Draft for discussion by Jan Swasthya Abhiyan
Our Health, Our Voice, Our Right!
हमारा स्वस्थ्य, हमारी आवाज़, हमारा अधिकार!
National Campaign for Health Rights and Universal Healthcare (2026–27)
Introduction
Across India today, society and systems are being fractured through growing exclusion, precarity and inequality. Large sections of people are being pushed out of welfare systems and even basic public services due to digital conditionalities and administrative requirements, austerity measures and deepening privatisation. Public health systems are being weakened, insurance-based schemes are failing to provide real protection, and crores of people are struggling to obtain basic, affordable and dignified healthcare. Communities across the country face denial, discrimination and neglect, and these experiences must now be brought together into a broad collective response.
Jan Swasthya Abhiyan asserts a clear principle: Everyone must be included, and no one should be excluded from essential health services, which are our basic right. Along with resisting privatisation, exclusion and corporate-driven healthcare, we need to work with communities, frontline health workers, Panchayats and local democratic institutions to strengthen public health systems and advance practical local solutions.
The proposed national health campaign to be led by Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) will build upon the well-attended and organised National convention on Health rights (December 2025) organised in Delhi by JSA, and will foreground five interconnected concerns: Health Situations, Health Solidarities, Health Solutions, Health Systems, and Health Struggles.
Health Situations – Speak with people and document their realities of denial, exclusion, discrimination, healthcare costs and barriers, and the state of local health facilities.
Health Solidarity – Build unity across diverse social groups and movements, around the shared principle that healthcare must be realised by all, without any exclusion.
Health Solutions – Advance practical, people-centred and locally rooted solutions to improve access to healthcare, while reclaiming public health facilities.
Health Systems – Defend, expand and democratise public health systems while challenging PPPs, insurance schemes and corporate-driven models.
Health Struggles – Support collective action at various levels against injustice, exclusion, privatisation and commercialisation in healthcare.
II. The next phase of health mobilisation – integrating struggles and alternatives (स्वास्थ्य के लिए - संघर्ष और विकल्प)
This campaign seeks to build upon considerable work already being carried out by health movements across India, while bringing new emphases and forms of collective action. A central focus will be proactive alliance-building with a much wider range of social constituencies — including farmers and rural communities, organised and unorganised workers, Dalit and Adivasi movements, women’s organisations and many others — while developing shared agendas, demands and struggles around health and social justice. Another thrust of the campaign will be to build stronger and more sustained joint fronts with health workers’ organisations at all levels — from ASHAs and frontline workers to nurses, doctors and other staff — around common demands such as expansion of health budgets, better working conditions, and resistance to privatisation. The campaign will also place greater emphasis on developing practical and locally rooted healthcare solutions while promoting collaborative efforts from below — such as community initiatives to strengthen Health and Wellness Centres and various forms of people-public partnerships to improve health services. Our approach is to actively reclaim and rebuild public health services through positive social action involving communities, Panchayats, frontline workers and local health institutions. Another dimension will be engagement with genuine not-for-profit and charitable healthcare providers, while supporting such institutions to resist growing commercialisation. At the same time, the campaign will frontally challenge corporatisation and commercialisation of healthcare, including insurance-driven models, which fail to provide healthcare access for the vast majority of Indian people. We strongly assert that the existing health system in India offers no viable pathway to ensure healthcare for 140 crore people.
The campaign will therefore place the alternative of Universal Health Care powerfully on the social and political agenda — understood as a publicly organised and publicly financed system that would guarantee free, quality healthcare for everyone through major expansion and strengthening of public health services, while also involving regulated, insourced not-for-profit and non-corporate providers to fill gaps. Universal Health Care today offers a practical and equitable pathway towards healthcare as a social right for all rather than a market commodity which is today inaccessible for the vast majority.
III. Main objectives of the campaign
Build widespread awareness among grassroots activists, frontline health professionals and concerned people on critical health policy issues, health rights, and JSA campaign demands through meetings, popular education materials and public dialogues.
Expand and deepen alliances by actively engaging farmers’ movements, Dalit and Adivasi movements, trade unions, unorganised sector workers’ associations, women’s organisations, LGBTQI groups, Health workers’ associations, Senior citizens forums, mental health and disability rights groups, food security campaign, environmental justice movements and other grassroots formations to weave a broad and inclusive Health Rights agenda with JSA.
Consolidate a shared platform of demands culminating in an updated People’s Health Charter and mass endorsement of the Ten-Point Health Rights Manifesto.
