SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

With or against the state when the government changes?: Narratives of activist 'engagement' within Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (People’s Health Movement), India

Based on 20 months’ fieldwork with a network of health activists in India, this paper explores the way in which different activists deal with the question of whether it is right to work with the government or against it, in the context of a change of central government from a BJP-led coalition opposed by all the activists, to a Congress-led coalition that some activists think has more potential for progressive change. I examine controversies within the network. One controversy is between two conflicting views of civil society, between those who see its role as pushing the state to perform better, and those who see the state as representing the interests of the ruling classes and the role of civil society as building the class consciousness of the oppressed in order to overthrow the existing system. Another controversy is between those who see the mainstream left parties (who were allied to the new government) as part of the solution and those who see them as part of the problem.

The core argument of the paper is that the ways in which activists articulate themselves is crucial to how activism works, and that for this reason it is important to analyse the narratives of activism: how activists construct and maintain their identities in relation to each other, the consequences of these constructions and the purposes they serve. In particular I emphasise the significance of the mutually constitutive processes of ‘moral selving’ and ‘moral othering’ that occur among activists, arguing that these processes play an important role in the shaping of collective identities within Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA). I develop this argument through the case study material by examining the way in which when the government changes, my research participants shift from a situation in which it is relatively easy for them to reconcile their non-radical identity as salaried employees of funded, registered NGOs with the radical (anti-government) activist identity they associate with their voluntary, unpaid work with the JSA platform, to a situation in which the tensions between these identities become increasingly problematic as the activists engage with the government’s National Rural Health Mission.