Between Recognition and Neglect

Marginalised communities; Whole person carehe sat so still in the crowded Digital Seva Kendra, her infant pressed close against her chest, as if the baby might somehow shield her from the noise and indifference swirling around.People rushed past in every direction, forms shuffled under impatient hands, numbers barked out, instructions repeated like a tired script.She hardly shifted.Her face carried no obvious urgency, just a kind of heavy calm that made me pause.I kept wondering whether she truly grasped what was slipping away from her, or whether endless visits to places like this had simply taught her body to wait in silence.She came from the Narikkuravar community, a nomadic group listed as a Scheduled Tribe in India.She had come seeking the maternity benefits that the government promised women in her situation.But her Aadhaar enrolment had been suspended for months.Every time she tried, the answer was the same: come back later, try again, call the helpline-1947.The number itself felt like a quiet mockery, borrowed from the year of our independence.The need was plain to see.Her body, still tender from recent childbirth, deserved that support.Yet the system refused to see her without that single piece of official recognition.Anger rose in my chest as I watched.As a postgraduate student in Community Medicine, I could not simply stand aside.I stepped forward, spoke directly to the officials, and searched for any loophole or alternative route.Their responses stayed flat, cold, and procedural, as if her life and her child's future were just another file to be processed.I could stand beside her that afternoon, offering what little solidarity I had.But I could not force the paperwork to bend.In the end, we walked away with nothing resolved.Her body, carrying both new life and old exhaustion, remained locked outside the help that was supposed to reach it.S Between Recognition and Neglect Mohamed Farris Masthan M. 62 International Journal of Whole Person Care Vol 13, No 2 (2026) Not long after that day, I visited a home and met a 63-year-old patient who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis six years earlier.He had given up treatment after only six months.He still smoked heavily, the