India must build a holistic care system

India’s development story over the past decade has been one of infrastructure: highways, metro lines, electrification and digital public platforms, each treated as a foundation for growth that requires public investment and planning. One foundation on which every household and economy depends has not received the same attention: care.Everyone needs care at some point in life. How care is organised shapes people’s opportunities, well-being and participation in society and the economy. When services are absent, families, and women most of all, bear the cost in unpaid work, lost earnings, and narrower opportunities.In the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2025, 44.4% of women outside the labour force cited childcare and homemaking as the main reason for staying out of the labour force. India’s Time Use Survey 2024 found that 41% of women aged 15–59 provided unpaid care, spending an average of 140 minutes a day on it. Expanding access to affordable, quality care services can give women greater freedom to pursue employment, leisure and participation in public life. With an ageing population, the need for accessible care services will only grow.Yet care rarely features in India’s growth strategy. For a Viksit Bharat 2047, the question is not only how to expand women’s economic participation, but how to build the care system that makes such participation possible. The Anganwadi network, strengthened through Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0, anchors early childhood care and nutrition. Palna, under Mission Shakti, supports crèches, while Mission Vatsalya, social security and provisions for persons with disabilities and senior citizens address other needs. The challenge is architecture, not ambition. Four gaps stand out. First, fragmentation. Care is split across multiple Ministries, from women and child development to housing and urban affairs. Each runs valuable programmes, but without a common framework. This can leave gaps such as crèches that close before factory shifts end or eldercare needs that fall outside of existing schemes.Second, coverage. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that 9–10 million women in low-income urban households need childcare. Similarly for eldercare, 24% of older persons face limitations in daily activities, while national data on service availability and coverage remain limited.Third, the workforce. Care depends on frontline workers; from Anganwadi workers to home-based caregivers and domestic workers — many of whom remain inadequately remunerated or engaged on an honorary basis. Building on NITI Aayog’s proposals, clear standards, certification, decent working conditions, social protection and career pathways would recognise care as skilled and paid work.Finally, financing and norms. Care is still budgeted as welfare rather than investment, and workplace policies assume that caregiving is women’s work. The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) recommends statutory paid paternity leave in the private sector.Comparable economies are building their own care ecosystems. Colombia’s 2025 National Care Policy brings 34 government entities under one framework. Brazil’s 2024 National Care Policy and 2025 National Care Plan set up inter-Ministerial committees to steer implementation. In Nepal, care mapping was used to fund care pilots.The way forwardIn India, NITI Aayog’s Reimagining Care: Strategies for Empowering Caregivers in Viksit Bharat@2047 report proposes a National Caregiving Council to strengthen coordination. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is consulting States and Union Territories; its May 2026 national workshop discussed a National Care Economy Mission with inter-Ministerial governance, aligned financing and shared data. State-level care roadmaps can make this practical. States can map needs, services and demographic trends, identify gaps in childcare, eldercare and disability support, and prepare costed plans with clear responsibilities. Building on UNDP’s research and lessons from UN Women’s TransformCare initiative in more than 50 countries, the two agencies are supporting this agenda under government leadership, from mapping care services and skilling care workers to backing women-led childcare enterprises with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Women Entrepreneurship Platform. India has the programmes, policy vision and evidence. On this International Day of Care and Support, the task is to connect them, finance them and hold them to account: to build care the way India builds infrastructure.Shoko Ishikawa is Country Representative, UN Women India; Angela Lusigi is Resident Representative, UNDP India