00:00In the Mahabharat, Bhishma chose the moment of his death.
00:03But in modern India, one family had to ask the highest coat of the land for that permission.
00:09Finally, on 11th March, the Supreme Court allowed the family to withdraw life support for their son.
00:13But the real story is why they had to fight for that permission in the first place.
00:17Imagine being a father fighting not to save your son, but to let him die.
00:21That is the story of Harish Rana and his parents.
00:24Even the judge had tears in his eyes while deciding the fate of this 32-year-old man,
00:27allowing him to die with dignity.
00:32Harish was a young man in 2013, when a fall left him in vegetative state.
00:36Medicine had no hope to offer, but the system had no roadmap either.
00:40In 2018, the Supreme Court had legalized passive euthanasia, but death judgment had a gap.
00:45It covered ventilators, not feeding tubes.
00:47In 2024, Harish's parents approached the Delhi High Court, seeking passive euthanasia for their son.
00:52But their plea was rejected on the grounds that Rana had not been placed on life support machines
00:57and was hence able to sustain himself without any external aid.
01:01That was the gap in the law that the Ranas were forced to fight.
01:04This week, the Supreme Court filled that gap.
01:06It allowed Harish's treatment to be withdrawn.
01:09The bench, by all accounts, delivered the verdict visibly emotional.
01:12Which tells you something about the weight that India has been trying to avoid.
01:15Here are some numbers that should bother you.
01:18An estimated 5.4 million Indians need palliative care every year.
01:23Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with serious illnesses.
01:27Basically providing relief from symptoms like pain and other illness-related stress that patients go through.
01:32The problem in India is, palliative care is accessible to less than 1% of the population
01:37and over 90% of the country's palliative care units are concentrated in a single state, Kerala.
01:44In fact, India ranks at the bottom of the Global Quality of Death Index
01:47and Living Wills, the legal documents the Supreme Court made valid in 2018
01:51that let you decide in advance what happens if you end up like Harish Rana.
01:55The procedure was so complicated that even the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine
01:59had to go back to court in 2023 just to get the guidelines simplified.
02:03Goa then became the first state to actually implement those directives.
02:07When a Mumbai doctor then filed what may be among the first living wills with the BMC
02:11in early 2024, it was treated as news.
02:14Seven years after the law changed, one doctor, news.
02:18In Mahabharat, Bhishma is mortally wounded.
02:21He could die at any moment, but he does not.
02:23Because Bhishma had been granted a boon, the power to choose the moment of his own death.
02:27So, he waits. He waits for the right astronomical moment, the Uttarayana,
02:32the auspicious Nautra journey of the sun.
02:34He waits for a conscious, prepared, dignified exit.
02:37Most of us won't be in that situation, but we can decide in advance what we want.
02:41We can file a living will.
02:42We can have the conversation with our families while everyone is healthy enough to have it.
02:46The Supreme Court gave this family an answer today.
02:48The question is, why did they have to travel that far to get it?
02:51I'm Anish Adhikari. Thank you for watching The Culture Project on MOH.
02:55MOH.
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