HEALTH CARE AND MARGINALIZED HOW FAR KERALA'S PUBLIC HEALTH POLICIES ARE INCLUSIVE?
Authors :Nancy Liza Thomas and Rajesh Komath
Abstract
The paper intends to argue that public health policies should not be a homogeneous one
though it is a ‘public’. Socio-economic vulnerabilities of specific groups shall be
addressed separately as the lived experiences of disadvantaged groups are complex and
historically embedded. Analyzing public health policies of 1939, 1955, the draft bill
released in 2009, and an ordinance in 2021, it put in place the experience of Adivasis in
Attapadi. There are many such groups whose issues are not been addressed in public
policies including persons with disabilities, and transgender groups. To locate the
insensitivity and mismatch of the public policies and the life-world experience of specific
social groups, the paper problematizes the health aspects of the Adivasis to make sense of
‘the public’ in public policies. The public is often defined and imagined as the middle
classes/castes and therefore, policies are formulated for this section of the people. The
paper is divided into three parts. First part forms an interpretive gaze of the public health
policies in various time periods. The second part is time-space aspects of the policies that
addressed various public health issues in Kerala. The third part is to put in place the
experience of Adivasis in Attapadi to locate the question of how far public policies touch
the life-world of the vulnerable groups. Subsequently, ‘the public’ in public policies are
interrogated.
