Healthcare in India

While the union government announced its plan to extend the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana to the unorganised working class poor like rickshaw-pullers, ragpickers, mineworkers, sanitation workers, etc, the Government of Maharashtra has decided to scrap RSBY and replace it with the Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana. This article analyses the conditions of waste pickers and argues not to pit one type of healthcare against another and not to scrap schemes like the RSBY that have come anyway too late.

Following the murder of the anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar in Maharashtra there has been a lot of outrage against quacks and "babas". However, in a diverse and pluralist country, it is difficult to determine which healing practices constitute "superstition" and which are genuine. Further, the rationalist movement fails to distinguish adequately between faith and blind faith often seeing the opposition between science and religion in either/or terms. In this rationalist world view, there is little space for the mystical, spiritual, or even the cultural and symbolic.

A comprehensive change in looking at nurses' issues is required, not only from the perspective of "quality healthcare", but also of their working conditions and treatment by hospital management. Better organising and increasing strikes by nurses has compelled the state - the Delhi government - to respond to their concerns.