Health as Freedom: Decolonizing Medicine Through the Capability Approach

Is surviving enough—or should health mean freedom to live well? In this episode of Bookshelves and Braincells, host Nishanth Araveti brings the capability approach to bear on one of the most urgent issues of our time: health injustice in the shadow of colonialism.

From HIV access battles in South Africa to traditional healing systems in the Amazon, and from caste and childbirth in rural India to mental health in Aboriginal Australia, this sweeping exploration uncovers how colonial histories continue to shape whose health matters, whose knowledge counts, and which lives are allowed to flourish.

What emerges is a radical reframing: health is not just a biological state, but a multidimensional freedom to live with dignity, agency, and cultural continuity. If metrics like disease rates and clinical access dominate global health, this episode asks: what would it mean to center freedom, capability, and justice instead?

🎧 Listen in for a deep dive that challenges biomedicine, reclaims indigenous voice, and imagines healthcare as a project of liberation—not management.