Tuberculosis (TB) kills more people today than HIV and malaria combined. In 2015, there were an estimated 10.4 million new TB cases worldwide and 1.8 million TB deaths, according to the World Health Organization. And India is at the epicentre of this global epidemic, with half a million TB deaths annually.

India also accounts for 16 per cent of the estimated 480,000 new cases of multi-drug-resistant TB. Can India turn things around and control this epidemic? The answer is a conditional yes. The Indian government has already taken several steps over the past few years to ...