Evidence building through People’s Health Watch Report (PHWR). An assessment of state of primary health care in India would be conducted through brief facility survey and exit interview of these facilities, complemented by village/community health dialogues to identify common health and social security issues faced by people, barriers to access to healthcare, and wats to improve access and ensure health rights. Evidence from surveys, the dialogue and collation of other evidence from various data sources would form the Peoples’ Health Watch report.
Ensuring greater participation and accountability through Village / Community Health Rights Watch Groups (Swasthya Adhikar Nigrani Samuh). Through the process of the dialogues, a Swasthya Adhikar Nigrani Samuh (SANS) would be constituted to ensure greater accountability of the health system and greater participation of people in the decision-making process.
Promote mass mobilisation and participation: The evidence generated through PHWR would be taken to people through mass campaign. This would be complemented by mass signature campaign on Right to Health in 100 - 150 districts, collection of 5–10 lakh public signatures, engagement of hundreds of grassroots organisations, and mobilisation of thousands of activists from diverse movements and groups, associations, unions.
Organise a phased national Health Rights Yatra (Swasthya Adhikar Yatra) moving through stages to cover around 20 states, holding a series of public dialogues (Swasthya Samvad) in each state. The Yatra would cover clusters of states in various phases over around six months. The aim would be to cover 5–10 districts in major states and fewer districts in smaller states, reaching out to over 100 districts across the country.
Widely popularise key demands including right to healthcare legislation, increasing public health expenditure to 3.5% of GDP, reclaiming and improving public health systems, free medicines and diagnostics, health worker rights, ending privatisation and destructive PPPs, regulation of private healthcare with patients’ rights, gender and social justice in health systems, and moving towards a system of Universal Healthcare.
Policy advocacy and public accountability through state-level submissions, media advocacy, and a national People’s Health Parliament in March 2027 aligned with the Parliament Budget session. Invite (opposition party) Parliamentarians to place the Right to Health centrally on their agenda. Attempt to present a Right to Health Bill in Parliament as a private member bill.
IV. Phases of Health Rights Campaign and Swasthya Adhikar Yatra
The campaign will follow a phased Yatra mode, with a series of public dialogues organised across clusters of states to ensure national coverage of 100–150 districts across India. The overall campaign period will be approximately September 2026 to March 2027. It will unfold through coordinated regional and state-level phases, rather than one continuous national yatra. National and regional teams will participate in district- and city-level programmes in each state.
Phase 1: Preparatory phase (June–August 2026): This phase will focus on widening the alliance and holding dialogue with like-minded peoples’ movements, health workers’ unions, trade unions, political parties, social groups and peoples’ representatives. During this period, volunteers will also be trained to conduct facility assessments and community health dialogues.
Phase 2: Preparation of People’s Health Watch Report (August–October 2026): The first round of activity, wherever possible, will be the participatory preparation of the People’s Health Watch Report (PHWR). This will involve collecting information on local health facilities at the village or urban community level through facility assessments, community health dialogues and evidence from other surveys.
The nearest primary care facility, such as a PHC, HWC or SC, will be identified for a brief facility survey. The survey will use a simple mobile-based form to record the availability of services, human resources, medicines, tests and infrastructure. It will also assess the functioning of VHSNCs, Jan Arogya Samitis and Rogi Kalyan Samitis. This will be followed by exit interviews or community-based interviews with around 10 people who have sought care in the facility, to assess whether they received the required services and how they perceived the quality of care.
The other key source of evidence for the PHWR will be Village/Community Health Dialogues. These dialogues will focus on common health and social security issues faced by people, the challenges and barriers to accessing healthcare, and people’s views on what could improve access and ensure health rights. Some broad themes for the dialogues will be:
Common health problems faced by people.
Barriers and challenges in access to healthcare.
Climate and environmental challenges, and social determinants of health.
People’s experiences of resistance, alternatives and struggles.
All evidence generated through facility assessments and community dialogues will be collated to develop state-specific and national PHWRs.
Phase 3: Yatra phase (October 2026 to February 2027):
The third and most crucial stage is to conduct in each state a series of district / local Health rights programmes, which would be organised in various districts / towns in ‘Yatra’ mode. The locations will be flexible and may include districts, towns, cities or, where relevant, active talukas. Each state can organise events in at least 5 to 10 such locations, depending on its size and the level of JSA activity, over a period of around 15–20 days to one month. Breaks may be kept between clusters of district programmes according to state-level planning. Members of JSA regional and national teams will participate in each state yatra as far as possible, to ensure continuity and a national link. The overall goal is to cover 100–150 districts across the country.
