The Right to elect

 

With the on-going Lok Sabha Elections 2024, the right to vote, the right to choose is probably the talk of the hour. While everyone goes on about importance of choosing your own leaders, medical college authorities quietly smile as they rob the students of their right to elect. Whether it comes to choosing your Students’ Council members or your elective subjects, there is no need to bother yourself, because there is always someone else to do it for you, while you happily go on pretending that you did it yourself.

The beginning of final year brings a special period of one month called Elective Postings. The idea is to allow the students to spend 15 days each in gaining some extra knowledge about 2 subjects of their choice. When one hears this initially, it sounds interesting. Some students look at this as an opportunity to learn new thigs while some others secretly exclaim, “OMG! I don’t even have a favorite subject! What do I do now?” But then, one fine morning, there comes in a roster which strips the students’ right to elect their "elective" subjects by assigning them random subjects roll number wise. Not only that, the students also lose the right to choose their government as the elective posting starts the very next day after Professional exams end and there is no chance to go home.

While attendance is compulsory in these postings, most students take leaves according to their own wish, which is probably their way of protesting against this dictatorial act of stripping them of their fundamental right to elect. The real fun of course begins when students actually start showing up in various departments apparently for some weird thing called “Elective Postings” which nobody seems to have heard of. The professors, interns, juniors and residents stare at you as you aimlessly wander through the wards and OPDs for the first few days hoping to find patients for conditions like Surgical Site Infection or Narrow Complex tachycardia or Acute Flaccid Paralysis.

In some departments one finds HODs who care so much about these postings that the students find themselves standing every other in the HOD’s office trying to enumerate and explain causes and complications of pancytopenia or answering questions like “Who was the father of the great Bengali author Upendrakishore Roy Chowdhury?”

 However, there are some other departments where HOD himself remains occult- you visit everyday with the patience of a saint waiting to meet God, but to no avail. Until, suddenly one morning, a couple of days before your posting is supposed to end, you see him appearing through a fog of insecticide spray in the ward, like a hero, and you realize that your prayers have finally been answered. He then gives you a simple order to go and visit another teacher for further details, with a sweet smile and the advice not to spend too much time on electives. Just when you think you are going to have an easy end to your posting you are handed with the responsibility to collect, compile and present different case series on various clinical topics. And thus, the struggle changes from finding your HOD to finding your cases!

At the end of the posting one wonders, what was the use of doing all this? Well, there can be various answers to this question. These postings teach you a lesson of patience, a small taste of what awaits you in final year, introduces you to some really helpful residents, and most importantly, it teaches you to work with a team where all members do not share your enthusiasm or your work culture. The art of making people work without allowing them to realize that they are working is the key to a successful project.

Many of you must be wondering, this entire entry talks about clinical subject postings only. What about the non-clinical subjects? Well, that is a story for another day.