Binayak Sen, leading human rights activist and vice-president of the People's Union of Civil Liberties, has said social and economic inequities are the major causes of ill-health and death in India.

While state action ought to reduce the inequities, the neoliberal economic policies of the Central government have only created and encouraged them, he alleged. Referring to a World Health Organisation report titled ‘Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale,'