“They [The Rats] Also Exist. Why Should I Poison Them?”: Decolonizing Local-Global Health Interventions for Remediating Water Insecurity in Rural West Bengal

In this essay, I foreground four interconnected, localocentric stories and case studies that critique the ideological underpinnings of global health benevolence and interventions in water insecure rural West Bengal. Through ethnographic fieldwork, including in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, field notes, reflexive journaling, artifact photograph narrative method (due to the inaccessibility of photovoice in this research context), and participant observation, I interrogate how marginalized communities navigate health amidst top-down developmental frameworks. Using the theoretical intersection of necrocapitalism and the culture-centered approach (CCA), I analyze two specific interventions: a kitchen garden project and an Information, Education, and Communication project. The data analysis reveals how these interventions often function as necrocapitalist engines, extracting community time, labor, and commodifying marginalized bodies while often failing to offer economic sustainability or structural solutions. I conclude this essay by offering two primary theoretical contributions: first, I demonstrate how the CCA can be used to disrupt necrocapitalist logics by centering the situated wisdom of those reduced to bare life by global health interventions and policies. Second, I challenge the behavior-change paradigm of development, illustrating how its focus on individual responsibility obscures systemic neglect and epistemic violence. By foregrounding four stories that resist Western-centric rationality, this work advocates for a radical shift toward localocentricity and structural remediation in global health communication and interventions.