Shadow of medical imperialism in Indian public health management

Sreemoyee Sarkar ()
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Sreemoyee Sarkar: CHRIST University

DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, 2025, vol. 52, issue 2, No 7, 233-243

Abstract: Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic surfaced various challenges in the Indian public health system, including commoners’ fear of hospitals, the spread of rumors, the creation of artificial shortages of medical supplies, and black marketing. It crosses our mind of the colonial root and trajectory of modern public health management in India when Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha medicinal schools were replaced and revolutionized by Louis Pasture’s Germ Theory and allopathy paradigm. The snowballing of colonial public health policy and management addressed cholera, kala-azar, smallpox, malaria, plague endemics, and epidemics. The study contours the challenges faced by Indigenous medicinal practices in being standardized and validated in comparison to ‘Western’ allopathy, leading to a rural–urban, folk-elite healthcare divide. The historical context of medical imperialism in India shows how indigenous medicinal traditions were degraded and substituted, both eventually and intentionally, shaping modern Indian public health management. Post-independence, official recognition has been extended to traditional medicinal practices, but India has failed to realign psychological and biomedical decolonization. Indigenous medicinal practices need to ace up with standardization, drug regulation, patenting, and monopoly to become a credible pillar in the Indian public health system. Maybe then, the ‘undoing’ of the harm that the colonial past has done to the Indian knowledge system is possible. The vaccine apartheid during the pandemic underscores the danger of biomedical neo-imperialism. Wealthy states and former colonial powers continue to marginalize global public health. This situation calls for a paradigm shift in Indian public health, aligning it with global standards of scientific temper, quality assurance, and benchmarking. The present historical study examines the penetration of medical imperialism in Indian public health since the colonial intervention and its implications to date, advocating for dismantling the colonial hangover. The abstract emphasizes the need to reflect on the evolution of Indian public health policies, moving beyond oriental–occidental encounters and imperialism rhetoric. It highlights the importance of recognizing and respecting indigenous medicinal practices, rooted in scientific temper and pragmatic applications, to foster a culture of inclusivity and cultural sensitivity in the Indian public health system.

Keywords: Medical imperialism; Colonial public health policy; Indigenous medicine; Indian health management; Indian knowledge system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s40622-025-00437-z

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