A short requiem for Indian civilization

In which civilized country does this happen?

'Seventy-five-year-old Rajpati Devi of Kharagpur died on the streets of Calcutta early on Thursday, after being denied entry into a government-run hospital through the night.

The liver cancer patient died unattended after being referred by Nil Ratan Sircar (NRS) Medical College and Hospital to Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, where she was refused permission to even enter the premises.'

But all is well, for the babus are in action. Or are they?

' “We have not received any complaint yet. I will get in touch with the institute director and ask for a report once we get the complaint,” state health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra told [Telegraph] Metro late on Thursday.

The vice-chairman of the institute’s governing body added that the health department would “definitely look into the matter” once it received a formal complaint.'

I understand how well-intended concerns about the use of the label 'civilized' to create distinctions between nations are, but sometimes politically correct squeamishness just has to take a back seat to proper indignation. Can anyone, with a straight face, claim the mantle of civilization for India anymore?

PS - this post has been festering for a while, mainly in response to this, this, and this. If, as Emerson had us know, the true test of civilization is the kind of man it turns out, we've come a long, long way from the India which produced Tagore.