No dignity for dead

Turning the spotlight once again on the decrepit state of our healthcare system is the moving video of a father walking 10 km to reach home with the body of his seven-year-old daughter slung on his shoulders in Chhattisgarh on Friday. It’s a sad story of how the poor folk, especially in rural areas, continue to be denied dignity in times of distress and death. This wretched reality of their life emanates from a frustrating combination of lack of resources and awareness and the abject apathy of those responsible for providing them decent mortuary and hearse services.

The state health minister’s prompt order of an investigation into why the Community Health Centre staff at Lakhanpur village of Surguja district, where the girl passed away, let this happen could invite penal action against officials found negligent in providing adequate care and services regarding the release of bodies. However, the shocking incident should have jolted the minister to look into how things stand statewide. Rather, it is a wake-up call for the country at large to ensure a dignified end and last rites for all.

We seem to have learnt little from the ignominy faced in 2016 when the news of a poverty-stricken tribal man of Odisha carrying his wife’s body, as his sobbing daughter walked alongside, gained global traction. He had been denied an ambulance by the hospital. Worse, there is not much improvement in the situation since then for the multitude of impoverished people, even as leaders of all hues gloat about the country’s progress and rising superpower status. Many such horrifying instances of the dead being desecrated came to the fore during the pandemic. That a 70-year-old man was compelled to ferry his dead wife on his cycle in UP is particularly shameful and exemplifies the general callousness. The dumping of bodies in the Ganga was another hauntingly tragic occurrence. These spine-chilling visuals of indignity heaped on the dead are a blot which must be erased through all-out efforts.