Let me introduce the book to the readers with an anecdote concerning the subject matter of the book. I joined as a medical undergraduate student at the Delhi’s University College of Medical Sciences (UCMS) in 1986, which by that time had shifted just adjacent to Shahdara in eastern Delhi, within the newly constructed campus of Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital (GTB). Having passed through the humdrum of Shahdara or other crowded and maddeningly chaotic localities of East Delhi to reach the GTB campus, its spacious locale and high rise buildings of the campus were bound to make an impression on any visitor. However, for us—the medical students and other residents of the campus, the problems of potable water supply, electricity, and absence of metalled roads, street lighting etc. and the accompaniment of mosquitoes made the living conditions onerous.
It must have been July end or August of the year 1988 when the monsoon was receding, a visit by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to the area to dedicate the new hospital to the people of East Delhi was announced. The announcement itself had an electrifying effect. I saw for the first time in my life what government machinery can accomplish within a matter of days when moved to please their masters. The roads got metalled; street lamp poles were erected lighting the campus brightly at night, new saplings were planted all over and the swamp adjacent to the southern boundary of the campus was filled and levelled to ready a ground for the Prime Minister’s rally. All of this happened within a matter of days, as though the entire hospital campus had been built to prove the beneficence of the rulers of the day than to suit the crying health care needs of the people of East Delhi.