मानव अधिकार सामाजिक मंच

Manavadhikar Samajik Manch (MASM) is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion, does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the victims whose rights it seeks to protect. It is concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights organization striving to empower the public, promote, reinforce and safeguard human rights and good governance in India and to bring transformation in the observance of human rights at local, national and international level. MASM has as its VISION, the creation of a Just and Equitable Society.

The broad objective of the organizations is to promote the cause of national and international integration by strengthening the efforts for recognition and implementation of human rights and to create legal and human rights awareness and empowerment among the general public through the provision of legal and civic education, provision of legal aid, conducting research and follow-up human rights violations.

The Specific objectives of the organization are:
  1. Promote, respect and observe of human rights and democracy
  2. Promote, respect and observe of rule of law and due process
  3. Create networks with the public interest and human rights organization, non-governmental organizations, universities, relevant research organizations and legal associations etc.
  4. Make best efforts for protection, promotion and advancement of socio-economic and political rights of the public.
  5. To fight lawfully for the causes of the rights of the masses and to file public interest petitions to safeguard the rights of the masses.
  6. Organise and sponsor to undertake conferences, seminars, workshops, meetings and such other activities with a view to promoting the social and educational objectives of the MASM.
  7. Raising funds for the purposes of the MASM on such terms as are compatible with the autonomy of MASM and within the spirit of its social and educational objectives.
  8. Work out for all out socio-economic progress of the country and the society.
The strategy i.e. adopted by MASM includes actions such as
  • To identify and expose policy, law reform and issues of practice with a view to advocating for change and proactive information sharing;
  • To raise human rights and legal awareness and empowerment amongst the general public for good governance in India;
  • To put-forth the demands of the public on a continuous basis before the three organs of the government i.e., Executive, Legislature and Judiciary and ensure justice.
  • To gather and disseminate concrete, reliable and up-to-date information on policies, legal issues and issues of practice
  • To improve the performance and sustainability of Manavadhikar Samajik Manch.
By
  • Strengthening strategic alliances with like minded organizations and individuals
  • Embarking on effective advocacy for good governance in the country;
  • Devising means to capture the needs of the public;
  • Making effective use of mass media
  • Strengthening administration of research
  • Putting in place an effective human resource development system for effective and efficient service delivery
As part of its work, MASM always strives to bring awareness among the various sections of the population especially to poorest and vulnerable sections of the society who are often the victims of human right violations. The areas of interventions always focused to bring changes in policy, legal framework and issues of practices. To ensure justice, MASM always tried to put the demands of the public on a continuous basis before the three organs of the government i.e., Executive, Legislature and Judiciary.

At present, MASM has two wings one for legal aid and human rights monitoring department with a legal aid clinic intending to do psychological counseling to the victims, to identify the cases of Human Rights violations, raise the issues and do the follow up exercise and the other is for Research publiation and documentation.

The Novel Covid-19: The Human Rights Issues in India

 

Covid-19 is an ongoing pandemic that has claimed an estimated 1.61 million lives and infected over 72.3 million people as of December 14, 2020. First detected in China in December 2019, Covid-19 has spread to almost all the countries and territories of the world. The world is facing an unprecedented crises. At its core is a global public health emergency on a scale not seen for a century, requiring a global response with far-reaching consequences for our economic, social and political lives. The priority is to save lives. In India, Covid-19 infected cases are rising exponentially since early August and hitting new highs every day but the fatality rate is very low compared to global average. To save human lives in the absence of any vaccine or antidote, government of India like any other countries adopted extraordinary measures like extensive lockdowns to slowdown the pace of the transmission of the virus. This in turn restricted the freedom of movement, and freedom to enjoy many other human rights. These measures inadvertently affected people’s livelihoods and security, their access to health care, to food, water, sanitation, work, education including their leisure. The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated the vulnerability of the least protected in society. Effective measures must be taken to mitigate the unintended consequences resulted from Covid-19 restrictions. This volume has made an attempt to analyse the human rights violation of the individuals and what policy measures the government of India must take in order to address this situation. The book has been divided into four parts. Part-I provides a theoretical analysis of human rights, Part-II discusses the poor Indian economy during the Covid-19 pandemic and the vulnerability of migrant workers, Part-III elaborates the deep rooted problems of gender violence in patriarchal societies like India amid Covid-19 on Indian educational system and the adoption of e-learning by several institutions. The edited volume may be an useful guide for the human rights activists and practitioners, academicians, researchers, students, civil society activists and other luminaries.


Mainstreaming healthcare startups amidst COVID-19 is the need of the hour - dr. shanker adawal

By Dr Shanker Adawal

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the deep vulnerabilities and inherent gaps of India’s healthcare system. The outbreak of COVID-19 posed both a challenge and opportunity for India’s healthcare startups. Despite several inherent challenges, startups promptly engaged themselves and developed solutions for COVID-19 applications in the areas of prevention, detection, disruption management, and operational efficiency and have provided innovations in medical goods and services. The involvement of startups has helped the government to reach every household during the pandemic.

