Rural India - Healthcare Challenges

Rural India has several challenges, and one of the most prominent ones is lack of quality healthcare. I find it despairing to see the condition of healthcare in every village that I have visited, and people I have talked. Leave aside the availability of hospitals, one cannot easily find a good clinic doctor for outpatient visits. One has to travel for 150-200 kms to reach to a town and access good quality care. Being in such situations, villagers typically avoid seeing a doctor unless it becomes an emergency; and many a times it is too late and life-threatening.

To meet the basic needs, there is a crop of pseudo-doctors (read illegal doctors) have come up. Farmers, rural villagers with no choice are visiting these pseudo-doctors in dire needs. Such pseudo-doctors generally would not have any basic knowledge of medicine, and they are checking the patients, diagnosing them and prescribing unnecessary tests and medicines.

There have been several cases of overdoses of medicines, incorrect medicine prescriptions and delayed discovery of a severe disease. People are suffering, however lack of options are making it difficult for villagers to avail right timely care.

Governments, both federal and state levels need to work together and put in efforts to improve the healthcare standards in villages; which comprises of over 60% of India. Governments needs to start with some  basic provisions such as setting up rural clinics within a proximity of 50-60 kms, and ensuring to have a quality hospital within 150 km. 

To facilitate access to good quality doctors and hospitals, government needs to motivate them by monetizing them or providing special accreditation to them.

Governments may want to include a special clause for doctors to retain their certification or accreditation by ensuring that they spend certain hours of time in villages providing care.

Governments and Private players can tie hands to set-up facilities in rural set-ups and in turn governments may want to reward them through relaxed tax norms, or some other means.

Apart from governments, and private players, I would urge the charitable institutions to focus on rural healthcare; and bring more awareness to general public on this issue.

Demonetization: What Rupee could do, Bolivar could not manage it!

On October 8, 2016, India implemented unthinkable is to implement Demonetization. It effective removed the currency notes of rupees 500 & 1000 (86% of cash in circulation) from market by declaring them as an invalid legal tender.

Venezuela, taking a cue from this, tried to implement something similar by scraping Bolivar 100 notes, and replacing it with higher currency notes (up to Bolivar 20000).

While the intent on both the occasions was more or less the same to curb corruption and deter black money hoarders; it met with different fate in both the countries.

In India, the implementation still seems to be successful, and true success of demonetization can be measured only after a few months. It had to be rolled back in Venezuela within few days of rolling it out.

I see three main reasons for the successful implementation of demonetization in India:

1. A vision: Clarity of thought on the need to implement this. Underlying idea was very pertinent to the people in general.
2. Better Marketing: Howsoever short notice to implement the initiative, the concept was presented rightly to the people. Crisp and clear message noting the point #1, and coupled with  with broader nationalism angle left little opposition. 
3. Conductive Environment: Indian economy is comparatively in much better shape, and government still enjoys a majority support. Government came up with this offensive, when opposition was asking questions on its pre-election manifesto to curb corruption. It was killing two birds with one strike.

These three reasons allowed the people to embrace the idea, absorb the pain (supposedly short term) and support the initiative.