Sikar (Rajasthan): The 2003 comedy hit Munnabhai MBBS showed a kind-hearted goon getting into a medical college by fraudulent means and attending MBBS classes. But unlike Munnabhai's effort to become a doctor on the silver screen, a real-life doctor in Rajasthan's Sikar district has 'turned' into a goalgappa or puchka seller.
Meet Dr. Anita who runs a private hospital on Nawalgarh Road in Sikar. She is protesting against the contentious bill but not by going on a hunger strike or by blocking a road or rail track. She has put her hospital under lock and key and started selling puchka in front of her hospital.
Taking the sarcasm level in her unique protest a notch higher Dr. Anita has 'rechristened' herself as Anita Puchka Wali, a former private hospital doctor. She has put up a signboard in front of her hospital renaming it from Khichad Hospital to Puchka Bhandar.
The hospital where prior to the passage of the Right to Health Bill services such as normal delivery, operation, and sterilization were used to be performed, now in its new avatar has turned into a shop selling sweet puchkas, sour puchkas, pungent puchkas and curd puchkas as per the signboard put up by the 'Anita puchkawali'.
A video of the doctor at her puchka shop shows her speaking to a customer whom she has earlier acquaintance with. During the conversation laced with sarcasm, Dr Anita tells her customer that the owners of the nearby private hospital have also turned itself into a 'paratha center'.
The Right to Health Bill, passed in the Rajasthan Assembly, amid strong protests by doctors of private hospitals provides the right to every resident of Rajasthan to emergency treatment without any charges at any public health institutions and healthcare establishments.
Protests by doctors of private hospitals have rocked the state with the protesters being apprehensive of the State Government interfering in the functioning of private hospitals after the enforcement of the law in Rajasthan.
