Newsmaker: Why the next 40 days are critical for Ayushman boss Indu Bhushan

The head of the mega health mission says his experience as a bureaucrat in India is standing him in better stead than his East Asian experiences with public health programmes

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was announcing the launch of Ayushman Bharat at Red Fort on Independence Day, the man spearheading the mega health mission was in the audience. No doubt the September 25 deadline was top of the mind. Soon after the function, Indu Bhushan, a former bureaucrat who left the Indian Administrative Service to pursue other goals, was taking questions on how exactly the prime minister’s plan would be executed and how the pilots would take off.

For the past five months, ever since he was appointed the Ayushman CEO in March, Nirman Bhawan has been Bhushan’s second