Make basic health a right: Amartya Sen

Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen hopes that the government of India will soon be bringing in legislation for making basic health services an entitlement of the people.

He feels that although the government, has rightly accepted and accordingly legitimised the people's right to food, work and education, nothing has been done to give them the right to basic health services, adding that because of the reliance on the private health system, most poor suffer.

“There is a real issue there. While whole of Europe, China, Singapore, Japan and many other countries have public health system in place, we have no such thing here,” Sen said.

 

Sen's Pratichi Trust has formed a research institute to study the basic questions related to the social issues like primary education, primary health and poverty. Leading social scientists like Partha Chatterjee, Manabi Majumdar, Achin Chakraborty and others took part in its first meeting of the advisory board today. While announcing the formation of the Pratichi Research Institute,

Sen discussed at length the need for all round growth in the society. He reiterated his position that while, “I am in favour of economic growth, because it can be very helpful in advancing living standards and battling poverty that should not be the end in itself”. Elaborating on his argument he cites the case of Bangladesh, which is way ahead of India in most of the human development indicators (HDI), though in terms of income India has a huge lead over Bangladesh. Sen points out to the key to success of Bangladesh, the female literacy rate in Bangladesh is higher than in India.