The tragedy at IIT Kharagpur – lack of proper healthcare facilities; a simple proposed solution
Rohit Kumar, a student at IIT Khargpur died today because of lack of facilities at BC Roy Hospital (should not really be called an hospital). Having spent a night at that hospital after an insect flew inside my ear, I have first hand experience involving BC Roy as well as the lack of proper medical facilities at Kharagpur.
The bigger tragedy is that when the lack of healthcare facilities in BC Roy hospital was pointed out by the students three years ago in the student newspaper, the authorities decided to punish the student paper and shut it down for some time.
I hope this time the authorities will take it seriously and find a long term solution. The current director of IIT Kharagpur has in the past implemented many innovative and bold ideas and here is a bold idea (bold in the context of West Bengal and its unions) that may solve the problem.
IIT needs to close down BC Roy operations and contract its health care operations to a reputed private company such as Apollo. (The company Vedanta is doing something like that.) A student and employee committee can come up with a specification of what medical services should be available on campus and invite bids from reputed health care companies and then pick the best. I don’t think money would be a problem. This is the way to go as health care is not a core competency of IIT Kharagpur and someone very good in that field should be the one taking care of the health care facilities at IIT Kharagpur.
This should be the model used in other universities and institutes that are in places without good health care facilities; or perhaps in all universities and institutes. Note that a lot of the proposed new central universities are being located in small towns without proper health care facilities. This is the time to take this issue into account and plan properly.
3 comments March 23rd, 2009
