"But since the total payout added up to a tidy sum, he presented the government with a scheme in which the teachers' medical allowance is paid to the National Insurance Company, a public sector general insurance firm based in Kolkata, for insuring them and their families for a cover of Rs 1,60,000 annually.

"Without the government spending a single extra rupee, close to 2 million people are getting good health facilities," says Dr Shetty.

The law of large numbers, according to Shetty who uses an assembly-line approach to healthcare, is the only way to bring about a revolution in healthcare in this country where everything is in short supply -hospital beds (1.5 per 1,000 population against a world average of four), doctors (0.5 per thousand against 1.6) - and where the burden of rising costs is borne by the people.

Image: An Indian doctor holds the "Ventricular Assist Device" or VAD, a battery operated mechanical device which is implanted in the lower part of the chest below the heart, as heart patient Venkata Krishnaiah looks on at Narayan Hrudyalaya in Bangalore on April 10, 2008. An Indian hospital has successfully performed what it says is Asia's first artificial heart transplant on a 54-year-old man. | Photograph: STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images