ABSTRACT
This chapter asks: How does a city mobilise itself around the problem of pervasive traumatic injury? Its data stem from interviews and observations as part of a five-year ethnographic research project on road and railway injuries in Mumbai. Working from the stories of ambulance workers in Central Mumbai, the chapter examines the complex relationship between traffic accidents on Mumbai’s railways and roads, and an emergency response system of ambulances developed to respond to these emergencies. It argues that the mobilisation of the injured operates as a key site of neoliberal transformations in Mumbai. It demonstrates that it is essential to think about healthcare access beyond the hospital, because transport to the hospital in the first place is not guaranteed, and in fact is the site of state intervention. This means that in theory and in practice, “the clinic” as such is always in motion, which demands a new critical vocabulary for our understanding of public health in Mumbai and beyond.
