Dislocated priorities: Why profit motive can't defeat the pandemic in India

A country of 1.4 billion people needs a system to support their most basic need: survival

India has never been prepared for a public health emergency of the scale of Covid-19. No country has. But the government’s dislocated priorities have left the nation particularly vulnerable. It is now running short of basic infrastructure including oxygen tanks, ventilators, antiviral medication and hospital beds, with hundreds of thousands of new infections being recorded every day. On Thursday, the country added 314,835 cases, the highest daily tally in the world since the pandemic began.

Public health spending was dismally low to begin with, at just close to 1% of India’s gross domestic product. The country ranks 179th out 189