The Biopiracy of Indigenous Ethnomedicinal Knowledge in India: Extractions, Injustices and Possibilities

As corporate bioprospecting has been a prominent strategy for medicinal modernities in India, the traditional herb-based ethnomedicinal practice of the Indigenous communities continues to be a largely marginalized and localized phenomenon. In the form of biopiracy, the Indigenous knowledge of traditional ethnomedicinal practices is dominantly replaced by widely capitalized modern healthcare practices where medicinal plants often meet scientific and technological experiments in a lab, only to be mixed with chemicals, fungus, biologically engineered mechanisms, artificial substances, etc. through a process of insolation. The commercialization of forest-based medicinal plants through modern experiments has not only been ecologically extractive, bio-precarious and therefore ecocidal, it has also combined political ecology of power, marginalization/exploitation of Indigenous ecologies and an overall subjectification of ethnobotanical ecologies.

The research has followed an extensive review of relevant literatures, case studies and statistical data pertaining to ethnomedicinal knowledge framework and traditional healing practices in India. This study was carried out from 2022 to 2026 at Badungduppa Kalakendra, Assam; Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur; Cooch Behar, West Bengal; Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala; and Chiang Mai University, Thailand.

The findings of this research reveal a complex structure of the reception, corporatisation and sensitisation of ethnobotanical knowledge and bioprospecting practices in India. Although ethnobotanical healing practices still survive as a prominent mode of cultural and traditional healthcare in India, they face multidimensional challenges and adversities. Although the tribal communities are careful about the conservation of the medicinal plants and herbs, a wider conservational initiative on the part of the government is necessary to promote more sustainable harvesting, gathering, utilising and selling of medicinal plants. This research proposes that there should be community driven corporate promotion of ethnobotanical knowledge and traditional healing practices. This would also potentially check commercially extractive bioprospecting and biopiracy activities in modern healthcare industries in India and the globe.