India, Oct. 24 -- Picture a government hospital on a crowded Monday morning, wherein, a panel of three senior doctors examines a patient who has been waiting for years, writes out five medicines and sends him down the corridor to the pharmacy. The pharmacist studies the slip at his own leisure. He hands over the first medicine, keeps the second 'under consideration', sends the third back upstairs for a second opinion nobody asked for, and dispenses the fifth before the fourth because he happens to like the label or salt. The patient goes home with half a treatment and a token number and waits for eternity.

In any other hospital the pharmacist would be answering a show-cause notice by the afternoon. In ours, the doctor watches the whole p...