Medical pluralism and health services in India

The problem of the equitable distribution of health services has gained universal recognition. In the developing countries, studies have indicated an uneven distribution of medical and health services, and various people have offered alternate approaches, strategies, and programmes to rectify this imbalance. Based on these reports, programmes have been launched in India, but unwarranted assumptions and biases underlie generalizations in this literature about the Indian medical situation. For example, the system of modern medicine has been characterized as elitist, urban-oriented, curative, hospital-based and so forth; and therefore, by implication, unsuited to Indian conditions. The result is a simplistic picture which has obfuscated clear thinking.

The problem has multiple dimensions, making it imperative for the sociologist to disentangle the issues. One has to clarify the meaning of medical pluralism in India, and separate its various components. There is need to separate the political from the economic dimensions of health and medical problems, and to isolate the purely medical from the non-medical interventions in health care. One has also to analyze the community's response to medical pluralism.