The Hindu : New Delhi News : Vintage Vajpayee at his best

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 08, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Vintage Vajpayee at his best

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 7. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee of old as he released a new book on polio, "A tale of two drops'', by former Delhi Health Minister and Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party president Harsh Vardhan at a function here today.

Mr Vajpayee appeared in his element as he recounted how when he first heard of pulse polio, he had mistaken it to be related to the pulse of the nerves. Drawing loud laughter, the former Prime Minister went on to add that he was also unable to decipher why children made all kinds of faces while being administered the drops. "I always saw people holding on to the cheeks of children and forcibly giving them the medicine. There was never an occasion when a child would himself call a volunteer to give him the polio drops.''

But without children, he said, the campaign could never have succeeded. "Just think of it, had the children closed their mouths tight and refused to take the drops saying `mooh nahin kholunga'' (won't open my mouth), what would have happened!'' he said, as the gathering broke into peals of laughter.

On a more serious note, Mr Vajpayee said the world had been fighting polio for a long time and there had been a delay in its eradication in India. As such he said it pained him to see polio-afflicted children walk and do their daily chores with great difficulty. "They must be thinking what have we done wrong to deserve this'', he said, adding that it was essential to ensure that their children are no more affected by polio.

Stating that the disease was more prevalent in areas of poverty and filth, Mr Vajpayee said it was encouraging to see women with their children queuing up outside the polio booths for the drops of life and science making a definite contribution in improving the lives of the masses.

The former Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, said the book marked the "achievement of an excellent task'' as Dr. Vardhan had undertaken the job on hand like a true mission. Noting how Nobel laureate Amartya Sen had written that India lagged behind other nations due to inadequate support to the health and education sectors, Mr Advani said Dr. Vardhan had displayed the missionary zeal in spreading the Pulse Polio campaign which used to be seen in the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Tilak, who were all barristers but gave up their comfortable lives to work for the country.

Lamenting that present day polity had stooped much, he said, let alone see their work as a job or a mission, most present-day politicians see it as "commerce, and at times bad commerce''. Noting that difficult tasks can only be achieved if there is a "junoon'' (missionary zeal), he said, the Vajpayee government had along with focussing on highways and nuclear power, also paid a lot of emphasis to health which had brought down the incidence of the largest killer, TB, by up to five times.

In his opening address, Dr. Vardhan said the campaign had shown that the view that the government workers were rusted machinery had been proved wrong. Noting that he had undertaken the polio campaign as Delhi Health Minister in 1994 since he believed that a Government must always do things with which people remember a regime, he said there was overwhelming support to the programme which ensured its success.

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