By mid-March, it became apparent the pandemic has come to stay for a while and thus, efforts were made to streamline the healthcare facilities in the areas such as diagnostic kits, respiratory aids, ventilators, PPE, and other critical capabilities as traditionally India was import-dependent of these vital components.

The startup ecosystem rose to the occasion and produced high-quality products, at scale and significantly lower prices than comparable products from around the world. Except the testing kits (we had a shortage till June) and of course, the COVID vaccine, we never felt any short-fall, even till date.

A variety of solutions were provided by startups in areas like rapid diagnostics and screening, ventilator and respiratory aids, preventing the spread of the virus by need innovation, cold-storage to maintain sample integrity while transporting to COVID-testing facilities and therapeutic candidate development and screening. The startups also remained active in telemedicine, online pharmacy, artificial intelligence / data analytics, transportation, home healthcare and well-being segment.

Overall, the healthtech startups in India raised a total of $504 million between 2014-2018.

As of 2018, there are a total of 4,892 startups in the Indian health-tech space and the number has further gone up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many startups have also shifted from other sub-sectors to health-care. Not only that the government has taken several initiatives to facilitate more number of start-ups. To list a few, NITI Aayog recently set up a committee to boost the government’s partnership with private companies to produce health equipment and personal protection equipment (PPE). In April 2020, it announced eight startups are working on innovative healthcare solutions to help the government deal with the situation better.

Secondly, the government’s Centre for Augmenting WAR along with COVID-19 Health Crisis (CAWACH), a unit of Department of Science & Technology has shortlisted 54 startups developing solutions to tackle the pandemic. CAWACH aims to quickly scale up responses to detect, test, treat and reduce Covid-19 transmission in India. The department filtered out 54 startups for developing indigenous, low-cost and effective solutions to contain COVID-19. Other government departments and bodies such as SIDBI have launched schemes to promote startups.

Multiple activities are being done for startups at different levels in the government system, but as observed, there was an absence of synergy. Now, the Indian healthcare startups have matured and ready to serve the country, they look to the government to formulate a national policy where adequate provisions may be made for their participation.

As a startup progresses from inception to commercialisation to scale, one of the most pertinent factors that shapes its operations and strategies is adherence to governmental regulations. Here in India, health laws and policies are localized-the startups move around the local municipal offices to state health departments for months together to obtain licence, permissions and obtain laboratory / clinical trials.

Non-availability of uniform regulatory and validation standards, leads to a huge variation in validation requirements at States and hospitals. As a result, hospitals often rely on foreign regulatory certifications such as FDA and CE, especially for riskier devices and instruments.

Due to absence of a standard national policy, the startups often face procurement challenges in both public and private procurement. The startups also face operational liquidity crunch as they spend long periods of time in the early development of their product. The process of testing the idea and working prototype, receiving certifications, performing clinical and commercial validations, and raising funds, in an unstructured environment makes the gestational period unusually long thereby limiting the operational liquidity of the start-up. There is a lack of incentives and adequate frameworks to grade and adopt innovations.

Indian startups are more vulnerable than older incumbents to the shock brought by the pandemic. They tend to engage in high-risk activities compared with other small and medium-sized firms (SMEs), face constraints in accessing traditional funding, and have a formative relationship at best with suppliers and customers. In many countries, adequate measures were taken targeting startups’ financial fragilities. These include measures such as loan guarantees, direct lending, grants or subsidies. France has set up a €4 billion fund to support startup liquidity, while Germany announced a startup aid programme, expanding and facilitating venture capital financing. In the case of India, although initiatives were taken, they have not been shaped properly to meet the challenges on ground.

The statistics indicate, till date, there is only one government bed for every 1,844 patients and one doctor for every 11,082 patients (lower than WHO standards) and the country is ranked 145 among 195 countries on the healthcare index. In order to provide affordable health care facilities to the 137 crore population, the government is to formulate a robust national health policy and focus on expanding hospital and human resources, healthcare startups can be effective to improve efficiencies, provide affordable services and bridge gaps. The engagement of the startups in the healthcare ecosystem will put the health system in a more robust position to help absorb the impact and save lives more efficiently in the event of another pandemic.

Providing easy and affordable healthcare for India’s ever-growing population is a challenge. Therefore, while formulating strategies, health rights of the people must be kept at the centre and affordability, accessibility and availability should be made the main mantra. The government may consider integrating few of its flagship programmes with health-care startups. The country has learned enough in the last six months and thus, it is critical that the right to health be supported and the health-care start-ups may be made as the key drivers to achieve affordable health-care for all. Mainstreaming of the healthcare startups in the Indian health system is certain to accelerate health system efficiency and bridge the gaps.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided us an opportunity to improve our healthcare system. The need of the hour is to formulate a robust national health policy and promote the concept “One Nation One Policy for the Startups”.

(The Author is officiating as President, Manavadhikar Samajik Manch, a New Delhi-based organisation which works in the areas of promotion and protection of human rights)