Healthcare and History for the Public

This research agenda is led by CASI postdoctoral research fellow Kiran Kumbhar (PhD in History of Science, 2022, Harvard University). One part of this agenda relates to Dr. Kumbhar’s new project tentatively titled “India After Bhore - Health Policy and Healthcare Reform in Post-independence India”. The recommendations of the Bhore Committee Report of 1946, including that of making medical and public health services accessible to everyone “irrespective of their ability to pay”, were regularly cited by early post-independence political leaders as legitimate state objectives (“healthcare for the public”). However, despite the egalitarian ambitions of the Committee and India’s early leaders, the overarching theme in Indian health policy after independence has been that of persistent and often deepening disparities. Dr. Kumbhar will examine how the social and cultural backgrounds of politicians, bureaucrats, administrators, and public health experts influenced which concepts and claims prevailed, and which were ignored, in the health policies they drafted and the infrastructure they established. As many scholars and activists have shown, most of India’s healthcare policies and infrastructure have hierarchies and inequalities already baked into them. While commonly the gaze in health disparities research focuses on the underprivileged and their struggles, in his research Dr Kumbhar will turn the gaze on to the elites, and their actions and inactions which give rise to the struggles of the underprivileged in the first place. In February 2025 Dr. Kumbhar gave a talk at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver based on some of this research. 

Dr. Kumbhar also works to bring scholarly historical research into the wider Indian public discourse, and to raise public awareness regarding academic methodologies and historical thinking skills (“history for the public”). His critical review of the popular history book “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World”, published in November 2024, received acclaim from scholars and readers alike. Since December 2024 he has been maintaining a website - “University of History” - dedicated to introducing readers to academic historians and their articles, books, and research methods.