“Sourcery”

Abstract

The standardising impacts of (inter)national regulations on Sowa Rigpa are increasingly visible, yet the complexities surrounding medicinal plant cultivation, trade, and conservation are perhaps more difficult to recognise. This chapter traces a handful of plants used in medicines by Men-Tsee-Khang (the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute in Dharamsala) and PADMA (a Swiss pharmaceutical company operating near Zürich) back to their suppliers in North Indian Ayurveda-dominated markets. Frequently characterised as places of “bribery” and “corruption,” the occult realities of these supply routes provide fertile ground for critiquing the neoliberal conservation-development discourse promulgated by the Indian state as well as academic and non-governmental actors. It is argued that policies aiming to formalise the trade fail to grasp its labyrinthine nature while often aggravating the inherent contradictions of capitalist market expansion coupled with “saving nature.” The resulting modus operandi is “sourcery,” a risky practice of sourcing raw materials by crossing convoluted legislative and moral grey zones, through ambivalent economies of favours. This large alter ego of the state-sanctioned “herbal sector” illustrates the failed formalisation of Indian medicinal plant trade, providing insight into why the raw material supply seems to always lag behind the demand – a key characteristic of the Sowa Rigpa pharmaceutical assemblage.