The fault line of poor health infrastructure
Updated:
Updated:
May 21, 2021 01:07 IST
As and when India emerges on the other side of the pandemic, bolstering public care systems has to be the top priority
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As and when India emerges on the other side of the pandemic, bolstering public care systems has to be the top priority
As the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic ravages India, many bitter home truths and fault lines have been starkly exposed. One of these is the abysmally poor state of the country’s health infrastructure. World Bank data reveal that India had 85.7 physicians per 1,00,000 people in 2017 (in contrast to 98 in Pakistan, 58 in Bangladesh, 100 in Sri Lanka and 241 in Japan), 53 beds per 1,00,000 people (in contrast to 63 in Pakistan, 79.5 in Bangladesh, 415 in Sri Lanka and 1,298 in Japan), and 172.7 nurses and midwives per 1,00,000 people (in contrast to 220 in Sri Lanka, 40 in Bangladesh, 70 in Pakistan, and 1,220 in Japan).
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Household incomes in India are yet to recover from the Covid-19 lockdown shock
Even as the country ‘unlocked’ in September 2020, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s data shows that unemployment numbers rose to over 9% in December. PTI
Indian incomes were on a downward slope – and then came the pandemic.
Household incomes in rural and urban India had begun to shrink from September 2019 owing to an ongoing economic slowdown. But the steepest decline came in April 2020, according to data from the business information company Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, which was analysed by Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data and Analysis.
Why Modi government is moving away from the path of economic austerity
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The Narendra Modi government, which kept a hawk-eye on spending over the past seven years, has said that the fiscal deficit for 2020-’21 will stand at 9.5%. This would be the highest at least since India liberalised its economy in 1991.
February 8, 2021
The Narendra Modi government, which kept a hawk-eye on spending over the past seven years, has said that the fiscal deficit for 2020-21 will stand at 9.5%. This would be the highest at least since India liberalised its economy in 1991.
For context, the fiscal deficit for 2019-20 was 4.6% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP).
On the face of it, a high fiscal deficit the difference between the government’s revenues and expenditure is alarming. It increases government borrowings and sends it into an interest repayment cycle, which only further increases spending in the future.
Governments in the past have taken the route of austerity to keep the fiscal deficit in check. This has been a common economic strategy, its biggest champions being former US president Ronald Reagan and former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.