Apparently to reassure the nation, Health Minister Shri Karmarkar said at the Lok Sabha,the other day, that the incidence of heart diseases in India has shown only a slight increase and not an alarming increase as one believes or seems to believe. If this is true, it is highly and deeply disappointing. Heart diseases, along with ulcer and cerebral haemorrhage, constitute the pillar of modern progress. They have become an unrivalled status symbol and there is an increasing number of men and women round the world who think it to be a matter of considerable satisfaction to die of a sophisticated heart attack instead of something as pedestrian as, say, triple pneumonia. If the incidence of these class diseases has shown only a very slight increase in India, it is an eloquent commentary on the slow progress we are making despite the Five Year Plans. Why is progress so slow? Why do we take so long to move ahead and keep with our times? It’s time that we do move ahead. Authorities will do well to devise ways and means by which our worries can be increased and our nerves stretched further. These are necessary concomitants of modern civilisation and it does us no credit to stay behind when other nations are developing ulcers at great speed. After all, what use are our plans if they cannot even give us a high blood pressure?
10th December 1960.
