NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

China and India collectively represent more than 35 percent of humanity. Both countries have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the last two decades. However, the developmental challenges that India and China have yet to surmount are mammoth. The public health sector is a crucial part of this challenge.

India and China ranked 95th and 75th respectively in the Social Progress Index’s ‘Health and Wellness’ segment, while the corresponding rankings in the ‘Nutrition and Basic Medical Care’ were 97th and 68th; both figures are unflattering. In the more popular UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), which encompasses health, education, and income variables, India and China ranked a miserable 136th and 101st in 2013. Whichever way one looks at it, the indications betray an absolute health policy failure in two of the world’s most populous states.