Even a year later, Jyoti Basu inspires body donations

KOLKATA - It could well be that Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu took the decision to pledge his body for medical research in his customary matter-of-fact manner, with a deadpan face. But his gesture, a rarity among politicians in India, has seen a great leap in body donations in West Bengal in the year since his death.

Monday is the former chief minister’s first death anniversary. Pledges for body donation have leapfrogged by over 50 percent in the last one year, non-governmental organisations working in the field told IANS.

Ganadarpan, the central coordinating NGO on body donation in the state, has received around 75,000 pledges from people of various age groups after Basu’s death as against an average of 50,000 in previous years.

Basu, 95, who had a record 23-year stint as chief minister of an Indian state and almost became the country’s prime minister in 1996, died Jan 17 last year.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader’s body was donated to state-owned SSKM Hospital for medical science according to his wish.

“We have received 75,000 pledges since last year regarding body donation. Before Basu’s death we used to receive 50,000 pledges a year,” Ganadarpan general secretary Brojo Roy said.

More than 85 percent of the pledges culminate in body donation, Roy said.

Another NGO corroborated Roy.

“We have received over 65,000 pledges from people eager to donate bodies. The number of pledges has indeed increased since Basu’s death. Many people are pledging and filling up body donation forms,” said Uttar Kolkata Udayer Pathe joint secretary Sanjoy Ghosh.

But Ghosh pointed out that although the figure was substantially more than that in the previous five years, it could improve further if more efforts were put in to raise public awareness levels.

“Also, we have to extend some basic help like ensuring that corpses are received by hospitals on Sundays and also at midnight,” he said.

Roy said his organisation had received 107 bodies since Jan 2010. In 2009, it got 103 bodies.

Roy felt the rush for body donation that had reached almost euphoric proportions in the days and months immediately following Basu’s death has subsided a bit.

But the numbers were still higher than ever before and could form the base for building a movement for removing the reservations a lot of people had about donating bodies.

Roy said the body donation movement would continue to be strengthened by Basu’s gesture.

“It is actually a movement we started many years back. We need to change the mindset of people,” he said.

Over 700,000 people have pledged their bodies in the state over the past 24 years, while around 1,600 bodies were actually donated.

(Pradipta Tapadar can be contacted at pradipta.t@ians.in)