Communities cannot thrive without good health, but sadly, good health can be elusive for communities on the margins of society. Even before covid, tribal and indigenous people all over the world have routinely experienced lower life expectancies, poor maternal and child health, and higher rates of both infectious and non-communicable diseases.
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The coronavirus pandemic—food insecurity, isolation, and loss of income that have followed—have only exacerbated these trends and pushed vulnerable tribal and indigenous populations further to the margins.
But India is particularly well placed to reverse these trends. As home to 28% of the world’s tribal people, developing holistic bottom-up strategies to improve health and well-being in local settings. India can become the forerunner of new initiatives to improve tribal health, creating a model for the rest of the world to empower indigenous communities.
By working with local leaders to bridge knowledge gaps, strengthening last mile service delivery and leveraging the potential of new technologies and partnerships, India can vastly improve the well-being of its 104 million tribal citizens and help the world reach its Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.
To be clear, this task will not be easy. Due to a variety of factors, the life expectancy of tribal and indigenous people worldwide is up to 20 years lower than the rest of the population. More than half of indigenous adults over 35 suffer from type-2 diabetes.
In India, while there is limited data, sources suggest that a tribal woman is twice as likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth. India’s tribal population also accounts for 50% of malaria deaths in the country, and tuberculosis is five times more prevalent.
Nonetheless, India has both the ability and responsibility to transform how its most vulnerable citizens and communities receive healthcare. Doing so is critical not only to India’s future, but to that of tribal and indigenous populations all over the world.
The challenge of improving tribal health and nutrition can be tackled with a three-pronged approach. First, there must be enough available knowledge and tribal de-segregated data to make evidence-based policy decisions. Complicated problems cannot be solved without an in-depth understanding of the root causes.
India is not a homogenous population; linguistic barriers, coupled with generally poor or no data, might further lead to a lack of context-specific policies and interventions. Thus, it becomes imperative to create and disseminate knowledge around tribal health and nutrition, both to inform policy and help address myths within communities that might discourage people from accessing healthcare if and when available.
Second, working alongside governments at every level, we must strengthen health service delivery in the last mile. While universal access to healthcare has remained elusive to date, the government is making its best attempts to bridge the gap with tribal focused plans, including by operationalizing health and wellness centres in remote and tribal areas.
In past, be it in the aspirational districts of India or working in other parts of the world, affordable and accessible healthcare does not become a reality unless both the delivery of health services and health-seeking behaviour of the community work towards each other. In other words, to achieve the audacious goal of impacting 104 million people, both the demand and supply sides of health services will have to be bolstered in parallel.
Finally, leveraging new technologies and partnerships can improve both decision-making and patient care. New digital innovations, especially mobile apps and platforms, can connect people longitudinally, vertically, and horizontally.
Introducing point-of-care devices can improve data collection and accountability throughout the health services sector. The national digital health mission is an important step in the right direction and can help expedite this digital transformation.
Similarly, bringing together multiple partners around the shared vision of improving tribal health can focus efforts for positive change. Several philanthropic organizations (including the Piramal Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and civic groups working in the tribal health space have recently come together to create the Tribal Health Collaborative.
This unique and exciting initiative has set an ambitious goal of ending all preventable diseases among India’s tribal communities in the next decade. If successful, it will improve the lives of 100 million of India’s most marginalized citizens and save more than 5 million lives from disease.
Through data, delivery, innovation, and partnership—guided by a spirit of sewa, or selfless service—we can help reduce the burdens of disease, malnutrition, and poor health for millions of people in India and around the world.
Creating robust knowledge infrastructure could enhance policymaking, effective implementation at the last mile can ensure the optimal use of healthcare services, and new technology platforms could help knit these aspects together and close the tribal health and nutrition loop.
This tripartite model of knowledge, implementation, and technology can help us realize our collective goal of a more equitable society. If we commit ourselves to it and invest now in improving tribal health and nutrition, we can make a world of difference to those in need.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.