This article examines how political economic transitions in India have shaped the trajectory of the biotech sector. With the increasing global prominence of biotechnology as a potential tool for economic growth, the Indian state also started prioritizing it. However, under the economic reforms that were initiated starting from the early 1980s, such growth is envisaged through encouraging private sector and public--private partnerships (PPP) while weakening the public sector units (PSU). Employing a political economy framework, we analyze three initiatives, namely Bharat Immunological and Biological Corporation Limited a PSU and Genomed, The Centre for Genomic Applications under PPP model established as first of its kind ventures. Our analysis shows that the PSU established with the mandate of production of affordable vaccines deviated from this role and became a part of the global value chain of vaccine market controlled by the Trans National Corporations. Similarly, the public--private initiatives have been appropriated to cater to the goals of private enterprises at the cost of public resources.
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Biotechnology, generated out of the well acclaimed, “successful” scientific revolutionFootnote1 in biological sciences, has opened up a new era of technological response to societal needs. There were certain break-through movements during the course of the history of this “success.” Most important was the discovery of recombinant deoxy ribose nucleic acid (rdna) technology that helped in combining the genetic sequences of different organisms across species, followed by the discovery of the sequence of human genome, famously known as the Human Genome Project (HGP). As it is well known, these two successful discoveries significantly (but not solely) contributed to the uprising and proliferation of a commercial establishment. Herbert Boyer, one of the leading academics who discovered the rdna technology later formed a commercial establishment named as Genentech. Thereafter, there was a huge expansion of biotechnology industry in the United States (US) with an emergence of speculative business model where intangible entities like patents became assets (Birch Citation2017). While this entire story is well documented (Hughes Citation2011; Sunder Rajan Citation2006), the Indian scenario, particularly, the emergent moment of biotechnology as an economic pursuit, is not sufficiently discussed. The limited discussions that took place were restricted to questions such as “how biotechnology helps in the process of economic growth?” (Chaturvedi Citation2007; Ramani Citation2002; Reid and Ramani Citation2012), how internationalization and globalization of R&D took place in the context of biotech? (Krishna, Patra, and Bhattacharya Citation2012; Reddy Citation1997; Reddy and Sigurdson Citation1997) or what the structure and organization of this industry is? (Arora Citation2005; Konde Citation2009; Saberwal Citation2016; Sen and Smith Citation2008).
