Principal Clara Philips was a celebrity of her times. An accomplished surgeon, a competent teacher, she was a strict disciplinarian too. In her brief stint as principal, she wanted to start internship on very first day of the year unlike preceding years. A section of faculty had decided to scuttle her plans. Our class enjoyed dubious reputation of exam boycotters. These forces had decided to exploit our weakness and sowed the seeds of demand for final prof exam postponement. Dr. Philips signaled to reward our class with a good result in O&G if the exams went through on time. We feared good result in one subject could mean bad in another. Caught on the horns of dilemma, we went ahead with boycott.
Our wait for the result turned endless. We were in midst of February but there was no sign of result. The university was still awaiting awards of O&G. Finally, the result was declared on 9th February, 1979. Our internship had been delayed by forty days. As expected, mortality was very high in O&G. We were a worried lot as we knew the ramifications of this delay. We had landed ourselves in a muddle.
Almost forty to fifty classmates had flunked in one or more subjects. A number of students were doing their internship in the peripheral hospitals. With a depleted strength agitation was impossible. Procuring forty days of internship condonement appeared an uphill task. In the interim Dr. Philips had retired. But before demitting office she had written a very damaging letter to university, government, and MCI. Describing us as habitual boycotters she had recommended that our internship shall not be condoned under any circumstances.
A meeting of local interns was held as early as in June. We met the new principal Dr. K S Sachdeva, to seek his guidance. He advised us to meet the Vice-Chancellor of GNDU. The VC washed his hands off saying he had no powers to condone 40 days of internship. He said university will withhold degrees till issue was resolved. We realized only MCI had the powers to condone such a long period of deficit in internship
MCI had only once condoned a deficit of 30 days so far. Myself, Rosy, Kaka, Sukhy and Dhanraj boarded a train to Delhi to meet Secretary MCI. We stayed in the office of Dhanraj’s father in Darya Ganj. It became clear during the meeting it was nearly impossible for MCI to condone forty days thanks to Dr. Philips’s letter. MCI needed Punjab government’s consent before it started work on condonement process.
We decided to meet Sardar Atma Singh Minister for medical education in Punjab government. Five of us boarded Kalka mail on frosty night and reached Chandigarh at 2 AM. We had no place to stay and barged into my massi’s house in Sector 9. After a brief nap and quick breakfast, we met the minister at his residence before he left for office. We explained our case to him. He was very kind to speak to Secretary Health G Balakrishnan IAS who promised to look in to our demand. A fortnight passed but there was no visible movement. We again met the Minister and Secretary who said the letter has already been sent to MCI.
We rushed to MCI office in Delhi requested Secretary to expedite the matter. We waited for a couple of hours. Secretary gave us a copy of the letter written by him to Secretary Health Punjab. It said MCI could condone only thirty days and we had to complete the remaining 10 days. On our insistence he had added a line, ‘the Punjab government should make sure that we are not denied our share of house jobs’. It was a tactical victory for our batch.
The thirty days condonement was no small achievement. Armed with the letter we reached Amritsar like triumphant warriors. But another battle was already brewing. (Details in next blog).
For the sake of brevity, I have skipped details of ground work done. But I must acknowledge the support and guidance provided by Dr. K S Sachdeva; he helped us at every step. I was in regular touch with him and every time we reached a dead end, I would ask him what do we next. One fine day he smilingly said ‘Dinesh I admire your perseverance; you never give up’. Coming from a teacher you admire it meant a lot. Please pardon me for beating my own drum, but I cannot forget these lines. These have kept me going in life.
Dinesh Kumar Sharma
