Endemic risks: influenza pandemics, public health, and making self-reliant Indian citizens

Kavita Sivaramakrishnan

Journal of Global History, 2020, vol. 15, issue 3, 459-477

Abstract: This article focuses on the politics of epidemics, health and development in the years between two pandemics of influenza in India, the so-called ‘Asian’ flu (1957) and the ‘Hong Kong’ flu (1968). I explore how public health and risk-focused cosmologies were constructed about urban life, and anchored in economic priorities about development planning, industrial productivity, and self-reliance in a modernizing Indian nation. How were pandemics ‘seen’ and identified among urban populations that were already suffering from endemic risks? Were they viewed as a continuum of local, natural hazards or through wider geopolitical insecurities? The influenza crises were characterized by incapacitation and absenteeism from work rather than high mortality rates in Indian cities, causing worries about industrial plans. The Indian state intervened minimally, and articulated ideas and rhetoric about individual responsibility and ‘cooperative citizenship’ that set the stage for later manifestations of neoliberalism.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jglhis:v:15:y:2020:i:3:p:459-477_11

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Global History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().