Security Deposit

I am glad I was born at a time which saw to it that I passed MD exam and could take a job of a lecturer at a time when they were not strong on security. I appeared for an interview, they selected me, gave me an appointment letter, and I joined duty. That process was not so simple as it sounds in this one sentence. But they did not make me pay a security deposit by a demand draft. If hey kept a part of my salary as a deposit, I don’t remember it. But it must have been small, or I would have remembered it. It seems everyone who takes a job in the corporation hospitals as a lecturer has to keep a hefty sum of fifty thousand six hundred rupees as security deposit before joining duty. There is a police clearance to be done too. Things have changed indeed. I don’t see anything wrong with either procedure in principle. But to get a security deposit in advance so that one can get a job is a bit too much. Perhaps people who have a lot of money even before they start earning will be able to do it. But what about people who become doctors taking education loan? What about those who become doctors because they love it, not because they can afford to? These young boys and girls, if coming from a middle class or lower middle class, may find it difficult to put up that amount up front, just so that they can start earning. It might be easier if they were asked to join duty, made to work and that amount was cut from their salary of the first two months. I know I have no means of changing that policy (come to think of it, any policy). I know it would be difficult to change the policy even if I had the means, because the attitude of people does not support the change in that direction. One should spend money, they say, without thinking if people have that money. I recall talking to the secretary of the Ethics Committee once. I wa discussing the issue of spending money while preparing and submitting Ethics Committee proposals. That time they wanted a patient information sheet in Marathi, when typing in Marathi was not easily available, and it used to cost ten times ty ping inEnglish did. We had meagre salaries, and the research had to be done using our own money, not fancy grants from pharma companies. Then they wanted five copies of the proposals in plastic folders. I asked if the Marathi part could be done in legible hand rather than typed, since it cost so much. The secretary said” “No!. It has to be typed. You should spend money.” I learned that in order to be academic you should spend money, not just be scientific. Now I learn you have to cough up dough to get a job, even if you have the merit and the will to serve the poor at monthly salaries that you would make in a couple of days in private practice.