No winter session
The decision of the government not to have the winter session of Parliament citing the COVID-19 pandemic is shocking (Inside pages, “Jairam Ramesh refutes govt. claim on Parliament session”, December 16). When there are public gatherings and political events of high visibility taking place all across India in spite of the pandemic why single out the winter session? There are several issues that need the attention of our MPs in view of the monsoon session also having been cut short. Is the government scared to face Parliament in order to avoid embarrassment and tough questions?
V. Padmanabhan,
Bengaluru
The scrapping of the winter session citing COVID-19 and without building political consensus bears testimony to the present government’s utter contempt for our Parliament. It also reinforces a strongly-held belief about this government increasingly becoming more authoritarian by the day. At a time when farmers’ groups have launched a peaceful agitation to protest the Farm Bills, one would have expected a democratically-elected government to advance the session for a full-fledged debate on these laws. When all other activities are near normal, including political rallies, the reason for not having the winter session lacks conviction.
S.K. Choudhury,
Bengaluru
The nursing sector
In the article, “A sector that needs to be nursed back to health” (Editorial page, December 14), even though the writer has looked at some of the problems that nurses face, she has mainly focused on the problems in the educational system in the country. The curriculum as far as nursing in India is concerned is exemplary because the training provided in various institutions in the country can be compared with the best in the world. This is the key reason why foreign nations have kept their doors open for Indian nurses. The respect given to an Indian nurse abroad is very visible, unlike in India.
Second, if there is to be a legal framework, it needs to be initiated from the ground level. Let us not forget that the workload on nurses is immense and the hospital system within the country is doctor-centric.
Health systems function on the basis of team work. So, inclusion of nurses in the line of treatment is very important. It is easy to blame the nursing profession because there isn’t any strong body to protect the rights of nurses. In looking at the problems in the nursing sector, there is also a need to focus on the entire system in the medical field.
Devi Padma Subin,
Chennai
Though 2020 is the “International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife”, the prevailing and disabling environment in this most prominent and essential health sector has led to the low status of nurses in the hierarchy of health-care professionals. Florence Nightingale would not have imagined that such an ill fate will befall these angels in health care.
The work situation that hospital nurses face is overwhelmingly stressful; stress that seems to arise from the overall complexity of nurses’ work. Stressors are uniform across clinical areas, especially with regard to perceived work pressure. Among the most frequently cited stressors for nurses are: “keeping track of many things at a time”, “it is hard to predict what will happen each day” and “simple mistakes could have dire consequences”.
Apart from this, the financial disparity these professionals face is another serious factor that leaves them discontented; there is a mismatch between their role description and remuneration. Let us hope that in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of nurses will be given the due recognition it deserves in the health scenario.
Rammohandas K.,
Malappuram, Kerala
Beaches reopened
The Tamil Nadu government’s green signal to throw open beaches again especially in Chennai, from December 14, needs to be reviewed since the spread of the novel coronavirus has still not abated. Beaches are generally sought out by a sea of citizens. Increasing the number of machines utilised in cleaning the beach or pruning the number of hawkers on the beach will not help. As seen in the case of IIT Madras, despite being a serene and sylvan campus, all it takes is for one person to infect a community. An uncontrollable surge of people thronging the seashore for different reasons could erase all efforts taken so far in containment.
Mani Nataraajan,
Chennai
