By the time one may finish reading this article, more than fifty Indians will be pushed deeper into poverty - not by unemployment, not by floods or conflict, but by illness. In the world’s fastest-growing economy, falling sick and chronically ill is a silent occurrence from the lowest class to the upper most class in wealth and income distributions.
In a year when India celebrated its climb into the ranks of the world’s top five largest economies, at least in size, a quieter, yet critical statistic tells a more sobering story: millions of Indians were pushed into poverty due to rising out of pocket health-related expenses.
These people are part of the Indian citizenry who did not fall victim to a sudden calamity or a pandemic shock. They were simply ill at the wrong time, in the wrong place, within a wrongly unjust healthcare system. For them, India's size of growth is perhaps less relevant or insignificant. A broken leg or a failed kidney was enough for those affected to collapse their financial futures.
It is a quiet emergency, but not an accidental one.