Abstract
The last few years have seen the influx of a new kind of tourist to India - medical tourists, coming in search of good quality and affordable treatments for a variety of medical procedures. With a large number of patients coming from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, the demand for local people with knowledge of Russian is steadily rising. Through ethnographic field work, which includes par-ticipant observations and interviews, this paper traces the development of the use of Russian in large private hospitals in Delhi, which have started attracting patients from the former Soviet Republics for medical services. The aim of the present paper is to introduce a pilot study of a relatively new sphere of economic activity where commodification of Russian language is acquiring a prominent place in India. My goal is to examine how Russian provides an added value to these hospitals in terms of the clientele they attract and how well it works for the clients themselves. In addressing these issues the paper aims to reveal the specific conditions and processes that characterize the use of Russian in ‘medical tourism’ in India and the motivation of the personnel involved. The results of the study indicate that commodification of the Russian language in India is an expanding phenomenon.
Highlights
“I am currently studying Russian and in the future I plan to study Croatian and Bulgarian languages
Because of the need of patients to communicate with medical workers at hospitals, interpreting services and any other communication prior, during and after medical treatment in the patient’s language of choice may evolve into a marketing argument that can be utilized in promotional discourses by healthcare providers in medical tourism markets and that as such may even provide an added value to the medical services offered (Muth 2017)
This paper demonstrates how Russian as a regional lingua franca is part of strategies of economic expansion by private healthcare providers in and around the Indian capital Delhi
Summary
“I am currently studying Russian and in the future I plan to study Croatian and Bulgarian languages. Because of the need of patients to communicate with medical workers at hospitals, interpreting services and any other communication prior, during and after medical treatment in the patient’s language of choice may evolve into a marketing argument that can be utilized in promotional discourses by healthcare providers in medical tourism markets and that as such may even provide an added value to the medical services offered (Muth 2017) This extends to languages spoken in neighboring countries, to English as a global language, but can relate unexpectedly — within particular national and geographic contexts — to other not widely available communicational resources such as Russian in India. With regard to the commodification of Russian beyond post-Soviet spaces, language skills in Russian mean an added value to the products of many service providers, ranging from healthcare to conventional tourism, from restaurants having menus in Russian readily available to hospitals providing interpreting services and care work in the language of Russian-speaking patients (Muth 2017a; Pavlenko 2017; Suryanarayan 2017)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
