The estimated incidence of cancer in India in 2024 at 15.6 lakh cases, revealing a rise from over 13 lakh five years earlier, makes a sound argument for the disease to be made notifiable under law. Cancer kills about 8.2 lakh people a year.

The disease is, at present, notifiable under local regulations in 17 states and Union Territories, but the Union government has baulked at issuing a national regulation on the ground that health is a state subject. It has also obtusely resisted the call for mandatory reporting because it views cancer as a non-communicable disease, unlike tuberculosis, malaria or dengue.

That argument, made before the National Human Rights Commission two years ago, besides being inaccurate—cervical cancer is linked to the human........

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