1st Edition

Health Beyond Medicine Some Reflections on the Politics and Sociology of Health in India

By Vikas Bajpai, Anoop Saraya Copyright 2025
    320 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book integrates the concept of healthcare with larger social determinants such as caste, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity. It presents a history of the development of health services, discusses the recommendations of the landmark report of the Bhore Committee that laid the foundations of the public health services in independent India, and traces the evolution of this system through social, economic, and political structures. The subject matter of this book also includes:

    • The Play of Religion in the Delivery of Rural Health Care
    • Of the Relationship Between Population and Development
    • Pay for Performance Programmes in Health Care

    Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan)

    Foreword by Imtiaz Ahmad

    Authors’ Note

    1. A Social, Political, and Public Health: Analysis of the Bhore Committee Recommendations

    2. Of the Relationship Between Population and Development: Stop Vilifying the People

    3. Landmarks in the Development of Health Care Services in India

    4. Factors That Influenced the Development of Health Services in India

    5. National Health Policy, 2017: Transition from a Draft Policy to Being the Official Prescription for Public Health Nemesis

    6. The Challenges Before Public Hospitals, Their Origins and Possible Solutions

    7. Socio-economic Inequalities and Health Outcomes in India

    8. The Play of Religion in the Delivery of Rural Health Care: Impressions from Mewat District in Haryana

    9. Pay for Performance Programmes in Health Care: An Analysis of Findings from Mewat District in Haryana

    Index

    Biography

    Vikas Bajpai teaches at the Center for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

    Anoop Saraya is Professor of Gastroenterology and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition Unit at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.