Equity and Access: Health Care Studies in India

Equity and Access attempts to unravel the complex narrative of why inequities in the health sector are growing and access to basic health care is worsening, and the underlying forces that contribute to this situation. It draws attention to the way globalization has influenced India’s development trajectory as healthcare issues have assumed significant socio-economic and political significance in contemporary India. The volume explains how state and market forces have progressively heightened the iniquitous health care system and the process through which substantial burden of meeting health care needs has fallen on the individual households. Twenty-eight scholars comprising social scientists, medical experts, public health experts, policy makers, health activists, legal experts, and gender specialists have delved into the politics of access for different classes, castes, gender, and other categories to contribute to a new field ‘health care studies’ in this volume. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach within a broader political-economy framework, the volume is useful for understanding power relations within social groups and complex organizational systems.

Contents: Introduction: Health Inequities in India—The Larger Dimensions/Purendra Prasad. I. State, Market, and Health Care: 1. State, Community, and Primary Health Care: Empowering or Disempowering Discourses?/Ritu Priya. 2. Health Care Reforms: Do They Ensure Social Protection for the Labouring Poor?/Purendra Prasad. 3. Medical–Industrial Complex: Trends in Corporatization of Health Services/Rama V. Baru. 4. Social Roots of Medical Education/Neha Madhiwalla. 5. Medical Education and Basic Health Care: Forging Connections/Anand Zachariah. II. Pharmaceuticals and Experimentation: 6. Globalization, Intellectual Property Rights, and Pharmaceuticals/Amit Sengupta. 7. Access to Pharmaceuticals: Role of State, Industry, and Market/S. Srinivasan and Malini Aisola. 8. Structure, Organization, and Knowledge Production of Clinical Trial Industry/Roger Jeffery, Gerard Porter, Salla Sariola, Amar Jesani, and Deapica Ravindran. 9. Body as ‘Resource’ in Surrogacy and Bio-Medical Research: New Frontiers and Dilemmas/Sarojini Nadimpally and Vrinda Marwah. III. Equity Issues in Health Care-Gender, Caste, Disability, and Violence: 10. Health, Disability, and Equity: Conversations among Bodies, Discourses, and Law/Renu Addlakha. 11. Caste, Class, and Gender on the Margins of the State: An Ethnographic Study among Community Health Workers/Madhumita Biswal. 12. Legitimizing Violence: A Narrative of Sexual Health/Asima Jena. 13. Violence against Women as a Health Care Issue: Perceptions and Approaches/Sangeeta Rege and Padma Bhate-Deosthali. IV. Right to Health and Universal health Strategies: 14. Universal Health Coverage: How Viable?/K. Srinath Reddy and Manu Raj Mathur. 15. Kerala’s Early Experience: Moving towards Universal Health Coverage/Sunil Nandraj and Devaki Nambiar. 16. A Financing Strategy for Universal Access to Health Care: Maharashtra Model/Ravi Duggal. 17. The Right to Health: A Winding Road to Actualization/Kajal Bhardwaj, Veena Johari, and Vivek Divan. Index.