Government has shown interest in reforming the Employees State Insurance Corporation of India, or ESIC. Do you think this reform should expand its coverage to those hitherto not covered by it? In the light of these impending reforms, also comment on what these mean to India’s public healthcare system. (200 Words)
Employee State Insurance Corporation as per ESI Act 1948 , is comprehensive Social Security to the workers earning less than Rs. 15000 per month. ESIC protect the industrial worker from physical and economic distress arising due to sickness, disabilities, loss of life while working , thus ESIC maintains the better condition of living for workers.
Most of workers are still not included in to ESIC, they have to face daily distress arising in their life mostly due to medical expenses which is very costly in India even for middle class family.
This workers can be construction labours and various unorganized people who are working without any social security net in their life.
But before expanding the limitation of ESIC we have to first look after our medical infrastructure, as per report India has 1.3 beds per 1000 population which much less then international level. We should concentrate much on primary health centre and community health centre rather than Tertiary medical facilities in India.
Increasing the local PHC’s and CHS’s with proper availability of medicines will be core of expanding ESIC net. Also to increase medical infrastructure higher allocation of expenditure to be made to medical sector.
Thus increasing the ESIC net will fulfil the constitutional provision of the country, but simultaneously we need to look after the medical infrastructure otherwise it will create the bottleneck of demand and supply.