The day-long programme in each district/city: Each programme may include People’s Health Dialogue (Swasthya Samvad) meetings, presentation of survey findings, testimonies from patients or community members about healthcare experiences, presentation of health data and demands, endorsement of the Health Rights Charter by social movements, interaction with MPs and MLAs, visits to public hospitals, press conferences and widely publicised signature drives.
Signature campaign goal: Collect around 5,000 signatures or more per district, including through online endorsement via Google forms or mobile phones, targeting total of 5–10 lakh signatures on the Ten-Point Health Rights Charter. If the campaign reaches one million signatures, it may be publicised as “A Million Signatures on Right to Health for One and a Half Billion People.”
Phase 4: State-level Health Assemblies and National Convergence (January–March 2027):
The final phase will consist of State-level Health Assemblies, during which the experiences, findings, demands and proposals emerging from across the state will be shared and discussed in major programmes involving MLAs, political party representatives, social movements and the media. This will be followed by countrywide mobilisation for the People’s Health Parliament in Delhi in late March or early April 2027.
Keeping in view diversity of situations across states, there would be flexibility for states to adapt the campaign components and themes based on their own context. At the same time, we may identify a few dates in the timeline when we might have some nationally coordinated action, which will be helpful in ensuring the coming together of all States, networks and allied movements.
V. Key campaign demands (Ten-point charter) for signatures
The campaign will tentatively publicise certain key policy measures based on JSA’s health rights agenda (this is a very brief mention of possible key issues, can be elaborated in a separate document):
Justiciable Right to Health: Enact legislation at Union and State levels to make healthcare a justiciable right. Make healthcare a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. Guarantee availability of good quality public health services for all.
Majorly increased Public health funding: Double central health budget (in 2027 Union budget), raise state health budgets and ensure public health expenditure to increase to 3.5% of GDP in next three years. Finance Commission to create a special financial envelope for all states to help them increase health budgets.
Justice for Health workers: Regularize all contractual health workers, including ASHAs and Anganwadi workers, with adequate wages and social security. Fill all vacancies and implement transparent policies to ensure doctors are present in remote rural areas.
Free medicines and diagnostics, rational pharma policy: Ensure regular supply of essential medicines in all public facilities using the TNMSC procurement model. Bring all essential medicines under price control, ban irrational drug combinations, promote generic medicine use by removing GST on drugs, revive public sector pharma companies.
Stop all forms of privatisation of healthcare and medical education: Eliminate Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that weaken public services. Phase out current health insurance schemes, and replace these by moving towards Universal Health Care.
Regulation of private healthcare sector: Implement Clinical Establishment Act or equivalent acts across all states to ensure rate transparency and regulation, care based on standards, and implementation of the Patients’ Rights Charter.
Gender justice in health: Ensure health rights for women and LGBTQI communities through dignified, stigma-free and equitable health care and services.
Eliminate exclusion, discrimination and deprivation in Healthcare: Ensure equitable and accessible care with dignity for various oppressed groups (Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, ethnic and linguistic minorities, migrants etc.) while making special financial allocations and provisions, along with removing barriers created by communal or social exclusion.
Moving towards a Universal Health Care (UHC) System: Phase out the discredited insurance-based PMJAY model and replace it with a publicly managed and funded UHC system, where services are free for everyone at the point of care. Insourcing of private providers (esp. charitable, smaller and individual providers) with regulation to cover existing gaps in public provisioning.
Social and environmental determinants of health: Address the wider conditions that shape health, including nutrition, housing, water, sanitation, work, climate and environment.
VI. Constituency-oriented outreach processes
One of the core objectives of this campaign would be to expand the engagement of various social groups and organizations related to jointly endorsed health demands in each area and state, for example -
A. Farmers, farmworkers and rural communities - indebtedness due to medical expenses, agrarian distress, farmers suicides linked with unbearable hospitalisation expenses, urgent need for upgrading rural health system.
B. Workers (including unorganised sector) and trade unions - ESI, occupational health, healthcare costs, urban health systems, privatisation.
C. Women’s organisations - reproductive rights, care for survivors of violence, nutrition, maternal healthcare, HPV vaccination etc.
D. Dalit and anti-caste movements – ending caste discrimination and exclusion in healthcare, health of sanitation workers, manual scavengers, locating health facilities in Dalit communities.
E. Adivasi organisations – inaccessible healthcare, health dimensions of displacement, malnutrition, discrimination, need for training of local persons as health workers etc.
