In a crucial domain like the public healthcare system the Indian State should play a vital role to contain the adverse impact of marketisation of the system. Suggest some measures through which the State can enhance the reach of public healthcare at the grassroots level.

Use the newborn care crisis to show where the State must strengthen grassroots public healthcare: safe, staffed facilities plus community health workers.

• Institutional deliveries rose from 39% in 2005-06 to around 90% in 2023-24, helped by Janani Suraksha Yojana incentives, but facilities have not kept pace.
• Three newborns died in the Amravati hospital fire on 24 August 2026; the op-ed links such deaths to overcrowding, electrical and oxygen failures, and too few nurses per baby.
• Proposed measures: decongest SNCUs via ASHA home care, add paediatricians and neonatal nurses, and enforce fire detection, oxygen backup, drills and independent safety audits.

Regulating the marketing, labelling and taxation of sugary foods is an example of the State checking market harms to public health, as the op-ed argues.

• The World Obesity Atlas 2026 estimates about 41 million Indian children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 are overweight or obese; the op-ed says India ranks second in childhood obesity.
• The op-ed criticises FSSAI's initial 'double trigger' label design, poorly enforced FSSAI and CBSE canteen rules, and sugar added to infant food sold in lower-income markets.
• It proposes a sugar-graded tax like the UK's Soft Drinks Industry Levy (18p and 24p per litre above 5 g and 8 g per 100 ml), limits on ads to children and nutrition education.

Use the cancer-drug markup case as a stark example of marketisation in health care, and margin control plus generics as state measures to contain it.

• On 29 September 2026 the Supreme Court was shown a cancer drug with a PTR of about ₹2,700 and an MRP of about ₹27,000, calling it 'carnage'; The Hindu's editorial notes markups up to 1,000%.
• Non-scheduled medicines, about four-fifths of the market by value, have no ceiling price under the DPCO, 2013; makers may only raise MRP by up to 10% a year.
• Precedent for state action: in February 2019 the NPPA capped trade margins on 42 non-scheduled anti-cancer drugs at 30%; expanding Jan Aushadhi generic outlets would extend affordable reach.

Cite the rabies data gap to argue that the State must build grassroots surveillance and stock life-saving biologicals at district level.

• Official surveillance counted 54 rabies deaths in 2024; ICMR-NIE estimates 5,726 a year, so most deaths go unrecorded.
• NAPRE (2021) seeks to make rabies notifiable in all States and UTs and follows a One Health approach.
• Free rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin are supplied under the National Rabies Control Programme.