Concern for healthcare
Public well-being has been the worst victim of capitalist reform.
If anything is singularly responsible for India remaining as one of the world's unhappiest countries to live, it is the utter neglect of life here. The CIA's world fact book, updated in July, this year, estimated 40.5 deaths per 1,000 live births — 39.2 deaths in the male child category and 41.8 deaths for female —in India in 2016. These unfortunate infant deaths partly explain why the world's ninth richest country by GDP and yet the home of the world's largest number of poor people is continuously slipping in the UN world happiness survey since its first report was published five years ago. It is not surprising that the sudden death of at least 64 children over six days at Gorakhpur's Baba Raghav Das Medical College and Hospital, earlier this month, became an instant political hit with opposition leaders such as Rahul Gandhi even before the cause or causes of death were officially established and known to the public. Reports blaming the death are contradictory — one blamed lack of oxygen in the children's word, other held the spread of Japanese Encephalitis responsible.