For a Realistic Assessment

Abstract

The Government of India set up the ‘Health Survey and Development Committee’, popularly known as the ‘Bhore Committee’ in 1943 to draw up the scheme of health services for the newly emerging independent India. The recommendations made by the committee remain a landmark in the development of health services in the country and continue to inspire the health workers in the country in their struggle for developing pro-people health system. This article makes an attempt to analyse the positives and the negatives in the recommendations of the committee by tracing their roots in the social and political conditions, nationally and internationally, at the time of the deliberations of the committee. An attempt has also been made to trace the consequences of these recommendations and draw appropriate lessons for health policy formulation in the country. The article identifies the continuance of the colonial governance paradigm even after 1947 as the biggest threat to evolving and implementing a health policy framework favourable to the interests of the poor masses of the country.