Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a plan to give half a billion poor people in India health insurance. A plan to make sure that India's poor vote him back to power when India goes into election 2019. But with India's dismal health infrastructure there is much more that needs to be done including building a robust primary healthcare system that does not exist even now. Our India correspondent Shweta Bajaj reports from New Delhi. 

The Union Budget of India for the financial year 2018-2019, addressed an issue long ignored by successive governments in India – the health of its citizens. A health insurance plan that would offer 100 million families up to 5,00,000  Indian Rupees or about 7,600 US dollars per person. The funding of the program though will be a struggle.

DR. K.K. AGRAWAL PRESIDENT, HEART CARE FOUNDATION OF INDIA "I think this will force all the private sector and the doctor's community to build up hospitals in smaller areas. If you can have Coca Cola, Pepsi, burgers reaching a remotest of the area, why we are not being able to have the health insurance and facilities there, with this insurance policy I think the health facilities can reach every corner of the country."

The insurance will allow India's poor to go to private hospitals which are too expensive to go to otherwise. Even though there are optimist views, India's health infrastructure is dismal. Treatment in public and government hospitals is technically free, but the primary health infrastructure is so dismal that many people have to travel hundreds of kilometers to even reach one. And even if they do, the hospitals are overburdened. India's government spends just 1.4% of the country's gross domestic product on health. A figure dismal compared to even under-developed economies.

SHWETA BAJAJ NEW DELHI, INDIA "In the next few years Indian will become the most populated country in the world. But one of its biggest challenges will be the health of its citizens. It needs investment in not just insurance but also public health infrastructure especially primary healthcare."

Rema Nagarajan is health editor of India's leading daily Times of India. She says it's much more than a health insurance plan that can make a healthy young India.

REMA NAGARAJAN HEALTH EDITOR, TIMES OF INDIA "You can have National Rural Health Mission, you can allocate funds for it, the funds will also be transferred to UP. But what matters is what happens after that. You can use the funds for? Basically everyone wants to make money. You will find primary healthcare centres being built, sub centres being built. They are empty you will find little hospitals being built, equipment being bought, no doctors, no nurses. There are empty well equipped things just sitting out there. And why is that? Because there is money to be made by giving out these contracts for buildings, money to be made."

India's health challenges are massive. It's a country still struggling with issues like sanitation and open defecation – a perfect place for infectious diseases to breed. There are not many details available on how the government plans to fund the program. Especially since India is struggling with high fiscal deficit. A young India is expected to be its strength. But a large population that is not healthy and unskilled, could instead be a recipe for a disaster. Shweta Bajaj, CGTN, New Delhi, India.