Srinagar, Feb. 12 -- Two days after the Union Budget was presented, I found myself not in a seminar room or policy discussion, but inside Ward 2 of the Sherbagh Maternity Hospital in Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir.A close family member had been admitted for emergency inpatient care and monitoring. What I witnessed there, however, extended far beyond one household's distress. On a single hospital bed, two patients lay facing each other, not separated by partitions or privacy, but by exhaustion and institutional constraint. Each patient required at least one attendant, meaning that around a single bed, four individuals occupied an already limited space. In a maternity settingwhere infection risk, privacy, and continuous monitoring are critical...