What ails Bihar

PATNA, March 17.—

If you thought Bihar’s muscle-flexing law-makers, rolling up their sleeves and shouting their rivals down in the House, possessed a lot of physical power, you were wrong. Hypertension, flatulence, diabetes, cardiac problems and similarly serious ailments are said in an official report to blight the existence of nearly 75 per cent of the Assembly’s 243 members.They are reliant on cheap medicines easily available at the MLA Hospital. Twenty-five per cent of them suffer from heart ailments, with 12 having survived heart attacks. Fifty per cent, aged between 35 and 50 years, are diabetic. The statistics emerged from a medical camp organised on the Assembly premises recently. “We were surprised that so many of them suffered from serious cardiac ailments,” said the director of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Science, Dr S N Mishra, who headed the camp’s team of doctors. Stress, today’s fast lifestyle and irregular food habits accounted for the condition, he said. A doctor, requesting anonymity, said many of the legislators ate more sweets and meat than was good for them. A canteen employee said some of them habitually helped themselves to up to 35 gulabjamuns at a sitting. Meat, mutton as well as chicken, is eaten daily by them. No wonder up to 200 antacid tablets are sent weekly to them from the hospital. When Sri Ravishankar visited Bihar in the last week of February for a three-day pranayam-cum-dhyan shivir in the state capital, a group of legislators urged him to organise a camp in the Assembly. The guru complied and the MLAs showed up in large numbers.