The Ankur Arora Murder Case is a 21st century film based in a strangely black and white world. Doctor Asthana played by Kay Kay in the film is pure evil, he is conceited and lacks anything that resembles a conscience. Doctor Romesh, on the other hand is the perfect hero, righteous and courageous. The Asthana whose surgery failed due to negligence is charged for 1st degree murder and as he tells his staff, anyone who is not with him is against him.
The movie however, alludes to some of the complexities of the real world. Shrouded in Bollywood Cliche’s and the fight between the good and the evil is a very real struggle all young idealistic professionals like Romesh must face in the real world. The struggle between the corporate ethic and their personal one.
When asked about business ethics Milton Friedman said provided they stayed withing the constraints of law, the only responsibility corporate executives have is serving the stakeholders by making more money. This thought is reflected in Doctor Asthana’s decision to prolong Ankur’s hospital stay in order to extract more money from his family. Dr Asthana’s View is in conflict with Dr Romesh’s. Romesh does not believe profiting out of someone’s pain is right and is not willing to sacrifice his personal ethics.
The younger generation is generally idealistic, they want to make a difference, they want to help people. This is what often attracts most young doctors to the medical line and inspires the youth to become soldiers, policemen, social workers and journalists.That being said, one’s profession has to sustain them and thus being completely selfless is never an option. But quite contrary to Friedman’s (and Doctor Asthana’s) view, business’s are more than money making machines, and business ethics involves more than just making money.
Let’s step away from the movie world for a minute, lets stop seeing Doctors as people who are supposed to be selfless heroes and hospitals as life saving institutions. Let’s look at Shekhawat General Hospital for what doctor Asthana tells us it is, a business in the service sector. Now we may forgive it for being inhumane and not understanding the pain of a grieving mother. But a business in the service sector can never be forgiven for negligence. In fact, it becomes all the more alarming that such a business would not ensure that the customer is satisfied with its service.
Doctor Asthana is so conceited, he doesn’t look through the patients records before the surgery, he believes he knows best. This is shockingly unprofessional. The way Doctor Asthana treats the already stressed out family members of patients throughout the movie is appalling. There is a clear breach of the duty of care between the professionals and the client. As such, the movie portrays a hospital that fails to measure up to the ethical standards expected from any business, let alone one in the healthcare sector. This is what is, in legal terms, called Professional Negligence.
In any other organisation in the public sector we have what is called “Grievance Redressal Mechanism“, these are simply ways for the customer to give their feedback to the company, and the company to engage in corrective actions. The Redressal Mechanism has a Public Relations Officer who addresses the grievances. However, Asthana seems to be completely lacking any such organisation.
The story shown in the in film is quite a common one, Doctors are after all human too, and sometimes they do make mistakes. However, what was rather ridiculous in this movie was the extent to which the hospital went to cover up what had happened. Crisis Management is a critical function of any management team. It is the job of the PRO to get companies out of such situations which could result in its reputation being ruined.
Ankur’s mother neither wanted revenge or monetary compensation, all she wanted was that no one else has to face what she had to. Any efficient PRO would have realized this. They would have responded quickly with an apology on the part of the hospital and assured the world that steps had been taken to prevent the same from happening. The hospital owner who seemed to be worried about his reputation would have done much better to condemn the wrong that had been done in his hospital instead of trying to cover up a mistake that he had no part in.
The hospital however, seems to have no real management. Instead, we have Asthana,an ultra powerful doctor who claims he is God. He seems to be running the hospital and head of management as well as chief surgeon. His subordinates are terrified of him and there is no one they can turn to when they feel they are being mistreated by him. This puts his subordinates in an extremely powerless position. In the beginning of the film we see him taunting his intern Romesh for not being able to inject an antibiotic straight into a patient’s lung, through out the film we see how Riya, his other intern is terrified of him and even Rossa his nurse is too scared to speak up against him in court. Asthana tells his subordinates that if they go against him, it will ruin their future in the medical world. He seems to have absolute power over Romesh and Riya till the point they resign, effectively giving up their dreams of being successful doctors. Asthana’s manipulation of his subordinates and how he makes use of the power imbalance between him and his subordinates are what would have even in the stone cold business world be termed as Workplace Harassment.
Asthana might claim that the hospital is a business, but that doesn’t excuse it from ethics. In fact it simply brings its every action under the unforgiving microscope of business and managerial ethics and the villainous hospital owner of the movies black and white world would be held just as culpable if not more in the real world.
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