Waiting for help: Shival Kumar

Patna, Feb. 6: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) may have cured the Prime Minister of his ailments, but the aam aadmi does not seem to deserve its attention.

With three holes in his heart, Shival, 2, is in constant pain, but AIIMS doctors have refused to operate on him without prior payment.

The plea of Shival’s father, Anil Kumar, and promise to pay up right after the Bihar government releases the promised sum has failed to cut the ice.

Anil, who is a taxi driver earning Rs 1,800 per month, was forced to bring his son back from AIIMS to their Bihar home at Gorhatta colony on Wednesday.

Now, he is running everyday to the secretariat for the money that was promised to him by the chief minister.

But, there, too, he has met with little success.

“It would be difficult to help you now as the workers are on a strike and there is none to locate your file,” he has been told.

In December 2008, chief minister Nitish Kumar had showed him some kindness by offering Rs 1 lakh from the state exchequer for the boy’s treatment and had asked Anil to seek AIIMS’s help.

But, to Anil’s dismay the strike called by government employees delayed the release of funds.

“Doctors told me that the operation would cost around Rs 70,000 and medicines would be around Rs 30,000. They asked me to deposit the sum prior to the operation. They suggested that the operation should be carried out in January itself to save my boy,” wept the father while talking to The Telegraph.

Anil’s agony, it seems, is far from over. Today Patna High Court deferred a hearing on the employees’ strike till Monday. The government employees have been on a strike for the past month pressing for a full implementation of the 6th Pay Commission’s recommendations.

“I have tried to get the government to deposit the money in my bank account. I contacted the Bihar resident commissioner at New Delhi and also the health department officials in the state for I was told that the file related to the medical grant was with the health department. But, my efforts so far have gone in vain,” Anil said. Bihar health minister Nandkishore Yadav said: “The file has not been presented before me. But be sure that once I get it, I shall dispose it off immediately.” Yadav who is in Nagpur (Maharastra) now, ruled out the strike angle as responsible for the delay.

While Anil Kumar has been waiting for the aid to come by soon and for his son to breathe easy, the chief minister is away on a vikas yatra (development march) in the countryside.