Chith Kudlu:
       Commodification, Knowledge, and Ayurveda
Commodification is not new to Ayurveda, a traditional system of medicine of the Indian sub-continent which has a two millennia old history of institutionalization and a century old story of modernization. Over the past decade, Ayurveda has changed dramatically, with the emergence of international Ayurvedic medical tourism in the state of Kerala. The new form of commodification is having impact on the way Ayurveda is practiced and sold at local, national and global levels. Besides impacting the form and texture of the medicine system, the changes are reverberating throughout the less visible chain of commodities that lead up to the finished product. For instance, “raw herb shops”, the central nodes of the old medicine market are undergoing a rapid transformation as consumption shifts to “finished products”. Insignificant plants in the backyard used for the daily chutney are turning into objects of global desire. Deciphering these changes has important implications for understanding the impact of globalized markets on local resources and livelihoods.
Pilot research on medicine collectors, processors and purveyors suggests that most of these changes are mediated by changing demands for knowledge at each node along the commodity chain. Fierce market competition has led to the proliferation of proprietary herbal products that increasingly appropriate intellectual property from open-source classical, folk, tribal and household medicinal knowledge streams. Increased centralization of production and institutionalization of Ayurveda seems to be accompanied by an erosion of local practical knowledge. Nevertheless, modern production and consumption of medicine continues to link and utilize the traditional knowledge and skills of various actors through a complex commodity chain, despite an increasing reliance on codified Ayurvedic texts and certified professionals.

 

This raises some important questions for research: What are the roles played by the different actors in the commodity chain, has there been a substantial transition in knowledge and skill demands and livelihood outcomes over the past decade? Is commodification of herbs and herbal products leading to erosion of local practical knowledge? How do the politics of knowledge that result from the power struggles between the various stakeholders influence the making and consumption of medicines? What is the effect of increasing interest of the formal system in acquiring intellectual property control over informal and open-source knowledge? How do these new developments in commodification influence the form and practice of delivery of both formal and informal medicine? What is the perceived impact of commodification of herbs and herbal knowledge on local health care?

With funding from the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, I am currently attempting to address these questions by following the commodity trajectories of a set of plants as they are transformed into medicine. The study spans across various locations in the State of Kerala, ranging from forest collection centers to farming regions, from raw drug shops to pharmaceutical production centers and from informal traditional practitioner clinics to tourist spas.