Midweek Musings 35. 5.08.26

                         Geriatric Day has just gone past us.

By Malini Shankar

Digital Discourse

It was in the wake of the Asian Tsunami that the phrase “Build Back Better” was coined by the former US President Bill Clinton who was part of a UN team that visited affected coasts to start the process of rehabilitation of the affected coastal communities. This phrase then came to embody incorporation of development to build resilience in the communities to be ‘prepared’ for the impact of future natural calamities.

This “Build Back Better” initiative included initiatives in the field of education, health care, fisheries, sanitation, awareness in menstrual hygiene, micro finance, infrastructure, utilities compounded on a per capita basis, housing, earthquake safe construction, nutrition and so on … all areas of human interventions and economic activities. Thus came the evolution of concepts like Human Development Index and Smart City Governance. Per capita consumption of not just drinking water, agriculture, banking and policing services by the State, but per capita waste generation, power utilisation and mapping for alternate energy supply on a per capita basis became the mainstay of development discourse. Similarly fire force infrastructure, primary health care service, vet care, green tree cover, telecom and internet bandwidth, public transport and so on, have all to be calibrated on a per capita basis.

That means a village of 5000 people must have an area of atleast 10 square kilometres; a fire force of atleast five fire engines and atleast seven fire force personnel per eight hour shift. Rainwater has to be harvested for each village of the administrative and geographical area, pooled in a reservoir and administered as a common property resource for the “General Good / General Will” of the People of that geographical area.

Public schools must serve the needs of atleast 500 children in a 10 square kilometre area. Apart from Secondary Schools, once every village has Pre University colleges, degree colleges, polytechnic institutes, Engineering, medical, dental colleges, and vocational course institutes besides Industrial Training Institutes, then we can plan Universities in every sub district or Taluq level, and specialised universities like dedicated Universities and Centres of Leaning for  information technology, traditional medicine or Research centres like Climate Change Lab, Marine Geology studies etc at district level. If this model can be achieved and scaled up in every district of India, the greatest educational reform would have been achieved. The bottom-line of employment oriented education is the need to establish aptitude test centres to serve the needs of every single citizen.

Next comes employment opportunities: based on aptitude tests and Montessori models of children’s education, investment needs to be made on the kind of ecosystem necessary to let a child’s talent, skills and merit bloom in that sphere. Say a child aspires to be a nurse or a paramedic like say physiotherapy or traditional medicine, it is then the Planning Commission / Niti Aayog’s responsibility to get investors to invest in state of the art physio therapy training institutes or provide ex situ access to herbal medicines and other biological resources… #UNCBD. Certification of traditional medicine pharmaceuticals, and standardisation of resources that go into making of traditional medicine will then be part of the legal framework.

Similarly Primary Health care Centres must serve a maximum of 1000 people. But in India it is in the range of 15000 – 50000 people. PHCs in every village must be well stocked with anti-venom, anti-rabies vaccines, and be Pandemic-prepared. Supply chains and logistics are critical to health care.

Artificial Intelligence application is critical in pharmacology, rural development, Automobile and Automation, agriculture, agro forestry, banking, financial institutions, governance and so on…  

·         Like there is an elders’ helpline and mental health helpline, there is a need for a helpline for the differently abled citizens too.

·         Single elders or elders living alone need a safe place to keep indexed duplicate keys of their houses / dwelling so as to give emergency access for appointed care givers.

·         Per capita green cover must include calibration of nutrition requirements of rural malnourished children, frail and infirm and nursing mothers across the country.

·         Is it too much to ask for a dedicated public transport for differently abled? If yes then reservations for the differently abled in public transport is necessary.

·         Inclusive / integrated education for differently abled children and teenagers is necessary. Employment opportunities must be created for gender minorities.

·         Advanced health care must be institutionalised for geriatric care.

·   Public health administration must factor in mental health care, including dedicated ambulance services… with lanes for ambulances and fire brigades marked on arterial roads.