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Paper short abstract

This paper investigates the concept of kamzori (weakness) and its relationship to debilitating and physically exhausting work. It traces how systems of care, run both by public healthcare and NGO adjuncts, respond to these 'complaints' by street populations in Delhi, India.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the concept of kamzori (weakness) and its relationship to debilitating and physically exhausting work. It traces how systems of care, run both by public healthcare and NGO adjuncts, respond to these 'complaints' by street populations in Delhi, India.

Anthropological work in the past decade has explored the polyvalence of ‘kamzori’ (Saxena 2023, Verma 2021), tracing its relationship to political oppression, gendered labour, and shifting political economies. The ubiquity of the complaint leads to varied responses, even within the same institution, with reflections on loneliness and masculinity, as well as ‘treatments’ of protein powder and multi vitamins, and sometimes outright dismissal. Although responses vary, physically demanding work remains a central causative factor in all such complaints. The politicization of kamzori is latent, occasionally finding mention when healthcare workers reflect on their days attending to and caring for patients.

The epidemic of TB on the street, more recognizable then kamzori, but still underacknowledged, remains the focus of activists. TB, recognised as an important public health problem, with its apparatus of diagnostics, treatments and statistics, takes centre-stage. Yet the biomedical response to TB keeps failing, with patients leaving before their 6 month treatment courses are complete in search of work or simply not starting treatment because they have the opportunity to work. What would a politics and a system of care that places kamzori as a diagnosis, rather than a symptom, of forms of dangerous labour?