A Coming of Age Story: A History of the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry, 1905-1966. (360G-Wellcome-094370_Z_10_Z)

The project will analyse the history of the pharmaceutical industry and its economic and social impact in colonial and post-colonial India. Several pharmaceutical companies were established in India from 1900 onwards, including Alembic Chemicals (1907), Zandu Limited (1910), Bombay,M/s Dharamsi Morarji Chemical Co, Bombay, M/s Bhogilal Premchand and Co, Bombay. The burgeoning market for drugs also attracted Multi-National Companies such as Glaxo, Wellcome Burroughs,and Unilever. It will combi ne history of medicine with business history to highlight how the use of modern pharmaceuticals and their markets were established in modern India. It will examine nationalist enterprise, urbanisation, and the patronage extended to the drugs and pharmaceutical industry by the princely state of Baroda and the colonial government. It will examine the role of the Indian pharmaceutical industry and the colonial state in shaping and standardizing the cultures of medical consumption in India Fi nally the project will locate the expansion of the Indian pharmaceutical industry as representative of India s pursuit of self-sufficiency in primary and secondary industrial goods in the post-independence era. In summary the project will provide a comprehensive analysis of the pharmaceutical industry in India to further the historical links between colonialism, economic nationalism, and modern medicine in India.