Development Disaster!

Under the cover of development, the real image of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

India has sent a spacecraft to the moon and successfully landed there. There is no limit to the pride of India, not only Indians but also we, the South Asians are talking with happiness about that. Bangladesh has built a bridge over one of the highest current rivers Padma, which fills the heart of the people of Bangladesh with pride. The people of India are also inquisitive about this bridge. Pakistan also compares the economic prosperity of Bangladesh by showing this bridge. But India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are still hundreds of years behind in changing the reality of their own countries. Limitless inefficiency, corruption, looting, and lack of knowledge flow have not yet brought much relief to the lives of the region’s quarter of two hundred million people. Fortunately, some great beings were called God, Ishwar, and Allah in this region. Otherwise, no leader of the ruling parties could die without going to jail. The ruling parties can suppress the stories of their misdeeds, inefficiency, incompetence, and looting because the people depend entirely on God, Ishwar, and Allah.

But listen to a true story. It is in India, but the situation is worse in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The story is about a child, his name is Imran. The story is about the tragic end of the young life of Imran, a ten-year-old boy from Farakka, India.

Imran gets bitten by a snake. He was brought to the local health center a day and a half after the snake bite. And there they said, it has come so late, we cannot do anything. They sent the boy to Tarapur Sramik Hospital, a few kilometers away from there, a central government hospital in India that is a specialized hospital for tobacco workers. There was no snake antivenom. As they could not provide any treatment, the boy was immediately sent to the Jangipur sub-district hospital with the hospital’s ambulance. From there he was again sent to Baharampur Medical College. The doctors of Baharampur Medical College saw Imran and said that the child would need dialysis. They don’t have pediatric nephrologists there. So they asked to take the baby to Neelratan Sarkar Medical College Hospital in Kolkata. No snakebite patients of this age were admitted by searching in Neelratan Sarkar Medical College Hospital according to their previous records. The child was traveling to various hospitals and then returned home without getting any treatment in Kolkata. The people of the child’s house said that the child died. But the news comes that they lied. The child did not die immediately, he was taken back to Ojha’s house. Ojha is a village priest who treats snake bites but their treatment methods are not scientifically proven. The next day, when the government officials went to the boy’s house, they saw that Imran had been buried.

What do you think of this event? Poor country, because of lack of resources baby Imran faced such a horrible death – what do you think? So what to build a hospital without sending a mission to the moon? Need to build a nursing home without building the Padma Bridge for three times the money? You know, people can be served even after sending those moon missions and building big bridges. There is no need to increase the budget. All that is needed is a little goodwill from the government, government policymakers, and bureaucrats. Even in the twenty-first century, these countries do not have full health facilities in the upazila and district headquarters hospitals! It can be thought that the politicians of these countries once again tell silly stories about development.

But the biggest problem is the reluctance of the government to use the technology of this time. They don’t have a simple database where they can get any treatment for sure, where the number of patients is high or low. No one knows where any medicine, vaccine, or equipment is stored. From marginal health centers to top healthcare authorities, this information is not available. In this era, the death of a patient who runs this hospital, that hospital without treatment means that the government of the country is responsible for killing that person. The advantage of the government is that the people of the country do not question the negligence of the government in this responsibility. They live their lives as destiny given by God, Ishwar, Allah. Religion is therefore a great boon for politicians in the region.