Only Dhankhar, PM Modi know real reason behind VP's exit: Mallikarjun Kharge
Mallikarjun Kharge
on Sunday said he has no information on the actual reason for Jagdeep Dhankhar's resignation as Vice President, holding that it was for Dhankhar to tell what really happened, as the matter was between him and
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
.
"I don't know all those details. He (Dhankhar) was always on the govt's side. He should say what happened," Kharge was reported as saying by news agency PTI, in response to a question on whether Dhankhar was forced to resign as he spoke in favour of farmers. Kharge was at Vijayapura in Karnataka. "When we raised several issues concerning farmers, the poor, international issues or foreign policy, he never used to give us an opportunity (in Rajya Sabha as its Chairman)," the Congress president said.
"When we tried to raise issues by giving notices on issues regarding the poor, atrocities against women, Dalits and the downtrodden, and incidents like Hindu-Muslim clashes, he did not give us an opportunity. It (the reason for Dhankhar's resignation as Vice President) is between him and Modi. We don't have any information on that," Kharge clarified. Notwithstanding Kharge's stance, senior leaders from his party have, since Dhankhar's abrupt departure as VP, have been asserting that there is far more to the episode than meets the eye.
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The Hindu
26 minutes ago
- The Hindu
The medical boundaries for AYUSH practitioners
The recent controversy on X between a hepatologist and an Indian chess Grand Master, on whether practitioners of traditional medicine can claim to be doctors, has sparked much commentary on the role and the status of practitioners of traditional Indian medicine systems such as Ayurveda and Unani, in India. Committees, governments, perspectives The burning issue here is not merely whether practitioners of Ayurveda can refer to themselves as doctors, but rather the scope of medical activities permitted under Indian law. This is an issue which has consequences for public health. A starting point for this discussion is to understand the framing of the debate over the last 80 years, beginning 1946, when the Health Survey and Development Committee, better known as Bhore Committee, batted in favour of modern scientific medicine based on evidence. The committee had pointed out that other countries were in the process of phasing out their traditional medicine systems and recommended that states take a call on the extent to which traditional medicine played a role in their public health systems. The Bhore committee's lack of enthusiasm for the traditional medicinal system did not go unnoticed by practitioners of traditional Indian medicine who mounted a vocal protest. They managed to convince the Government of India to set up the Committee on Indigenous Systems of Medicine, which submitted its report in 1948. This committee unabashedly wrapped up its conclusions in communal language, framing the issue in terms of Hindu nationalism by linking Ayurveda to the Vedas and its decline to 'foreign domination'. While the Nehru government took no action to formally recognise these practitioners of traditional medicine, the Indira Gandhi government in 1970 enacted a legislation called The Indian Medicine Central Council Act recognising and regulating the practitioners of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani. This law was replaced in 2020 with a new law called The National Commission for Indian System of Medicine Act. The syllabus for aspiring practitioners of Ayurveda is an absolute mish-mash of concepts that span everything from doshas, prakriti, atmas (which includes learning the difference between paramatma and jivatma) with a sprinkling of modern medical concepts such as cell physiology and anatomy. These are irreconcilable concepts — the theory of tridosha attributes all ills to an imbalance of doshas, while modern medicine locates the concepts of some diseases such as infections in 'germ theory', among others. There is no middle ground between both systems of medicine which is why concepts such as integrative medicine make no sense. Point of friction Nevertheless, the legal recognition of this new class of practitioners led to questions on the exact boundaries between the practice of traditional and modern medicine. The major point of friction has been the prescription of modern medicines by the practitioners of traditional medicine. Ayurvedic practitioners, in particular, while claiming the superiority of their art over modern medicine, have consistently demanded the right to prescribe modern medicines developed by evidence-based modern science. Pertinently, this dispute revolved around the interpretation of Rule 2(ee) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 which defined the class of 'registered medical practitioners' who can prescribe modern medicine. This definition is complicated since it is not limited to doctors with a MBBS degree. It delegates a certain amount of power to State governments to pass orders declaring medical practitioners on their State medical registers as persons 'practising the modern scientific system of medicine for the purposes of ….' the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940. Many State governments have used this power under Rule 2(ee) to allow registered practitioners of Ayurveda and Unani to prescribe modern medicine such as antibiotics. The constitutionality of these orders was challenged before the courts and the first round of litigation concluded in 1998 with the judgment of the Supreme Court of India in Dr. Mukhtiar Chand & Ors vs The State Of Punjab & Ors. The Court concluded that 'the right to prescribe drugs of a system of medicine would be synonymous with the right to practise that system of medicine. In that sense, the right to prescribe allopathic drug cannot be wholly divorced from the claim to practice allopathic medicine'. Simply put, Ayurvedic practitioners had no right to prescribe modern medicine. That judgment never stopped the lobbying by Ayurvedic and Unani practitioners with State governments for the promulgation of orders under Rule 2(ee) allowing them to prescribe modern medicine. Several State governments have continued passing these orders in defiance of the Court's judgment. This inevitably leads to litigation before the High Courts, usually by the Indian Medical Association, which often wins these cases. Unsuspecting patients too have often sued practitioners of Ayurveda before consumer courts on the grounds that they were deceived into believing that they were being treated by a doctor with a MBBS degree who can prescribe modern medicine. While much of the litigation has revolved around the right to dispense modern medicine, there is also the issue regarding the medical procedures that can be conducted legally by practitioners of Ayurveda and Unani. For example, can a registered Ayurvedic practitioner 'intubate' a patient? This is an important question to ask since it is an open secret that many hospitals purporting to practise modern medicine are hiring Ayurvedic practitioners with Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) degree at lower pay in place of graduates with a MBBS degree. Further, a notification by the Indian government in 2020 has allowed Ayurvedic practitioners (post graduates) to perform 58 minor surgeries, including the removal of the gall bladder, appendix and benign tumours. The constitutionality of this notification is pending before the courts. If the notification is upheld, the question that arises is whether these Ayurvedic practitioners can now use anaesthetic agents and antibiotics required to conduct surgeries. The stakes are high for public health in India since the likely strategy of Ayurvedic practitioners will be to argue that these surgeries were known in traditional Indian medicine. In these times of heady Hindutva, it will be difficult to find a judge who will ignore these claims. The political factor The larger political backdrop to this entire debate regarding Ayurvedic practitioners is 'Hindu pride', which has fuelled claims of fantastical achievements by ancient Indian civilisation, be it the pushpaka vimana or the claims of the Kauravas being test tube babies. When a policy issue such as Ayurveda is cynically draped in the language of 'Hindu pride', it is not just the Bharatiya Janata Party but also the Indian National Congress which feels compelled to support an obviously dangerous approach to public health. The last election manifesto of the Indian National Congress, in 2024, promised that the party would 'support' all systems of medicines instead of a promise to support only rational, evidence-based medicine. This blind faith in traditional medicine is going to cost every citizen in the future since the government is actively considering the inclusion of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) treatments under the Ayushman Bharat insurance scheme funded by tax-payers. This is in addition to approximately ₹20,000 crore of tax-payer money spent on research councils functioning under the Ministry of AYUSH with a mandate to research AYUSH. They have very little to show for in terms of scientific breakthroughs. Twitter outrage notwithstanding, the joke at the end of the day is on the tax-payer. Dinesh S. Thakur is the author of 'The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India'. Prashant Reddy T. is the coauthor of 'The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India'
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