Market Transitions, Policy Frames and Responses Within: Ayurvedic Pharmaceuticals through a Transnational Lens
Harilal M.S., Centre for Development Studies, India
The paper discusses how Indian traditional medicine, Ayurveda, is getting remodelled in the process of Globalization. The diffusion of ayurveda into the global scene as a holistic alternative to dominant biomedicine at the therapeutic level and as herbal food supplements and beauty products at the product level, brings in, the dual pluralistic production, i.e. therapuetical pluralism and pharmaceutical pluralism with an added emphasis towards the latter. We argue that this ‘pharamecuticalisation’ of ayurveda can be viewed as a ‘glocalised’ remodelling, emerged largely as a result of cutting edge policies towards alternative medicines followed by the biomedical dominant markets. And for a system, where capitalist production has been accepted as a survival strategy in the colonial and postcolonial period and thriving strategy later, the national institutions in the recent decades have also reciprocated by rescheduling the standards in the templates set by international policy regimes, which reduced ayurveda to a mere supplier of proprietary products in the transnational context.
About the speaker
Doctoral Scholar, Centre for Development Studies India
Venue: UNU MERIT Conference Room
Date: 27 January 2009
Time: 16:00 - 17:00 CET
