Care Management: Issues and Challenges

Care and caring are primarily based on human bonding. Whatever be the form of care, caring is a process to be analyzed, contextualized and managed from different perspectives. Social relations centering care become very specialized in form and content in that the care-giver(s) and care-receiver(s) interact continuously both ways. From the very basic maternal care to parental care to family care and various societal institutionalized care system operating in human society, care and caring issue have taken a central paradigmatic dimension in the present post-industrial service society. At present care is not bound and limited by a family, the basic unit of society and family-related caring mechanisms. Care has now become a social issue. Each and every country has been taking many positive measures and intervening in the caring process to ensure healthy Human Development Index (HDI) from a globalized perspective. So, care has now assumed an important social role which is to be analyzed sociologically taking into account different dimensions from maternal bonding of the basic biological dimension to governmental responsibility with inter-governmental collaboration at the international level. The present paper tries to analyse care management from an institutional perspective and visualize the issues and challenges thereof in Indian context, underpinning both sociology of care as well as management of care. The issue of management of care has now assumed a vernal significance, because the delivery mechanism of the care system has to be effective as well as efficient from the perspective of the philosophy of welfare of the citizens by a state like India.