ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand the politics of identifying, defining and categorising snakebite as a “neglected tropical disease.” In doing so, it tries to present a critical reading of the WHO-led global biomedical discourse, its relation to the larger discourse on tropical poverty and funding in medical infrastructure. While recognising the politics of “Otherisation” of snakebite as a disease predominantly affecting the tropical poor, this chapter also intends to discuss the ways in which the local health agencies deferentially engage themselves with the burgeoning discourse on medical management of snakebite in India and thereby dispense with the sinister techniques of Othering. Thus, this chapter makes an effort to foreground the local practices which indicate that the realities on the ground are far more complicated than are commonly perceived in the international development discourse. In other words, this chapter tries to historically trace the complex and layered story of negotiation between the global and the local that is often missing in recent researches on public health in general and the epidemiology of snakebites in India in particular.
