The land’s people are being reminded about the imperatives of keeping their living spaces spic and span. The message being blared on the small screen, using popular film personalities and also through dailies in various languages, currently toilet-centric, appears to have been oversimplified, given the parting shot in the campaign saying ‘Keeping the toilet door shut results in pulling the shutters down on diseases.’ However, the heightened activity of constructing toilets, particularly in villages across the country and people being induced to give up time-honoured open defecation is highly laudable. The Union Minister for Health is also issuing public statements with figures of number of toilets targeted for construction and also their number that have come up. All will be well with the nation’s romance with toilet as it were only when water becomes available in adequate quantities, to say the obvious.

While the old saying that cleanliness is next to Godliness may not be on the minds of people at large any more, the Swachchata Abhiyan, launched on October 2, 2014 seems to have engulfed the land’s masses to a remarkable extent. Even Mysureans, known for long as a society with laid back outlook have taken keen interest in making a total success of the mission in the city, pushing Bengalureans to wear the badge of residents of a garbage city.

Even as sites witnessing different sections of society, including government employees and school children taking to the broom signifying the symbol of the Swachchata Abhiyan as it were across the country may be likened to an oasis in a vast desert for now, the government has just launched the project of providing generic medicines at virtually cost price to the public by opening 3,000 Jan Aushadhi Kendras, including in Mysuru. That is a landmark step in medicare aimed at reducing the disease burden bugging the nation’s masses, particularly the economically weaker sections of society. Expanding the infrastructure for medical education and also building hospitals served by competent doctors as well as providing diagnostic facilities in new regions augurs well for sicknesscare.

The foregoing points bearing on various issues of people’s welfare triggers thoughts dwelling on people’s healthcare. The onus is more on the people at large than the government in the matter of health, often neglected until reaching a crisis point. The nation has both stock of knowledge and resources to augment measures of medicare and sicknesscare complying with simple steps of healthcare.