Keele Research Repository

Since the introduction of a scheme promoting institutional deliveries in India, dai-mas (traditional midwives) have not become obsolete, but remain integral to institutional caregiving in rural areas in ways that are not always recognized. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Rajasthan, I discuss two institutional contexts in which dai-mas were encountered - traditional midwife training event and hospital births. By examining how dai-mas' authoritative knowledge is reconfigured within institutions, I suggest that the polysemic Hindi term jugaad - a phrase describing the kinds of improvisation required in resource-poor settings - captures different aspects of dai-mas' relationships with and within institutions and the state of maternal caregiving in rural India.