At the margins of Biomedicine: The ambiguous position of ‘Registered Medical Practitioners’ in rural Indian healthcare

Nahar, P.; Kishore Kannuri, N.; Mikkilineni, S.; Murthy, G.V.S.; Phillimore, P.

doi:10.1111/1467-9566.12521

At the margins of Biomedicine: The ambiguous position of ‘Registered Medical Practitioners’ in rural Indian healthcare

Nahar, P.; Kishore Kannuri, N.; Mikkilineni, S.; Murthy, G.V.S.; Phillimore, P.

Authors

P. Nahar

N. Kishore Kannuri

S. Mikkilineni

G.V.S. Murthy

P. Phillimore

Abstract

This analysis challenges a tendency in public health and the social sciences to associate India's medical pluralism with a distinction between biomedicine, as a homogeneous entity, and its non-biomedical ‘others’. We argue that this overdrawn dichotomy obscures the important part played by ‘informal’ biomedical practice, an issue with salience well beyond India. Based on a qualitative study in rural Andhra Pradesh, South India, we focus on a figure little discussed in the academic literature – the Registered Medical Practitioner (RMP) – who occupies a niche in the medical market-place as an informal exponent of biomedical treatment. We explore the significance of these practitioners by tracking diagnosis and treatment of one increasingly prominent medical ‘condition’, namely diabetes. The RMP, who despite the title is rarely registered, sheds light on the supposed formal-informal sector divide in India's healthcare system, and its permeability in practice. We develop our analysis by contrasting two distinctive conceptualisations of ‘informality’ in relation to the state in India – one Sarah Pinto's, the other Ananya Roy's.

Citation

Nahar, P., Kishore Kannuri, N., Mikkilineni, S., Murthy, G., & Phillimore, P. (2017). At the margins of Biomedicine: The ambiguous position of ‘Registered Medical Practitioners’ in rural Indian healthcare. Sociology of Health & Illness, 39(4), 614-628. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12521

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	Dec 2, 2016
Publication Date	May 1, 2017
Deposit Date	Jan 14, 2017
Publicly Available Date	Feb 1, 2017
Journal	Sociology of Health & Illness
Print ISSN	0141-9889
Electronic ISSN	1467-9566
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	39
Issue	4
Pages	614-628
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12521

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Advance online version © 2016 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for S HIL.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribut ion License, which permits use, distribution andreproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.