Spoonful Of Sugar

Why India’s push for alt-med in the public health system is ill-advised / Science

- Sumaiya Shaikh

Since November 2014, the alternative treatment industry in India has been bolstered by the establishment of a dedicated ministry called the ministry of ayurveda, yoga & naturopathy, unani, siddha and homeopathy, or AYUSH. Upgraded from its status as a department, the AYUSH ministry now operates parallel to the ministry of health and family welfare, which focusses primarily on evidence-based modern medicine. In the past four years, the AYUSH ministry’s budget has more than doubled to R1,428.7 crore in 2017-2018. With such serious money under its belt, plans for the industry’s scale and growth have been ramped up. In 2017, the union minister of state for AYUSH, Shripad Yesso Naik, a Bachelor of Arts graduate with no scientific training, announced that the centre had approved proposals to set up 100 AYUSH hospitals across the country. This would include a major Ayurveda centre, called the All India Institute of Ayurveda—dreamed up as an equivalent of AIIMS in Delhi, India’s premier government teaching hospital. In addition, Naik spoke of plans to set up an Institute of Naturopathy in Pune, at a cost of R1,000 crore. The government also approved postings for 4,000 AYUSH practitioners in primary health centres across the country. This year, there was an even more aggressive push to commemorate days promoting alt-med—as alternative treatment systems are popularly referred to—in the Indian public health system. The Homoeopathy Day in April, Yoga Day in June and National Ayurveda Day in November are all fallouts of this policy push.