Rant

I had a busy 10 days, which left me sapped of all energy, physically and emotionally. This hasn’t happened in a while. One test and one essay left me tired. Came online to blog many times but didn’t get down to doing it. I think it was the fact that I did medical anthropology.

One of the motivating factors for me to do the unit was my memory of reading M.N.Srinivas’s book, titled ‘The remembered village’. I was a medical student then and I remember being totally taken up by the sociological methods used to get an intimate perspective of Rampura village.

I went into the study unit with the hope of gaining a unique perspective on issues relating to health. One which looks at public health programs critically and questions the assumptions and decisions made for health care of populations which are not their own. But what I found that anthropologists were included in the public health arena more to give some quick fix insights into the ‘culture’ of people to make interventions successful at the community level. Most of the faculty were part of funded projects (as opposed to the biomedical sciences of epidemiology and statistics who were on the permanent staff rolls of the school). It looks like they were there so that public health could look ‘culture specific’ when in reality most decisions taken were by epidemiologists / doctors who would pick the stuff they liked. Despite of my training in medicine, I don’t like the almost absolute monopoly, western medicine /doctors/ biomedicine has over many public health issues. I guess I am being a little harsh but that’s how I felt. The other aspect that pissed me off was that there wasn’t a single article in the binder ( there were some in nthe reading list but none in the essential readings)written by the anthropologists/sociologists from the developing world. It mirrored the earlier anthropology of ‘studying the natives’. I thought it was a kind of bias that almost hints at intellectual racism. With so much experience in the school and with the kind of international presence they have I expected a much more comprehensive overview of the area.

Anyway enough of ranting! It feels better now that I have it written down.
On other news, this post has been written in Cairo!
I came here yesterday and had a view of the Nile and the Pyramids from the aircraft, just before landing. It felt surreal.I have had this dream to travel to Egypt since when I was a teenager.The city is like so many Indian cities-sunny, dusty, noisy and buzzing with activity.
More tomorrow.