'Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India' is a show about history and historians hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and produced by Suno India. It explores the history of medicine and public health in India (South Asia), and focuses on events and developments which occurred primarily in the nineteenth century, or the 1800s, and which laid the foundations for the later development of healthcare and health policy in India.
The podcast traces the genesis of many of contemporary India's healthcare structures and institutions, and provides the necessary historical context to why healthcare in the country today is the way it is. This knowledge about our medical past will be provided directly by historians who have worked on medicine and public health in British colonial India, and who will be featured regularly in every episode of the show. We will also hear from them about their personal journey of becoming a historian, and on how they write history and what social scientific methods they use to analyze the past and enlighten us about historical personalities, events and ideas.
Kiran Kumbhar is a medical doctor and PhD in History of Science from Harvard University, currently affiliated with Yale University's South Asian Studies Council as the Dr Malathy Singh Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer.