Healthy Brokerage? Middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry of north India

LSE's Department of International Development and Global Health Initiative are pleased to host Dr Nishpriha Thakur from King's College London for a talk and discussion on her research: 'Healthy Brokerage? Middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry of north India.'

Middlemen are essential to various transactions that happen in the delivery of public health globally. They inform the ways in which regulations are played out at micro levels, that make possible pertinent ethical and political choices in the systems of health delivery. Despite being fundamental to the workings of the commercial life of health delivery globally, the role of middlemen at various points do not have professional designations, their roles are under- determined and there is not much scholarly attention paid to how they work on ground and imbricate larger changes to global health policies, global health markets and public health institutions.

While there are enriching debates and studies around morality and markets in health, global health actors are wary of bringing together health, value and markets or even viewing bioethical debates through a commercial lens because economic value and ethical value are incommensurable. Dr Thakur's fieldwork in pharmaceuticals markets of India states that even though in practice any service or commodity pertaining to health is treated in a similar manner as other commodities, yet in discourse, these commodities and services are much more valuable - they are not to be ‘traded’ by a trader, but rather through a specialist, a doctor, a pharmacist who excels in the knowledge of the commodity ethically. This disjunction hides a range of commercial actors and their everyday activities in hospitals, ports, consultancy offices, clinics, pharmaceuticals’ wholesale and retail marketplaces, gray and black markets. Through this talk, Dr Thakur will bring forth not just middlemen, but also varied contexts in which they do not just emerge, they form the transactions.

About the Speaker, Dr Nishpriha Thakur

Dr Nishpriha Thakur, King’s College London. Dr. Nishpriha Thakur is a cultural anthropologist who works at the intersection of markets and medical anthropology. Largely, her work has been in the areas of informal markets, urban development, pharmaceuticals and healthcare markets, trust, market languages and global trade. Nishpriha is the recipient of a Wellcome Trust Early Career Award for her project ‘Middlemen in Global Health: Markets, Hospitals and Consultancies in North India’.

About the Discussant, Sheyla Enciso-Valdivia

Sheyla Enciso a PhD student in the LSE Department of International Development. She studies the political economy of public infrastructure provision in systems of decentralised governance. Her research has a substantive emphasis on local politics, state capacity, and territorial inequality, and a regional focus on Latin America. Before her PhD she earned a master’s degree in public and economic policy from the LSE School of Public Policy and worked for several international institutions and research centres.

About the Moderator

Dr Tine Hanrieder, Associate Professor in Health and International Development. Tine conducts research on global political economies of health, migration and labour.

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