India should spend more on healthcare than defence: Kamal Haasan
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Chennai: Makkal Needhi Maiam Chief Kamal Haasan on Monday envisioned how India should use its resources.
Currently India spends 2 percent of its GDP on defence, while just over 1 percent goes to healthcare.
He wants India to spend more on health post COVID-19 in preparedness for another pandemic.
The veteran actor said that poor healthcare is an everyday war leading to 1.6 million deaths annually.
Microbes don’t judge and wage war with anybody irrespective of their military budgets.
Given this, India should earmark an epidemic preparedness budget, he said.
This crisis hit migrant labours hard reducing them to scavengers. So the government should correct income inequality and alleviate poverty.
As for the agricultural sector, Haasan said that India needed to make the sector great again, and suggested a Green Plus revolution.
Also, India needed to maximize productivity on a war footing.
The Covid-19 crisis is an opportunity for India to emerge from its shadows, said the actor.