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Healthcare is indispensable for any civilisation to attain a good quality of life and well-being on both mental and physical levels. The healthcare domain primarily falls under pharma, medical, biotechnology, and nursing. Also, other fields may be aligned with these primary fields. Healthcare amasses the contemporary trends and knowledge of upcoming techniques to improve healthcare processes. The practitioners are primarily doctors, nurses, specialists and health professionals, hospital administrators, and health insurance.

It is a fundamental attribute needed for any society to attain good quality of life and well-being in mental and physical health. It is a fundamental right of people to receive good healthcare where drug treatment and hospitalization are available at a nominal cost, as a requirement of today’s modern era. There appears to be a significant disparity in the availability of good healthcare in rural areas compared to urban in India. Even though we enter the digital era with the facilities offered in Industry 4.0 and other advanced technologies brings about a significant change of overall processing within healthcare systems. During the pandemic of COVID-19, there has been digital transformation with success globally. Healthcare cooperatives are a new norm to support the healthcare systems globally. The chapter discusses Gampaha healthcare cooperative and reviews Ayushman Sahakar scheme in India. The reforms require time to evolve.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in reducing Infant Mortality in India. The study will help the government in deciding its future course of action regarding the infant mortality rate (IMR) reduction in India.

This paper adopts the interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) approach with a control group to study the role of NRHM in reducing the IMR in India. The authors examined infant mortality in rural areas of India for the level and trend change before and after the implementation of NRHM. The authors then applied a suitable ARMA model to estimate the coefficients of the regression model. From the estimated results, the study predicts the counterfactuals for both the rural IMR and urban IMR and plots the results.

The study found the evidence supporting the hypotheses that the NRHM has led to a reduction in the difference between urban IMR and rural IMR. The research shows that the rural IMR declined at steeper rates in the post-NRHM period (2005–2015).

None of the existing studies analyses the impact of a social scheme like NRHM on the reduction of IMR in India by applying the ITSA. The study is unique as it estimates the counterfactuals and plots the results which show the impact of NRHM on reducing IMR.

The study aims to compare India's public health expenditure at the international and state levels. The paper also empirically examines the regional disparities in NRHM spending across the 21 selected states of India.

The tools of absolute β-and σ-convergence are used in the analysis to test the regional convergence. The average annual growth rate across the states is the dependent variable for β-convergence, and time is the second dependent variable but is used for s-convergence. In contrast, the initial value of NRHM expenditure and the coefficient of variation of NRHM expenditure are used as independent variables, respectively. Descriptive statistics are also used for the study. The data are annual and cover the panel from 2007 to 2020.

The study attests to the hypothesis of β-and σ-convergence for the selected states in the period mentioned. The observed convergence in NRHM expenditure is due to the shift in the government's attention from the non-high focus high focus states to high states through the national rural health mission policy. The coefficient of variation across the states also shows a declining trend and provides the robustness of the σ-convergence.

As far as the literature is concerned, none of the existing studies examines the convergence of a public health expenditure scheme like the National Rural Health Mission across the Indian states by applying the techniques of β-and σ-convergence. The novelty of the study is using the newly updated dataset and validating the convergence hypotheses in the National Rural Health Mission expenditure case.

This paper aims to analyze the status of infrastructure, workforce and basic amenities at public health-care facilities in rural India and draw a comparison with its urban counterparts.

Rural Health Statistics data and National Sample Survey Office Report for the period 2019–10 were used to analyze lower-level public health facilities, namely, subcenters, primary health centers and community health centers (CHCs). Selected tracer indicators under World Health Organization’s (WHO) Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) mechanism such as health center density, core health workforce density and basic amenities were used to carry out the analysis. The extent of facility coverage was measured using the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) guidelines and the proportion of facilities satisfying the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) was measured to assess the service provision quality in rural public health-care facilities.

Results indicated that the density of public health centers is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Almost all public health-care facilities lack basic amenities in rural areas. Working positions for health specialists in CHCs barely meet the total requirement. Almost all of the public health facilities functioning in rural areas do not meet the IPHS norms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present paper is the first initiative to assess the status of rural public health-care facilities on the national level using WHO’s SARA indicators as well as NRHM and IPHS guidelines. The study is significant in terms of policy input for achieving universal health coverage in India.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an improvised sustainable health-care model by integrating best practices, innovations and new dimensions to the present public health-care system – National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) – for improving the health status of the bottom of pyramid (BoP) in India.

The contribution of NRHM in ensuring the availability of health-care services and improving health indicators has been assessed. Some unique proven models of excellent health-care services and innovations have also been considered in designing an improvised health-care model. The empirical context takes the use of case study research methodology. The data have been extracted from various relevant papers, reports and websites.

Despite substantial augmentation in health infrastructure and human resources, increased local engagement and technology integration, the progress in health indicators during the NRHM has not been fairly better than that before. The present paper provides an improvised model that integrates all the potential stakeholders such as Government, Private health-care services providers, pharmaceutical and insurance companies and BoP community itself to ensuring 5As rather than 4As (Prahalad, 2004) in rural health care.

This study has relied mainly upon the secondary sources of data and some published case studies. The model is a hypothetical framework designed exclusively for rural setups of India.

The study shows the ways and invites all the stakeholders to come forward and build hybrid partnerships not only to develop society but also to develop sustainable BoP markets and earn profits.

The paper brings forth the aspects of achievements and limitations of NRHM in improving BoP health status, and it develops an improvised model to achieve the BoP-health objectives.

Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) are community health workers under the National Rural Health Mission of Government of India (NRHM). They have played a pivotal role during the COVID-19 pandemic in providing information and healthcare services to and from the remotest part of a village in India, working round the clock tracing patients and providing other COVID-19 related services along with fulfilling their basic duties of anti-natal care, immunization, sanitization, etc. The chapter seeks to understand the causative factors of invisibility and marginalization of ASHA workers. As most of them come from low-income and low-literacy background, they face discrimination and marginalization with long working hours, very low wages, and being treated as social pariah by the community they work in and work for. The study is particularly relevant because ASHA workers have worked as a communicating link between doctors, hospitals, and communities, and also through door-to-door survey, they have collected massive data during the pandemic, which has helped the governments to frame policies and take decisions. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used. I have interviewed some 55 ASHA workers (some of being my former students). I have used news clippings and government reports, regulations, directives and guidelines, survey reports of Thomas Reuters foundation, Amnesty International, Aziz Premji Foundation, as source material for information. There are certain gaps in policy making, social behavior, and attitude toward the ASHA workers, which need to be addressed.