``The Delhi Government will set up a committee within a month and invite the quacks to get themselves registered,'' said Alok Kumar, Chairman of the Select Committee. ``Then, we will start appropriate training courses for them so that they can take up jobs or start their own businesses. To make the package attractive, we'll offer these courses for free and provide soft loans to those who want to venture out on their own.'' Because the quacks have a passing acquaintance with medicine, there are plans to train them for paramedical services as well as for various government health programmes, like the one for tuberculosiscontrol.

But critics have smelt a roundabout way of dangling election-eve largesse. ``There's no way anyone will be able to tell whether a person who registers as a quack is one or not,'' commented a senior doctor with a government hospital on the condition of anonymity. ``After all, no one really knows who these quacks are and where they operate from.''

Still, the Delhi Medical Association (DMA), which has been spearheading the campaign for the Bill, is satisfied at the outcome of the session. ``The Delhi Government says the implementation will take time because the Bill's financial implications are huge,'' said Rajesh Chawla, President, DMA. ``But we are ready to wait. At least all parties are supporting the Bill and they are on record.'' The doctors have called off their fast, but they insist they won't step down their pressure.

Which is what victims like Sudha Mahajan (not her real name), 19, badly need to stop unscrupulous operators from ensnaring them with their honeytraps. Sudha, who livesin a jhuggi-jhopri cluster in the neighbourhood of Sri Venkateswara College, had been rushed to Safdarjung Hospital in a serious condition which doctors describe as septic abortion. She was bleeding profusely from the uterus after being `operated upon' by her friendly neighbourhood `doctor'. When the case got complicated, the `doctor' simply dumped her saying her uterus was `abnormal'.

Sudha has been rendered incapable of conceiving again, for the `doctor' had left her with a badly perforated uterus and a severe infection in her fallopian tubes. She can do little more than accept her fate, but her `doctor' has a thriving practice.

Cases like Sudha's come to government hospitals daily. ``Some 4-5 per cent of the 500 women who come to us every month suffer from acute bleeding, thanks to being mishandled by untrained people who pretend to be doctors or dais,'' said a University College of Medical Sciences doctor on the condition of anonymity. These may be extreme cases, but self-proclaimeddoctors cause more harm than meets the eye by indiscriminately prescribing steroids and antibiotics -- promoting both infections and drug resistance.

But people have a good reason to go to quacks. Government hospitals are what they can afford, but they are inaccessible to people without `pull'. ``For a daily-wage labourer who earns about Rs 100 a day,'' explained DMA's Chawla, ``just one visit to a government hospital means a day's income lost, thanks to the long queues and endless paper chase. So, it makes sense for him to go to the neighbourhood `doctor' and get instant relief for, say, Rs 20. That's what he may have to pay as bus fare to go to the hospital.''

It is on these compulsions of daily life that quackery thrives and there's little that the existing law can do about it. When the Delhi High Court, acting on a PIL (public interest litigation) in March 1997, directed the Anti-Quackery Cell to conduct raids, some 10-15 arrests were made in a flurry of activity, but the quacks were back in businessthe next day after paying the regulation fine of Rs 250. Hopefully, when the Delhi Quackery Prohibition Bill, 1997, is enacted, all this will change for the better.