The Mahars of Bombay Presidency, who buried the human and animal dead, were essential to the colonial state as frontline health workers. They worked in filthy burial grounds where jackals often dug up the dead
A guest post from Sohini Chattopadhyay, PhD candidate, History Department, Columbia University
Science and Health
Science and Health
Do Mortuary Workers Come Last in the Covid19 fight?
The invisible indispensable cadre of workers who handle the dead in government hospitals received PPE kits only in the sixth week of the Covid19 lockdown in Bengal. This is probably the case in other cities. The viral videos of dead bodies in hospital wards may point to this At the largest government hospital in Kolkata, mortuary assistants started being given…
Science and Health
Locked Out of Mental Healthcare and Drugs
There are those whose mental health conditions cannot be managed by deep breathing and physical exercise and whatsapp conversations with doctors. Patients in government hospitals, for instance. The lockdown violates their care In the first week of the lockdown imposed by PM Modi, arguably the harshest in the world, a chance memory of a policeman who had briefly consulted him…
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Once Upon a Midwife
A brief history of witch burnings, abortion laws and insurance rules that have taken midwifery to near extinction
Science and Health
Two Kidney Recipients, and A Failed Liver Donor
My association with the late Cabinet ministers Arun Jaitely and Sushma Swaraj is ineffably with them as transplant patients: two kidney recipients, and me, a failed liver donor. I come from a transplant family myself: my father got a life-saving liver transplant in June 2018 with my mother as the donor.
Science and Health
The Surprising Generosity of the Online Crowd
Milaap, Ketto and ImpactGuru collectively raised Rs 272 crore for medical emergencies in 2018. This is 11% of the ₹2,400 crore inaugural budget for Ayushman Bharat, the Central scheme rolled out by the government that promises ₹5 lakh free health insurance for the poorest 40% of the population.
Science and Health
Sum of Her Parts
Women constitute 74% kidney donors. For liver surgeries, the data I received was much more limited because these transplants happen almost entirely in private hospitals, which do not come under RTI. Here, women are 60.5% of the donors
Essays, Science and Health
The Privilege of the 0.1%
If cinema is a lens to understand society, then both
Placebo and Munnabhai MBBS tell you two things–why doctors evoke such dislike, and why they themselves appear dehumanized and alienated, out of love with the work they have spent so
many years in training for.
Science and Health
How the Public Tragedy of the Kolkata Flyover Collapse Was Buried
More than one year since the Kolkata flyover collapse that killed 26, the criminal trial has not begun. The police are not speaking on the record. And the government is silent
Science and Health
‘I can’t take it anymore’: Sights and awful sounds from the labour room of an Indian public hospital
A reporter goes undercover to see how women are treated in a large government facility in Kolkata By SOHINI CHATTOPADHYAY | 31 May 2015 Munmun Mukherjee is a good patient. She lies quiet on the white stone delivery table of the government hospital in Kolkata but for an occasional low moan. Even this is muted, the edge of her voice flattened, as…