Social entrepreneurship in Indian health care sector –problms and prospects

Human resource development plays crucial role in economic development. Large scale investment in human resources is required to exploit the physical capital fully and efficiently. Improvement in the health of masses increases their productive capacity and leads to qualitative improvement in human capital. Therefore expenditures on health are important in building and maintaining a productive labour force as well as improving the lives of the people and the quality of society. The health care system in India is intended to provide free health care to all. Despite significant improvements made in the past few decades, the sector fails to provide easily accessible quality health care at an affordable cost in time to a major segment of Indian population specifically to the rural and vulnerable. Under this scenario, social enterprises have the potential to accelerate India’s spectacular growth and make it inclusive and sustainable. A social entrepreneur deals with the practical social problems by combining innovation, resourcefulness and opportunity. He acts as the change agent for society. Social entrepreneurship in India is emerging primarily because of what the government has not been able to do. The paper focuses on the main issues, impact, challenges of social entrepreneurship in Indian health care sector and proposes some suggestions.