Delusions of Grandeur: A Fallacy

Saturday, April 17, 2010

There is the strong smell of death in hospital where there are ghost doctors and ghost nurses. Woman in labor cries for help when help will never come around. Bed sheets in ward are never washed for heaven knows how long with every inch and area soaked in blood. Incubating refrigerator stands in the corner without the medicine stock and without the electrical code. A teenage girl dies from simple dehydration stripping away her life well before her youth.

Schools are built everywhere disproportionate to the number of students. The construction cost is shared between the civil servants, representatives of people and the businessmen. Teachers need not be qualified and many schools are even without them. People bribe the government and register as teachers who do not show up in the schools. By registering as teachers they earn the pension fund illegitimately after superannuation terms. Students walk to schools miles each way only to wait for teachers who are never to be seen; ghost teachers. Text books are not available since the networks of distributors ask for bribes.

Senior international inspector visits a remote village of Bhutan where there is a small clinic called BHU Grade III. She is greeted by a warm smile of Health Assistant (HA) in neatly worn white-coat. In escorting to the ward she sees the patients genuinely smiling their faces despite the pain. In a corner she sees the refrigerator with full stock of medicines incubated by the propylene gas. The bed sheets in the ward are as neat as her guest house in the capital. She says it shocked her system expecting the same with the countries in South East Asia. She sees the real professional in the field and real clinic for the first time. She decides to ask few questions to him only to regret how foolishly she asked those. When she asks why he preferred to be in remote place he simply cites an example of our King. He is there because King is there for the people. Importance of leadership runs in her mind. She says King is the leader and HA is also the leader because of his personal leadership. She reminds the floor about the fallacy of delusions of grandeur and talks about personal leadership.

Person at any level has the leadership qualities to work hard and earn salary. She says a person gets charity if one does not burn fire in the belly to work. To keep the fire burning one has to solicit stepping in the service recipients’ shoes and then only a salary can be earned. Start earning your salary and not getting charity-Shiv Khera, I recalled my memory.

Bhutan is a country blessed under the great leadership of His Majesty the King. You have many things in place and it is only a matter of containing them and it falls in your hands. Humans are tempted to want and greed. Bhutanese are humans too and are vulnerable to any evils in the society. To contain your values you must begin with the personal leadership and understanding the misconception of power and titles, she sums up.

I looked around to see the reaction of the floor. The fire in the belly was already setting in. I saw tears in all of them including in my own eyes too.

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