Everything for free, right?

While walking through the streets of Tamil Nadu, it is hard to ignore the face of Amma (= Tamil for mother). The leader of the current party observes one from posters, walls, fans, kitchen machines, bags… and thus draws attention to the things that are sponsored by her. Furthermore, we noticed that the government (government and amma are here basically synonyms) provided bicycles to two of the Abhaya college students. The students of the governmental polytechnical college even got laptops for free (the college is also visited by some former Abhaya girls).

As you can see, the current cabinet is very active in providing material for free (especially in the time before elections). However, not only items are distributed, but the population can also benefit from gratis service in the sectors nutrition, health and education. Normally, these services are than financed by Indian’s central government and do not only exist in Tamil Nadu, but in the whole country. In the past we had the chance to visit some governmental institutions and now we would like to share our experiences with you.

Education

As well as in Germany, it is also in India free of cost to visit a public school. However, the sector of private schools is with 40% much higher than in our home country. People act according to the rule: the more you invest into the school education and tuition of your child, the better are the career opportunities in future.

That is why the public schools rather address poorer people. School uniforms, bags and textbooks are provided for free. In addition to that every student of a primary or middle school has the possibility to get a nutritious lunch (every day one egg), for which they do not have to pay either.

In spit of all this support many public schools face the problem that teaching staff does not attend to work regularly and lessons are not used properly. Still, there are discrepancies between public schools as well (generally it is said: the more urban they are, the better).

Another main difference to private schools is that at private schools the lessons are taken in English (while at most public schools the children are taught in the local language). This is supposed to be an advantage for the students regarding their further education at colleges and universities.

By the way: the government also establishes free day care centres, in which children between 2 and 5 years arw looked after and fed while their parents are at work.

Nutrition

Every Indian citizen can own a ration card. This enables people to purchase basic items once in a month in a ration shop for free. Ration Shops are basically in every village (except very remote areas). Depending on the number of people mentioned in the ration card, families get certain amounts of rice, daal, sugar… and even kerosene. There are three different types of ration cards available - the type of card is linked to the income of the family.

The only negative point we have noticed during our fieldwork is the fact that for really poor and uneducated people it is a bureaucratic difficulty to get a ration card.

Health

As there is no obligated health insurance in India, it is good that medical treatment at governmental hospitals is free of cost. We visited a public “Primary Health Centre”, which can be compared to a big doctor’s surgery. Next to conventional medicine there is also the possibility to get an alternative treatment, for example with Aryuveda (a traditional Indian way of healing). 25% of the patients make use of this alternative.

Moreover, the TB (=Tuberculosis) sector was very interesting to us. Here infected people are looked after quite intensively, sometimes even with house visits. But even though the treatment is the same, richer people prefer to go to a private hospital with better and cleaner facilities. The problem is that the government wants to collect and evaluate the data of all TB-cases, but the private doctors refuse to share their patient’s details. That is way the government plans to make an agreement with the pharmaceutical industry, so that in future TB-medicine will only be available in public institutions.

Also interesting was our conversation with the Blog-Medical-Officer, who is responsible for an area of about 30km and is suppose to observe the health condition of the here living population. He/she has to be available for 24hours every day, links people with public health institutions and creates awareness on how to deal with illnesses that circulate at the moment. According to the Blog-Medical-Officer we talked to, the main problem is that many people only go to the next medical shop (something like a small pharmacy) when they are ill and do not visit a real doctor.

With this Blog article we do not want to praise or judge the Indian government in any way. To be honest we really do not know much about Politics in India. We just want to share with you what we experienced and show that systems can work differently than in Germany (for example free treatment instead of an obligatory health insurance).