Leveraging Yoga to Give AYUSH a Global Launch

The tremendous international popularity of Yoga can help propagate AYUSH-centric wellness, which has proved to be of immense importance during the ongoing pandemic.

Since India began experiencing lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, prophylactic remedies, immunity-boosting supplements, and medicinal and agricultural commodities have garnered tremendous attention. The market analytics, in terms of production volumes, sales, and demand, for these products are not yet available. However, as economic normalcy begins to set in in the coming months, consulting and market intelligence firms in India will undoubtedly study the trends. But well before such quantitative studies are undertaken, the growing interest in holistic wellness is relatively indiscernible.

With a sixth of the world population and perhaps the largest diaspora globally, India has, since antiquity, shared its knowledge of ‘holistic wellness’ with the entire world. The sharing began as a formal trade of medicinal and agricultural commodities, including spices, in pre-colonial times through land and maritime routes. However, with colonisation, trade contracted immediately. The other side of sharing holistic wellness was through practitioners and exponents. Wellness can be considered India’s soft diplomacy exports in the pre-colonial times of Maharshi Patanjali and Bodhidharma; during the colonial times from Swami Vivekananda and Swami Sivananda, and in the post-colonial era of today.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself and his administration have promoted Hatha Yoga internationally. Since 2014, the Indian government has successfully utilised social media, and through formally organised Yoga cultural events by India’s diplomatic missions, promoted Hatha Yoga. The United Nations’ unanimous support in declaring June 21 as the International Yoga Day has helped India, the birthplace of Hatha Yoga, to gain control over the all-important interpretation of Yoga. This control was necessary, as allowing Hath Yoga to go adrift would have mutated it into gimmicky forms, such as Beer Yoga and Doga (doing yoga with a pet dog). The recent success with Hatha Yoga promotion may sound like another feather in the cap of achievements, with nothing to be achieved ahead. But that is not the case.

As the Chinese economy began growing after 2000, it started investing efforts in formalising traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) of the herbal kind, from R&D to administration, within its public medical system. Pharmaceutical and pharmacological research involving natural herb-extracted molecules, previously confined to China’s R&D laboratories, was now open to international review. CTM's outward march began roughly in 2004 when the European Commission adopted a directive to establish the term “traditional herbal medicinal product.” This directive paved the way to formalise the process by which traditional medicines could be introduced in European and North American markets. The formalising included protocols that ask traditional medicine manufacturers to supply information on medicine administration and prescription, quality control, safety and toxicological studies, efficacy from clinical studies, and so forth. Since most traditional medicines are sourced from farms, the protocol also began focusing on quality from the field to the finished product stages.

Within four years, China started its first science diplomacy with the European Union on CTM. The European Union’s 7th Framework Programme (a research funding initiative for the duration of 2009 to 2012) established a programme known as Good Practices in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The programme offered funding for European researchers to work on quality control, pharmacology and toxicology, clinical studies, regulatory aspects, acupuncture, and joint Sino-European research publications. The programme also promoted a new scientific journal dedicated to this domain. These developments enabled CTM manufacturers to focus on GxP (Good Practice) compliance. In 2015, Tu Youyou, the discoverer of artemisinin, a CTM extracted from sweet wormwood, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. This laurel was a tremendous achievement for CTM, and a good omen for other traditional medicines, including Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani, Naturopathy, Sowa Rigpa, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) combined.

While China had been undertaking these technical steps since 1999, it began celebrating the last Saturday of April every year as World Tai Chi and Qi Gong Day. The Chinese versions of physical Yoga, Qi Gong, and the martial art, Tai Chi, became platforms for spreading awareness of CTM. Over the years, China has been able to celebrate the day in over 80 countries. However, it has been unable to receive recognition like International Yoga Day has.

Unlike CTM, which relied on Tai Chi and Qi Gong for its propagation, AYUSH combines Yoga and has worldwide recognition. The introduction of GxP in the manufacturing of AYUSH combine can validate them at par with conventional pharmaceuticals. A GxP strategy for AYUSH in concert with nutraceuticals, where food is considered a medicine, can give rise to ‘Ayurceuticals’. This branching into supplements can have a tremendous constructive impact on the pursuit of health and wellness, which is also high on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals list.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly created the much-needed momentum for the AYUSH combine. The ability of Indian traditional medicine manufacturers to directly or indirectly contribute to the R&D of urgent and critical COVID-19 prophylaxis has created a market space. This market space is vital for the sustenance of R&D for developing efficacious Indian Traditional Medicine (ITM) with farm-to-final product GxP in place.

The Ministry of AYUSH is already implementing the National AYUSH Mission. It supports market-driven and highly subsidised cultivation of prioritised medicinal plants in select geographies. Through this mission, the ministry is helping to raise the supply of quality planting material, assist with post-harvest management, and set primary processing and marketing infrastructure. The Ministry of AYUSH is also implementing a conservation and sustainable management scheme for medicinal plants in close conjunction with forest management. Likewise, under the Ministry of AYUSH, the National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB) has already begun focusing on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Good Field Collection Practices with a voluntary certification scheme for cultivators and farmers. The NMPB has signed agreements with various ayurvedic medicine manufacturers and industry chambers in the country.

India is an important global destination for wellness and holistic human health. With a robust, well-regulated, and streamlined traditional medicine sector in place, India can enjoy tremendous exports, for which many global markets have shown openness. Secondly, there is an enormous market in the world's developing economies, in the Indo-Pacific, Africa, and South America. Ayurveda Tourism can be on the rise in the post-COVID era, and India must be prepared to capitalise on it.

Many of the constructive developments mentioned in the article occur in closed confines and are often overlooked. The progress of traditional medicine, wherever it is globally, needs to be promoted if it follows best practices. Promoting traditional medicine will be crucial whenever the next pandemic hits the world. Until then, International Yoga Day is the best occasion to encourage the AYUSH combine.

The original article was published in the June 2021 edition of Science India.