India’s complete lockdown has caused unnecessary disruptions in the food supply chain, with the scarcity of labour making it even worse. A sharp decline in demand is imminent with the financial sector being in a freeze and incomes having shrunk for everyone, except for the small salaried class. Consumer sentiment and business outlook on recovery are bleak. While ensuring the free movement of essential goods and availability and safety of labour can mitigate the immediate disruptions in the supply chain, unclogging the financial sector and restoring optimism in the market will take time and heroic efforts from the government.
The massive scarcity of physicians in India, mainly in rural areas, prompted the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to propose a three-and-a-half year Bachelor of Rural Health and Care degree designed exclusively to serve rural populations. The fierce opposition by powerful medical lobbies forced the proposal to fade away. This paper emphasises the importance of "task shifting" and "non-physician prescribing" in the global context and argues that non-physician healthcare providers would not only increase availability and accessibility to rural healthcare, but also provide an empowered second line of authority, adding to the checks and balances to the exploitative prestige-based hierarchy that pervades this knowledge-intensive service.
