Technology and Health in Late Colonial India

Abstract

In order to move beyond the familiar ‘epidemic–institutional nexus’ in studies of disease and medicine in modern India, this chapter argues for the importance of examining the health of the subaltern classes through three largely social and spatial arenas—the street, the factory, and the home. While these locations offered some health benefits and facilities, they also presented substantial threats to health – through the creation of novel disease environments, through accidents and pollution in the home, the workplace and on the street, and through deficient diets and new food-processing techniques. Indians faced further danger from modern machines and novel forms of technology. Taken together, these locations require a fresh understanding of what constituted health in modern Indian society.