The essay examines claims of health improvement and women’s empowerment in family planning projects in Uttar Pradesh, India. Presenting tensions between the visions of these projects and the experiences of beneficiaries, the essay discusses the value of social medicine as a field that brings necessary granular subjectivities to the forefront and exposes asymmetries in contemporary global health practice.

The Global Social Medicine Essay contest is organised by the Global Social Medicine Network, a global network for scholarship in social medicine funded by the Wellcome Trust and launched at an international conference in London in 2018.

The essay will be published later this year in a special collection along with the other successful submissions.