Comment

When a poor man dies of starvation or malnutrition, nowhere will you find a doctor stating them as the cause of death. Instead, the death certificate invariably states that the person died “a natural death”.

If life is a fundamental right, then every elected representative and government official who could not feed the starving person should be put behind bars for violating a constitutional provision.

Even in Aruna Shanbaug’s case, it is doubtful if KEM Hospital would have extended care and treatment for over three decades if she had not been an employee of that hospital. If it was some other visiting patient who had got raped and then slipped into coma, perhaps the hospital would have taken care of the victim for a few months, and would have then advised relatives or a charity home to take the patient away.

The hospital’s administrators would have justified the action by saying that the bed could be used to save many more patients instead. The morality of continued care beyond three decades in what is medically known as a “persistent vegetative state” appears prompted by the privilege of Aruna Shanbaug being an employee of the hospital.

It is the same privilege that is extended to ministers, members of Parliament and other politicians when they are allowed extended stay in hospitals at the taxpayers’ cost.

The author is honorary secretary of the Society for the Right to Die with Dignity.