Surgeon-writer Atul Gawande is a writer of best-selling books, mostly riveting essays on the challenges and tricky ethical issues facing modern medicine and about doctors and their mistakes. His recent book, Being Mortal, is a courageous meditation on ageing and death and how doctors can help patients deal with end of life. Gawande was in Delhi recently to deliver this year's BBC Reith Lectures. Soutik Biswas spoke to him on what ails India's public health system. Excerpts: