The findings presented here are from a survey conducted among 1,522 citizens across five States – Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh — between March and April 2022. This is a collaborative study conducted by Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) with King’s India Institute, Royal Holloway (University of London) and the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). The survey received funding from the British Academy small grant SRG21\211431.

These five States were selected because they represent a range of overall health outcomes, a public/private healthcare mix, and are governed by different political parties. In each State, three districts were selected for sampling based on their performance on various health indicators. From each district four locations — two villages, one town, and one district headquarters — were selected. From each location, the enumerators were instructed to interview 25 respondents randomly. In total, 100 interviews were conducted per district which accounted for 300 interviews from each State. A random sampling method was used for selecting a household and quota sampling was used for selecting a respondent. For mapping out the profile of respondents, we provided a sheet with a pre-assigned quota of age and gender.

The interviews were conducted face to face at people’s homes by specially trained field investigators, mostly students from various colleges and universities. A specially designed App (SurveyCTO) was used for the data collection. The questionnaire for the survey was translated into Tamil and Gujarati for Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, respectively. In Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, a Hindi questionnaire was used. Each interview took 20-25 minutes to be completed.

Rakesh Ranjan in Bihar, Sanjay Lodha in Rajasthan, Gladston Xavier in Tamil Nadu and Shashikant Pandey in Uttar Pradesh coordinated the study. The Lokniti team which coordinated and analysed the data constituted of Jyoti Mishra, Vibha Attri, Himanshu Kapoor, Rishikesh Yadav, Himanshu Bhattacharya, Devesh Kumar, Aaliyia Malik and Dhananjay Kumar Singh.

The study was directed by Sanjay Kumar, Suhas Palshikar and Sandeep Shastri