Speech delivered by Ms. Sucharita, representative AIFAP at the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) Convention on 10-11 December 2025 at New Delhi
In her presentation, Ms. Sucharita highlighted the deplorable condition of government hospitals, clinics, and public health services. The severe shortage of healthcare workers, medicines, diagnostic facilities, and other resources causes immense suffering to the common working people. Doctors, nurses, and other staff working in these facilities are often forced to care for hundreds of patients alone and work long hours continuously due to the extremely low number of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. On the other hand, large private companies, both domestic and international, are opening new, expensive hospitals with the explicit intention of making huge profits.
In her presentation, she clarified that the increasing privatization of healthcare is an inevitable consequence of the globalization program implemented by the ruling capitalist class in our country, starting with the liberalization and privatization policies adopted in the 1980s and 90s.
She explained that the violation of the fundamental right to public healthcare is an integral part of the current system of capitalist exploitation. To end this, capitalist exploitation itself must be abolished. Workers of all sectors must advance their struggle against the privatization of public services, for the right to healthcare, for secure livelihoods, and for all other rights, with the goal of establishing rule of the working people in place of the current rule of the capitalist class.
Presentation
It is with great pleasure and pride that I address this forum on behalf of the All India Forum Against Privatization (AIFAP). As you know, AIFAP has been fighting against privatization across many different industries and public services – and we are taking this struggle forward by bringing together both the workers and consumers in these sectors on a common platform. Today, we have been invited by the Jan Swathya Abhiyan (Public Health Campaign) to speak on the issue of privatization in the health sector.
Healthcare is a fundamental service for human society. Every member of society should have the right to timely, appropriate, high-quality, and modern healthcare, whether in cities, villages, mountains, tribal areas, or remote regions – and at affordable prices that they can manage. There should be easily accessible hospitals and clinics. They should have an adequate number of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers. These workers should have proper working conditions, job security, safety, a decent living wage, social security, and pensions.
However, the reality in our country is far from this.
There is a severe shortage of government hospitals and clinics and the services they provide.
In villages and remote areas, people have to undertake long and arduous journeys for even minor medical emergencies. There are numerous reports of shortages of services and doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers in rural clinics, and of appalling working conditions. Healthcare workers under various schemes like Anganwadi, ASHA, and the National Health Mission provide essential health services, including maternal and child health services, in remote areas for a meager salary of Rs. 6000-8000 per month, even though they are not recognized as healthcare workers or employees, and their jobs are not secure. Governments arbitrarily shut down schemes, resulting in the loss of their jobs and the discontinuation of healthcare services for the people. In the capital city of Delhi, the long queues of patients at government hospitals like AIIMS, Safdarjung, LNJP, and Hindu Rao, or ESI hospitals, speak for themselves. The doctors, nurses, and other staff working in these hospitals are often force to care for hundreds of patients alone and work continuously for long hours because the number of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers is far less than required.
In large and small cities, there are several magnificent hospitals belonging to private hospital chains – Max, Fortis, Apollo, etc. – where even basic services are beyond the reach of the majority of the working class.
The increasing privatization of healthcare is an inevitable consequence of the globalization through liberalization and privatization (LPG) program adopted by the ruling capitalists of our country, which began in the 1980s and 90s. While the previously adopted socialist model emphasized providing free or affordable healthcare in government hospitals and dispensaries, and establishing government hospitals and dispensaries in every village, now Indian capitalists have become monopolistic capitalists. They are competing with and expanding alongside the world’s largest monopolistic capitalist houses. All pretense of the socialist model has been abandoned, and like many other industries and services, the era of healthcare privatization has begun.
However, accessing healthcare in private hospitals is beyond the reach of the working class. Government healthcare has been systematically dismantled, government spending on health has been reduced, and obtaining treatment in government hospitals has become extremely difficult. To quell the anger and protests of the working class in these circumstances, the rulers introduced the PPP (public-private partnership) model of privatization, in which people will be referred from government hospitals to private hospitals and private medical services. The government will provide land and investment for establishing hospitals, and then their management will be handed over to private hands.
Alongside this, several services in government hospitals have been outsourced to private companies (diagnostics, ambulances, blood banks, telemedicine services, the running of health and wellness centres (HWCs), and strategic purchasing of care from private hospitals for secondary and tertiary care). Under various government schemes (CGHS, ESI, Ayushman Bharat), working people are being referred to private hospitals for treatment. This is significantly increasing the profits of private monopolistic capitalists in the healthcare sector – Max, Fortis, Escorts, etc. – while working people are being told that the government is providing them with top-class healthcare at affordable rates. In reality, the government is filling the coffers of these private monopolistic capitalists with the contributions of working people to health schemes and taxpayers’ money, all to conceal its failure to provide adequate and high-quality healthcare to the working class. Large monopolistic capitalist companies worldwide are now engaged in the medical insurance business, and in collusion with private hospitals, they are relentlessly exploiting people.
This brutal violation of the right of working people to access good quality healthcare at affordable prices is rooted in the existing capitalist system in our country. Our ruling class is the capitalist class, led by a few select monopoly capitalist houses such as Tata, Birla, Ambani, Adani, and others. The Indian state protects the interests of this ruling capitalist class, serves it, and shields it from the anger of the working people through its security forces, laws, and judicial system.
The illusion is spread that people elect their government by casting votes in elections, that this is democracy – when in reality, people have neither the right to choose their candidates, nor to hold elected representatives accountable, nor to recall them, nor to make laws and policies in the public interest. Only those parties that faithfully implement the agenda of the capitalists are able to form governments. Therefore, even if the ruling party changes, the problems of the people do not get solved; instead, they continue to worsen. The privatization of public services and healthcare services continues unabated.
The objective of the capitalist rulers is the continuous increase of their profits. They are not concerned about the well-being of the working people, nor of doctors, nurses, or workers in any sector.
We must fight for a comprehensive, universal healthcare system, under which everyone, without exception, receives good quality treatment at affordable prices, without having to wait for hours, months, or years. This demand is a crucial part of our struggle against the privatization program. The All India Forum Against Privatization (AIFAP) believes this and fully supports this struggle. The privatization of healthcare services, along with all other industries and public services – railways, banking, insurance, education, etc. – is the agenda of our ruling capitalist class, through which they seek to enrich themselves by intensely exploiting the working class and ruthlessly plundering our natural resources, aiming to join the ranks of the world’s major monopolistic capitalists.
The violation of the fundamental right to public healthcare is an integral part of the current system of capitalist exploitation. To end this, capitalist exploitation itself must be abolished. Workers in all sectors must advance their struggle against the privatization of public services, for the right to healthcare, for secure livelihoods, and for all other rights, with the goal of establishing a workers’ government in place of the current capitalist rule. In this new system, the people will be empowered to make all decisions and formulate policies that affect their future, instead of leaving these decisions and policies in the hands of a few parliamentarians – as is the case now – who consistently act against our interests and in favor of the capitalists.
We must advance this struggle with the vision of creating a new society where ensuring the well-being of all people is the state’s duty and the primary objective of the economy, rather than increasing the wealth of capitalist exploiters.