India's public healthcare sector is in terrible shape. Public healthcare practitioners doctors nurses and paramedics fed up with the high stress environment and low pay are leaving for greener private pastures. Things are even worse in the rural sector causing Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh to say that the country's public healthcare system had collapsed! While we harp on about the government not spending enough on healthcare ( a woeful 1% of GDP) no one who can afford it actually uses government facilities. In this grim atmosphere the powers-that-be seem to have come to a conclusion that the only way