Ravi Duggal

Fifty percent of India’s citizens remain at the mercy of markets when it comes to healthcare, even as the Indian government remains far behind its goal to commit 2.5 percent of GDP to public health by 2025. A deep-dive into India’s health budget reveals systemic cracks.

India’s Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Under-five mortality rate (U5MR) are not showing any significant decline, and hence, India‘s rank for IMR/U5MR performance globally continues to remain in the bottom quarter of all countries despite our robust economic growth rates. The only way this can be remedied is to invest much more in primary healthcare, ICDS, mid-day meals and MGNREGA to secure the health and nutrition of its citizens, and especially children.

The Sample Registration System (SRS)'s death rate data for 2020 exposes the weakness of recording deaths in India when a massive pandemic strikes. The SRS estimates are the closest to reality, but they too could be underestimates because of their conservative approach.