CELEBRATING MAHATMA GANDHI AFTER 75 YEARS.HAVE WE LIVED UP TO HIS DREAMS OF A NEW INDIA?

Dr. Shuchin Bajaj is a doctor social entrepreneur. He was inspired by his roots as the son of refugee parents to give up his work in Delhi's biggest private hospital and open hospitals, clinics and digital health services aimed at providing high quality low cost health care to communities that don't have access.

Dr.Shuchin Bajaj
Founder & Director
Ujala Cygnus Healthcare

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, believed that the village should be the center of all activity in India. He saw the village as the backbone of the country and believed that the true measure of India's progress lay in the well-being of its rural population. As we mark the 75th anniversary of his death on January 30th, it is a tragic reality that we have failed to live up to his vision for the village and rural India. This is particularly evident in the state of Healthcare in Rural India.

Today as the world stresses on economic growth, globalization and privatization, a silent section of the society seems to slip through all safety nets. In India, one is talking about at least 26 percent of the population who fit into this category. The percentage varies from state to state. In most of the northern states poverty seems to be increasing and if you further disaggregate from urban to rural, you will find that 40 percent of the rural population in 10 states in India are below the poverty line. If one further disaggregates the figures into schedule caste, schedule tribes, the marginalized, the percentages just keep on rising. In India, health care has emerged as one of the largest sector with maximum expenditure incurred.

An astounding 60 percent of this is out of pocket expense. India has one of the highest proportions of private health spending, comparable only to only few countries in the world with a recent history of major internal unrest, such as Cambodia and Myanmar. Such is the lack of trust in the public health system that not only do 80 percent of the wealthy seek treatment in the private sector, but a similar percentage of the poor also goes to private practitioners, even though the treatment may be of low quality and provided by untrained practitioners.

Some unfortunate statistics reflect this state of affairs: