India has the world's largest cataract backlog, with approximately 7 million individuals in need of cataract surgery . This is after the launch of the National Programme for the Control of Blindness, and of Vision 2020 - the right to sight programme - which lead to a considerable improvement in the situation. Currently, 5 million cataract surgeries are performed every year, up from only 0.5 million in 1976. This is a big achievement, particularly with the scarce human resources and poor physical infrastructure available in the country. But though the number of operations has gone up, the quality still needs improvement. Still, surgical complications arising from cataract surgery are the cause of just a fraction of blindness according to surveys conducted across the country