This paper attempts to explain three broad trends that underpinned the relationship between the state, market, and healthcare: first, the state is moving away from its health provider role to a regulator role, which involves shifting the resources, authority, and responsibility to diverse public and private actors. Second, in the name of the pandemic, the state has opened up fresh frontiers of privatisation and corporatisation of healthcare, extending to non-metropolitan cities and small towns. Third, the above two processes would lead to further exclusion of lower castes, classes, and genders from access to healthcare, spiralling health inequalities.
