Health of budget• DESPITE healthcare coming into focus this year, the healthcare outlay still accounts only for about 2 per cent of GDP. The problem is that the government does not extend support to the bigger healthcare players because it claims they cater to the more prosperous section of society. Yet it knows that only 20 lakh Indians have health insurance. How do we ensure more healthcare for the poorer sections? It has been estimated that 40 per cent of spurious drugs in the market come via the government hospitals themselves, so perhaps private care can introduce much-needed quality and accountability. Granted, private hospitals have started to resemble hotels. Yet they should be required to channelise a part of their profit into providing free healthcare for the poor. In order to achieve this, India should exploit its potential for health tourism. The reason we lag behind is that unlike places like Bangkok, it is not as easy to get visas to come here for medical procedures because of red tapism. Only if there is sensible leadership by the government that takes into account the unique parallel economy of India, and exploits the potential growth of medical tourism, can there be significant progress made in this sphere. —Akshay Bawa, New DelhiCongress failure• THE Congress Party has done nothing wrong in asking the government to provide funds in pro-poor schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or National Rural Health Mission. That can’t be termed political interference in governance (‘How the north was lost’, IE, February 28). What the Congress lacks is the manpower that would link people’s needs and rulers’ attention together. Why didn’t the party organise any rally against price rise or the growing insecurity among the people? In a functioning democracy like us, if the rulers fail to care for the people, the people will respond by not returning them to power. —Naval Langa, Ahmedabad• THE Punjab and Uttaranchal elections results should serve as an eye-opener for the Congress regime at the Centre about its anti-common man policies. The FM does not pay any heed to the plight of the common person, especially the salaried class. The party has not learnt from its earlier and current defeats. It has always been the case with the Congress that once it is voted to power, it resorts to its old gimmicks again — taxing the common man. How long can we bear the brunt of taxes? Those in power will not feel the pinch of inflation. The government is trying hard to explain away the inflation figure. It’s time P. Chidambaram learnt from ‘management guru’ Lalu Prasad Yadav.— C.R. Ramakrishnan, New DelhiFacing terror• TAVLEEN SINGH’S ‘Terror without a face’ (IE, February 25) has raised some very pertinent questions regarding the way India is dealing with rampant terrorist attacks. We still don’t know what really took place on December 13. Mohammed Afzal has been convicted, but we still do not know who the five (some say six) terrorists were. The families of the victims deserve to know who the perpetrators of these crimes were and where they came from. Every time an attack occurs, all fingers point to Pakistan. If that is the truth then why doesn’t the security agencies come up with strong evidence? Kudos to Tavleen Singh for raising this important issue in the wake of the Samjhauta tragedy. — Neha Rathi, New Delhi
