The allocation of funds is decided through the annual financial statement, commonly known as the Union Budget. The Union budget is announced in Parliament by the minister of finance. Both the finance bill and the appropriation bill are passed by the Lok Sabha before the annual announcement. In 2019–2020, the health budget was increased to support the requirements of the rural health mission and to initiate the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana health scheme (AB-PMJAY).

For other programmes, such as the National Programme for Palliative care, declared in 2012, a model Personal Independence Payment (PIP) framework with operational and financial guidelines has been designed. Based on a model PIP (Project Implementation Plans), the states/UTs may prepare their proposals related to palliative care and seek financial support from the National Health Mission. Palliative Care is part of the ‘Mission Flexipool’ under the National Health Mission (NHM) and no separate budget has been allocated for the implementation of the programme (MoHFW, 2019b). However, large gaps in the implementation of this programme have been reported with only about 2% of the proposed budget being sanctioned to a small number of states (Rajagopal, 2017).

References:

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. (2019b). National Programme for Palliative care (NPPC): National Health Mission.

Rajagopal Vallath Nandini, M., Mathews Rajashree, L. K., & Watson, M. (2017). An Indian Primer of Palliative Care For medical students and doctors. Available from https://palliumindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Chapter-1-Principles-of-Palliative-Care.pdf