The village of Alsisar opened its doors and homes to us in 2013, and their unhesitating and warm hospitality is one of the reason why Magnetic Fields has become a must-attend festival for artists and attendees around the world.

While the festival has helped put the sleepy and dusty village of Alsisar on the map, we wanted to do something that would improve the life of everyone who lives there. We turned to the dance music community and asked our guestlist for a compulsory but small amount of Rs 2,000 as a donation for a charitable cause - that would go towards the welfare of the village.

We let the village community decide what they needed the most, and medical infrastructure was deemed to be the most pressing need.

• The current health scenario of the general population of India is a sad one. According to The Lancet a new index developed to assess each country’s achievement on a range of health indicators, India ranks at 154 in a list of 188 countries.
• A staggering 70 per cent of the population still lives in rural areas and has no or limited access to hospitals and clinics.
• India has 48 doctors per 100,000 persons which is fewer than in developed nations.
• The country has the third-highest child mortality rate among SAARC countries with 48 deaths reported per 1,000 live births and the total life expectancy is 68.3 which gives India a World Life Expectancy ranking of 123.

With this in mind, we reached out to Smile Foundation, who specialise in providing healthcare to the poorest of the poor and in the remotest of places.

Smile Foundation will undertake a two-pronged approach in Alsisar. They will utilise the funds raised to purchase and install quality health care equipment at the local primary healthcare centre, and the fundraising efforts of 2019 will go towards conducting camps for healthcare awareness and hygiene education through the year via their Smile on Wheels programme.

Smile on Wheels is a unique mobile hospital programme that seeks to address problems of mobility, accessibility and availability of primary healthcare with a special focus on children and women, in urban slums and remote rural areas. More than 10 lakh children and families have benefitted so far from the free healthcare services provided through the Smile on Wheels programme.