The Supreme Court has delivered health minister Anbumani Ramadoss a rap on the knuckles for trying to push through an amendment to the AIIMS Act, a piece of legislation aimed at forcibly removing AIIMS director P. Venugopal. Venugopal claimed that the amendment’s age-bar was specifically inserted to victimise and oust him. The government, however, claimed that “malice could not be attributed to Parliament”, as it was merely trying to clarify the murky business of appointing directors by making a formal statute to govern selection. Venugopal’s court victory is the latest instalment in the bitter wrangle for power over AIIMS.
Institutional autonomy is a fine ideal, and increasingly elusive in India as ministries interfere with the running of our most significant academic institutions. Perhaps some friction is only to be expected when the institution depends on Government grants and is also politically useful. But this AIIMS episode has abandoned all pretences of principle, becoming a purely personal clash. Of course, AIIMS is natural turf for political shenanigans — it has treated
India’s most powerful politicians for decades, and its directors have been closely connected with those in power — and institutional autonomy cannot be construed as unquestioned autonomy of the institution’s head. But, instructively, the government, despite its dark mutterings about Venugopal’s administrative heavy-handedness, only cited his criticism of the government during the anti-reservations strike in its legal plea. Whether or not the Supreme Court’s intervention results in Venugopal’s reinstatement, the health ministry’s coercive tactics have fallen flat.
Either way, instead of vainly trying to show Venugopal who’s boss, Ramadoss should just enlarge his imagination. For instance, the six new AIIMS-like institutions planned by the NDA are still at the proposal stage, and the paucity of professionals and health infrastructure is reaching crisis proportions. Ultimately, all that this unlovely spectacle reveals is how, in a country with enormous public health needs, the ministry in charge chooses to fight imaginary monsters.
