Today is India's Independence Day (as yesterday was Pakistan's). The revolutionary British National Health Service was created less than a year after both nations won freedom from Britain. The Empire was built on exploitation of Indian resources and labour. Soon, Britain once again turned to the South Asian workforce, to staff the new health service which found itself floundering after just a few years. I wrote about it over at the Healthcare Blog. Anti-immigrant sentiment is rising in the UK, the same country that voted the NHS as one of its greatest achievements. Yet the NHS's dependence on overseas labour simply cannot be overestimated.