India is a very beautiful country because of the rich variety of cultures and languages that gets spoken here. Such is the wide spectrum of our cultural diversity that it is difficult for anyone to have a thorough understanding of it until we make it a diligent habit of enhancing our skills in this arena. In previous times this was not as much required as it is required now when moving from the part of the country where one is born and brought into a culturally diverse part is not a big thing due to occupational reasons. Earlier people preferred to stay in the regions which were culturally and language-wise more known but now this inhibition has got washed away especially when more and more people have started moving off-shore. In comparison, moving anywhere inside the country does not appear a big deal to the individuals as well as the families. But there is something that we undermine during such migrations and that is our cultural and linguistic competence. 

There are small nuances of every culture and language that sets the tone for connections between one human being to another and this needs to be embarked upon. These are very subtle and invisible factors but at the same time extremely important to build human connections. Health practitioners are the people whom in general we trust the most. If they are not able to connect to our personalities which are seeped into our cultural background, we might feel inhibited to connect or open up. Very few observe but people always tend to go to doctors who just do not treat but who connect. This is why cultural and linguistic competence in health practitioners is one of the supreme factors which is invisible but powerful. It is a soft skill that should be in tandem with hard skills.

With the advent of technology and recent pandemic, there is a new wave called “teleconsultations” which is in vogue. This has set the ground for people to connect to doctors staying miles apart as well. So, even when health practitioners might be staying in a culturally own place, if due to occupational needs they are connecting to people with diverse regions through online mediums, they need to adapt to different cultural nuances in the same manner in which they are adapting to the technological nuances. This will help them in their goal of promoting the health of culturally and linguistically diverse communities.