We need to have a health policy that promotes a healthy nation

We need to have a health policy that promotes a healthy nation. It should impart health education and health security. If compared to developed nations, India is lacking in this respect. Only a healthy citizen can make India strong. We have to give special attention to our hospitals.

Swadeshi is the spirit that instills a sense of pride and achievement in our minds. We need to adopt everything that is swadeshi or Indian and shun that is foreign. We must give preference to home grown products. Ayurveda and yoga need to be promoted.

The national agenda of governance should only concentrate on nation and the people. What is good for the nation and the people, should be good for us all?individuals, groups and institutions.

India does need to have a National Agenda for Governance ? an agenda whose concern is only the nation and its interest and nothing else. We have first to pay special attention to education, health, roti, kapda, makaan, employment, youth and social security.

During the last over sixty-one years of Independence and 59 years of our democratic republic, we have failed to instill in the minds of our citizens a sense of pride in being a Bharatiya. We need to tell our youth that India was the vishwaguru and it has all the wherewithals to be vishwaguru. Our mind needs to be truly singed with the spirit of nationalism and commitment to whatever is Indian?in our culture, history and traditions.

All pervasive education
We need to impart education that is comprehensive, inclusive and useful. It should be uniform all over the country. It should make no distinction between the poor and the rich, between the privileged and the underprivileged. The distinction between the education in a government school at a village or a town and that in a public school should cease. The son of a Tatas should have the same education as that of a child living in a slum. There should be uniformity in school fees, curriculum and everybody should possess the equal opportunities to move forward.

Our education should be industry centric, employment oriented, should inspire entrepreneurship and self-employment. Its aim should be to inculcate a spirit of respect for our culture and traditions. We need to strengthen and not to violate these. Education should infuse respect in the democratic rights of others and create conditions in which the rights of no man? high or low?should be violated.

Towards a healthy India
We need to have a health policy that promotes a healthy nation. It should impart health education and health security. If compared to developed nations, India is lacking in this respect. Only a healthy citizen can make India strong. We have to give special attention to our hospitals. The situation today is that we have more patients and fewer hospitals. Our hospitals have themselves turned unhealthy, ill-equipped, lacking world class expertise and facilities. We have to create conditions in which no citizen is worried about his health. The best possible treatment should be easily available to every citizen. We should build a healthy India?healthy in mind, body and spirit.

Yoga needs to be introduced in all the schools from the earliest classes. This will infuse health consciousness among our young generation that is healthy, energetic and bodily and mentally sound.

Security should be primary concern
One of our primary concerns should be to provide total security to the people at large. An individual should entertain no apprehension about his own and that of his family?s security. Today, everyone?s mind gets overwhelmed with the fear about the well-being of members of his family if they step out of home whether for a walk, recreation, school/college or for their duty. Nobody is sure whether he/she will return home safe in the evening. This fear feeling has to be completely taken out from people?s mind.

A person who himself is all the while worried about his own safety and security cannot think of the welfare of the nation or do something for the nation. He is more worried about his own welfare and protection and in such a situation how can he serve the nation. A soldier is able to fight for the country with total devotion and commitment only when he is not worried at all about the welfare and safety of his family far away at his home.

Social harmony
Social harmony is also one of the primary concerns at this hour. Every religion is equally respectable. There needs to be no distinction between one way of worship and the other. Yet, at the same time, the vital condition has to be that everybody practising any mode of worship and subscribing to any faith must first consider himself to be an Indian and everything afterwards. The nation should be foremost in our concern and everything else afterwards.

The reasons that give rise to social strife have to be paid special attention and every effort be made to eliminate chances of social tension.

At the same time, our agenda should be to usher in such an environment in India where justice is dispensed to all without distinction of caste, creed, sex or religion and there is appeasement of none at the cost of others.

Every government grant, help and facility should be extended to every citizen and caste or creed should never be the criterion to determine the merit and eligibility for it. Minorities should be looked upon with compassion and love, but not just as voters.

