Health Policy

A new National Health Policy was launched in January 2015. Government spending was not increased; instead the role of private healthcare organisations was emphasised. In this, the Modi government showed a different path from that of the UPA government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals. Several national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In 2018, the Ayushman Bharat programme, a government health insurance scheme, was launched.

On October 2, 2014 was launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission), Prime Minister Modi’s flagship sanitation campaign, the belief being that sanitation was basic to ensuring good health. It was a nation-wide campaign in India aimed at cleaning up the streets, roads, and infrastructure of India’s cities, towns and rural areas, and doing away with manual scavenging. The main aim was to make the country free of open defecation to which purpose government encouraged the building of toilets. In 2018, the World Health Organisation said thousands of deaths from diarrhoea were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation mission.