Pension, Mediclaim and now MedInfra

MediInfra Policy- To Improve Confidence Of Labor Force and Employees.

By end of 19th century some of the corporates started pension schemes for the employees who served them for certain period of time. This was very successful initiative to attract labor force during this period.

Offering different pension schemes to retired military personnel or their widows was very old concept and it is there since thousands of years in different part of world. But offering similar benefit to any company employee was a new beginning.

It was like win-win situation for both employees and employer as the employee could secure his life after retirement from financial perspective and employer could retain skilled workforce for much longer period. Due to this fact, thousands of people got motivated to work in manufacturing as well as in service sector, leaving agriculture sector which is somewhat unpredictable in nature.

This initiative became very popular around 2nd world war and helped across the globe to increase productivity of labor force. But the baseline was very clear that labor or employee was feeling motivated and secure about his/her future after working age. And this became a norm in many private and government companies by providing this safety net to attract manpower.

Then over the period of time, different governments came out with rules and regulations to ensure such pension, provident fund and social security schemes to get proper legal framework. Over the period of time, we have seen that many companies also started providing life and medical insurances further to retain employees as part of their welfare schemes, again to attract labor force and retain skilled people.

But current Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented situation of labor force. Wherever possible, many people are working from home, thanks to technology. But this will definitely reduce the productivity in long term. Not everybody can contribute by working from home.

People those are working under essential services, manufacturing, field work and even government employees are at much greater risk. Though government is also having some medical insurance schemes for citizen, but looking at the current situation and with available medical infrastructure, those schemes are not sufficient to cover the risks.

Today many employees and labor force are feeling that this safety net is not sufficient when it comes to actually availing medical facilities. The most critical part is despite having all such social welfare schemes and medical insurance, today employees are feeling not secure that whether they will get the right treatment on the right time.

Most of time this is at the mercy of the local government authorities, regional politics and available local medical infrastructure and so many known, unknown factors. And medical infrastructure is so stretched that it is no point to expect proper care for everyone.

So the point here is that if government and corporates can assure to all labor force, not only for medical insurance schemes but the availability of such medical infrastructure and facilities when one needs the most (may be through policy or scheme), which could be a game changer. This is very important step to get back the confidence of employees and labor force. Then only people will be motivated to return to the work and may fill gap of productivity and help to increase the economic activity

There is no straight forward answer and quick solution for this problem. But India has one of the lowest healthcare cost in world backed up by skilled medical professionals. And we have seen result of this with boom in medical tourism in India in recent years with CAGR of 51% over last few years.

In country like India, where population is high, it is high time that we should focus on basic needs such as clean water, better sanitization and basic medical facilities in every part of the country. It should be shared responsibility of corporates as well as local communities to support governments to build local medical infrastructure, beyond asking for tax breaks.

Expert believes that government should look into policy changes and investment in the segment by putting efforts into medical, paramedical education, focus in manufacturing of medical devices and supplies. In March 2020, we had issues of PPE kits which got resolved quickly when government intervened and changed the policy.

In fact India can look this opportunity similar to IT sector in 1990, where many Indian IT companies started to manage IT infrastructure of big corporates. In similar fashion, Indian healthcare providers with their competitiveness and knowledge can manage medical infrastructure for cities or corporates.

This is quite possible if Government, Corporates and communities come together to change the future of India on brighter side.

 Mahendra M Nimkar