Health in India Since Independence

Abstract

This study contends that comprehending the issues confronting Indian health policy now requires an understanding of history. Institutional trajectories matter, and the study attempts to demonstrate how a history of underinvestment and poor health infrastructure during the colonial period shaped the circumstances of possibility for health policy in India following independence. The study focuses on the insights intellectual history may provide to our understanding of profoundly embedded aspects of public health in India that continue to characterise the predicament confronting health officials today. The ethical and intellectual foundations of the Indian state's foundational commitment to promote public health continue to affect public health's sense of possibility to this day.