Check-in, check-out: India’s fast-moving health bureaucracy

After 15 years and 12 secretaries, a new health policy is in place. If the administrative bureaucracy isn’t reformed, public and private care will remain parallel tracks

For reasons of retirement, political interference or a personal choice, health secretaries have had short tenures

Brief tenures may work in regulatory departments like coal or mines. But in social sectors, the top bureaucrat’s aptitude and length of stay make all the difference

Healthcare is a challenging sector, and bureaucrats often view it as less glamorous than commerce or finance

With a new health policy in place, it’s time the government empowered the secretary with resources and a long tenure

Earlier this month, a very forgotten-type of policy was announced. After 15 years, India got a new National Health Policy 2017. Since in a democracy the government often delivers what the people demand, such a lapsed policy revision, after 2002, could be blamed on the people. On what they demand from their elected representatives. But there’s another plausible explanation for this apathy.

AUTHOR

Seema Singh

Seema has over two decades of experience in journalism. Before starting The Ken, Seema wrote “Myth Breaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech”, published by HarperCollins in May 2016. Prior to that, she was a senior editor and bureau chief for Bangalore with Forbes India, and before that she wrote for Mint. Seema has written for numerous international publications like IEEE-Spectrum, New Scientist, Cell and Newsweek. Seema is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MacArthur Foundation Research Grantee.

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AUTHOR

Ruhi Kandhari

Ruhi writes on the impact of healthcare policies, trends in the healthcare sector and developments on the implementation of Electronic Health Records in India. She has an M. Sc. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics.

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