The debate on euthanasia has been revived of late. Social norms, religious beliefs, the Hippocratic oath and modern medical interventions make it extremely difficult to go peacefully and gently into the night. The code in hospitals is to leave no stone unturned in interventions, procedures and operations to save human life, even when it means merely postponing the inevitable by a few months.
Why do hospitals never provide the chilling statistics of how many patients actually manage to get successfully weaned off the ventilator, before hustling relatives to sign the consent form?
Active euthanasia is banned in India, but in 2011, the Supreme Court made minimal progress on paper by legalising passive euthanasia in the case of Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug vs Union of India.
Guidelines for legal approval for withdrawing life-sustaining treatment to allow a person to die naturally are unfortunately so elaborate, it makes it virtually unsustainable in practical terms. Shanbaug, who spent 42 years in a perpetual vegetative state because of extensive brain damage as the result of a sexual assault, never actually benefitted from the “path-breaking judgment’’ in her name.
Shanbaug died finally of pneumonia.
The Supreme Court crept incrementally forward in 2018, in Common Cause vs the Union of India, by accepting the right to die with dignity as a fundamental right and recognised the validity of a living will, where a person requests that in his last days he should not be put on any form of life support.
Interestingly, the intrepid, public spirited founder of Common Cause, H D Shourie, himself passed away peacefully two years later in circumstances that suggested he might have indeed practised what he believed in.
In the case of London-based journalist and historian Zareer Masani, there was no ambiguity about his death this August. He booked himself into a Swiss clinic for voluntary assisted dying (VAD) after first wishing all his friends goodbye and settling his affairs.
In fact, 10 months earlier, he had written an article for a magazine ‘Chronicle of My Death Foretold’, explaining his reasons for ending his life at some point, since he suffered from severe breathing problems and other ailments.
He recalled the unhappy fate of his father, Swatantra Party president Minoo Masani, who founded the Indian Society for the Right to Die with Dignity. Minoo’s worst fears were to prove all too real.
In his last years, he sank into senility, was near-deaf and blind, bedridden with a broken hip and requiring around-the-clock nursing.
At this stage, he was in no position to locate the lethal dose of medicine he had once stashed away for just this eventuality.
Elephant in room
Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, in his latest book, 2024: The Election that Surprised India, has been more candid than most in pinpointing the true reason for the BJP’s disastrous performance in UP: the undeclared war between Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath, both viewed as potential successors to Prime Minister Modi.
Sardesai describes the tussle between the two men as “the elephant in the room”, which nobody dared speak about. Adityanath was excluded from the Lok Sabha campaign, or else, opted out, furious that hardly any of his suggested candidates were given tickets in Uttar Pradesh, including General V K Singh from Ghaziabad, which turned many voters against the party.
On the other hand, Shah’s nominees, such as Congress turncoat Kripashankar Singh and Saket Misra, Nripendra Misra’s son who earlier worked abroad, were among the outsiders blessed by Delhi, who were defeated.
Incidentally, Kripashankar Singh was among the 100-plus BJP candidates who had defected in the last decade, a source of much disquiet in the party.
Trump card
US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, a Biden appointee, knew he was not staying on in India after the American polls, one way or the other.
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If his fellow Californian, Kamala Harris had won, he had hoped for a plum post in the US.
With Trump’s victory, the former two-term mayor of Los Angeles, Garcetti, will return home to help organise the next Olympics.
After all, he played a key role in securing this honour for his hometown. Garcetti has promised that cricket will be included as an Olympic sport in 2028. The Indian government would be wise to seek his tips for getting Delhi declared the Olympics host in 2036.
