Nirmala has No Idea of the ‘Never Before’ Budget that She has Promised

Danger of healthcare being pushed further into private hands, writes K RAVEENDRAN.

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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has a penchant for platitudes and hyperbole. Going by her track record with budgets and stimulus packages, while she promises the moon, she ends up delivering sweet nothings. 

Come February, she will be presenting her new budget—another magnum opus. This time she has promised a 'never before' kind of budget, one which will put the pandemic-struck economy back on track. But based on her own admission, she has no idea of what it would be like.

"Send me your inputs so that we can see a budget which is a budget like never before, in a way. 100 years of India wouldn't have seen a budget being made post pandemic like this. And that is not going to be possible unless I get your inputs and wish list, clear observation of what has put you through the challenge… Without that, it is impossible for me to draft something which is going to be that Budget like never before, a Budget which is being made after a pandemic," Sitharaman said while addressing the CII Partnership Summit 2020.

The pandemic has naturally brought in new concerns and a need for solutions, for which she is drumming up support for a bigger role for the private sector in healthcare, which is, of course, in line with Modi government's policy of handing everything over to corporates, a leading cause for farmers to agitate in the extreme weather of the national capital in protest against the new farm laws pushed through the back door.

As such, the Finance Minister said that while providing more funding for infrastructure, it would be important to bring in private partnerships for not just providing buildings and hospitals, but also for providing the capacities to run these hospitals.

But the pandemic has shown the world how private healthcare failed miserably in coping with the outbreak, leading to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, with the bodies unceremoniously dumped in unmarked mass graves by contract labourers because the situation had simply gone out of control. The hardest hit were countries that had become entirely dependent on private healthcare as a consequence of neglecting national health systems under their newly-favoured neoliberal policies, just as what the Modi government has been doing.

According to an analysis of the failure of European healthcare in coping with COVID-19, when beds were most needed for the treatment of acute cases, private providers suffered a liquidity crisis, itself propelled by the primary effects of lockdowns, government regulations and patient deferrals, and the secondary economic impacts of the pandemic. The poorly-resourced public sector health services merely stood as helpless spectators while the private sector players responded with hospital closures, furloughing of staff, refusals of treatment, and attempts to profit by gouging patients. 

The progressive privatisation of medical education and healthcare by successive governments in India has already taken healthcare beyond the reach of vast sections of the people, who cannot afford the out-of-pocket expenses even for minor ailments.

Perhaps there is an irony in the timing of declaration of Nirmala Sitharaman's intent as it was on the same day that the Supreme Court of India called for capping the fees charged by private hospitals, where the court asserted that affordable treatment was a fundamental right of the citizens.

The court observed that right to health is a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution and such right includes affordable treatment and, therefore, the state is duty-bound to make provisions for affordable treatment.

"It cannot be disputed that for whatever reasons the treatment has become costlier and costlier and it is not affordable to the common people at all. Even if one survives from Covid-19, many times financially and economically he is finished. Therefore, either more and more provisions are to be made by the state government and the local administration or there shall be cap on the fees charged by the private hospitals, which can be in exercise of the powers under the Disaster Management Act," the judges said. (IPA)

(K Raveendran is a senior journalist. Views are personal.)