Profits Over People

Recent tragedies in Srinagar show how deeply our institutions fail. Behind the fees and the franchises, there's a dangerous absence of care.

- Syed Nissar H Gilani

cent years, and you'll hear the same story: unnecessary tests, inflated bills, long stays without reason.

A single scan can cost the equivalent of a month’s salary. A bed in a shared room now comes with a premium tag. And sometimes, surgeries are performed that shouldn’t have been done in the first place.

There have even been cases of healthy organs being removed, of expired or unapproved implants being used, of patients made to buy branded medicines from “attached” pharmacies.

In these corridors of care, you are often not a patient, but a walking invoice.

But then, not all doctors are complicit. In fact, many of them try to resist this growing tide of commercialization. They speak out, resign, and suffer professionally.

There are doctors in Kashmir who still treat patients like human beings, not clients. But the system is not built for them. It's built for profit.

And it’s not just the hospitals. A few days after that boy died in the hospital, another child died in a school. An eighth-grade student in a private institution in Srinagar took his own life. The school claimed the child had been bullied. The parent claimed harassment. The child left no note, only questions that no one wants to answer.