Social uplift
Special attention must be paid to uplift the society with special attention to the poor and the deprived sections. Gandhiji and Deendayalji's concept of Antyodaya should be the guiding spirit to help the poorest of the poor first.

Under the present economic system, the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer. We need to work towards equitable distribution of wealth to remove the curse of poverty. The widening gulf between the haves and have-nots has to be bridged.

Greater attention to agriculture
The advent of agricultural revolution marked the onset of gradual neglect of agriculture. The area under agriculture and horticulture has got squeezed. The agricultural production is now going down almost every year. The share of agriculture sector in the GDP too is getting shrunk. Because of wrong policies of the government agriculture is no longer a paying profession. The agriculturists are not getting remunerative prices for their produce with the result that every year more and more farmers are getting buried under the increasing weight of loans and interests, mostly from private parties. This situation has led to increasing incidents of farmers' suicides. During the last five years, thousands of farmers have committed suicide, despite the government having come out with a loan-waiver scheme for farmers.

Although the government does make a nominal increase in the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of various agricultural crops, yet it is not commensurate with the rise in the cost of inputs. This is the reason why in many states which were earlier known to be the harbingers of agricultural revolution more and more farmers are selling their land and shifting to other professions.

Farmer is not only the annadata (producer of foodgrains) but is also the greatest consumer. He needs to have greater money in his hands to purchase more consumer goods to promote the health of industry. If he has no money in his pocket, the consumer industry is bound to be the loser. Therefore, increasing agricultural production and making it a profitable business is all the more necessary in the interest of the farmer, the consumer, the industry and the economic health of the country.

To boost the health of economy, agriculture has to be given the status of industry and extended every financial and other material help.

Don?t neglect animal husbandry too
The situation in the animal husbandry sector is the worst. It is the very foundation of a healthy and strong India. Milk and dairy products are the very backbone of our nutrition. Today, more and more children and pregnant women are dying mainly because of malnutrition, perhaps more in this country than in other developing countries. The reason is primarily our neglect of this sector.

On the contrary, we have developed a new culture in which cows and milch cattle are being thrown out of houses and dogs and cats are entering our bedrooms.

Animal husbandry and other allied sectors, like fisheries, sericulture, need to be paid special attention.

Swadeshi is the spirit that instills a sense of pride and achievement in our minds. We need to adopt everything that is swadeshi or Indian and shun that is foreign. We must give preference to home grown products.

Ayurveda also needs to be promoted. We need to use more ayurvedic medicines in preference to other ones as the former have no side-effects at all. Cottage, village industries and handicrafts too should be given a boost. Doing so will promote self-employment in the village itself and put a brake on the migration of population from villages to towns and cities.

A responsive administration
An administration responsive and sympathetic to the people is another means to peace and prosperity of the nation. Quick redressal of peoples? grievances eliminates chances of discontentment among the people.

Responding to the needs of the people is another plus point for a good administration. Madhya Pradesh government of Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Chhattisgarh government of Dr Raman Singh were very alive to the hopes and aspirations of the people. They kept their finger on the pulse of the people. This stood the BJP in good stead and their governments were repeated with the support of the people.

Transparency is one of the essential requirements of a good administration. It eliminates chances of corruption and acts as a deterrent to those who wish to commit this crime against society. Governments should encourage social audit of all programmes which directly concern the people. This gives the people a greater sense of participation and involvement. It also eliminates chances of unnecessary and unfounded criticism.

Public funding of elections
Money and muscle power is playing a greater role in elections today. To do away with this malady, government should fund the election expenses. Genuine and good people will then be able to come forward to fight elections. That will promote greater strength of Indian democracy.

Media is playing a great role in today?s politics and social life. This has to be strengthened. But, of late, media has started paying more attention towards sensationalisation of news and events and negative reporting. They are more concerned with increasing their TRPs than anything else. They have to avoid the pitfalls of commercialisation. That is why there have been more and more demands for evolving some kind of self-censorship or regulation by the media itself.

Media has to consider that nation is much more important and superior to anything in the country. They should not compromise with quality, objectivity, fairness and truthfulness while reporting events. The duty towards the nation should be supreme in their mind.