Doctor sahab

Doctors and the public in the 'golden era' of the Indian medical profession

Bibliographic Data

ID2250223
AuthorsKiran Kumbhar (0000-0002-9221-4297, South Asian Studies Council Yale University New Haven Connecticut USA, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume46
Issue5
Pages815-830
Publication date2024-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9566.13630
PMID36896649
OpenAlexW4323805153
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited29

This essay analyses and historicises a contemporary dominant narrative among India's biomedical doctors, that the early post-independence period (1940s-1970s) was characterised by immense public trust and confidence in the biomedical profession, with the patient-doctor relationship experiencing a 'golden era'. By exploring people's experiences with and perceptions of doctors during these decades, I show that contrary to contemporary understanding, public dissatisfaction with doctors was substantial even in the early post-independence period. I argue that the dominance of privileged-caste and -class Indians in the medical profession nurtured a caste privilege-based elitist outlook within the mainstream profession and its leadership and created an insurmountable socioeconomic distance between doctors and the large majority of the public. What doctors deemed as people's 'trust' in them and their profession was often simply a manifestation of people's general deference towards the elites of the society. This incorrect interpretation of patient-doctor dynamics in the past has been a constant feature of mainstream narratives around the doctor-society relationship in post-independence India and has remained largely under-explored and under-historicised in the medical, scholarly and public discourses

Caste · Deference · Elite · Family medicine · Independence (probability theory) · Mainstream · Medical profession · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing) · Social class · Social science · Sociology · Empathy and Medical Education · Gender Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Medicine

Tools

Open DOI