The role of India in Global Access to Medicines Campaign, 1970 – present: Is Political Economy of ‘Drug Quality’ Fighting or Forging Fake-talk?
The role of India in Global Access to Medicines Campaign, 1970 – present: Is Political Economy of ‘Drug Quality’ Fighting or Forging Fake-talk?
Shalini Rudra’s research asks questions about India’s role as a manufacturer of affordable medicines that are used across the globe, particularly in low-resource settings, such as
1) How did the initial ‘access to medicine’ campaigns led by people from countries like India and Brazil, for example mobilise and advance the interests of the poor in their demands of access to fairly priced, good quality drugs?
2) To what degree the trade conflicts and transformations in global medicines governance since the 1970s is impacted by the dominant discourse of ‘fakeness’ in a changing global political economy framework?
3) Can we say that the story of access to medicines movements one that begins as patient activism, but ends up in the hands of large multinational pharmaceutical corporations? In other words, is access to medicines currently a co-opted and capitalised phrase? If so, to what degree can charting the discursive history of ‘fakeness’ within successive access to medicines campaign highlight this direction of travel, from activism to corporatism?