For years, youth from rural India have been drawn to urban hubs in pursuit of jobs and a better quality of life. With the Covid-19 pandemic, though, we saw a reverse odyssey of such casual workforce and migrant population.
The uncertainty about the future in their villages seemed less alarming than the certainty of lost livelihood, lack of support for families, increased debt and the very real danger from the virus.
This triggers a sense of urgency to plan for holistic growth and development in the hinterlands, by fostering sustainable social, economic and health welfare. Building resilient rural communities by optimising existing resources, undertaking health interventions and sharing data has become priority.
A sustainable foundation in specific small towns can be facilitated by improved preventive and therapeutic healthcare infrastructure and a disciplined management of chronic conditions. Public-private partnerships with community-based organisations can shape affordable and sustainable approaches to fit individual rural communities.
Such partnerships can establish healthcare infrastructure beyond the choked healthcare networks of urban India. As India’s experience with the pandemic has made clear, populations that were already experiencing health disparities have been significantly impacted. Rural health partnerships also enable communities to address the social and economic determinants of health challenges, help mitigate disparities and, consequently, reduce strain on healthcare providers.
If necessity is the mother of invention, then crisis is the mother of adoption. Partnerships for infrastructure development and affordable access to quality healthcare in rural India have been in discussion much before Covid-19. In the past, we focused on ‘Smart City’ rollouts as a sustainable development model for other parts of India to follow suit. A sustainable model involving livelihood, education and, importantly, healthcare needs to be built into rural and urban areas alike as part of a renewed ‘Smart City’ initiative. Building back health, and in a holistic manner, can be the turning point for us to look beyond our today to tomorrow and further beyond.
Vani Manja is Managing Director, Boehringer Ingelheim India. Views are personal