The everyday ethics in sterilization camps in India

This ethnographic paper examines how various professionals working within sterilization camps in India engage with everyday ethics. While sterilization in India—and its place within India's population control programme historically entrenched in overtly and covertly coercive measures—gathers significant ethical concern in the scholarly and activist circles, extensive ethnographic engagement within sterilization camps in rural Rajasthan in 2012–2013 demonstrates that biomedical and bureaucratic personnel involved in the organisation of the camps are not preoccupied with dramatic ethical considerations during the majority of their time performing various duties in the camps. While they are not preoccupied with a question of ‘Is this ethical?’, they often do see their actions as fundamentally moral. This paper argues that while different ethical reasonings co-exist and clash within the camp, professionals working in sterilization camps view their work as ethical despite the controversial nature of sterilization in the country. Disgust plays a significant role in shaping the moral imperative surrounding sterilization: disgust felt by professionals towards sterilization patients, rooted in caste and class hierarchies, reinforces professionals' belief that they are engaged in humanitarian work by providing services to a population perceived as ‘backward.’ In the context of the impeding climate crisis and the proliferating discourses that return to the question of (over)population, it is important to understand the ethical worlds of professionals who carry out population control programmes.