LURE OF EASY BUCKS & IRNOY OF SURVIVAL
..Let’s try to be practical here. To quote we all depend on Statistics but to gain insight we need to extract qualitative analysis that a manipulative and quantitative science like Statistics would not be able to provide. World Bank estimates say 28% of rural India and 26% of Urban India is living below the poverty line today while the same agency had estimated around 42% of the overall Indian population to be living below the poverty line, i.e., having subsistence on $1.25 a day. Again a World Bank study pegged India’s lower-middle-income class around 42% of the population in 2007. If we look into these figures, we find a large chunk devoid of every basic amenity of life. Prune the understanding to a finer level and see! The population chunk above the poverty line may be surviving on any sum above $1.25 and if we do not go much into the statistics, we all know the plight, the widespread base of lower middle class that survives not much above this $1.25 limit. Let’s think what we can do with Rs 55 a day earning. Here we are!
This felony of depravity at bottom of the pyramid is the root cause of most of the evil in our social structure and gives sustenance to the victim as well as the evildoer. When someone can hardly manage a meal, it is outrightly atrocious to think the person would be able to finance his healthcare needs. The class belonging to such Indians is a readily available vast pool of preys for these blood-suckers. The irony starts.
A healthcare industry report says the Indian healthcare market is presently at $35 billion and is expected to reach over $75 billion in 2012, $150 billion in 2017, and $280 billion by 2022. The report further goes on elaborating emergence of corporate hospitals, increasing options for healthcare financing and leapfrogging medical tourism. The visiting cost for any small hospital in a small city is at least in the range of Rs 100-200 and we can very comfortably put this ceiling around Rs 500 in case of multi specialty hospitals, and nothing less that Rs 1000 would no anything, just for a single visit, to the ‘corporate’ reincarnation of healthcare. Let’s not talk about a person earning Rs 55 a day, can a person earning even Rs 200 a day avail services of private hospitals without compromising on some other basic needs of life? We know the answer.
So this wide base of India’s human capital has govt hospitals as the only viable options. But visiting a govt hospital may be economical in terms of doctor’s fee; two other major problems thwart people willing to access the govt healthcare infrastructure. Long waiting hours at cost of daily wage earning and high medicine costs. The irony continues.
When someone is surrounded with so many hardships, when every day is a new battle, just for merely passing the day somehow, to make the count one more, the lure of easy bucks becomes a much awaited reality for the person. Survival becomes the primary instinct and the ‘right and wrong’ debate becomes the primary obstacle to the survival..
Continued..
