This article looks at some of the sites of contestation that mark the encounter of ayurveda with globalisation, making it a marginal player in the medical market. With enormous pressures being exerted by the dominant establishment including the pharmaceuticals industry, alternative medical systems have been confined to marketing alternative products. The real challenge for ayurveda in the global economy lies in defining the parameters and terms of those parts of its knowledge system that are considered adaptable to the market. However, in the scramble to protect markets and knowledge regimes, it is not yet understood that there is a deeper colonisation being played out in the edging out of alternative world-views inherent in these medical systems.
