The Spirit of Public Private Partnership in the Health Sector of India:Towards a New Paradigm

With the economic changes incited in 1991, the Indian private sector felt the need to reposition itself quickly in order to effectively respond to the competition which was rapidly cropping up and also to exploit the opportunities which could be unfolded in the forthcoming years. The inability of the State to provide satisfactory health care services gave rise to take the recourse of public private partnership (PPP) model which can respond to the dire demand to amend the broken health system and can reap benefits from the health sector. The reason to collaborate the efforts of both is that neither of them is capable of serving to the best of the interest of the health system alone. To understand and grasp the best practices, to have adequate funds for HR and technology, to improvise on the quality of services, to increase accessibility and for proper regulation and accountability, such an alliance is a boon. Utilized reasonably and fitted to specific localities, they can undoubtedly change the landscape of medical sector in India.

This paper is organised as follows. Section I gives a brief introduction about health sector in India and the prevailing schemes and models adopted to accelerate the growth and development in this sector. Further section discusses the pitfalls in the prevailing schemes and the challenges in the application of this partnership model. The next section elucidates about the need to encourage PPP in the Indian health sector. The conclusions and recommendations are presented in the last part.