Gigerenzer, ThaliaDSilva, Tara P.2025-07-282025-07-282025-04-28https://theses-dissertations.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp016t053k41xThis thesis is based on six weeks of ethnographic research conducted with an NGO in Tamil Nadu, India during the summer of 2024. During my fieldwork, I conducted semi-structured interviews with beneficiaries and participant-observation with NGO staffers to learn more about how the NGO was facilitating health access. Drawing from this material, I question why welfare services are still not reaching marginalized communities despite the abundance of welfare schemes in Tamil Nadu. I point to narratives of deservingness stemming from dominant political imaginaries that construct beneficiaries as lazy and stigmatize welfare. I highlight how these narratives, the hidden costs of accessing welfare, and historical dehumanization serve as barriers to availing of free schemes. I then examine waiting as an obstacle to care. Finally, I look at the role of care and affective labor within the NGO in facilitating access by addressing feelings of misrecognition and maintaining initiatives in the face of scarcity.en-USPrinceton University Senior Theses