Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Start your answer by giving a brief about Ayurveda.
• Discuss the key challenges associated with Ayurveda.
• Conclude your answer by giving a way forward.

Introduction

Ayurveda, India’s traditional medicine, has been in practice for close to 3,000 years and has been serving the healthcare needs of millions of Indians. Currently, it is greatly emphasised by the present government through various programmes and schemes like National Ayush Mission, Aahaar Kranti Mission, New Portals on Ayush Sector, ACCR Portal and Ayush Sanjivani App, etc.

Main Body

Key Challenges faced by Ayurveda in the Modern World

• Outdated Ideas: On benefits of physical exercise, Ayurveda states “A sense of ease, improved fitness, easy digestion, ideal body-weight, and handsomeness of bodily features are the benefits that would accrue from regular exercise.” However, such continued validity cannot be claimed for the physiological and pathological conjectures the same text contains.
• Ineffective Treatment in Emergency Cases: The inadequacies of Ayurveda in treating acute infections and other emergencies including surgery, and lack of meaningful research in therapeutics continue to limit the universal acceptance of Ayurveda. Ayurveda therapeutics are complex and there are too many dos and don’ts.
• Lack of Homogeneity: The medical practices in Ayurveda are not uniform. It is because the medicinal plants used in it vary with geography and climate and local agriculture practices. Unlike Ayurveda, in modern medicine, the diseases are classified and treated as per prior set uniform criteria.
• Misleading Propaganda by Ayurvedic Pharmas: The Ayurvedic pharmacopeia industry claimed that its manufacturing practices were consistent with the classic Ayurveda texts. For better market appeal of ayurvedic medicines, the pharmaceutical companies publicized many medicinal claims about their ayurvedic products without sufficient scientific basis. This led to further obsession for drugs in the community and ailments requiring lifestyle correction were instead treated with poly-pharmacy.

Way Forward

• Reverse Pharmacology: It is defined as the science of integrating documented clinical experiences and experiential observations into leads, through transdisciplinary exploratory studies, to develop these into drugs.
• New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI): It seeks to build, capture and retain for India a leadership position by synergising the best competencies of publicly funded R&D institutions, academia and private industry.
• Emulating Kerala Model: Kerala has been promoting Ayurveda as a way of improving immunity in the general population. It promotes Ayurvedic formulations and recommends Ayurveda practices to all demographics of its population.