Urine to Dettol is our only progress: Lalu

Urine and Dettol are both antiseptic and the only progress we’ve made today is that we now wash our hands with Dettol, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav told homeopathy doctors at a function here on Saturday.

“Earlier we were using urine as antiseptic on cuts or bruises on our body… now we use Dettol, with which we can also wash our hands. This has been the only progress in medical science through the ages,” he said at the Homeopathic Science Congress in Patna. Mr. Prasad was not invited to the function. He had turned up in place of his elder son, State Health Minister Tej Pratap.

“Our chief guest, Tej Pratap Yadav, had another engagement. So Laluji agreed to grace the occasion in his place,” said an official.

Mr. Prasad said homeopathy was the real medical stream. “In allopathy, they only do chir-phad (surgery). But it is only because of homeopathy that people have now started living up to the age of 80,” said Mr. Prasad amidst laughter.

The RJD chief did not restrict himself to medicine. He regaled the audience with his take on other issues as well. “Internet marriages are not durable. People fall in love and get married. But they separate after a while… it is better to accept the choice of your parents and marry in the traditional way,” he said.

Mr. Prasad said he was against increasing the retirement age. “Young boys will not get a chance,” he said. And he demanded “smart villages” instead of “smart cities.”

State BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav said Mr. Prasad’s presence at the homeopathy doctors’ conference showed who was running the government and the health department. “Chief Minister Nitish Kumar should officially declare Lalu Prasad the Super CM of Bihar,” Mr. Yadav said.

However, some of the doctors who attended the congress told The Hindu on Sunday that “they were amazed by his knowledge and the tips he offered on everything from medical science to social science.”