Every New Year may be the direct descendant of a long line of proven criminals, as Ogden Nash once speculated. But let us not knock the power of hopes, prayers and wish lists. Especially the wish list as 2015 draws to a close and 2016 beckons.
So here is my most fervent wish for India. We have wasted enough time and energy jousting over ghar wapsi, love jihad, beef ban, and so on. Can we please get back on track now?
Arguably, over the past few weeks, there has been a flurry of announcements about infrastructure development and innovative foreign policy. Now there is a big buzz around “Start-up India, Stand Up India” — an initiative that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will formally launch on January 16. The promos say it is the government’s New Year gift to “young people” who want to set up new businesses or innovative projects.
That is good news. Opportunity should knock on the door of everyone even in the most remote corner of the country. But so should the basics — education and health. Where is the buzz around making India educated and healthy?
On top of my wish list is a clear road map for public healthcare. The vast majority of Indians live in morbid fear of a catastrophic illness in the family. Most of us who are not working for the government have no choice but to pay for our medical treatment. Insurance covers only a small section of the population. Even for them, it only covers expenses during hospitalisation. Millions of families sink into poverty due to medical bills. Many Indians die because their families do not have the money to pay for treatment.
In the arena of public healthcare, it is not at all clear where we are headed. The health ministry released the draft of a new National Health Policy (NHP) in December 2014. Health experts found it highly promising. But then there were divergent views among those advising the government and now it is in cold storage.
Health experts have been consistently saying that financial allocations to public healthcare must be increased and that rural and urban primary care services, district hospitals etc. must be strengthened. There are mixed signals on all these from the government.
The one encouraging announcement in recent days is that the government has decided to revise its list of essential medicines to add drugs for diseases ranging from cancer and HIV/AIDS to hepatitis C. This should make these medicines more affordable. But the details are yet to be revealed. Still, we need to know what the big picture is to reduce the overall out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the average Indian.
By now, it is clear that the Modi government is not comfortable with the idea of universal healthcare which experts all over the world advocate. It places its hopes on health insurance instead. But we are still in the dark about the road map. Can we please know the details of how the government’s proposed universal health insurance plan will be implemented? What will it pay for? What will it not pay for? Officials chant the mantra of public-private-partnership which has an alluring alliterative ring but what will it deliver on the ground for you and me? My fervent wish is for a straight answer.
Take the second building block for an innovative India — quality education. Once again, what we need is a clear road map on the subject. As is the case with healthcare, those of us who have enough money need not lose our night’s sleep about the abysmal standard of public education in this country. For a price, often a very steep one, India offers the best.
But what about the rest? Enrolment figures in schools are going up but millions of children are dropping out, at least partly because in government-run schools, they are not being taught anything at all. Survey after survey points out that Class 5 children cannot read Class 2 textbooks, Class 10 mathematics teachers cannot do Class 6 arithmetic sums and so on. This has been going on for years. It needs to stop right now.
Unless there is a minimum quality in basic school education — whether provided by the government or a private entrepreneur — all this talk about innovative India, start-up India, will remain nothing more than talk. It is not good enough to say we invented the zero and are now sending a spacecraft to Mars. We have always had that minority of very bright people. But unless the whole country learns to add two and two and then some more, India cannot stand up and be counted.
As in healthcare, education is one area where the government is retreating. From playschools to universities, privatisation is the buzzword. In theory, there is nothing wrong with that. But in practice, there is plenty wrong — there are plenty of private schools that have neither the classrooms nor the teachers nor the playgrounds that are essential.
There are plenty of private medical and engineering colleges that have neither the laboratories nor the faculty they are mandated to have. It is no good saying very often government-run educational institutions do not have these either. That is why Indians are spending so much to put their children in private schools and universities. Not to provide these basic facilities is cheating. The government must ensure this stops now.
When the private sector fills up the vacuum left by a government retreating from the spheres of public healthcare and education, there are certain areas the private entrepreneur will still not touch — areas like fundamental research and development, where the return on investment is uncertain.
Governments in even the most gung-ho free market economies have to find money to finance such research. There is no getting away from that. As renowned academic Mariana Mazzucato pointed out during a TED talk, “the Internet, which you can surf the Web anywhere you are in the world; GPS, where you can actually know where you are anywhere in the world; the touchscreen display, which makes it also a really easy-to-use phone for anybody… the very smart, revolutionary bits about the iPhone, and they’re all government-funded.”
It is time to draw up a list of non-negotiables, what we will not compromise with under any circumstances. Healthcare, basic quality education, fundamental research and development should be among the top items on that list.
And if this goes the way of most New Year resolutions, we will remain in an illusory land where we may think we are becoming a knowledge economy and an innovation hub but are actually doing nothing of the kind.
The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com
Download the all new Deccan Chronicle app for Android and iOS to stay up-to-date with latest headlines and news stories in politics, entertainment, sports, technology, business and much more from India and around the world.
