Claiming the State: Revisiting women's reproductive identity in India's development policy

Abstract

In November 2014, the news of the deaths of 15 women and the hospitalisation of 70 women in rural India during a ‘routine’ state-sponsored sterilization camp drew attention once more to the glaring inadequacies of the state’s family welfare programme (The Guardian, 2014). The alarm that this incident evokes is especially magnified in light of decades-long activism and collaborative work between the grassroots health movement and the government specifically to reform the state’s reproductive health services. Galvanised by transnational feminist movements in the 1990s and aligning with international population development consensus of the time, the Indian state undertook to revamp its population policies in a way that acknowledged women’s interests at its core. The Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) policy was the outcome of this disquiet.