India is the world's biggest exporter of, and consumer of, antibiotics. Their overuse and misuse is on the brink of triggering systemic failures across food production, health care, and public welfare. It is part of a wider threat to the world at large, from antimicrobial resistance, when antibiotics no longer work against bacteria.

Guest: Assa Doron, co-author with Alex Broom, of ‘World of Resistance: India and the global antibiotic crisis’ (Harvard University Press)Professor of Anthropology and South Asia at the Australian National University.  

Producer: Ann Arnold