From Crisis to Reformulation: Innovation in the Global Drug Industry and the Alternative Modernization of Indian Ayurveda

Alternative modernity has become a key notion in the history of science and medicine outside Europe. The aim of the following chapter is to illustrate the fecundity of this concept for addressing the role of non-technological factors in innovation, beyond the “time of empires”. “Modern without being Western” remains a central feature of our present and global fascination for innovation as a driving force of economic and social development. To this purpose this chapter links two issues which have generally been discussed as two unrelated developments in the very recent history of health, pharmacy and industry. First, it discusses the putative crisis of innovation that is presently considered to be a major feature of this critical sector in global capitalism. While the origins of this crisis are often located in non-technological factors, beginning with the changes in the administrative regulation of markets, the articulation of their technological and non-technological aspects warrants closer consideration. Building on an epistemic and social interpretation of the crisis, the chapter then looks at the alternatives that are emerging outside the prevailing Western economy of pharmacy, following the form of alternative modernity associated with the industrialization and globalization of the “traditional” medical systems of Asia. Taking Ayurveda as example, it shows how Indian companies are now reformulating traditional medical knowledge to produce industrial, standardized and simplified poly-herbal remedies targeting biomedically defined disorders, especially the complex chronic disorders that global health now puts high on its agenda. Placing these developments in relation one to the other not only reveal a strong case of innovation beyond technology, but also sheds light on the more general juxtaposition of heterogeneous political economies within what is superficially perceived as a single hegemonic logic of global pharmaceutical capitalism.