What are we doing for the Noors of India?
Reeta Sharma

PAKISTAN'S Noor was everywhere but an Indian Noor was nowhere in sight! For the last 15 days, the media was full of reports about the child from Pakistan who came to India for a heart surgery. The story of Noor tugged at the heartstrings of many as the media extensively reported on her arrival, surgery and recovery. It is another matter that Noor was fortunate enough to be born in a rich family while thousands of Indian children, born with holes in their hearts, gasp for breath in their poverty-stricken homes. They have no help and the media has no space for them. In fact, the saturation coverage reminded me of the time when the Indian media went overboard while reporting the Agra Summit between General Pervez Musharraf and Atal Bihari Vajpayee a few years ago.

But what could have been the purpose of reporting on Noor so much? Was it to highlight the Prime Minister’s gesture of having re-started the peace process? Or was it the hope that whipping up public emotions would actually improve Indo-Pak relations? Or was it to stress that the Indian doctors are better at mending holes in the heart as compared to the doctors in Pakistan?

Was it a diplomatic move (!!) to send signals to General Musharraf or the ISI that the Pak-backed militants should stop killing pilgrims and other innocents and resort to humanitarian deeds? I think we need to ask ourselves whether any of these purposes was served by playing up the Noor story so much.

To my mind, there is a difference between making a humane gesture towards a suffering individual and making a goodwill gesture towards a country that has entangled us in a proxy war. As a humane gesture, stitching a heart is perfectly acceptable. But in the case of a proxy war, it is more important to stitch the bleeding heart of India than to tom-tom the details of the heart operation performed on Noor.

India has always been an emotionally volatile nation. We react to everything in an excessively sentimental way. No wonder, the media too used expressions like "meeting of hearts" on the resumption of the Delhi-Lahore bus. But really, have the hearts ever met in the past 54 years? I think Pakistan has always exploited all our goodwill gestures to its own advantage and has also read them as signs of weakness.

It is an acknowledged fact that we continue to suffer from a colonial hangover. Most of these feelings from the Raj days are non-progressive and negative. I wish we had imbibed the British legacy of subtle responses towards the proven enemies of the country.

The case of Noor needed to be reported with restraint that showed it only as a humane gesture towards a sick child. Such reports would have been much more meaningful if the Indian media had highlighted the plight of millions of poor Indian children unable to afford such an operation. Every Indian hospital which specialises in such operations has data of Indian children whom it is unable to help because of the exorbitant cost of the treatment. Let’s acknowledge the fact that whenever the Indian media has highlighted the plight of a poor patient in dire need of finances, readers have always come forward with financial support. We should have reported on Noor’s case to motivate support for poor Indian children.

According to the PGI’s internationally acknowledged heart surgeon, Dr R. S. Dhaliwal, "At least two per cent of the total population is born with congenital heart diseases, including a hole in the heart. At the PGI itself, we receive 400 to 500 poor children every year who urgently need heart repair. But, unfortunately, at least 70 per cent of them are denied any treatment in the absence of financial aid. The others get financial support from various sources like the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, Rotary International, Red Cross or various NGOs. I am talking about only those cases which get referred to the PGI or any other such institution. But I am sure there must be lakhs of other such cases, which go unnoticed and undetected because of lack of awareness among the people."

The ever-elusive peace between India and Pakistan will never be achieved by peoples’ emotions alone. If this were so, it would have happened three or four decades ago. Let’s acknowledge that there was a post-Partition generation on both sides, which was heart-broken. Today, that generation has shrunk. The new generation in India and Pakistan does not have similar emotional bonds. Hence, whipping up such emotions is only an exercise in futility.

Moreover, given a situation wherein Musharraf has been changing colours like a chameleon, all the hoopla over Noor is unnecessary. Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha’s over-enthusiastic statement that a 100 more children from Pakistan will be operated upon free of cost as a goodwill gesture also appears unreasonable and unrealistic. He forgot to mention that these operations would be at the cost of our nation’s poor children.

Incidentally, as against the excessive coverage of Noor’s operation in the Indian media, reports in the Pakistani Press have been extremely brief. The Jang Group’s daily, The News, has only glorified Noor’s father’s decision to set up a fund for Indian and Pakistani children. For this fund too, Indians have donated Rs 1 lakh and the Rotary Club of Bangalore has added another Rs 50,000. Noor’s father has put in Rs 1.40 lakh, the cost of the operation of his daughter. The cost had been waived by the Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital, Bangalore, where Noor had been treated.