Database as an Experiment: Parataxonomy of Medicinal Plants as Intellectual Property in India

Abstract

Abstract Bioprospecting refers to the scientific investigation of plants and folk medicines in the hope of developing new drugs. Its 1980s revival raised concerns about the intellectual property of indigenous people, requiring bioprospecting scientists to make legitimate benefit-sharing agreements with resource owners and communities. Despite the “ethical” look of such a movement, it has been criticized as a new form of “biocapitalism.” This is especially true in India, where the government has initiated databases of “valuable” traditional medicine, such as Ayurveda, and criticism has been directed at the way the complex composition of Ayurveda was disentangled and reorganized into elementary botanical units commensurate with the global pharmaceutical industry. This paper explores the politics embedded in the material-semiotic process of databasing Ayurveda and herbal plants. Focusing on a state government project in Uttarakhand, India, the study reveals how the project relies on colonial herbal relations while generating new and unexpected relations among particular medicinal plants (jadi buti), folk Ayurvedic healers (vaidyas), and local plant taxonomists. This study highlights the necessity of grasping the emergent biodiversity databasing initiatives in India as “experiments,” open-ended, uncertain, and indeterminate projects rather than part of a universal process of pharmaceuticalization.