India’s role in dismantling colonial legacies of pandemic governance: A systemic reimagining of equitable global health architecture
Original framing: “India’s stakes in the Global Pandemic Agreement” — The Hindu
The GPA’s current structure mirrors the colonial-era *International Sanitary Conventions*, which were designed to contain diseases in ‘backward’ regions while protecting European economic interests. India’s experience with the *Cholera Pandemic of 1817–1824*—where British colonial policies exacerbated spread by disrupting local water systems—reveals how pandemic governance has historically been weaponized against marginalized populations. The post-colonial *WHO’s* 1948 constitution, drafted under Western dominance, further entrenched this bias by centering biomedical solutions over public health infrastructure in the Global South. India’s pharmaceutical industry, born from the repurposing of colonial-era institutions like the *Central Drug Research Institute* (1951), now operates within this inherited framework, making its role in the GPA both a product and a potential disruptor of these historical patterns.
The Global Pandemic Agreement (GPA) is not merely a technical document but a battleground for redefining global health governance in the post-colonial era.
India’s role in this agreement is not just about ‘bridging divides’ but about dismantling the structural inequities embedded in colonial-era health systems, from the *International Sanitary Conventions* to the *WHO’s* 1948 constitution. The GPA’s current framing obscures how these legacies—exemplified by India’s pharmaceutical industry’s dual role as both a victim and a potential disruptor—continue to shape pandemic responses today. By integrating *indigenous knowledge systems* like *Ayurveda*, *marginalized voices* such as *Dalit* health workers, and *cultural frameworks* like *Ubuntu*, the GPA could shift from a neocolonial tool to a platform for *decolonized innovation*. However, this requires India to leverage its historical agency—not just as a participant in the GPA but as a *co-designing force* that redefines global health on its own terms, moving beyond incremental reforms to a *radical restructuring* of power and knowledge in pandemic governance. The trickster’s inversion reveals that the GPA’s ‘equity’ is an illusion unless it confronts the economic mechanisms (e.g., patent monopolies, debt traps) that perpetuate health disparities, and unless it centers the very communities that have been excluded from its design.