Why I cannot pay a tribute to a dear friend

Abstract

IT IS INDEED HARD TO BELIEVE THAT I AM WRITING MY TRIBUTES to my dear friend Amit, who for over two decades played crucial and multiple roles in my life as mentor, hand-holder and colleague. What makes it more unbelievable is that we were together for almost 20 days in Savar, Dhaka in November 2018 -barely till a week before he left us forever -working closely on organising the International People's Health University (IPHU) and the 4th People's Health Assembly (PHA) of the People's Health Movement (PHM).I can still vividly remember when I first met Amit at the Delhi Science Forum (DSF) office in 1994. That was the period when women's groups were actively involved in the campaign against population control policies, injectable contraceptives and coercive sterilisations. I was working with Jagori, a feminist organisation, those days. We were planning to come up with a strategy to stop the introduction of the injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera in the Family Welfare Programme. Friends from All India Drug Action Network (Aidan) asked me to become involved in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) suit on bannable drugs that was being filed by DSF. A friend, Kalpana Mehta from Saheli, suggested I should meet a certain Dr. Amit Sengupta at his office in Saket J Block Market and consult him about the prayers for the intervention.I was new in Delhi those days. I took the bus number 500 from South Extension to Saket, and walked into his office. The room was full of papers, files and books. I noticed someone sitting behind a table piled up with papers in a corner, barely visible. I asked him very politely that I wanted to meet Dr. Amit Sengupta. He looked up with a rather serious look and said, "I am Amit… yes, what is it about?". I was extremely nervous in the beginning, but slowly managed to have a conversation. He was very supportive and explained the process with great patience.Over the years we met far more frequently and we both became a part of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) and PHM. Amit was a founding member of the PHM and was instrumental in building the Movement as a globalpeople's health network bringing together movements, organisations, academics and activists committed to the struggle for health for all.He was a major organizer the IPHU, a capacity building program for young health activists; and theWorld Health Organisation-Watch (WHO-Watch) in Geneva which intervenes with own statements into the debates at the World Health Assembly. Amit was the editor of the Global Health Watch (GHW), the civil society's alternative report to the WHO's World Health Report, which covers almost every aspect of the state of global health within the social-economic and political realities. He brought his enormous political, organisational and leadership capacity to both PHM and JSA. He could easily relate complex analytical information in a very simple manner to the grassroots health activists in JSA through his speeches, workshops and discussions.Mentoring and building the capacities of young activists in this struggle was anothe...