The setting up of the National Rural Health Mission is yet another political move by the present government of India to make yet another promise to the long suffering rural population to improve their health status. As has happened so often in the past, it is based on questionable premises. It adopts a simplistic approach to a highly complex problem. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and its advisors, either because of ignorance or otherwise, have doggedly refused to learn from the many experiences of the past, both in terms of the efforts to earlier somewhat sincere efforts to develop endogenous mechanisms to offer access to health services as well as from the devastative impact on the painstakingly built rural health services of the imposition of prefabricated, ill-conceived, ill-formulated, techno-centric vertical programmes on the people of India. The also ignore some of the basic postulates of public health practice in a country like India. That did not substantiate the bases of some of their substantive contentions with scientific data obtained from health systems research reveals that they are not serious about their promise to rural population. This is yet another instance of what Romesh Thaper had called 'Baba Log playing government government'.

The health care system in India has expanded considerably over the last few decades but the quality of the services is not up to the mark due to various reasons. Hence standards are being introduced in order to improve the quality of services. A task group under the chairmanship of Director General of Health Services, Government of India was constituted to recommend the standards to be called as Indian Public Health Standards. IPHS are a set of standards envisaged to improve the quality of health care delivery in the country under the National Rural Health Mission.

The recently declared National Rural Health Mission has aroused significant interest, being both welcomed and closely scrutinized, since there is a long overdue and outstanding need to strengthen weak and dysfunctional public health systems in rural India. In this setting, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) has been involved in analysing various aspects of the Mission. The concern has been that it should develop in a manner that actually strengthens public health systems in an integrated manner, and that it should empower communities to be involved in the planning and utilization of these systems in a Rights-based framework. In this article, one will draw upon and reflect on a few of the major concerns about NRHM that have emerged during the insightful discussions in JSA.

Training plays a key role in health manpower development and management of health care system. Since NRHM is a new concept, due weight-age has to be given to various components of the Mission. For the efficient and effective performance of medical and paramedical workers a certain level of competence in the form of knowledge, skill and attitude are essential. Various aspects of training activities to be included in training programmes have been discussed in the paper.

This paper explores the forces that led to the conceptualisation of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) including the role of the Common Minimum Programme and the Structural Adjustment Programme. The paper analyses the key components of the NRHM in terms of the theoretical frameworks of decentralisation, integration of programmes, primary health care, community health workers and standards.

National Rural Health Mission represents an important public health initiative to address essential health needs of the country's underserved population. For the Mission to achieve its goals, urban population needs to be included in its scope. Urban poor population constitutes nearly a third of India's urban population and is growing at three times the national population growth rate. Health status and access of reproductive and child health services of slum dwellers are poor and comparable to the rural population. Efforts to improve the conditions of urban poor necessitate strengthening national policy and fiscal mandate, augmenting and strengthening the urban health delivery system, coordinating among multiple stakeholders, involving private sector, strengthening municipal functioning and building community capacities. National Rural Health Mission should be broadened to National Public Health Mission. This paper discusses issues pertaining to health conditions of the urban poor, present status of services, challenges and suggests options for NRHM to bridge the large gap.

The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), launched by the present government as part of its honouring the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) commitment, had its content shaped by an active process of dialogue between many stakeholders. This article traces the contours of the discussions on three key concerns of civil society that influenced their contributions to the shaping of the National Rural Health Mission agenda. These three concerns were promotion of targeted sterilisation, a retreat of the state from its commitments to the health sector and that the NRHM agenda would lead to privatisation of public health facilities. Whereas fears on targeted sterilisation and retreat of the state may be unrealistic, there is a thrust to increased involvement of the private sector, which needs to be understood in its entirety. There is need for continued engagement by equity concerned public health professionals and health activists at all levels of implementation and not merely community monitoring to influence and shape the National Rural Health Mission in a pro-poor direction.

Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) continues to remain high in our country without showing any declining trend over a period of two decades. The proportions of maternal deaths contributed by direct obstetric causes have also remained more or less the same in rural areas. There is a strong need to improve coverage of antenatal care, promote institutional deliveries and provide emergency obstetric care. Delays occur in seeking care for obstetric complications and levels of 'met obstetric need' continue to be low in many parts of the country. Most of the First Referral Units (FRUs) and CHCs function at sub-optimal level in the country. National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) offers institutional mechanism and strategic options to reduce high MMR. 'Janani Suraksha Yojna', strengthening of CHCs (as per Indian Public Health standards) to offer 24 hours quality services including that of anesthetists and Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) are important proposals in this regard. District Health Mission can play an important role in monitoring maternal deaths occurring in hospitals or in community and thus create a social momentum to prevent and reduce maternal deaths. NRHM, however, depends largely on Panchayati Raj Institutions for effective implementation of proposed interventions and utilization of resources. In most parts of our country, State Governments have not empowered PRIs with real devolution of power. Therefore, much needs to be done locally to build the capacity of PRIs and develop state-specific guidelines in operational terms to implement interventions under NRHM for reducing maternal mortality ratio.

National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) launched by Government of India holds great hopes and promises to serve the deprived and underserved communities of rural areas. The backbone of the programme is Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), which will play major role in the implementation of the programme. The invariable existence of socio-cultural clusters in the community has always been a major challenge to the health care efforts made by the government. Though ASHA is a novel concept to melt the ice in the culture of silence among the various cluster community groups, it is important to emphasize that inter-cluster communication may still pose a problem, which ASHA may be unable to address. Considering the constraints of ASHA and success of cluster community approach in Unicef supported community based Maternal Child Health & Nutrition (MCHN) Project, it is quite reasonable to state that inclusion of community mobilisers (Bal Parivar Mitra) from within the cluster community group might well be an asset to the programme, who may actually bring about the task of spreading the spirit of NRHM. These set of functionaries may work in coordination to bring about the desired behaviour changes and decrease the social delays responsible for maternal and childhood mortality. It will also bring about the feeling of community participation and ownership. The programme is in its initial phase but has years ahead of it to bring visible changes at community level to make it a reality..

National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) launched by Government of India holds great hopes and promises to serve the deprived and underserved communities of rural areas. The backbone of the programme is Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), which will play major role in the implementation of the programme. The invariable existence of socio-cultural clusters in the community has always been a major challenge to the health care efforts made by the government. Though ASHA is a novel concept to melt the ice in the culture of silence among the various cluster community groups, it is important to emphasize that inter-cluster communication may still pose a problem, which ASHA may be unable to address. Considering the constraints of ASHA and success of cluster community approach in Unicef supported community based Maternal Child Health & Nutrition (MCHN) Project, it is quite reasonable to state that inclusion of community mobilisers (Bal Parivar Mitra) from within the cluster community group might well be an asset to the programme, who may actually bring about the task of spreading the spirit of NRHM. These set of functionaries may work in coordination to bring about the desired behaviour changes and decrease the social delays responsible for maternal and childhood mortality. It will also bring about the feeling of community participation and ownership. The programme is in its initial phase but has years ahead of it to bring visible changes at community level to make it a reality..