Turning obstacles into an opportunity

Amy and Arpit gifted this book to Anna on her birthday in 2012. I returned to this book several times during the last six months. 

It is a story of a British Nurse, Janet, who was brought up in Quaker tradition, living in Titmoh, a village in Jarkhand, formerly in Bihar, for ten years to experience the realities people face in their day to day life. 

Janet got deeply involved to create a primary health care for humans and animals in this village. In her attempt to make a difference, she came across the powerful in the society who exploited the weak  and became rich. The money lenders were one such group. 

It is written in a story form, easy to read and to connect with rural India. The stories create anger and shame within us as it is litany of  stories of insensitivity and callousness  of those in authority, whether it is health care professionals or animal husbandry professionals. 

The ten years she spent from 1975 was different as the development mantra that we hear today had not  surfaced in the India polity at that time. People lived at the mercy of a heath care system which was rudimentary in Indian villages especially in Bihar. 

What she left behind when she returned to Britain, was a mud hut in the village, where a dispensary was established with the help of a doctor from Calcutta and several living memories of her insistent pursuit to make a change in the social and health care setting of the community.

The question we often ask is, 'what can an individual do in a system that is resistant to change'? I hear this echoed among the christian heath care professionals working in rural India. Most of the rural hospitals in the Christian hospitals net work are through rough times, of late, with health care professionals disregarding this opportunity. One organisation needs fifty new doctors for its hospitals, but there are only one or two applicants.

Let me commend this book because it revives the call to rural India for partnering with people in their struggle  to progress. The book was published by Penguin in 2005.

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)