Doctors, lawyers and academics on strike

A thinking man's guide to the angst of the professions

I stare stupefied at headlines like these: One from last June said, 800,000 doctors in India on strike “demanding better working conditions”; this one from November: Bar Council of India calls for a lawyers’ strike across all courts in Delhi protesting “brutal police action”; and another from last December: Delhi University teachers’ association calls for indefinite strike “demanding absorption of temporary teachers”.
 
As a product of an Indian middle-class family in which my father and grandfather were doctors, my uncles, aunts and cousins were either lawyers, college professors or engineers, we were the envy of other families. They were