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Nearly a month ago, India’s countrymen applauded health workers on the advice of the Prime Minister. But today the same health workers are protesting against attacks, they are being attacked whilst performing their duties in hospitals and work places. On the pretext of keeping the locality safe, people are driving out health workers from their homes. Many are simply refusing to realise that without the health workers, no one is safe. Forget about villages, even in cities where literacy rate is considerably high, such incidents are occurring, leaving the society clueless and the government helpless.
According to sociologists such behaviour by the people is simply due to the fact that Covid-19 is an infectious disease. People are afraid of getting infected and are keeping those individuals who may be exposed to the virus from entering the locality. As the health workers are in constant danger of being affected by this virus, they are being specially targeted. But this explanation is too simple. If this happens to be the real cause, there would have been no attacks on health workers in cities, they are surely more aware that with proper precautions, spreading of the infectious disease can be prevented. So what are the real reasons behind targeting health workers? This is not a recent phenomenon, for the past few years, Indian society has become more volatile and virulent. People have started taking law in their own hands on the slightest pretext. This is why lynching has become a common phenomenon. For every offence, lynching appears to be the only medicine. More worrying is the fact that offenders go scot free in most instances. So the obvious conclusion is that fear of the law is diminishing in the minds of the people. They have realised that law enforcers are bounded by many laws which have actually made them weak or slow in action. This disease has affected society faster than any pandemic.
The attack on health workers is a result of our silence towards such crimes. Now, when the entire country is under lock down and the people don’t have much to do, they have targeted the health workers. The extent of our cruelty can be gaged through the incident that occurred in rural India, it was after a week of strenuous labour to save lives of corona affected persons, that a health worker was not allowed to enter her village where she went to spend time with her mother. The villagers were so forceful that even local administration expressed its inability to help the lady health worker. On the other hand in New York, nearly 200 cars with recovered patients drove past the front of Indian-origin doctor Madhusudana’s house to express their gratitude to the lady, who tirelessly treated them and saved their lives. Why can’t we witness such a scene in India too? If India is doing well in combating Covid-19, credit goes to the health workers. All of them have been working tirelessly since the outbreak of this pandemic and serving the people, whilst putting their lives in danger. Yet, they are being abused, manhandled and harassed. If this is not a crime, what is? The government should firmly deal with such cases. A nation which cannot protect its health workers will automatically cease to exist sooner than later. So let us stand solidly behind our health workers and help them to win this battle.