Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6776-9940

Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

History

Committee Chair

Joseph Hodge

Committee Member

Kate Staples

Committee Member

Devin Smart

Committee Member

Michele Stephens

Committee Member

Nilanjana Paul

Abstract

This dissertation employs the comparative framework of “Access and Entitlement,” which serves as a metric to measure the goods and services the state could responsively provide to the public. It utilizes this framework to analyze the realm of public health in Bengal/West Bengal before and after decolonization. The main body is divided into two parts: the first three chapters focus on malaria, and the last three on nutrition. The first chapter explores debates over malaria control between 1919 and 1935. The second examines anti-malarial efforts from 1935 to 1947, emphasizing the influence of communal politics and the Second World War in hindering these efforts. The third discusses how the postcolonial state of West Bengal addressed malaria. The fourth chapter investigates the discursive landscape surrounding nutrition in the 1930s and 1940s. The fifth chapter analyzes the causes and effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943 on the rural agricultural population of the province. The sixth looks at how postcolonial food security politics contributed to the rise of the Communist Party of India in West Bengal. The dissertation yields three main findings. First, that the question of what constitutes effective governance in public health was heavily shaped by ideology and intersectional identity. Second, that in both late colonial Bengal and West Bengal, the ruling parties prioritized profit over necessary and effective expansions in public health governance, rationalizing their decisions with claims of fiscal practicality, while political opposition framed their viability around promises of significantly increased public health resources. Third, that expectations from below shifted as rural peasants and urban poor, in the aftermath of famine, partition, and decolonization, began to view the government’s role in ensuring food security and protection from malaria differently, expecting expanded infrastructure. This dissertation provides a significant contribution by contextualizing the relationship between public health governance and politics in mid-twentieth- century South Asia.

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