ABSTRACT
In a society like India, where many cannot afford to “be sick” and are often socially and politically marginalized within a rigid positivist paradigm of biomedicine dominated by upper-class-caste heterosexual norms, the routine moral evaluation of patients is expected within healthcare spaces. Building on the discussion from Chapter 2 about the rhetoric of the passive patient within the legal system, this chapter illustrates how healthcare professionals, particularly doctors and nurses, create the dominant archetype of “incompetent patient” based on their perceived social categories and identities—especially class, caste, and gender. Through their subjective assessments and by labeling patients as “incompetent” or “troublemakers”, healthcare professionals justify their often paternalistic and authoritative actions, behaviors, and practices, that often normalizes disrespectful attitude and behavior. This chapter demonstrates how patients’ social and political recognition is routinely called into question in healthcare encounters and care contexts, showing how this process targets self-respect, and humiliates them, and disregards the agency of patients and their families by upholding the archetypal image of the passive patient.
