Let146;s heal ourselves

Everything we know so far, including the bits that especially matters to us as Indians, about the failed Glasgow bombings, can be put under the subhead of globalisation. Al-Qaeda, supposedly the mastermind of the healers as killers plot, is globalised politics of fanaticism. Britain8217;s National Health Service is a national project that would shut down without global movement of skilled labour. Four out of 10 doctors in the NHS were trained outside Britain. Indians, nearly 28,000 of them, are the largest foreign contingent. Bangalore, the city that seems to be the epicentre of the India connection in the Glasgow case, is India8217;s best symbol of success under globalisation. But it is now also the locus of two less celebratory discussions connected with globalisation.

First, has globalised terror finally succeeded in recruiting educated Indians? Infosys, not Al-Qaeda, was supposed to be our response to globalisation. If there is a sub-plot in that narrative, there is no point letting either leftwing political correctness or rightwing political demagoguery obfuscate it. It could be true that Indian middle class professionals who come up on the terror radar are indoctrinated abroad. It is also true that plenty separates India from Pakistan, and Middle Eastern and North African countries, the usual hunting grounds for Al-Qaeda8217;s HR managers. But these countries are not India8217;s reference points. If young men from affluent families in Bangalore turn out to be willing executives of global terrorism, we have to not only understand why Britain may want to have deeper background checks but also why the Indian middle class story is faltering in some cases. There is more than just the acceptability of skilled Indian migrants at stake here.

The second discomfiting globalisation-related question is this: why can8217;t this country, which has a shamefully low per capita availability of doctors, persuade some of its most promising medical graduates to stay home? The answer is the appalling state of post MBBS medical education and the public health service. Most MBBS graduates face murderous competition for getting admissions into MD courses. There are criminally few medical post-graduate opportunities because the government has no policy or vision for increasing them. There is huge demand for such seats, huge demand for such medical specialisation, but tell that to ministers like Arjun Singh and Anbumani Ramadoss. Plus, a job in the public health service is only a shade better than unemployment for young doctors. Especially now that private sector salaries and facilities have set a benchmark. Britain may well make its peace over the issue of Indian doctors, but India shouldn8217;t.