I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m waiting for the day Tamil Nadu becomes Gujarat.
And it’s not just for the khakra, fafda, dhokla , and all the other cool onomatopoeic snacks I could be eating on the bullet train as I watch seaplanes have dogfights in the sky if that came true. It’s because of how far ahead of us they are in innovation.
Yes, we do have the veshti with pocket, but how long can we rest on laurels of this technological milestone?
That the entire country is suffering from a shortage of doctors, despite having almost as many medical colleges as potti kadais , is common knowledge. But while the rest of the country is going ‘er’ and ‘um’, the mighty land of Gujarat, home of the Gir lion and Amisha Patel, has shown us that there is a solution right under our noses. And by that I mean literally under our noses.
Gujarat has dealt with this shortage, especially in rural areas, by coming up with the hitherto unheard of, and totally brilliant, may I add, concept of (drumroll) ‘ bal doctors’, i.e., kid doctors! According to their health department, very soon, a few select little Gujarati balaks and balikas will now look after the wellness of their little Gujarati bhais and bens under the state’s school health programme.
Makes you go, ‘Now, why the **** didn’t we think of that?!’
Health department officials say that the first nominated bal doctor is an 11-year-old Class Six student from a government school in Navagam village.
Apparently, this bal doctor, and the others to follow, will be equipped with an apron, a badge, a stethoscope, a torch, an Ayurvedic medicine kit, and a booklet and poster on health-related problems. All this will make them “look like a doctor”, and, voilà, therefore instantly super-qualified to administer medicines to their bal patient classmates.
As any true-blue Indian knows, 90% is the get-up.
It’s not like this plan hasn’t been fully thought through, by the way. The bal doctors will receive training, of course. Which, in all likelihood, will consist of a course in illegible handwriting for prescriptions, and a basic module in lab–doc kickback percentages.
It’s only a matter of time now before we have bal (or, more likely, balika ) nurses, too. After all, when a bal doctor turns around and says ‘gloves’ or ‘syringe’, who is going to hand them to him? A fully grown nurse? Soon, there will be Bal Clinics and Bal Nursing Homes. This obviously will be followed by Bal Multi-Speciality Hospitals.
And where are we going to get so many bal doctors, balika nurses, bal compounders, bal anaesthesiologists, bal ward boys, you ask? Bal Medical Colleges, of course.
What about school then, you say? There will be no more schools, silly. They will morph into Bal Medical Colleges.
Okay, then. If everyone in a Bal Medical College is training to be a bal doctor, who will be the bal patients?
Ha. Not so fast. Did we say all schools will become Bal Medical Colleges? This is the Gujarat Model, stupid. Only some schools will take that route. The others will become Bal Engineering Colleges, Bal Arts Colleges, Bal Law Colleges, Bal Colleges of Journalism, Bal Colleges of Nuclear Physics, and so on. Their students will become the patients.
Can you imagine where that will take them? Pretty much into John bhai Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ territory.
While bal doctors are taking care of bal patients, bal lawyers will be fighting for the rights of bal criminals. While bal drivers will be helming the bullet train, bal veterinarians will tend to bal cows.
The adults can finally relax and play dandiya all day.
