New Delhi: Despite Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s stress on health and wellness being one of the six pillars of Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India), the actual increase in the allocation for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is a modest 7 per cent, according to the documents of Budget 2021.
The 137 per cent hike that the finance minister announced includes sundry other allocations such as for water supply, sanitation, and mitigation of air pollution etc bundled under a new head of “health and wellness”.
The allocation for the ministry stands at Rs 73,931.77 crore. Last year, the ministry’s allocation was Rs 69,000 crore, which has now gone up by Rs 4,931 crore — a little over 7 per cent.
The allocation for the department of health research, under the ministry, stands at Rs 2,663 crore, up from Rs 2,100 crore last year, while the allocation for the Department of Health and Family Welfare is Rs 71,268 crore, up from Rs 66,900 crore.
The Department of Health Research has played a pivotal role in the development of the first indigenous Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech that is currently being used in the vaccination drive.
The allocation for Ayushman Bharat, also known as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, stays at Rs 6,400 crore. The allocation for the Ministry of AYUSH stands at Rs 2,970 crore, up by 39 per cent from last year’s Rs 2,122 crore.
This, government officials said, is according to expectations of the health ministry.
Even though the pandemic drove home the importance of health, the fact also remains that the economic despondency too has been big and thus there is very little fiscal room for substantial additional commitments on health.
Last year, the health ministry had seen a hike in allocation by 3.75 per cent in the face of an approaching pandemic.
In 2019, the health budget went up by 17 per cent, while a year earlier, it went up by just 5 per cent.
Meanwhile, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said he is “very happy… seems like our dream… has been realised under the leadership of Narendra Modi with the health and wellbeing of individuals taking centre-stage”.
“The investment in health has gone up by 137 per cent, which is over 2.37 times from last year’s allocation. This is a very big thing. The focus on holistic health has been decided after a lot of deliberations,” he told reporters.
“The Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana allocation for the next six years is in addition to the National Health Mission. The Covid vaccines that were rolled out from 16 January have also seen a special allocation and the finance minister has assured that she would look at more allocation if needed. It is very comprehensive,” Vardhan added.
Also read: Privatisation gets mega push in Budget 2021, most ambitious plan since Vajpayee era
Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat has allocation over 6 years
The new centrally sponsored scheme, PM Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, to strengthen the health system that Sitharaman announced, has an outlay of Rs 64,180 crore over six years. This comes to a little over Rs 10,000 crore per year if evenly distributed.
The Budget documents, however, do not give out a timeline for when it will be disbursed.
The money is to be spent on strengthening the health system, including expansion of laboratory networks, on the National Centre for Disease Control and lending support to over 17,000 rural and 11,000 urban health and wellness centres. There are many other heads on which the money is expected to be spent.
“It is not clear if the PM Atmanirbhar Swasth scheme is over and above the health ministry’s allocation. How do they arrive at that number? I understand the Rs 35,000 crore separate allocation for vaccines, but then the rest of it is just a small increase,” former health secretary Sujatha Rao told ThePrint.
“How they have arrived at the vaccine money is not clear either because in bulk procurement, prices are expected to fall, so it should be more than the 30-crore vaccination target population announced earlier. We do not know how long the vaccines will be effective,” Rao added.
Also read: Budget puts roads in focus in poll-bound states, Bengal & Assam tea workers get welfare push