The case has been shut, echoing the 1989 settlement, when a 79-day strike ended with a paltry Rs 250 stipend-hike, or the 1992 assurances that ended a 10-day agitation. The agitation just concluded was the third in line, notwithstanding the smaller stirs en route.

Though the doctors, content with a 56 per cent stipend-hike, rule out similar strikes in the near future, it may not be judicious to take the promise at face-value. For, though the stipends are more or less at par with the national average, the difference has not been completely wiped out. A stipend hike in the other States could trigger a repeat of the whole episode. An issue for the government, not for the medicos, to ponder upon.

The authorities should also consider the fact that it is a strike by various medical personnel -- junior doctors, undergraduates, medical teachers, even nurses -- that has caused successive governments to sit up. Though all is quiet on the medical front on the moment, there is no indication whatsoever that the State machinery will get a holistic overhaul.

The paucity of equipment, the poor state of government hospitals, community health centres, primary health centres and reluctance of doctors to venture into the rural sector are some of the vital issues that are not only interlinked but are also asking for serious attention. The medicos cannot afford to be content with their stipend in the same way the Government cannot be content with passing it over.

It is sheer luck -- for both the government and the medicos -- that the patients cannot go on strike. They can only suffer. So, the story of the doctors' agitation cannot be complete without strongly condemning the utter apathy towards patients.

Even the junior doctors and senior doctors concede the patient was the biggest casualty of the agitation. Services at the century-old 1200-bed SSG Hospital, for instance, were almost completely paralysed even as the cold (non-emergency) cases were discharged in herds and new ones turned away.

And while hospital superintendent Kirit Sheth maintained a studied silence, the JDA itself announced how affected the services has been.

The services being provided at 14 of the total 20 wards and OPDs in place of more than 350 resident doctors were clearly inadequate. The so-called ``parallel OPDs'' run by striking doctors got no response and its medicine bank was hardly used.