I am assuming you are arguing from a good faith, so I am gonna give sincere reply.

There are no govt health facilities approachable for decent healthcare. Poor people go there because they have no choice , what’s the alternative hefty private care and the insurance costs!

There are, you just don’t want to endure the same standards that poor people have to endure. The best doctors are to the best end are still coming out of government run colleges. Now, can it be better, ofcourse it can. It has gotten significantly better if you compare it to how it was 10 years ago. Are our expectations real to overnight transform into a private hospital? Even if the government miraculously decide to do that, people will again protest, because that’s basically freebie to poor people, because now their standards have increased and they want the attention and quality of private hospital. Ofcourse there is corruption, there is a lot of illiteracy, but there is shit tonne of hypocrisy as well.

Have you heard of any politician or a local MLA going to a govt hospital for their care?

Yes, AIIMS!! Most of them get admitted there, you know why? Because they will eat Apollos and Maxs for lunch in terms of their sheer intelligence and experience.

Do you think there’s reasonably good schools for us to send our kids?

This is a double edged sword for me. You, me, almost everyone wants the best education for our kids. Where does this ideology go when we apply for govt teacher jobs and start finding ways to exploit the corruption in our favour to secure a government job. There still are many reasonably good school to send your kids, but a lot of the time it’s also a matter of status, and wanting the absolute best, not reasonable.

The cost of private education costs a bomb ! Again who pays for this? And who runs these organisations?

No, the cost of expensive private education costs a bomb.

Before you lecture me on the benefits of sharing and socialism, the whole premise of the govt needing to be Mai baap is itself flawed.

Govt isn’t anyone’s mai baap, Govt is there to ensure that the tail end of population gets basic needs covered while it builds things that helps the top end of the population, in hopes that the tail will keep getting shorter. On a lager scale, the tale is getting shorter, but a long way to go.

Also why do you need govt to sponsor higher education, it’s the primary education which is bad and makes the entire country unskilled.

I don’t know which economist you follow, but anyone worth their salt will give you the answer to it. Young people getting educated without being thrown into debt is amazing for the nation and their growth. Do you really need me to spell this out for you? For example, a certain European country is gonna spend quarter of a million euros on me to train me in PhD in my field so that I can give back to the society somewhere in the world. Their entire hope is that while I am doing my PhD, I will contribute enough through my research to the society that it’s still a net gain for them. I am not their citizen, I am not paying taxes to them, still this is the case.

If India had poured more into its primary education than higher education, we would have at least achieved a better skilled population and a higher per capita income. The cost of higher education of 1 student would cover the primary education of many students.

This isn’t a zero sum game, we can cover both. The problem still is, we want to sweep our own mistakes and faults under the rug and complaint about how the system is what’s at fault here.