eSSH 157 Traditional medicine 2 is an umbrella term that includes all the systems of medicine and therapeutic practices which do not fall under the domain of biomedicine. Traditional medicine consists of different strands, different forms, different therapeutics, and of different systems. It includes codifed and non-codifed, formal and informal, elite and subaltern, professional and popular medicine. Dunn (1976, p. 139), divides traditional medicine into two groups: (1) Popular traditional medicine (PTM), (Un) popular Traditional Medicine Community Perceptions, Changing Practices, and State Policy in Nepal Bamdev Subedi 1 Lakshmi Raj Joshi 1 Traditional medicine refers to different forms of medicines and therapeutic practices, both popular and scholarly. This paper draws on the feld data collected from two villages of Nepal to refect on whether popular traditional medicine is becoming unpopular among the rural communities. The article looks into community perceptions, changing practices and therapeutic choices among the local people. Inequalities and differences were observed in the use of popular traditional medicine (PTM) and scholarly traditional medicine (STM). We found that the overall popularity of PTM has declined over the past few decades. Field narratives and treatment- seeking data show the falling use of PTM. It appears that the present trajectory of healthcare development has had a damaging effect on PTM. STM, which has been recognized as part of national health care system, gets some support for its growth and development but PTM, on which still a large number of people rely, lacks such support. We argue that the damages to PTM will have a serious implication from a health equity perspective. Rising inequities in health cannot be addressed without taking PTM on board. Furthermore, the damages to PTM will have a damaging effect on the growth and development of STM as well. We question the policy rhetoric of “promoting Ayurveda and other alternative systems” and “making health care services accessible to all.” We conclude that promotion of positive aspects of PTM can contribute to the advancement of STM. Making healthcare services more accessible and affordable lies not in the growth of an unregulated private sector and pushing towards biomedicine- based- government- healthcare provisioning. It depends on the promotion and strengthening of the public sector with a balanced role for traditional medicine, both popular and scholarly. Keywords : Traditional medicines, traditional practices, health policy, Nepal 1 Center of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi Corresponding author’s email address: bamdevsubedi@gmail.com. 2 WHO defnes traditional medicine as ‘the sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness”(WHO, 2013, p. 15). 3 The local health tradition is a broad concept which “represent the practices and knowledge of the common people and folk practitioners who follow an oral tradition of learning and passing on of the knowledge through practice” (Priya & Shweta, 2010).