Milind X
Before the reader gets on with this essay, I have to say, that I have been admitted to the RINPAS (Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Allied Sciences) wards a total of 4 times over the years. So the reader must assume they’re reading something by a somewhat “sane” person. Additionally, they should ignore the view that my writing doesn’t concern the “well-adjusted” neurotypical person and carry on, for it’s probable that this information might help someone they know.
RINPAS is structured to boost the big pharma companies. This is ensured by ensuring the medicines provided there are not available online or in stores anywhere else. This makes the Once-Admitted to one of their several wards keep returning again and again. Everything from the opaque reviewing process of the files, which is designed in a way to test the limits of endurance of the innocent, and thus make them react in desperation “insane”, to the bullying of the security guards, extending to the doing-it-as-a-favor character of the doctors on duty, everything combines to make it a hellscape which only the out-of-luck have to deal with. I once had to beg and plead with one of the doctors on duty to check my file as I was nearing a manic breakdown but the doctor, it seemed had run out of pity. Having come to purchase medication, I was put into one of the wards.
The majority of the inmates at RINPAS, as could be expected, are from marginalized castes, which makes the Savarna fleet of doctors explode with disdain for the unfortunate former. There is no accountability as those in charge appear and vanish as they wish. Add to the fact, that instead of trying to be a place of healing, their main goal is to keep their wards full of patients. Such a mindset cannot be found anywhere, or maybe I’m wrong.
There is, and this may come as a shock (pun partly intended) that patients here are also given the already banned unmodified Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). This is a shame on the country if not humanity, continuing such a bestial form of practice (considered a crime under the Mental Healthcare Act of 2017). If we are to be direct, the practitioners should be behind bars, but what can be expected from a country that allows its citizens to die in sewers and manholes almost daily? A nation that can go to the “Dark” side of the moon but not have the will to change the barbaric customs of a society still stuck in pre-independent times. The savarna judges of all the courts in the country, with their eyes voluntarily shut like one of the monkeys of MK Ghandy should hang their heads in shame at what goes on around them but don’t because it doesn’t affect them personally. But then the question arises about how far behind they left even a modicum of humanity. How they rest at night with their families is something to be studied by anthropologists.
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Milind X is an independent writer.
