This paper demonstrates the World Bank and other multilateral development banks play key roles in the creation of India’s private healthcare system, providing ideological and financial support for its growth and development. The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) also provide countries in the Global South with finance in response to the pandemic. It is important to evaluate the MDBs’ health lending in response to COVID-19, focusing in particular on the extent to which they are using the crisis as an opportunity to further their privatisation agenda, as Dimakou et al. (2020) argues has been the case in general.