The Pharmaceutical Industry and Its Subalterns: Venom Procurement, Ethnic Identities and Labor Exploitation in Indian Capitalism

Pharmaceutical capitalism is often framed as a financially sophisticated and technology-intensive value-creation domain. This approach, as relevant as it can be, neglects essential features of pharmaceutical operations. The paper insists upon one of them, which is the critical role of raw materials procurement originating from wild sources and requiring specific collection skills. Based upon the case study of snake collection for antivenom manufacturing in India, the paper shows the key contribution of Irular snake catchers to the activity of the pharmaceutical industry. It describes the operations involved in snake catching and underlines the expertise required. It also analyzes the working conditions and the socioeconomic situation of the snake catchers’ group, emphasizing the exclusion processes they are exposed to and their status as a “scheduled tribe,” an administrative category conceived of as an affirmative action tool. The paper equally insists upon the entanglements between pharmaceutical capitalism and social exclusion put forward by this situation: beyond the media celebration of snake catching, one has to analyze how the pharmaceutical industry builds upon the skills of discriminated social groups and contributes in a complex and contradictory way to promote their interests, exploit their labor, and renew the forms of exclusion they are facing.