Srinagar, Dec. 15 -- Supreme Court's ruling that doctors who died on duty during the COVID-19 pandemic are entitled to insurance under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana is not just a legal pronouncement; it is a moral thunderclap. It is the nation's conscience finally stirred, a recognition that those who stood unflinching in the storm of contagion were not expendable footnotes but guardians of life who gave everything. Their sacrifice was not abstract; it was livid in suffocating wards, in the relentless rhythm of ventilators, in the trembling hands that held patients when families could not. To deny their families justice would have been to deny the very soul of our collective struggle.

Doctors were the riverbanks when the flood o...