Abstract
While sterilization in India (and its place within India’s population control programme historically entrenched in overtly or covertly coercive measures) gathers significant ethical concern in the scholarly and activist circles in India and elsewhere, my extensive ethnographic work in sterilization camps in rural Rajasthan demonstrates that biomedical and bureaucratic personnel involved in the organisation of the camps are not preoccupied with ethical considerations during the majority of their time performing various duties in the camps. For most, this work constitutes seva (service) to rural populations albeit within a discourse of development which constructs clear hierarchies between caste Hindus and Adivasi (indigenous) communities. This may explain why the Supreme Court’s ban on sterilisation camps in 2016 (to be implemented within 3 years) has not had much effect and journalists report that sterilization camps continue to be held similarly throughout India. In the context of the impeding climate crisis and the proliferating discourses that return to the question of (over)population, it is important to understand the ethical worlds of those professionals who carry out population control programmes.

This will be a hybrid seminar in the Big Data Institute and on Zoom.
Zoom registration medsci.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcldO-qqDMuGNc6Ca15dCj7po2qtIUaXqn3