The institutionalisation of therapeutic practices in India - Social and legal perspectives

The institutionalisation of medicine in India has been approached in quite a number of academic works. However, collective comparative study on a pan-Indian scale has been so far neglected. This workshop aims to offer a preliminary understanding of the contemporary processes, their modern history and social implications, of medical institutionalisation in the country.

Institutionalisation may be read as a process imposing norms and values, a framework to medical education and practice, driven by the State or organized groups of healers. It leads to standardisation of medical practice, marginalisation of non-institutionalised practices, or again, it both controls and fosters the commercialisation of medicines. Institutionalisation of medicines in India creates codes of conduct and nomenclatures, the social dimension of which one may be prompted to analyse. Moreover, institutionalisation of medicines is a relevant port of entry for the study of governance in India.

The workshop comprised four sessions, followed by thematic and directed discussions :

• 1. Designing analytical lines : General views on institutionalisation
• 2. Making institutions & practising institutional medicine
• 3. Institutionalisation and the market. Pt. 1 : Micro and macro businesses
• 4. Institutionalisation and the market. Pt. 2 : Legal issues

This workshop is part of a wider project conducted by the French Institute of Pondicherry and the Gujarat Institute of Development Research, which explores matters of governance and indigenous knowledge protection, in the case of medicines in India. The workshop is funded by the FIP and by the transversal programme of the French Research Institutes (IFRE) in the framework of the programme entitled “Democratic Transformations”.

Programme

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First session : Designing analytical lines : General views on institutionalisation

• The institutionalisation of medicine from East to West, by Anne-Marie Moulin

• Local needs vs. global demands : Trends in institutionalisation of Indian medical practices, by Leena Abraham

• Of the esoteric, the exoteric and the professional : Modes of institutionalising medicine in India, by Harish Naraindas

• The moral character of medical standardization, by Laurent Pordié

Second Session : Making institutions & practicing institutional medicine

• The institutionalisation of astrology in Indian Universities. Ideological, historical and social perspectives, by Caterina Guenzi

• Negotiating Western science and the State. The case of the institutionalisation of indigenous medicine in Kerala, by Burton Cleetus

• Institutionalisation and growth of homeopathy in time and space in India, by Anne-Cécile Hoyez

• Role of associations of experts in the revitalisation of Siddha medicine, by Brigitte Sébastia

• The making and unmaking of cure. Eye treatment in Siddha medicine, by V. Sujatha

Third Session : Institutionalisation and the market / Pt. 1 : Micro and macro businesses

• From “greenish leaves” to “herbal Ayurvedic treatment” : Professionalising Narikuravar medicine, by Gabi Alex

• From home to market : Responses, resurgence and institutionalisation of Ayurvedic manufacturing from 1830s to 1920s, by M.S. Harilal

• For whom the bells toll : Good practices and standard laws for traditional medicine business in India, by Madhulika Banerjee

Fourth Session : Institutionalisation and the market / Pt. 2 : Legal issues

• Institutionalising medicinal plant management in Kerala : Forest control, rights of use and participation, by Lucie Dejouhanet

• Intellectual property rights for traditional medicines : Where does India stand ?, by N. Lalitha

• Geographical indications : a legal tool adapted to protect medicines and their producers ?, by Delphine Marie-Vivien

Consult detailed schedule

Coordinator

Dr Laurent Pordié, Head of the Department of Social Sciences, FIP

Organizers

French Institute of Pondicherry and Gujarat Institute of Development Research

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry - 605 001

Participants

• Leena Abraham (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)
• Gabi Alex (South Asia Institute at Heidelberg)
• Burton Cleetus (IFP)
• Lucie Dejouhanet (IFP / Université de Nanterre - Paris X)
• Caterina Guenzi (Centre d’études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, Paris)
• M.S. Harilal (Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram)
• Anne-Cécile Hoyez (University of Rouen)
• Yoji Kamata, (Atelier for Development and the Future (ADF), Yokohama, Japan)
• N. Lalitha (GIDR, Ahmedabad)
• Delphine Marie-Vivien (CIRAD / La Sorbonne, Paris)
• Anne-Marie Moulin (CNRS / CEDeJ, Cairo)
• Harish Naraindas (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
• Laurent Pordié (IFP / Paul Cézanne Univ., Aix)
• Brigitte Sébastia (IFP / Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Toulouse)
• V. Sujatha (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)