A Brief account of british health policies in assam under colonial government

Abstract

Public health has become another important area of research in recent years and many studies have been done on endemic diseases like cholera, smallpox, kala-azar, plague etc in the British India. Response to the epidemic diseases both within the colonial administration and in different sections of the indigenous population–have also attracted the social historians. Historians have treated epidemics as an important event of the mid of the 19th century because it had created major transformation in the society. At first colonial government adopted some policies mainly to serve the needs of the colonizers and soldiers and were extended to urban areas to safeguard the Europeans in mines, plantations, factories and administrative centers. Later they realized that if their surrounding area remained diseased and unclean, it was difficult to protect them. So they adopted some health policies in India as well as in Assam. This paper focuses on public health policies that were adopted by British. This paper also focuses on impact of these policies on society.