If the government really wants online fitness challenges to work, it should look at the Ice Bucket Challenge, which received $220 million in donations from across the world for research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
This government’s love for photo opportunities is infinite. From carrying broomsticks in hands to eating with Dalits, the current government has never lost an opportunity for that perfect, airbrushed politics of ‘photo op’.
Trending or not, a hashtag isn’t enough to make India go fit.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also release his version of an exercise after star-cricketer Virat Kohli tagged him in a #fitnesschallenge. The dare was started by information and broadcasting minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.
Challenge accepted, Virat! I will be sharing my own #FitnessChallenge video soon. @imVkohli #HumFitTohIndiaFit https://t.co/qdc1JabCYb
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 24, 2018
Despite fitness challenges and yoga day, it is the #HealthChallenge that the government is losing.
Let’s start from the budget itself. Currently, the total health expenditure remains lower than 4 per cent of the GDP while the government spending stands at less than 1.3 per cent of the GDP. The government’s ambitious National Health Policy (NHP) aims to increase the health expenditure as a percentage of the GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2025, where the global average is 6 per cent. The government, in order to fulfil the aim of the NHP, should increase the health budget at least by 20 per cent year-on-year for seven years, but in its latest budget the allocation has increased by just 5 per cent.
Private healthcare is also not affordable for a majority of our population, and the time wasted in standing in government hospital queues is seriously debilitating.
And, if we go by the National Family Health Survey figures, more than 50 per cent young women (15-49) in India are anaemic, child stunting breaks world record, and health infrastructure isn’t adequate to serve 1.3 billion people. All this will have serious implications for the growing workforce, and for the ageing population.
It will not be an epidemic that will expose the Indian healthcare system, but it will be the deficiency in the public health expenditure.
So, why is the #fitnesschallenge coming up now?
The World Health Day was 7 April, International Yoga Day is 21 June, so those photo ops are a little distant now. This trending hashtag has another hidden purpose.
It is a clever political distraction after the loss of faith in Karnataka and especially after the opposition show of strength at H. D. Kumaraswamy’s swearing-in ceremony. The BJP wants people to forget these images and also stop talking about rising fuel prices. Instead of organising ‘Bharat Bandhs’ on fuel price hike, like it used to when it was in the opposition, the BJP is going for a ‘Vichaar Bandh’ – make people stop thinking about it.
Surely, Modi knows how to be the king of headlines and the moment he tweets his video of #fitnesschallenge, the media will go gaga over it, everyone will be covering it, and everyone will forget the fuel prices the way they did Nirav Modi, judicial crisis, and so on.
If the government really wants online fitness challenges to work, then it should look at the way the Ice Bucket Challenge did so. In this 2014 online challenge, people had to throw a bucket of ice water on their head to raise awareness on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or motor neurone disease and encourage donations for its research. The challenge received more than $220 million in donations from across the world, and was fun too.
What is the tangible outcome from the fitness challenge of Rathore, which, he said, was inspired by Modi’s fitness? Are they collecting donations? Are they changing behaviour?
When children died of encephalitis last year in BRD medical college of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath had said ‘Ab kya sarkaar bacchon ka lalan palan bhi karegi’ (Do people expect that the government should take care of their children now?). It is this political attitude that challenges our health system.
Remember the Beti Bachao selfie in Haryana? What was the outcome? Forget outcome, were there any targets for deliverables even set?
Our #Fitnesschallenge cares about the rich people who are able to afford smartphones to push videos of them exercising, which the poor cannot even see. What they need to see is #BedMyHospitalChallenge, #FundOurHealthChallenge, #ImproveHealthInfraChallenge, #SexEducationChallenge and #MalnutritionFreeIndia challenge.