Damned to doom?

I was just enquiring about the fee for a friend's sibling in a local college. I was in for a big surprise. It was not professional course and it was pretty expensive (it was about my two years engineering fee 8 years ago!). I hear about how expensive even primary education is in Bangalore. Education is a basic requirement. Like health care even education has become very expensive for the general public. It seems to be such a sorry state of affairs.

 I had once accompanied my mother to a private nursing home and she was running high temperature. She initially did not want to go and it took some persuasion. When we reached there we were told that the physician is about to leave and we had to check with him if he was available before taking the appointment at the reception! When we turned from the reception, the doctor happened to be going out. I worriedly requested him to take a look at my mother. He said he was running late for another nursing home and we will have to go there for the check up! I just did not get the point. My mother was already tired. It was not that we would pay him any less or he was doing us a favor financially by seeing her in the other nursing home. He was a doctor we knew and that did not make any difference to him. My blood was boiling. I wanted to yell at him and demand how he can call himself a doctor with such a disgusting attitude. These people take an oath while becoming doctors that they will serve people. It is all soon forgotten. Even when we are ready to dish out the money some doctors act like jerks. I just could not believe what I had heard.  When a loved one is not keeping well, the last thing you expect from a doctor is to disgust you.  I just looked the other way and enquired if there was any other doctor available. We met a junior doctor who treated us with a smile. I was grateful to her. She even charged less than half of his fee.

Some people reason it out saying these doctors would have paid several lakhs to even become doctors. Some of them could have huge student loans which they are keen to repay and hence such money-minting-care-a-damn-about-patients-attitude. It again boils down to expensive education systems. Is it a vicious circle? Is there no way out?

 I just pray and hope our health care and education systems become less oriented towards money and more towards people. Else there is no way why people who go abroad would want to return to such pathetic state of affairs where even basic amenities of life are made to look like luxuries!