In the last quarter of 1962, India launched an ambitious National Smallpox Eradication Programme, following an epidemic cycle in 1958. At this stage, the primary strategy adopted was that of mass vaccination and the programme aimed to vaccinate the entire population of the country by March 1966.
There were obvious technical and administrative hurdles in vaccinating each and every individual in a vast and populous country like India, which contributed nearly half the number of smallpox cases in the world at that time. Another stumbling block was the general resistance and apathy towards vaccination among the populace. The success of this gigantic public health programme hinged on active and voluntary participation by the people. And, this was certainly difficult to count on in the mid-1960s.
Hence a ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’, a flurry of events to popularise the government campaign, was launched in the last week of September every year, though not much is known about the event in its early years. A ‘Smallpox Day’ was celebrated on 25 September 1962 just before the launch of the programme and since then there was a week of intensive publicity and canvassing for popularising the government programme beginning on the 25th September in the years 1963 and 1964.
Meanwhile, an evaluation conducted in the interim indicated that only 74 percent of the population was vaccinated, while a quarter of the population remained unvaccinated and therefore susceptible to the scourge. Health education was an important component of the eradication programme; its importance was never clearer to the authorities and the public health workers than in the face of falling targets.
Seemingly, the 1965 ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’ was specially mandated to shore up the programme’s vaccination targets, and these ‘celebrations’ are better known since they were reported in contemporary media. In fact, a special manual outlined all activities envisaged as part of the programme. All the federal states were mandated to participate and report their activities in the official mouth-piece of the programme The Smallpox Eradication News (English) and the Rashtriya Chechak Unmulan Samachar (Hindi).
A range of activities including lectures, debates, programmes on All India Radio (the public broadcaster) and cinema shows were organized throughout the country. However, interestingly, the dominant images that come to us today are those of public processions with men, women and even children carrying placards and raising slogans.
SCHOOLBOYS TAKE PART IN THE INDIAN VACCINATION CAMPAIGN (1963)
Copyright: WHO/ T S Satyan
The enduring images of the ‘Smallpox Eradication Week’, of people marching in procession, carrying banners etc. or performing at events, were perhaps meant to convey that the general masses welcomed the programme despite the evidence of obvious resistance in the large numbers of unvaccinated people towards the close of the first phase of the programme.[1]
This archive of images, relatively little known and under analysed, gesture towards the politics of popular representations of state managed schemes and programmes. Even as the eradication programme was faltering in achieving its targeted outcomes, the visuals remain celebratory and euphoric.
Pictures have usually been used to produce a narrative that conforms to what we already know. However if used ‘on their own terms’, as Pinney (2004:8) suggests, they might be able to narrate to us a different story about the Indian programme.
[1] Another image with the caption ‘The anti smallpox procession wends its way through Delhi streets’ , 1963, Image Credit: WHO/TS Satyan, can be viewed at the WHO Photo Library, WHO_A_010880, https://extranet.who.int/photolibrary/
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