The State has unquestionable and fundamental responsibility to provide basic social service to all its citizens. Everyone should, by now, have access to primary health care and primary education irrespective of their ability to pay. Governments must place these services at the highest priority among their programes. But the health care and education needs of our people go well beyond the primary levels, and in the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that these can be met in their entirety from public funds. Such services, involving more specialized and costly facilities, must be paid for by those who want them. This is not to say that only the rich are entitled to the more advanced services available. The state has also a role to provide financial support to those who have special health and education needs but cannot afford to pay for them – through, for example, medical insurance, scholarships, etc. However, it is becoming clear that sustainable well being of our people will ultimately come from widespread access to sustainable livelihoods. Only when people have the purchasing power to pay for their more advanced health and education needs, will the quality and quantity of social services being to match the demand. Sustainable livelihoods are, in themselves, also a valuable, direct source of health and education. Apart from the income they yield, they provide meaning and dignity to people’s lives, and help to raise the status they have in the community, factors, which directly affect the well being of people. Moreover, sustainable livelihoods provide strong reasons for families to have fewer children and better living conditions. Both these factors in time further reduce the pressure on social services. Sustainable livelihoods are best created by micro enterprises dispersed throughout the villages and towns of the country. Thus, the micro-entrepreneur becomes, in a real sense, a very fine surrogate for a doctor and a teacher. Incidentally, many of the sustainable enterprises needed at the village level could themselves deliver products and services needed for better health care and education. These would certainly include small private clinics, health communication systems, cold chains, schools as services and solar refrigerators, solar autoclaves books and teaching aids as products. Indirect through the process might seem, the health profession and the teaching community would go along way towards fulfilling their own objectives by promoting and facilitating the establishment of local micro enterprises. This is typical of many social objectives for which an effective and sometimes the most effective – intervention lies in a seemingly “unrelated” sector. The solution to traffic congestion and commuting time lies not in more cars and private vehicles but in better public transportation systems. More broadly, it lies in better urban design and zoning of activities. On another front, it is not far fetched to say that trees are the best contraceptives at least in rural communities. Adequate forest cover certainly can have dramatic impact on the lives of village women, reducing the time and energy they spend on gathering fuel, fodder and water. Almost in all spheres, we need to identify the interlinkages among the sectors of the economy (industry and agriculture, transport, water, …………….) and the sectors of society (government, NGOs, private sector, academia,………) Unfortunately, such linkages among the sectors are not often understood and even less often acted upon. Partnerships among the different sectors are now crucial if the policies of government and the actions of professionals are to produce synergies instead of neutralizing each other. Planning, budgeting and implementation by single sector agencies needs to be replaced by new, cross-sectoral machineries that more effectively bring about cooperation among ministries agencies and companies.
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