As presidents of the Resident Doctors Association and Youth For Equality respectively, Anil Sharma and Kaushal Mishra are spokespersons for the students opposed to reservation at AIIMS. The doctors ended the strike when the Supreme Court ordered them back to work and assured them that it would look into their grievances.
Sitting in the Resident Doctors Association office at the AIIMS boys hostel, they say the average middle class Indian has become a bedroom and drawing room protestor. "The mentality is that till there is no fire raging in my house, I am not bothered," says Anil.
The duo say a change has to come in society and Youth for Equality is a beginning. "We want to be political in the sense that our voice should be heard in the forum that makes the laws," says Anil.
YFE members contested the Mumbai and Delhi municipal elections this year.
"Our target is to change Parliament by 2019," says Kaushal, who spends the time after his eight-hour shift at AIIMS' Emergency department involved in YFE work.
In a high-pressure job and with wives and family living on the campus in accommodation they pay for, Anil and Kaushal say they hardly have had time outside work and the movement. "But it is a small price," says Anil.
He says the issue has also led to a polarisation on campus that did not exist before. "The feeling that he is not from my category etc has started. If the government has succeeded in dividing such an educated campus like AIIMS, think of the rest of society."
Image: Dr Kaushal Mishra, a senior resident doctor at AIIMS and president of Youth for Equality, the organisation that led the crusade for the anti-reservation movement.
Photograph: Seema Pant
Also see: Do our institutes connect with the real India?
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