NEW DELHI
A doctors’ strike that began in the capital to protest an affirmative action program at medical colleges spread Sunday, threatening to cripple services at major government health care facilities.
Protests by medical students on Saturday were met with violence by police at government hospitals in the capital, New Delhi, and Bombay.
The protests were sparked by the government’s decision to increase the percentage of low-caste Indians at state-run medical colleges to 49.5 percent of the student body. Currently, 22.5 percent of admissions entries are set aside for low-caste Hindus and students from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Similar affirmative action programs already exist in other state-run educational institutions, aimed at creating equal opportunities for low-caste Hindus, who have faced discrimination for centuries.
Emergency health services at New Delhi hospitals were the worst hit by the strike. Television stations showed dozens of patients on stretchers lying unattended outside emergency rooms, many of them poor people unable to afford private hospitals.
Students at seven medical colleges in western Gujarat state began a hunger strike. Medical students in the eastern state of Orissa and the northern Punjab state burned effigies of Human Resource Minister Arjun Singh during protests on Saturday and Sunday.
