Regulation, science and the state: reproductive technologies in India

• In Event: Social Studies of Politics: State Affect? 2

Abstract

The inherent paradox in India is the co-existence of population control and infertility management especially since the last 1970s. Since the mid 2000s, the Indian state has been attempting to regulate reproductive technologies. Initially, it appeared that it was following other developed countries that were regulating reproductive technologies. Later, it changed to the need to maintain scientific protocols and ethical procedures. Recently, they began regulating due to controversial cases that drew a lot of national and international media attention and were mired in questions of citizenship, belonging and questions related to care, emotional and affective labour. This paper presents an analysis of English print media focused on one commercially circulated popular English language magazine in India in terms of the relations drawn between science and the regulation of the technology and a cursory analysis of regulatory documents since 2002. I argue in the paper that state regulation of assisted reproduction is ambivalent, paradoxical and complex because of the convoluted relationship between society, culture, and the state’s felt need to maintain scientific protocols. Also, the state projects that regulation is in the best interests of science as well as nationalistic agendas around the preservation of socio-cultural norms amidst a growing neo liberal capitalist context. The paper’s contribution to STS will be a postcolonial analysis that will look at language, the role of the state, and the nature of knowledge production in relation to science amidst which regulation takes place.

Keywords: regulation, science, ethico-legal procedures, culture, media, controversial cases

Author

• Vasudha Mohanka, University of Wollongong