Harvesting the Spare Parts

Many years ago, there used to be a minister in West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s cabinet by the name of Benoy Choudhury. He used to be the deputy chief minister at one point and was responsible for all the land reforms carried out in the early years of the Left Front government. An austere, honest and humble man in life, he stayed that way in death. When he died, there was neither cremation nor burial - he had donated his remains to the government medical college so that students might learn some anatomy by dissecting up his body.

Recently, A.K.Antony set another sort of precedent when he donated his organs as did celebrities Priyanka Chopra and cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu. Preity Zinta has done this even earlier. This is great. For just as it is desirable to avoid ostentatious ness in the happier moments of life, so too in moments of grief – especially when there is a lot that could be done with our bodies even after we have passed on. As Priyanka Chopra put it quite well, in a symbolic sense, donating your organs enables you to live for ever.

But while such romantic notions of eternity are fine; there is a case to revisit the entire gamut of organ donation in the country. For on one side, there is a scarcity of vital organs so much so that there is a thriving black market in them and on the other side, every such organs are being consigned to the flames or buried six feet under.

As Scott Carney writes in Wired magazine,

“Scarcity has long been a key driver of the global kidney market, but in regions like India, Brazil, Pakistan and China, sellers are dealing with signs of a surplus. Operations that once set back patients tens of thousands of dollars on the black market can now be had for a fraction of the cost in some places.” and body brokers are now connecting wealthy patients with healthy but poor people willing to sell their organs for cash. The international market for human parts is thriving: A kidney goes for $25,000 in Russia, a heart for $290,000 in South Africa

In organ donation, the main taboos seem to be religious and here it does not seem to make much of a difference as to which religion one belongs to. But the taboos are clearly relative. The large numbers of donors who are poor and living on the edge who are selling of their organs for a pittance clearly are prepared to sell to survive another day. The presence of affluent doctors like Amit Kumar acting as racketeers and brokers proves that religious taboos are not too binding at the rich end of society either.

Not too long ago, blood donation was handicapped by similar taboos and myths. Now while it may be a little premature to claim that all the taboos have gone away, it goes without saying that we have come a long way indeed. Though fringes of commercialism still persist in the form of the “professional blood donors”, the voluntary blood donor movement – aided by strong social backing and helpful legislation has grown. Perhaps, we need to go the same route for harvesting our organs and who knows the large catchments of voluntary blood donors who already know what it means to gift life through donating blood may become the bulwark of another movement – those who donate blood in life…. And their body parts in death…

Appeal, Appeal and Appeal Again.....

Many years ago, a portion of our office was rented out to a firm of architects. The office was small then and it was thought that renting out the surplus area and make some money was a good idea. But some years later as the expanded and the need was felt for more space, the firm of architects refused to vacate. Inevitably litigation followed in the local District Court, where after years of hearings, adjournments and affidavits, a judgement was passed in our favour. But barely had the ink dried on the paper, that the lawyers – ours and the architect’s were rushing to the high court- we to prevent the high court from staying the eviction order and theirs to do just the opposite. It would seem that judgements have lost all their sanctity. If you lose one case, there is always another court or tribunal to appeal to and though you pay through your nose to keep the lawyers filing one petition after another, the battle is kept alive.

With this kind of a litigation ridden culture, I do not know how any dispute can ever be resolved. When I was naïve, I used to think that ultimately all petitions finally ended up in the Supreme Court if all other appeal routes were exhausted and the verdict of the Supreme Court was ultimately binding. But now I know better. As soon as one party loses, there is a rash of lawyers wanting to file a review petition so that the matter can be heard by a different judge. If the original judgement was by a single judge, then the appeal may be to constitute a three judge bench, then five, seven, nine, eleven and finally even a thirteen judge bench and at each stage, one can hope for a reversal of fortunes.

Recently the Cauvery water tribunal gave its verdict on the distribution of waters. It is obviously that water is a limited commodity and the best that the tribunal could do was to try and ensure some sort of equity so that all the riparian states received some quantity of water. It was obviously not possible for the tribunal to amplify the amount of water in the Cauvery, so that all states could get water according to their requirements. Unfortunately that level of statesmanship seems not to be present in our political leadership. Shortly after the verdict was out, Deputy Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa said that Karnataka would file a petition before the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal seeking review of its verdict on water sharing. The familiar cycle has begun.

This is not the only instance. Manu Sharma was recently convicted of the murder of Jessica Lal by the Delhi High Court after he was acquitted by a lower court and a retrial was ordered after public outcry. In the midst of all the background noise generated by the high court taking note of the hostile witnesses in the case Manu Sharma has quietly appealed to the Supreme Court challenging his conviction by the High Court. Again, some months ago, Shibu Soren became the first sitting cabinet minister to be convicted of murder and asked to resign. He has appealed to the High Court challenging his sentence of life imprisonment. Navjot Sidhu , who was convicted of a road rage incident by the Punjab and Haryana High Court appealed to the Supreme Court , got his conviction stayed and is back in the electoral fray from Amritsar , barely weeks after he resigned as MP. And so the show goes on –get convicted, appeal, pay the lawyers and get on with your life……