ON 12 MAY all five medical colleges of Delhi decided to reach Akbar Road to remind Human Resource and Development minister Arjun Singh of his promise to have a talk with doctors and students. Singh agreed for the meeting. Police permission had been taken two days before the march.
The police force reached Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) early in the morning, as per the schedule fixed for the rally, to escort students to Akbar Road. But, instead of that they escorted the buses from MAMC and Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC) to Jantar Mantar.
The students from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) somehow reached near Akbar Road, but then the news came that the police were beating them. When a batch of other students tried to reach them at Akbar Road they were stopped at Janpath. When the angry students tried to protest by blocking traffic they were forced into the buses and were taken to a police station. The police officers told them to calm down and try to reach Singh from there only.
However, when nothing happened for an hour the students decided to march back again. The police started using water canons and tear gas shells to stop them from proceeding. Suddenly there was a lot of chaos. The students saw no purpose in trying to move forward. They were not used to such treatment, so they decided to disperse and plan some other way to approach Singh.
When for two days the students did not get any positive response from the government, they decided to go on a hunger strike. On 14 May about 130 students came forward and decided to sit on an indefinite hunger strike. The students put up a tent in the AIIMS campus. The collapse of the students during the strike has brought the plight of the students to public knowledge.
The concerned doctors, in spite of being on the strike, started a parallel out patient department (OPD) from 15 May. The patients or their relatives approached the doctors to assure their support for the doctors’ cause, even though they faced problems, because they wanted to be treated by good doctors. People from distant places visited the students to express their support. Some celebrities such as Shiv Khera, Nafisa Ali and Palash Sen also visited the students to boost their morale. The words of Khera did the work of a health tonic for the students on the huger strike. A new batch of students and doctors has replaced the old batch from 22 May, after the last student from the old batch collapsed.
On 19 May the protestors took out a rally named dilli chalo. Students from all over the country joined the march. The students from Government Medical College, Patiala, reached the AIIMS campus the on 18 May. The registrations of the participants showed that people from as far as Medical College, Mangalore, attended the rally. The students from Amity University, Jamia Milia Islamia University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Institute for Physically Handicapped, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, the Institute of Medical Science, Banaras Hindu University, and the medical colleges of Gwalior, Allahabad, Meerut and Rohtak also joined the rally. Chartered accountants of Delhi, the corporate sector represented by the employees of WIPRO, IBM, C-DOT and other companies also joined the march. In all around 70 such institutes participated in the protest. Apart from the students and doctors, parents of the students, housewives and other senior citizens offered their support to the students.
A protestor recalled that a lady approached her saying, ‘I am neither a parent of a protestor nor from some institute. I am here only to support your cause.’ Students wore T-shirts painted with the Youth for Equality symbol. The students had made special arrangements for parking and water both in the campus and at Jantar Mantar.
The rally was peaceful and no one shouted slogans. But, the success of the demonstration will be visible only when the government agrees for rational talks with the students.
The rally proved to be a good example of the expression of public opinion where people from all corners of the world come together for a common cause and ask for justice from the government. It was an example of people demanding answers from the government, when their chosen representatives fail to do the same.
