DNA Edit: In bad health

In an increasingly integrated world, the global picture is often representative of Indian realities. A new report by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) that monitored universal health coverage across nations in 2017 holds a mirror to mankind. If half of the world’s population does not have access to essential healthcare services, there are reasons to believe that the march of civilisation has halted.

Each year 100 million people, which also includes people from India, fall into poverty because they have to pay for steep medical expenses. In India, this is a familiar trend where families are known to have perished because of the exorbitant costs of undergoing treatment in the private health sector. With government hospitals and clinics hobbled by lack of funds, equipment and manpower, people have no other recourse but to avail of the services of private hospitals. Before long, they are inundated with bills that force them to sell their meagre possessions.

This exploitation happens right under the nose of central and state governments which, by failing to act against corruption, become active accomplices. Nearly five crore Indians are driven to penury due to such malpractices, according to the WHO and World Bank study. The Lancet medical journal’s 2015 report on the findings of the Global Burden of Disease Study, put India in the 154th position out of 195 countries in terms of access to health care.

In the last two years with population consistently on the rise, and a near-absence of governmental intervention, the scenario has become increasingly bleak. Health indicators are considered one of the true markers of a humane society. Hence, the report on healthcare should be read along with the World Inequality Lab’s World Inequality report 2018, which says that there has been a substantial increase in economic inequality in India since the country opened up to financial reforms in the 80s. Consider this: In 2014, the share of national income captured by India’s top one per cent of earners was 22 per cent, while the share of top 10 per cent of earners was around 56 per cent.

The top 0.1 per cent of earners has continued to capture more growth than all those in the bottom 50 per cent combined. Simply put, the rich has become richer and the poor have become poorer even as the latter lives in the false hope that good days are just round the corner.

To be fair, this more or less reflects the global trend, but in India, the so-called growth story sidesteps the poverty narrative to avoid embarrassment. If the first 30 years following Independence was about striving for equitable distribution of wealth, then the subsequent years were marked by a widening of the chasm.

With liberalisation, the gulf increased at a much faster speed with institutional backing. Sadly, a political party or a coalition is elected by the very people who are victims of an unjust system because the rich and the mighty do not go out to vote. And, yet, change remains a distant dream.