Doctors under siege: Making sense of the rising incidence of violence against doctors in India.
Medical Research Council
Gokhale Inst of Politics and Economics
Society grants medical professionals' status, respect, and privilege with the expectation that physicians would be competent, altruistic, moral, and conscientious. A well-functioning social contract and a harmonious relationship between the medical profession and the people it serves is essential for a country's health system to fulfill its mandate - in India this social contract seems to be breaking down. Globally, many societies have seen major transformations in their social contracts with the medical profession, however in India, this historically stable social contract is unraveling with a dramatic rise in violent attacks on doctors. We contend that this unraveling deserves critical examination to understand what underpins it - we argue that this understanding is an essential first step to inform changes to the nature of the medical profession's relationship with Indian society. This is the objective of our study. We will conduct an exploratory, qualitative study using in-depth interviews with purposefully selected participants to unpack how various societal actors experience and understand these acts of violence. Through comparing the understandings and experiences of different actors we will reveal the cleavages and disconnects in the current social contract, and the implications going forward. While the inquiry will be inductive, it will be guided by theoretical understandings around social conflict and foregrounded by the socio-economic-political processes shaping the society and the medical profession in India. Insights from our study will be of interest to social and health policy makers, and to the medical profession in India and beyond. We will share our insights widely within the medical profession with a view to trigger conversations and critical reflections about the state of social contract. We will also use study insights to work with stakeholders in India to inform the development of innovative and practical health system interventions.
8.1 Organisation and delivery of services / Research Grant