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IMPROVED PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES HIGHEST AMONG PRIORITIES As we said, participants showed an overwhelmingly low preference for cash through DBT when they were offered alternative avenues

for funds use -- roads and health, with the latter picked over both road construction and employment generation. “People’s preferences, at the very least, would depend upon their views of

how the state has performed in the past,” said Khemani. “It could be, for example, that precisely because the state has not performed well in implementing large, targeted poverty alleviation

programmes in the past, people are now expressing support for broader kinds of public services such as public health.” Inadequate funding (2% of the 2018-19 interim budget) has left India’s

public healthcare sector in a bad shape, forcing patients to visit private health facilities. This out-of-pocket expenditure increased by 16% between 2014 and 2016, according to data from

the World Health Organization, INDIASPEND reported in January 2019. In 2011-12, 55 million Indians were pushed into poverty by out-of-pocket health expenses, as per this July 2018 INDIASPEND

report. The central government was likely to increase allocation of resources for primary and secondary healthcare at the cost of tertiary care, the 2019 INDIASPEND report said.

Encephalitis was first identified in Muzaffarpur in 1995 and now strikes the city with “clockwork” precision, _The Wire_ reported. Despite this, the state has been unable to deal with the

annual health threat.