ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Renu AddlakhaSubscribe to Renu Addlakha

Women with Visual Disabilities and the Women’s Movement

Visually challenged participants at a workshop framed issues almost exclusively through the lens of their personal experiences and understanding of visual disability, while the articulations of the non-disabled participants revealed a more mixed perspective combining their understanding and assumptions about disability and gender in general. With regard to the connections between the women’s movement and disability rights movement, it was felt that being a part of mainstream society, the women’s movement has, with a few exceptions, also invisibilised disability.

Disability Law in India: Paradigm Shift or Evolving Discourse?

The inclusion of disability as a subject matter of law and policy is a relatively recent development in India. An analysis of some landmark judgments delivered by the appellate courts between 1996 and 2007 under the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act highlights the central characteristics of disability jurisprudence. This analysis provides an insight into the violations faced by persons with disabilities and the nature of litigation coming under the disability laws. It draws attention to the changing understandings of the notions of disability and personhood in society.

User Configuration and Perspective

The aim of this paper is to delineate the different user representations of a new EPI vaccine. Among the range of users, the mother of the child in a distinctive local world emerges as the target user. The East Delhi Introductory Trial constitutes the ethnographic site for an understanding of user constructions among various public health officials. Corresponding to these user representations are the lived experiences of actual users negotiating with health problems in their everyday lives in specific local settings. The concluding section of the paper will compare and contrast providers' representations of the user with the users' self-representations as appropriators of child health services in both the community and biomedical spaces.

Global-Local Dialectic in Medico-Administrative Practice

This paper is an analysis of the discursive formation of poliomyelitis in India. The period under consideration is from 1970, prior to the adoption of World Health Organisation's Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) by the government of India, to the first National Pulse Polio Immunisation Campaign held during 1995-96. The change in state policy from management and control of the disease to its eradication is an outcome of the interaction between local and global factors in international health. The interface between the Indian state and the medical profession foregrounds the discussion in the present paper. Indian researchers have questioned the OPV immunisation regime promoted by the global EPI. A survey of Indian paediatric literature reveals that concerns with vaccination efficacy and the immunisation schedule are accorded prime importance in the medical research on poliomyelitis. The review of the medical literature shows how studies on country-specific pathogenesis of vaccine preventable diseases result in recommendations for alternative vaccine regimes that contest the universal norms put forward by the global EPI.

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