NEW DELHI, 16 May 2006 — With doctors from private hospitals joining their colleagues, the anti-reservation agitation of medical students intensified yesterday and also spread to different parts of the county. Medical services in the capital were worst hit, with yesterday’s strike called by the Indian Medical Association.

Alarmed by protesting medicos continuing their stir, Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh said he was willing to hold talks with them. They should meet him for talks, Arjun said. “How can I go on talking in the air? How can I talk to them if they are not willing to?” he said.

The government is also planning action against doctors if they abstain from work. The striking doctors may be issued memos, officials said. Besides, they will not be granted any leave.

Health Secretary D.S. Negi said: “In view of the strike, we have decided to cancel the leave of doctors and it has also been decided that no leave will be granted to doctors in hospitals under Delhi government for the time being.” However, protesters displayed no sign of calling off their stir. They will continue their stir till their demand is met and the government withdraws its reservation proposal. “We will continue our hunger strike and will not attend our duties,” said Vinod Patro of the AIIMS Resident Doctors Association.

Mass indefinite hunger strike by students of the city’s five premier medical colleges continued in New Delhi yesterday. Besides, thousands of medical students boycotted classes and doctors struck work in New Delhi, Bombay, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and other cities. In support of the strike, private hospitals of Delhi announced closure of their OPD services. Emergency services were also affected in the capital city.

Doctors at some of the capital’s private hospitals joined the strike, and nearly 150 students from five medical colleges continued a hunger strike for the second day outside the prestigious government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

The protests started over the weekend, sparked by government plans to increase quotas for lower caste students in state-funded medical, engineering and other professional colleges from 22.5 percent to 49.5 percent.

Opponents to the plan say that instituting such a high quota at medical schools would severely compromise the level of professionalism in Indian health care.

Hospitals in Bombay, India’s financial and entertainment capital, were spared strikes. But medical students launched a petition drive demanding that the government scrap its plan.

“We demand a total roll back of the government proposal,” said Amitasha Sinha, a representative of Lady Hardinge Medical College in the Indian capital.

Doctors at several private hospitals in the Indian capital showed their solidarity by only tending to emergency cases.

On Sunday, medical students demonstrated across the country, angered by police violence against striking doctors and medical students, whom they dispersed with wooden batons and water cannons in Bombay a day earlier. Police in New Delhi used water cannons and tear gas against striking doctors.

Despite laws against discrimination, India’s lower castes — 80 percent of India’s 1 billion people by government estimate — are still at the bottom in most social indicators, such as education, income, employment, asset ownership and debt. It remains rare for a lower caste Indian to hold high-paying jobs that require advanced schooling; most of those who find work toil on farms and in fields.

Medical services in major hospitals across Madhya Pradesh were badly hit yesterday as junior doctors went on a token strike in support of the nationwide protest against a proposed reservation move.

Major hospitals in Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Rewa saw their services crippled with patients running helter-skelter as the doctors struck work urging political parties to make their stand clear on the proposed reservation. Emergency services, however, remained unaffected. Doctors took out rallies and burned effigies of Arjun Singh.

In Bhopal, around 250 undergraduates took out a peace march from the Gandhi Medical College and handed over to the district magistrate a memorandum addressed to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, said Ravi, one of the protesters.

“We also gave a memorandum to Gov. Balram Jhakar’s aide who asked us to come and discuss the matter Tuesday,” he said, adding, that they had got support of the Private Medical Practitioners Association.

Medical services were hit hard in the Government Hamidia Hospital in Bhopal and relatives of seriously ill patients were seen narrating their woes before journalists.

Medical students in three Gujarat cities yesterday joined the indefinite nationwide protest against the government’s proposed quota system for backward classes.

Medical students and interns from Baroda, Surat and Rajkot joined the strike in their campuses. Students in Ahmedabad and Jamnagar had already gone on protest Saturday.

The students are also demanding an apology from the authorities for detaining protesting medical students in New Delhi and for the baton attack on students in Bombay.

“The strike will be called off after the government tenders an apology and promises to withdraw its initiative to present a bill seeking reservation for other backward classes,” said Jayesh Vazirani, student leader of B.J. Medical College, Ahmedabad.

The students, who had earlier confined their protests to the campus, yesterday stood on the city’s crossroads distributing leaflets to “create awareness” among people.

Vazirani said though they had support from junior and resident doctors, they would involve them in a strike as “a last resort”. “We don”t want to disrupt medical services,” he said.

Students of Ahmedabad and Jamnagar have been on indefinite strike from Saturday. Medical students from the reserved categories stayed away from the stir.

Health services in three Orissa towns were badly hit for the third successive day yesterday with resident doctors and medical students joining the nationwide stir.

The agitators have been boycotting outpatient and inpatient services in all the three government medical college hospitals at Cuttack, Burla and Berhampur since Saturday. They did not join duty yesterday too, a state health official told IANS.

The protesters however allowed doctors to attend to patients in the emergency wards of the three hospitals.

— With input from agencies