ABSTRACT
The SDGs including the SDG-3 targets lend themselves to be interpreted as political statement that defines development as more than economic growth rates, and health as more than a few selective interventions. Clearly, achievement of SDG targets is incompatible with neo-liberal understandings of growth and development that inform current national and international economic policies and that informed the first wave of health sector reforms in the nineties and the ongoing second wave of reforms linked to the UHC discourse. The incoherence between different policy articulations and policy as practiced, both by the Indian state and by global health institutions, could lead to confusion and cynicism, but can be analysed and understood as emanating from the contradiction between the economic policies pursued and the health and human development goals. The chapter thus argues that engaging with the discussion around its measurement, interpretation and implementation could provide scope for questioning current economic policies and neo-liberal understandings that drive health reform and posing alternatives to these.
