Appropriate Technologies, Primary Health Care and the Integration of Traditional Medicines in India

Jean-Paul Gaudillière () and Harilal Madhavan
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Jean-Paul Gaudillière: Inserm & EHESS
Harilal Madhavan: CHRIST University

Chapter 10 in Capitalism, Innovations, and Health after Covid-19, 2026, pp 363-388 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the relationship between social and technological innovations and their specificity in the health sector by taking the benefit of the long history of discussions about appropriate technologies, social policies and development in international health since the 1970s. The chapter thus looks at a configuration of alternatives to the dominant biomedical model of innovation, namely the primary health care strategy to meet basic health needs that the WHO and UNICEF promoted up to the 1990s. It focuses on one dimension of the strategy, namely the idea that traditional medical knowledge and practices are resources to be integrated in the health systems, following the way India, its health authorities and actors—have articulated social and technological innovations to fostering the integration and access to Ayurveda. The chapter thus argues that the modernization of ayurvedic medical practice has followed two different logics: first, a model of institutional juxtaposition, which prevailed until the late 1990s; second, a model of industrialization, dominating since the early 2000s. By recounting and analyzing this trajectory, the chapter therefore contributes to two discussions. The first one is about the meanings the notion of appropriate technologies has taken, showing the boundary work through which health actors define both the boundary and the interplay between social and technological innovations. The second debate concerns the problematic consequences of the successful industrialization of Ayurveda. Scaling-up the production of plant-based remedies to enlarge access has indeed created novel tensions typical of the Anthropocene. Industrial Ayurveda fosters a massive consumption of medicinal plants, which threatens their mere reproducibility, and therefore the sustainability of a model of continuous growth based on the supply of unlimited resources. The mere successes of the Indian’s path toward appropriate technologies therefore urges for urgent adaptations of the anthropogenic mode of development in order to face the mounting issues of ecological sustainability.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-24479-6_10

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