India must use the AYUSH opportunity

The 2026-27 Union Budget and India’s new Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU) signals Ayurveda’s ambitious leap into the global mainstream. The Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) Ministry’s budget has nearly doubled in the past five years, reaching ₹4,408 crore this year. Further, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced three new All-India Institutes of Ayurveda, aiming to set top standards for traditional medicine, similar to how AIIMS leads modern medicine in India. These institutes will not just treat patients, they will teach and conduct advanced research as well. The Budget also turbo-charges the National AYUSH Mission, raising its funding by 66% to modernise dispensaries, establish AYUSH clinics inside government hospitals, and upgrade drug-testing laboratories.

Together, these measures reflect an effort to bring traditional medicine into the mainstream health ecosystem rather than treat it as an alternative silo.

Global reach

If the Budget gives Ayurveda depth within India, the India-EU FTA gives it global reach. In EU countries that don’t specifically regulate traditional medicine, the trade deal allows Indian AYUSH practitioners to provide their services using qualifications obtained in India. It guarantees that Indian companies can open Ayurvedic clinics across Europe without the fear of sudden policy reversal. It also sets up a system where Indian safety certifications could eventually be accepted in Europe, which means that products approved in India might not need extra testing. 

However, this policy is also a moment which will test whether the country can merge faith in heritage with the discipline of evidence. For this is not just an economic expansion; it is a structural repositioning of Ayurveda within India’s health system and the global market. When the alternative moves from local clinics to international markets, it enters regulatory and scientific arenas that demand proof. These treatments, understood as Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Medicine (TCAM), will be evaluated within stringent regulatory and vigilance frameworks. This is precisely the moment when regulatory harmonisation becomes essential. If AYUSH products are to circulate in EU markets, they must meet international standards of safety, manufacturing quality, and claims regulation. Global ambition demands scientific accountability.

Need for scientific evidence

If claims outpace evidence, India risks legal disputes, reputational damage, and the reinforcement of stereotypes about ‘unscientific traditionalism.’ For Ayurveda and other AYUSH systems to enter the global mainstream credibly, they must submit to rigorous, independent, and transparent scientific evaluation conducted by third-party research organisations. At present, many assessments are funded, designed, or overseen by the same Ministry that promotes AYUSH, creating a structural conflict of interest. Global credibility requires independently funded clinical trials, transparent methodologies, peer-reviewed publications, and the willingness to publish negative findings.

A common defensive move in debates around traditional medicine or cultural knowledge is to frame scientific scrutiny as colonial bias or Western epistemic dominance. Certainly, the history of colonial medicine in India involved the marginalisation and delegitimisation of local systems of healing. While that history should not be forgotten, it does not follow that all demands for empirical evaluation are acts of epistemic domination. Demanding evidence is not cultural betrayal, and scientific evaluation does not diminish tradition.

Coexisting systems

Furthermore, TCAM systems endure not simply because of cultural loyalty, but because they carry different imaginations of the body, health, and illness. To engage with TCAM seriously is to recognise that they are not merely collections of remedies but coherent epistemologies. Systems such as Ayurveda are organised around ontological commitments about what the body is, how it is constituted, and how disorder emerges. The body in Ayurveda, for instance, is not a collection of discrete organs but an interdependent system embedded in environment, diet, season, and social life. Health is a state of equilibrium across physiological, psychological, and ecological registers, and illness is a disturbance in patterned relations rather than a discrete lesion.

This stands in contrast to modern medicine, which has historically been grounded in anatomical localisation. Biomedicine excels at identifying specific causal mechanisms and intervening with precision at targeted sites. TCAM systems, by contrast, often operate through systemic logics. But the question is not biomedicine versus TCAM. The conceptual frames in TCAM do not need to replace biomedicine to be valuable. They can function as counterpoints that expand questions about what it means to be healthy. They offer alternative models of embodiment — models in which the body is ecological and dynamic. 

Thus, the goal is not substitution but dialogue. In that dialogue lies the possibility of strengthening scientific inquiry across the spectrum of care. Therefore, public investment should fund intellectual openness and scientific freedom. Global ambition will be sustained not by assertion, but by evidence, transparency and the courage to be rigorously examined.

Suchika Chopra, Assistant Professor of Economics at Krea University; Sabah Siddiqui, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Krea University

Published – March 23, 2026 01:42 am IST