“India is facing a desperate situation in which poverty coexists with increasing levels of inequity,” said human rights activist Binayak Sen.
Inaugurating a health rights convention organised by the Movement for Socialist Alternative (MASS) in Kozhikode on Saturday, he said inequity killed people on a large scale and to keep the system in place, there was an enormous scale of violence.
He spoke on the importance of the broader Left alternative at a time when the Left in India was passing through a bad phase. Speaking of a socialist alternative, there was a need to articulate on the right to health and health care, as the health care expenditure in the country had risen to unprecedented levels, he said. India needed Rs.1.76 lakh crore to ensure free and quality health care to the entire country. The amount was only one third of the tax waiver given to big corporate companies.
Poverty in India was not just financial. In fact, 35 per cent of the adult population here had a Body Mass Index less than 18.5 that denoted chronic malnutrition. More than 45 per cent of children below 5 years of age were suffering from acute malnutrition and were stunted owing to chronic malnutrition.The convention passed a resolution demanding that the government withdraw policies that would disrupt the public health system, to end looting by drug companies, and to declare that health was a fundamental right.
