Oral Health and the Republic

Why This Book

India speaks often of healthcare reform, universal coverage, and preventive medicine—yet oral health remains structurally invisible in national medical discourse. Dentistry is treated as a peripheral craft rather than a core public health science, despite overwhelming evidence linking oral health to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pregnancy outcomes, nutrition, productivity, and dignity.

This book is written to correct a systemic blind spot.

It argues that oral health is not a cosmetic or optional service, but a republican obligation—integral to public health, economic efficiency, and social equity. By situating dentistry within India’s constitutional values, healthcare economics, epidemiological realities, and institutional frameworks, this book reframes dentistry as a strategic pillar of India’s healthcare future, not an adjunct profession.

Preface

Modern India has built vast health ambitions—Ayushman Bharat, digital health missions, medical education reforms—yet dentistry remains institutionally fragmented, policy-neglected, and socially misunderstood. This paradox persists despite India producing one of the world’s largest dental workforces and facing one of the world’s highest burdens of untreated oral disease.

This book is neither a clinical manual nor a professional grievance.
It is a systems-level examination.

Written at the intersection of medicine, pharmacology, public policy, ethics, and governance, this work seeks to:

• Integrate dentistry into the larger health ecosystem
• Examine structural failures in dental education, regulation, and service delivery
• Propose a coherent national oral health strategy aligned with India’s demographic and epidemiological transition

Above all, it treats dentistry not merely as a profession—but as a public institution serving the Republic.