, at specific levels, beginning at the Hsien (Tehsil) level right up to the modern specialities at the city level. Their courses are 6 months, 1-2-3-4 and 5 years, and each is devised with very clear cut and specific intentions. They have thrown for the time being the academic ideals out of the window. They said there is time for that. In interviewed the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Mukden and was astounded to learn that they did not believe in the teaching of international nomenclature in anatomy.
When I asked why this trend to isolationism, he said that it was their first intention that China should produce terms that Chinese could understand in order to become reasonably efficient practical physicians and to create an army of scientists was not their primary objective. Scientists they would produce, and for that they would devise a different type of education. At present their aim was to train men and women in large numbers, as rapidly as possible, to serve specific purposes, and for that, they believe that all extraneous and unnecessary theoretical junk should be excluded.
They wanted men and women to learn to take a practical approach to a known set of problems with a known set of measures. When Professor Bhagwantham, the famous Indian physicist, was shocked, as I pretended to be shocked, that people with only a six months course of training were let loose on Chinese humanity, the same minister sent for her Director who took Bhagwantham round to the most up-to-date and largest hospital and showing him the various instruments for diagnosis and treatment, explained that it needed a full 5 years training in order to know how to use them.
But, he asked, could China, at present and for several years to come, afford to send all such equipments to villages. Obviously no. Then what is the good of sending men to to those villages when such equipment could not be made available. But all knew the common – place disease in the countryside and they also knew the simple remedies with which to combat them. Obviously, it was logical to get men from those very villages to acquire the necessary minimum training for specific purposes at specific levels till the economic situation improved, which was bound to be, but that needed time.
So they believed that the local practising indigenous physician should be enlisted, encouraged to undergo further training in the elements of new things and he is not expected to work miracles but is just expected to do his work better than before. The chinese Government had already had experience during their resistance against Japan when nothing was available, how to improvise medical aid out of practically nothing; for example, the famous Eight Route Army, and even peasants were given elementary training, like the Feldscherrs in Russia, and they did excellent work.
But then, my friends, the chinese did not have the disadvantage of a highly intellectual Indian Medical Council with the Burra Saab Mentality, nor the most unscientific, “scientific” trade union known as the Indian Medical Association. Things had to be done in the easiest, cheapest, quickest and most practical manner, no matter on whose toes of sensitive private vested interests they had to tread, and they did it.
Shanghai was the most notorious endemic focus for cholera before the new Chinese Government took over power. They did not talk big words like “Preventive Medicine”, nor did they consult the W.H.O. they went straight to the point, called upon the people in a mighty popular campaign to clear up choked sewers and streets, and week in and week out, bands of enthusiastic young men dredged stinking sewers and set an example to the people, who at first, distrustful, then amazed, joined in the work. In short, the old thesis that our former National Planning Committee had put up, alas, not followed by the present Planners, that “whatever measures we may take, it must be understandable to the people and must appear as if it comes from their own endeavours”, has been put into practice by the chinese.
In short, let us be happy. The practical proof you and I have been looking for in all our proposals to our present Government in India, has been supplied in ample measure by New China. Just recently a delegation of Engineers went to China from India and they came back with the report that the Chinese did the same things we did, but much cheaper in spite of the fact that we had more machines. Why? Because they know how to enlist man power and has a definite clear cut purpose. Yes, Friends, I myself saw a huge building of 400 rooms going up to be completed in 5 weeks; and who were building it? The students of the Mukden Technical Institute under the supervision of the masons. Imagine such a thing happening in India? It will be damned good idea and India will be far the better for it.
Now the question, the very pertinent question is should India follow the Chinese example? Are the conditions in China to which such methods of solution were applied identical with ours or at least similar? My answer is a most emphatic yes. I say this after considerable study. Most of the visitors to China from India after a brief visit imagined themselves full – bloomed authorities on China and have even delivered themselves in print.
I did not emulate their precious example, but on the contrary sat down to read more books on China from various aspects and till now I have read nearly 40 books on China from wherever I could borrow them and the more I study the problems of china I feel that at least in the economic approach, there is much to learn from China, not because of their practical approach, not only because theoretically we came to the same conclusion as the Chinese did, but because those very views we hold, have been proved eminently correct and successful.
But again the recurring question arises: Will our Health Ministry and our present Government realise this? My answer is no. It is not as if the Health bureaucrats are unaware of the force of public opinion is pressing for recognition of the other systems of medicine in India. Take for instance the redoubtable Dr. K.C.K.E. Raja. On page 295 of the Chopra Committee Report, Vol 2, he admits.
“There is considerable force in those arguments and they can be met only by an acceptance of the position that indigenous medicine will have to be utilised under present conditions to promote a rapid extension of health services”.
But how do they intend to stab all this in the back? Very simple, dear friends, very simple. Just get the Indian Medical Council and the Health Ministers Conference to go back on their previous recommendations and make Ayurveda a Five Years Course. Homoeopathy, D. Raja at least is honest as compared to Dr. Satish Sen, for he admits he knows about Homoeopathy only from Goulds Medical Dictionary, is recommended as a “post – graduate” or 4 years course, and I happen to know from inside sources, how Dr. Raja smuggled himself into the meeting of the Council in his “PRIVATE CAPACITY”, to make vital proposal to upset previous decisions and what General Thaper (now happily retired from doing further damage) said and I know many things which the bureaucrats imagine I do not know as to inner working of the Government.
All this has been clothed with the sanctimonious desire of raising the standard of medical education in all systems of of medicine. But who has any quarrel with the desire for the highest standards of training? But what is the purposefulness of that under present conditions, when we know that we can have more than adequate results at a much less expenditure, in a shorter time? It is intellectual tomfoolery at best; in reality, a sinister purpose masquerading under the garb of academic idealism.
So seven the recommendations of the Planning Committee have been thrown to the winds; and, where I am positively convinced, and I am qualified to speak on it, that on an average a two years course will give us a large number of reasonably trained auxiliary personnel, these academic idealists, intend to sabotage all these steps by their latest decisions.
