Reproductive and maternal health programmes remain the main initiatives through which the state reaches women in contemporary rural North India. One of the most far-reaching programmes is government sterilization camps, regularly held in different areas. The encounter between women who come for the procedure, a team of nurses and doctors performing it and the intricate world of the state - health workers, bureaucrats as well as paperwork - provide an interesting angle to discuss the gendered and intimate nature of subject-making. On the one hand, the aim of the family planning programme depends on local health workers who ‘motivate’ poor, tribal women for the procedure and create the relationship of care. On the other hand, poor tribal women demonstrate their agency by making the decision according to their own considerations regarding family size, anxieties about weakening bodies and domestic responsibilities. This paper is based on 18-months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in a multi-caste village as well as government sterilization camps in rural Rajasthan.
