In this new initiative, Antardhwani brings to you some of the sharpest minds share their 5-point vision of What India Needs to become future ready. India is standing at the cusp of a great change and its people are racing against time to return their nation its ancient glory. Here, we will bring to you changemakers with backgrounds as diverse as politics, business, science, medicine, technology, law, social service, arts and more who will reveal their profound ideas of making India progressive and prosperous.
Corruption is the termite that demolishes the sturdiest of social and economic structures. We need to make India corruption-free in every respect with the concerted and collective effort of the government and citizens.
Our political, bureaucratic, and corporate systems need to show more commitment towards wiping out corruption, where required, through stringent criteria and tougher protocols. It is a myth that education makes people corruption-free, it should include other aspects like culture and clean track record of the person. We have anti-bribery laws to deter people, yet they succumb to various pressures. Corruption is a social malaise, and it will take a peoples’ movement to fight it at the grassroots, for which awareness programmes must be organized to educate people about the self-defeating and counterproductive case of corruption. Rural people need to know how corruption deprives them of the funds deployed for their benefit. Scams and frauds have a detrimental effect on the nation’s image, which in turn impacts the volumes and value of foreign investment and hinders our economic progress. Tax evasion and tax avoidance is another recurring issue in India which breeds a culture of corrupt practices and demoralises the honest taxpayer.
Wellness is integral to wellbeing. We should make healthcare access a fundamental right for all. The pandemic exposed the inadequacy of our healthcare systems like never before, at the same time brought to light the dire need for change, which did happen. However, it is high time we make health and wellbeing our top national priority.
This will call for a more commensurate and more realistic share of the GDP towards healthcare, which is currently among the lowest in the world. According to a Niti Aayog report, about 30% of India’s population is deprived of financial protection for health. The actual percentage could be more given the shortfall in the published numbers of the coverage under the Ayushman Bharat scheme, which supposedly covers 50% of the population. India must seriously enhance the quality and reach of its universal health cover. Also, healthcare infrastructure needs a shot in the arm —number of beds, doctors, and nurses — across public and private institutions. The disparity between rural and urban healthcare systems and services is still wide. According to an estimate, over 75% of healthcare infrastructure and services cater to metros inhabited by a mere 27% of India’s population. Much of our people reside in rural areas where healthcare still needs to penetrate. This scenario must be reversed by making healthcare access a fundamental right, by improving doctor-patient ratio, and making quality treatment affordable for every citizen.
Wellness is integral to wellbeing. We should make healthcare access a fundamental right for all. The pandemic exposed the inadequacy of our healthcare systems like never before, at the same time brought to light the dire need for change, which did happen. However, it is high time we make health and wellbeing our top national priority.
This will call for a more commensurate and more realistic share of the GDP towards healthcare, which is currently among the lowest in the world. According to a Niti Aayog report, about 30% of India’s population is deprived of financial protection for health. The actual percentage could be more given the shortfall in the published numbers of the coverage under the Ayushman Bharat scheme, which supposedly covers 50% of the population. India must seriously enhance the quality and reach of its universal health cover. Also, healthcare infrastructure needs a shot in the arm —number of beds, doctors, and nurses — across public and private institutions. The disparity between rural and urban healthcare systems and services is still wide. According to an estimate, over 75% of healthcare infrastructure and services cater to metros inhabited by a mere 27% of India’s population. Much of our people reside in rural areas where healthcare still needs to penetrate. This scenario must be reversed by making healthcare access a fundamental right, by improving doctor-patient ratio, and making quality treatment affordable for every citizen.
Quality is a way of life, not just a process. We need to make quality all-pervasive across every aspect of education, business, and service. In India, cost considerations largely triumph over value considerations because we collectively do not value quality as a basic need of any product, service, or experience. Having said that, it is not that India is not known for quality products.
Some of our software, cars, two-wheelers, fabrics, apparel, designs, and food products are world-renowned for their impeccable quality. But largely, on the ground, we fail to meet many quality benchmarks. India’s ‘jugaad’ innovation has got much attention, which is ingenious no doubt but leaves room for compromise on quality. An innate penchant for quality can be developed among our young generation by focusing on skill upgradation through experiential learning, beyond the confines of conventional education. In this context, the efforts of the Atal Innovation Mission are indeed pioneering in providing several schools across India learning labs equipped with robots, 3D printers, and hi-tech devices for disruptive innovation led by quality-consciousness. This will in turn help create a highly skilled and adaptive workforce adept at driving cutting edge technologies. Policymakers should encourage academic-industry collaborations across various disciplines and institutions that make quality the defining feature of every innovation and progression.
Dr Nandakumar Jairam is the chairman of Medica Group of Hospitals. A general surgeon, he is the former chairman and group medical director of Columbia Asia Hospitals. He has been the chairman of NABH under the auspices of the Quality Council of India and chairman of FICCI Health Services Committee. He is the founder member of NATHEALTH and present president of Global Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.
