Oral Health and the Republic is a rigorous examination of how and why oral health has been systematically neglected within India’s healthcare system, despite its profound impact on pain, productivity, dignity, and population health. Written from a medical, public health, and policy perspective, the book argues that dentistry is not a peripheral service but an essential pillar of a functioning republic.

Through structured analysis of epidemiology, economics, education, regulation, culture, and governance, the book exposes the institutional failures that have kept oral health outside mainstream medicine and universal health coverage. It makes the case that India does not lack dentists or knowledge, but vision, integration, and policy courage.

Positioning oral health as a matter of health sovereignty and ethical governance, this book is a call for systemic reform—one that treats preventable suffering not as an inevitability, but as a failure the republic can and must correct.