Even the remotest villages in India are now well connected through the wide spread network highways across the country, thereby imparting greater mobility to the rural population of India. This improved connectivity has opened up new avenues of employment to the rural poor in the non-agricultural sector thus reducing the problem of seasonal unemployment among the rural agricultural labor force. Thanks to this well spread network roads and railways, the rural population of India can now hope to enjoy the opportunities of better health care facilities and higher education.

According to the current annual Human Development Report published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on November 9, 2006 sanitation still constitutes a major problem area in India. It reveals that around two-third of Indian population doesn't have proper sanitation facilities. Every year nearly 450,000 people in India die out of diarrhoea.

However India's performance in providing clean water has been relatively better. Unfortunately the recent economic growth in India in terms of increasing per capita income and improved standard of living has not been able to reduce the child mortality rate in our country. According to the Human Development Report, it is only through more investment on sanitation and water supply that our nation can expect to have a reduced child mortality rate in future.

All children of ages 6-11 years (Standard/Grade I to V) fall under the domain of primary education in India. In order to universalize primary education as per the constitutional provision there has been a wide spread expansion of primary education across the nation since our independence. According to an estimate of 2001-02, Indian educational system comprised around 0.66 million primary schools, being the second largest educational system in the world after China. With an attempt to attain Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) for all children of ages 6-14 by the year 2010 the Central Government of India initiated the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in 2001.

The main objectives of the SSA are as follows:

• Provision of good quality primary education with focus on education for life.
• Reduction of social and gender related disparities in primary education sector by 2007 and in elementary education by 2010.
• To bring all the children in school or Education Guarantee Center or 'Back to School' camp by 2003.
• To achieve the goal of Universalization of Elementary Education by 2010.

The subsidized or free provision of primary education is also aimed to reduce the problem of child labor prevalent in India.

In sharp contrast with it's rising GDP in recent time the infant mortality and morbidity rate in India still continue to be high. Till now the health care system in rural India is primarily based on the Primary Health Centre (PHC). However the PHCs lack basic facilities like sufficient quantities of medicines, laboratories for pathological tests and good medical practitioners. Again due to illiteracy leading to lack of health awareness, the villagers seldom visit the PHCs at the early stage of their diseases. So with poor infrastructure it has always been a great challenge for the PHCs to serve the rural population of India with the best of health care facilities.

Again each PHC is supposed to serve a population of around 25,000. All these constitute the major reasons for the poor performance of PHCs in India. So to improve the quality of primary health care services, infrastructural improvement in this social sector of India is of utmost importance.

Greater participation of private sector in primary health care services is expected to improve the quality and accountability of the Primary Health Centres in India.