Caste and medical education in India:

While being exceptionally lenient towards the individuals who Dr Payal Tadvi specifically said had unbearably harassed her, the SC noted "Even a convict is allowed to... develop his [their word] potential as a human being to the fullest."

As many folks hav pointed out, how come courts don't apply this principle to so many other, certainly more deserving, frequently falsely accused, undertrials?

The amount of ongoing institutional injustice in Dr Tadvi's case is stupendous, & has shaken many of us to the core.

My research on d history of medicine in post-independence India has given me som leads on d early intersections of caste & healthcare. In the current context, d most relevant stuff I want activists to know about is a debate on caste that raged in d pages of NMJI in 1992-94

Many of the issues raised in those articles, reflections and letters continue to be raised, unsurprisingly, even today. E.g., here's an argument from Dr. L.R. Murmu's article (He is today a faculty member at AIIMS): http://archive.nmji.in/approval/archive/Volume-7/issue-5/speaking-for-myself.pdf

Apart from Dr Murmu's article, there is Madras-based Dr Mani's 1992 correspondence in which he argues against Tamil Nadu's affirmative action policies. http://archive.nmji.in/approval/archive/Volume-5/issue-6/letter-from-madras.pdf

Then there's Dr Murmu et al's response to Dr Mani: http://archive.nmji.in/approval/archive/Volume-6/issue-2/correspondence.pdf

And Dr K.L. Narasimhan's response to Dr Murmu et al: http://archive.nmji.in/approval/archive/Volume-7/issue-4/correspondence.pdf

Two salient aspects of this debate. We see only the male perspective here, on either side. Secondly, almost the entire thrust is on affirmative action (or reservations), tho clearly there are several ways in which caste-based discrimination is practised in medical institutes.

Besides, affirmative action is a complex policy & today we shud find more creative ways to discuss it & advocate for it (tho it's baffling that folks find it hard to trust that reservations will benefit d nation in d long run, when they so easily trusted that demonetisation will)

The NMJI debates feature well-known points, seen also in the film Aarakshan. They r oft abstract & impersonal. There's potential to create a simultaneously more empathetic & aggressiv set of arguments. Willy-nilly, college kids cant b xpected to take reservations as self-evident

Also important to combine those arguments with the lived experience of discrimination faced by Dalits and adivasis, both within & outside medical institutions. In the NMJI debate above, there's little mention of any of the brutal, human aspects of caste & other discrimin

My two cents apart, I am sure there's stronger analyses that cud be done of the NMJI stuff. Knowledge is power. And in New India, historical knowledge more so. I hope this particular snippet from recent history will help activists and others respond better to the crises today.