How some Indian baby makers are made: Media narratives and assisted conception in India

Abstract

In the closing decades of the 20th century, media and media narratives in India have become powerful rhetorical devices. The journalistic narratives on science in India through the 1980s and the 1990s have tended to oscillate between the 'awe and mistrust' and 'marvel of science' frame, resulting in the creation of genre of popular science journalism that has assumed the form of an 'institutional advertisement'. This 'institutional advertisement' approach to scientific knowledge has played a central role in normalising assisted conception in India. Drawing on extensive media narratives on infertile patients and assisted conception practitioners, this paper attempts to show how the stories told in these accounts have resulted in the 'narrativisation of infertility' as a big problem. Undertaking a narrative analysis, the paper tries to show how the media narratives are publicity driven 'institutional advertisements' and have succeeded in creating a credible image of the medical expertise/experts in an iniquitous disregard for code of good medical practice in India.