The quote attributed to the country’s renowned Philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan that “Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom” fits to a T in the matter of caring ourselves to be healthy in body and mind. Information relating to care, particularly the illnesses bugging the land’s masses, their underlying causes, measures to prevent their occurrence, consequences such as loss of valuable lives hurting the affected families, paucity of infrastructure in the country’s healthcare sector and so on is being widely publicised by the media. Knowledge of means and ways of treating as well as curing the diseases, facilities and services of medical practitioners, connect between health and food habits as well as hygiene, cost of medicines and hospitalisation, hardship that comes in the wake of neglecting the importance of keeping good health and so on is as clear as daylight. However, wellness is more talked and written about than bestowed wisdom on the part of the land’s people at large, including the literati as well as the cognoscenti.
India’s pharmaceutical industry is booming to the extent of earning the distinction as the world’s pharmacy. The country also has the dubious distinction of producing nearly one-third of the world’s spurious drugs and hosting quack practitioners of medicine in large numbers, thanks to the people’s gullibility, particularly the urban poor and the rural population. The low ratio of qualified medical practitioners to the country’s population, at one-tenth of World Health Organisation’s norm, is another factor hurting the country’s healthcare sector.
