Health Propaganda and Health Consciousness in Jalpaiguri (1880 - 1945) : A Historical Overview

Abstract

The present study focuses the practices of British Govt. on Health & hygiene in Jalpaiguri district which constitute the health propaganda during colonial phase. British Raj extracted huge revenue from tea gardens of Jalpaiguri but spend a fragment of it in health services. The Director of Public health too regularly informed about the shortage of fund to regarding various public health schemes. To spread the govt. policies for the health services and maintain the hygiene in different community various steps were taken but did not reach to the labor line areas of various plantation industry and other rural parts of Jalpaiguri district. The role of the govt. journals was also not satisfactory in this regard because of lack of interest of colonial government. Sources gathered that many preventive measures were taken like malaria Vaccination, distribution of western medicines, mosquito net etc. as safety measures in other parts of Bengal but Jalpaiguri was kept untouched. Facilities were provided for Europeans but not as a whole for the commoners, Govt facilities were in paper but not in practices in real sense. The minimum facilities regarding health and hygiene were ignored by colonial ruler and mortality rate increased in Jalpaiguri. Though climate of Jalpaiguri was also very favorable in this regard and gradually Jalpaiguri became the store house of all diseases. Few charitable hospitals were built for minimum health services after world war I to meet the challenges but were very minimum which forced the people to depend upon indigenous medicines.