Gendered Development Work and Non-State Primary Healthcare Provisions: The Skippo Medical Van Scheme in Rural India, c. 1940s to mid-1970s

Abstract

This article focuses on gendered rural development work in late colonial and early post-colonial
India. Next to the question of livelihood generation and education, the issue of health and
hence of women’s vulnerability, was taken up by members of the All-India Women’s Conference
(AIWC). From the 1930s the AIWC had been interested in maternity and child welfare work. It
lobbied for adequate medical aid to women and birth control. With independence looming,
the organization turned its attention increasingly to the Indian villages. In 1946, the AIWC initiated
a mobile van scheme, called Skippo, to provide primary healthcare facilities to remote rural
areas. The article investigates the healthcare related work of the AIWC for rural communities,
focusing on the formation and development of the Skippo van scheme, the ideas behind it
and its successes and failures. By asking what motivated Indian women activists to work for
the health of their fellow countrypeople in the villages, the article strives to understand how
women scripted themselves into the narratives of national progress and development. Women
activists of the AIWC established various entanglements with international actors and organizations in pursuance of rural development work. Examining these transnational networks of
cooperation the article gives further insights in their nature, content, and outcome. It clearly
demonstrates the beneficial influence of transnational nongovernmental networks for primary
healthcare in post-colonial rural India, while also showing how Indian activists tied in the politics
of international rural development.