Health Disparity and Health Equity in India: Understanding the Difference and the Pathways Towards Policy

Health is essential in all spheres of everyday life. It is crucial for well-being, longevity, and to avail economic and social opportunity. Therefore, resources and services needed to be healthy go beyond medical care. Living and working conditions which promote health assume greater importance as they have the potential to reduce the need for medical care (Daniels, 1981;1Daniels et al., 1999). Therefore, the discourse on health needs to begin from the socioecological framework and move towards the biomedical through the biopsychosocial.  The health promoting elements require to be distributed according to need, rather than treated as commodities which can be accessed based on one’s economic propensity. Evidences are aplenty that health status is contingent to health promoting environment, and  imbalances in this environment are likely to produce disparities, inequities and inequalities in health.