F. LGBTQI collectives – opposing Transgender Persons Amendment Act 2026, ensuring stigma-free and gender affirming healthcare, mental health issues and counselling, ending discrimination in health institutions.
G. Child health and nutrition – malnutrition and anaemia, weakening of ICDS and school nutrition programmes, rising out-of-pocket expenditure for childhood illness, strengthening paediatric and neonatal services, and ensuring quality healthcare for all children.
H. Mental health groups and initiatives – expanding access to affordable and community-based mental healthcare, addressing widespread distress linked with unemployment, violence and social exclusion, ensuring availability of counselling and psychosocial support services, developing alternatives to over-commercialised and exclusionary models of mental healthcare.
I. HIV/AIDS networks and affected communities – protecting access to free treatment and testing services, combating stigma and discrimination in healthcare settings, defending rights-based approaches for people living with HIV/AIDS and vulnerable communities.
J. Elderly people and senior citizens’ groups – affordable and accessible care for chronic illnesses, access to medicines and diagnostics, strengthening geriatric and palliative care services, protection from exclusion due to digitalisation and weakening public services.
K. Disability rights groups: Physical access in all public health facilities with functional ramps etc., provision of health information in accessible formats, free distribution of high-quality assistive devices—such as wheelchairs, prosthetics etc., decentralized and simplified disability certification.
L. Environmental justice and grassroots ecological movements – challenging health impacts of industrial pollution, contaminated water, toxic waste dumping, air pollution etc. Highlight rising cancers, respiratory illness, occupational diseases etc., demanding accessible public healthcare.
We can consider whether some joint conventions / online events can be held in collaboration with such social movements, highlighting joint critical issues and demands.
VII. Massive communication and public outreach
A major component of this campaign will be large-scale communication and public outreach to carry the message of Health Rights and Universal Health Care to diverse sections of people across India. The campaign at every stage will have social media strategies, ensuring that emerging issues, evidence, demands and health struggles are widely covered. Communication efforts will also promote the signature campaign, while highlighting positive alternatives, local solutions, inspiring examples of public healthcare provisioning and people’s solidarity.
Communications would be based on combination of multilingual print materials, social media content, short videos, testimonies, press engagement and state-level documentation, so that campaign messages are accessible to diverse audiences, including younger constituencies. Wherever possible related cultural activities including street theatre / Kala Jatha initiatives would be actively promoted. Through sustained and creative communication efforts, the campaign will not only mobilise lakhs of people physically, but will also reshape public discourse around healthcare by reaching crores of people through various forms of media, demanding health as a basic right.
VIII. Some key outcomes of the campaign
The campaign will culminate in high-visibility outcomes like:
Updated People’s Health Charter: A living document to be released in the People’s Health Parliament, reflecting the range of demands from grassroots movements during the Yatra.
100 - 150 District health rights programs: Local dialogues to reach out to lakhs of people across India. Consolidation / formation of JSA district or city units in over 100 districts.
Around a million signatures endorsing set of 10 Health rights demands, including the demand to make Healthcare a fundamental right in the Constitution.
Wide range of grassroots evidence and information flowing from local surveys and testimonies etc. which could be compiled in form of a national report
People’s Health Parliament (March 2027): A national assembly held in Delhi during the actual Parliament session, where the 5-10 lakh signatures and the People's Health Charter would be presented to MPs, political parties, media etc.
Establishing a strong network and contacts with MPs and MLAs, especially from opposition parties, who would commit to defending public health, as part of saving democracy.
To engage opposition parties and related state governments effectively, the campaign’s political positioning should expand from a purely rights-based demand to a "Federalist - Democratic - Welfare State" position. Our campaign would be framed as a defence of the Indian Constitution, State autonomy, and People’s welfare against a hyper-centralizing, pro-corporate health model.
The campaign can position the current Union government and BJP-led state government’s health policies as the "Healthcare for Profit, not for People" model which treats patients as consumers, and public funds as subsidies for private health companies. JSA offers an alternative model "Healthcare for People, not for Profit". In an era of deepening social and religion-based divides, a system for Universal Healthcare is the ultimate secular institution. By focusing on positive health proposals, JSA can help opposition parties to offer a constructive, inclusive agenda (Politics of Care) that counters communal and divisive narratives (Politics of Violence).
If properly organised, this national campaign can become the largest health rights mobilisation in India since 2000, a bridge between health activism and broader democratic struggles, a counter to corporate-centric, commercialised healthcare, and a major step toward creating a powerful narrative and socio-political momentum for Right to health and Universal Health Care.
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