Health Care and Social Development

This chapter provides a brief description of the health sector and social developmental scenarios of the two Bengals starting from the inception of their post-division political history. While in terms of basic socioeconomic, demographic, and political aspects, both the Bengals were undisguisable prior to their division, a couple of decades after when they started strategizing on planning as new economic territories, and they portrayed divergent growth paths. Nonetheless, with a separate set of challenges, resources, and constraints post-division, both the Bengals took off in terms of economic growth and development indicators of importance. In the health sector, both the Bengals share several commonalities in terms of challenges, such as inequity in health service access, distribution of health infrastructure, insurance service penetration, and lack of transparency and regulation, among many others. On triggering a collaborative transition in growth and development, multiple scopes do exist and have emerged over time, which need specific policy attention and suitable intervention. This is more so because they share more commonalities in these economic territories than the disparities they possess, which may be due to their strong historical overlaps.