The discipline of public health can be described as a contested terrain where governments, institutions, medical professionals and academics have been engaging and influencing each other. Imrana Qadeer’s work represents the strand of critical public health which questions the dominant approach to health research and policy. This volume brings together several important articles of Imrana Qadeer which reflect and analyze the shifts and continuities in public health. The volume will be useful for public health professionals, scholars, policymakers and all those who are concerned with the practice and pedagogy of public health in South Asia.

Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Part I: Knowledge and Pedagogy in Critical Public Health

1.    Political Economy of Knowledge: A Case of Systems Research in Primary Health Care in India

2.    Beyond Medicine: An Analysis of the Health Status of the Indian People

3.    Critique of Methods and Science: The Role of Objectivity in the Science of Public Health and Health Policy

4.    Health Services System in India: An Expression of Socio-Economic Inequalities

5.    Politics of Pedagogy in Public Health

Part II: The Health Status of Indian People: Critical Reflections

6.    Contextualizing Plague: A Reconstruction and an Analysis

7.    Paralytic Poliomyelitis in a Rural Area of North India

8.    Reproductive Health: A Public Health Perspective

Part III: Policies and Planning for Health in India

9.    Health Planning in India: Some Lessons from the Past

10.  The National Population Policy: Problems and Possibilities

11.  Shrinking Spaces

12.  Black Death, White Lies

13.  Our Historical Legacy in MCH Programmes

Part IV: Health and Ill-health in a Neo-liberal World

14.  The World Development Report 1993: The Brave New World of Primary Health Care

15.  Continuities and Discontinuities in Public Health: The Indian Experience

16.  Impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes on Concepts in Public Health

17.  Challenges for Public Health in Contemporary South Asia

Index