Medicine in the Margins: Daktars , Parasitism, and the Work of Care in Delhi

In Delhi, unlicensed medical practitioners – or ‘daktars’ – are popular sources of healthcare for the poor. Based on ethnographic research in the city’s low-income settlements, and drawing on Michel Serres’s The Parasite, this article asks: how might the notion of ‘parasitism’ help us better understand daktars’ work of care in Delhi? Though denounced by elites and the biomedical establishment as ‘quacks’, daktars are deeply embedded within their communities. Operating in the margins of formal healthcare, they treat individuals in informal, low-wage work, for whom even minor illnesses can be devastating. This article explores daktars’ role withinurban economies of wellness, wherein elite wellbeing depends on the labour of the poor. Their patients interpret this dynamic as parasitic, wherein the rich feed off their vitality. Drawing on the concept of the parasite, the article shows how structural relations and moral counter-accusations interlink in daktars’ and patients’ everyday lives.