Dreams of a Healthy India, the ninth volume in the Rethinking India series, is an attempt to demystify the issues of health care and health systems for the general reader, and to simultaneously provoke rethinking on several critical dimensions through writings by policymakers and academics. Its introductory essay and the thirteen subsequent essays lay out the scenario as well as the challenges in this regard, and provide actionable solutions. These are solutions for the present times that can simultaneously contribute to sustainable health care for the future. Complex ideas are not made simplistic but are presented in simple language, with some illustrative case studies, vignettes and data that speak for themselves.

The book, published in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, sheds light on the complex systemic layers and processes that influence people’s health in their everyday lives. It argues that there has to be a reassessment of the popular image of health care as medical care alone, as well as of the nineteenth- and twentiety-century imagination of hospitals and health centres that we still work with. Systemic issues, such as increasing doctor-patient distrust, plural health knowledge systems and health governance, need to be understood with analytical rigour and dealt with in the collaborative spirit of the twenty-first century. Democratic health care in the present times will have to ensure the dignity of the patient, the community health workers, nurses and doctors-something that is increasingly getting lost in the contemporary health-care system.

This volume suggests that an indigenously developed health-care system, based on public-community partnerships, and respect for the plurality of needs, experiences and knowledges, can generate such health care for every Indian.