Encountering Illness: Local Knowledge, Institutions and the Science of Healthcare Practices among the Chuktia Bhunjia Tribe of Odisha, India

Abstract

This paper documents local knowledge-based healthcare practices of Chuktia Bhunjia tribe of Odisha, India, and attempts to ascertain the socio-cultural rationale explaining its persistence against escalating modern healthcare facilities. Focusing on the coexistence of culture, ecology and healthcare, it describes the associated beliefs, rituals, institutions and practices concerning the healthcare. Data, collected using formal interview, observation and case study, reveal that the healthcare practices of Chuktia Bhunjia revolve around the customary beliefs, ecology and laws governing the access to healthcare services. Despite provision of modern medical facilities in their locality, their submission to culture, backed by purity-pollution, customary laws and absence of resource to afford modern medicine, continues to become determinant forces towards relying on traditional healthcare. With malfunctioning of the conventional healthcare institutions, coupled with communication constraint and lack of capability, ethno-ecological and community-based knowledge healthcare fill the gap between demand and supply of their healthcare services. Nevertheless, owing to the declining pathways of transmission of those knowledge bases due to state intervention, forest policies, migration of younger generation, socio-cultural transformation and disassociation of people with plant resources because of tiger project, healthcare knowledge and institutions are under threat. Therefore, given the implication of knowledge-based healthcare and possible threats to its existence, documentation of such practices would sustainably offer a solution to their healthcare, provided cultural diversity upholding those practices are preserved. Alternatively, owing to threats over cultural reproduction knowledge, any integration of their knowledge base with modern healthcare system can best just their healthcare practices in sustainable way.