Meritocracy is the lifeblood of a thriving democracy. We must make merit the sole prerequisite for giving opportunities to people in employment and entrepreneurship. Discrimination and favouritism in academic institutions and professional organizations have an adverse effect on our social and economic advancement
as they are focused on people rather than projects and ideas, promoting a culture of mediocrity instead of meritocracy. We need to overhaul our systems of candidate selection, performance assessment, compensation, promotions, or other recognition by embracing diversity and inclusion across institutions and organisations. For this, we need to eliminate biases that knowingly or unknowingly creep into the work fabric. Much has been spoken and debated in favour of diversity and inclusion, but the action on the ground has largely been cosmetic. Laws and regulation can only do so much to promote inclusion in academia or industry, what we need is a genuine acceptance of diversity and inclusivity as an integral part of our culture. This would again merit making diversity and inclusion part of the academic curriculum so that children inculcate critical behavioural aspects and learn to steer clear of the systemic biases proactively. This effort will help create happy workplaces of tomorrow where every employee or stakeholder is free to speak their mind, express contrarian views with conviction, and seek fair resolution for the grievances raised, to a greater extent than what it is today.
Accountability helps performance tread the winding route towards fulfilment. We must make accountability an integral part of our vocational, social, and cultural ethos. Going by our public infrastructure and utilities, both urban and rural,
it is clear and evident that there is a lack of proper accountability across public and private institutions responsible for the governance, administration, project planning, and execution. Even after 75 years of independence, public welfare remains an area which is relatively orphaned – with no one to take responsibility. We cherish our democracy which is great, but we overlook the element of local-level accountability which is crucial for effecting positive change at the grassroots. Instead, we crave for centralized power structures which cannot meet the requirements of our large country. India has laws on governance across public and private sectors, but lacks in making accountability integral to authority. There is a lot technology can do to develop smart dashboards capturing the extent and quality of accountability for anyone in the public domain to study and draw inferences from. This initiative can also help our electoral process as people will be motivated to vote for candidates and parties with credible track records and good intentions.
One of the major issues that India must urgently address is lack of enough employment opportunities, particularly in rural areas. More employment opportunities must be created in agriculture and other sectors. To do that and prevent rural-urban migration, India’s villages must develop and become self-sustainable. The government must explore sustainable and innovative ways to fund rural infrastructure – roads, education, healthcare, power, water etc. How do we provide better facilities and improve lives in rural India? If India has over 6,50,000 villages, how do we target each of these and create model villages? The key is to make our villages economically self-reliant with flourishing businesses in and around, and with that infrastructure, roads, schools and colleges and everything else will follow. People would no longer see any need to go to cities. It is time to build the nation village upwards and not city downwards.
The left out majority needs big push
It is imperative that India works to bridge the gap between its growing 350 million who are moving up the ladder with best education and healthcare and those over 900 million people in the lower social economic strata who are still struggling for basic needs. They should be provided ample right opportunities to grow. For this to happen, it is important that good education and skilling opportunities are created in rural areas, tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Education and skill development, particularly for young girls, is crucial so that they become confident and become successful entrepreneurs.
Equitable wealth distribution to bridge inequality gap
When we talk of closing the gap, India must find ways to close the ever-widening divide between its poor masses and small affluent elite. India is among the world’s most unequal nations where its bottom half own less than 3% of its wealth whereas the top 1% own 40% of its wealth. A very small percentage of the country’s economy is controlled by the majority. This wealth inequality has deprived 70% of Indians from bare minimum necessities. Rising inflation is bringing more people into poverty every day. India must ensure equitable distribution of wealth among its people but doing it is indeed a challenge. It is not that it has not been looked into, but the poor-rich gap has only widened. We should now explore whether we can achieve better distribution of wealth through imposing some kind of ‘wealth tax’ on the rich and super rich, increasing revenues by widening the tax base, hiking corporate tax slabs, and lowering taxes for marginal earners.
Reform taxation policy, widen tax base
A key step in this direction will be to reform India’s taxation policy. Given populist underlying tax structures, just 4.5% or 5.9 crore of the total population of the country pay income tax. Many may be paying indirect taxes but it is different from direct tax. Indirect taxes are based on your usage. You pay tax when you go to a restaurant, if you do not you need not pay any tax. It is your choice. Whereas a direct tax must be paid mandatorily. We need to increase the direct tax base. In India, wealthy farmers do not pay any kind of tax as well as wealthy people in many other professions owing to loopholes in the taxation system. This large tax evasion has deprived the country of immense revenues that could be used to fuel its growth. Further, the prevalence of cash transactions, which has remarkably come down in recent times but still persists in large numbers, prevents fair taxation. So, India must strengthen its taxation system, make it fair, transparent, and robust.
Universal healthcare & education
Helpless and devastated. To treat a disease – heart ailments, cancer, or other non-communicable ailments – we must ensure it is treated the right way, the first time. Right technology and talent are required to do that. The treatment costs should be fair for both patients and hospitals, and this cost can be covered by the right kind of insurance that every patient must have today. This will help them get the right treatment, that too cashless across the country and at the same time will incentivize private enterprise to penetrate tier 2 and 3 cities. On the other hand, the government must redefine its role, it cannot be a service provider as well as a monitoring body. The government should only monitor and ensure that the right and optimal quality of services are provided. The best government is that which governs the least. It should not become an impediment to growth. India’s private enterprise is remarkable, and they must be involved in a big way for sustainable delivery of quality healthcare.
Similarly, universal education is critical for India to become an advanced nation. High quality education in multiple regional languages accompanied with job-oriented skills training should be imparted in India’s rural areas. This will bring the children and youth in villages on a par with those in urban areas. Our youth is extremely promising and intelligent. They are doing extraordinarily well abroad and heading several large companies in the US, Europe and elsewhere. There also some exceptional Indian medical professionals and academicians abroad. We have the intellectual capability, and we can make it happen in India as well. If only India is unbound, it can achieve all this.
