Doctors forced to report suicides due to SIR is a solemn, politically-charged position that has come to light in India in recent times, which is mostly connected to the stress and the controversy around the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list. One must realise that this is not a proven, legally established fact, but the statement of political leaders.
The controversial issue has been the heavy workload and pressure on government workers who are mostly assigned the position of Booth Level Officers (BLOs), where they are expected to conduct the massive and time-consuming SIR exercise. This huge, nationwide initiative involves modernisation and restructuring voter list. A number of these officials have died in a number of ways; some of them have committed suicide, and others have not, but the working conditions of these officials have caused a lot of political and public outcry.
Special Intensive Rectification (SIR) Background
Special Intensive Rectification (SIR) is an important administrative exercise preceding the actual elections, in which the voter list will be carefully checked and updated, and revised. It is a compulsory process which involves the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) who are mostly of the aforementioned group of teachers, Anganwadi workers and other government employees, to work extended hours, on the edges of their usual duties, and at times, under severe pressure to meet deadlines and targets.
There are also disturbing reports about the death of these BLOs in the different states, including claims of suicide. As an illustration, in states such as Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, several election officials have been reported dead within a relatively short time, and the families of the victims have frequently cited the excessively heavy workload that comes with SIR work as the main cause. Especially the case of the suicide of a female booth-level officer, who was a worker in the Anganwadi, in the West Bengal district of Jalpaiguri, has attracted attention, and her family has directly attributed the tragedy to the workload of the SIR. In another case in Uttar Pradesh, a BLO who died after taking poison left a video in which he claimed that he was under pressure and mistreatment by the officials who were in charge of SIR.
Claims of medical workers being tortured
After this tragic death, a high-ranking political figure made a particular and serious accusation, which is known by the term Doctors forced to say suicide due to SIR.
Allegation
A leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Locket Chatterjee, has accused doctors of coercing them to alter the official cause of death in the certificates of deceased booth-level officials. Specifically, there are assertions that the government is being coerced to include the cause of death as suicide due to SIR, or secondary reasons, which would tend to underreport the administrative indifference or procedural malfunction, which could have resulted in death. On the other hand, we can also find the general accusations of the effort to hide the work-related deaths by categorising them as non-work-related.
The crux of the accusations is that medical professionals are pressured or manipulated to give the data a politically or administratively convenient interpretation, or that there is an institutional cover-up or alteration of the data given by putting medical professionals in a position where their ethical and legal duties require them to offer responsible judgments. The coercion of physicians, should it exist, is an ultimate ethical breach and a sabotage of the medico-legal process.
Political and popular reaction
The accusations have already become a huge political topic, and the opposing parties have become very critical of the ruling administrative body and the Election Commission, which supervises the SIR process.
Call to action: The West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, has also written a stern letter to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), terming the SIR process as unplanned, coercive and dangerous and urging him to immediately stop the process. He clearly referred to killings of Anganwadi workers/BLOs, attributing it to SIR-related stress.
Investigative demands: It is also the political leaders who demand that the deaths of BLOs, particularly those that are being claimed to be suicides to establish the level of stress in the workplaces and coercion by the government. The overall mood is of strong distrust of the objectivity of state-level government investigations made by state-level agencies.
General Issue – The Human Cost of SIR
The claims of intimidation of the doctors cannot be discussed without referring to the more significant problem of the human price of the SIR process. The prevalence of death cases and the ensuing allegations of work overloads have clearly reflected the precarious working conditions of the elective positions of the government in the case of the elective public servants.
Workload and Stress: The first one is the excessive, even obligatory, character of SIR work, which is usually performed by individuals who already have a heavy load of their main work (e.g., teaching, healthcare) to bear.
Administrative Indifference: There have been complaints that supervisory officials tend to be inconsiderate and exert unreasonable pressure to make sure that the goals are met, which includes the threat of disciplinary measures, thus resulting in a poor working environment and severe psychological pressure. The so-called attempt to coerce doctors provides one more nuance to this story, and it means that there is an attempt to hold back the entire truth about the system failures.
Concisely, the argument that Doctors are being coerced into discussing suicide because of SIR is a highly political accusation and inflammatory statement that purports that medical practitioners are being forced to falsify government documentation concerning the deaths of election duty officers.
This accusation is already a political issue of discussion, and it is necessary to demand a high-profile investigation into the reasons for the deaths of several booth-level officers operating in the unusually intensive work on the voter list. To this day, these accusations are still controversial topics of political discussion and the necessity to conduct their own investigations.
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