11 March 2024 : Indian Express Editorial Analysis

• Modern medicine practitioners are increasingly urged to embrace a more open approach to working with traditional or alternative medical systems, aiming for integrated medicine for the benefit of patients.
• This concept is promising but entails practical challenges that need careful examination.
• Three scenarios—competitive, coexistent, and cooperative depict potential relationships between modern medicine and traditional systems.

• Traditional medicine, as defined by the WHO, is the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures.
• These skills are used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement, or treatment of physical and mental illness.
• Some traditional medicine systems are supported by huge volumes of literature and records of the theoretical concepts and practical skills.
• Others pass down these skills from generation to generation through verbal teaching.
• The most widely used traditional medicine systems today include those of China, India, and Africa.

India & Traditional medicine

• India has been known to be rich repository of medicinal plants.
• The forest in India is the principal repository of large number of medicinal and aromatic plants.
• About 8,000 herbal remedies have been codified in AYUSH systems in INDIA.
• Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Folk (tribal) medicines are the major systems of indigenous medicines.

What are the opportunities in AYUSH sector in India?

• The country has witnessed unprecedented growth in the production of AYUSH medicines, supplements and cosmetics.
• This sector has seen exponential growth from more than $3 billion in 2014 to $18 billion in 2020 and is anticipated to reach $24 billion in 2023.
• Presently, 7,000 AYUSH-based health and wellness centres are operational in India.
• There are immense possibilities of investment and innovation in supply chain management, AYUSH-based diagnostic tools and tele-medicine.

What are the steps taken by India to Promote AYUSH?
New Ministry Formed
In 2014, the Union government established the Ministry of AYUSH, a separate ministry dedicated to traditional medicine and treatment.
National AYUSH Mission

• Department of AYUSH, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had launched National AYUSH Mission (NAM) during 12th Plan.

The basic objective of NAM is to promote

• AYUSH medical systems through cost effective AYUSH services, strengthening of educational systems,
• facilitate the enforcement of quality control of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani & Homoeopathy (ASU &H) drugs and
• sustainable availability of ASU & H raw-materials.

Recent Steps

• The new category ‘AYUSH Aahar’ introduced by the FSSAI in its regulations will help the producers of herbal nutritional supplements.
• The AYUSH Export Promotion Council has been set up recently to encourage exports and help find foreign markets.
• The government is going to create a network of AYUSH Parks to encourage research and provide a new direction to AYUSH manufacturing.
• An incubation centre developed by the All-India Institute of Ayurveda was inaugurated by the Ministry of AYUSH.
• This will encourage start-up culture in the field of traditional medicine.

• The unanimous decision by the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, authored by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, along with Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, marks a significant milestone in Indian democracy.
• The verdict declares the Electoral Bond Scheme (EBS) introduced by the Finance Act, 2017, unconstitutional, highlighting the imperative for transparency in corporate election funding and upholding the principles enshrined in Articles 14 (right to equality) and 19(1)(a) (right to information).

• Some individuals or organisations, for instance, foreign citizens or companies, may be banned from making donations. There may also be donation limits, aimed at ensuring that a party is not captured by a few large donors — whether individuals, corporations, or civil society organisations.
• Some jurisdictions rely on contribution limits for regulating the influence of money in politics. US federal law imposes different contribution limits on different types of donors. Some other countries, such as the UK, do not impose contribution limits, but instead, rely on expenditure limits.

Limits on Expenditure:

• Expenditure limits safeguard politics from a financial arms race. They relieve parties from the pressure of competing for money even before they start to compete for votes.
• Therefore, some jurisdictions impose an expenditure limit on political parties. For example, in the UK, political parties are not allowed to spend more than Euro 30,000 (about Rs 30 lakh) per seat.
• In the US, the Supreme Court’s expansive interpretation of the First Amendment (freedom of expression) has come in the way of legislative attempts at imposing expenditure limits.

Providing Public Funding to Parties:

• The most commonly used method is to set predetermined criteria. For instance, in Germany, parties receive public funds on the basis of their importance within the political system.
• Generally, this is measured on the basis of the votes they received in past elections, membership fees, and the donations received from private sources. German “political party foundations” receive special state funding dedicated to their work as party-affiliated policy think tanks.
• A relatively recent experiment in public funding is that of “democracy vouchers”, which is used in local elections in Seattle, US. The government distributes a certain number of vouchers — each of which is worth a certain amount to eligible voters.
• Voters can use these vouchers to donate to the candidate of their choice. The voucher is publicly funded, but the decision to allocate the money is the individual voter’s. Put simply, voters get to “vote” with their money before they cast their ballot.

Disclosure Requirements:

• Disclosure as regulation rests on an assumption that the information supply and public scrutiny may influence politicians’ decisions and the electorate’s votes. However, mandatory disclosure of donations to parties is not always desirable.
• At times, donor anonymity serves a useful purpose of protecting donors. For instance, donors may face the fear of retribution or extortion by the parties in power. The threat of retaliation may, in turn, deter donors from donating money to parties of their liking.
• Many jurisdictions have struggled with striking an appropriate balance between the two legitimate concerns — transparency and anonymity. This issue was addressed by the Supreme Court in its judgment.

The Chilean Experiment:

• Under the Chilean system of “reserved contributions”, donors could transfer to the Chilean Electoral Service the money they wished to donate to parties, and the Electoral Service would then forward the sum to the party without revealing the donor’s identity.
• If the complete anonymity system worked perfectly, the political party would not be able to ascertain the sum donated by any specific donor — and would find it extremely difficult to strike quid pro quo arrangements.
• However, it would be in the interest of donors (who want government patronage) and parties (who need money) to informally coordinate in advance to ascertain the sums donated by those donors. Indeed, as various scandals revealed in 2014-15, Chilean politicians and donors had coordinated with each other to effectively erode the system of complete anonymity.

Balancing Transparency, Anonymity:

• One of the most prominent responses is to balance legitimate public interests in transparency and anonymity. Many jurisdictions strike this balance by allowing anonymity for small donors, while requiring disclosures of large donations.
• In the UK, a party needs to report donations received from a single source amounting to a total of more than Pounds 7,500 in a calendar year. The analogous limit in Germany is Euros 10,000.
• The argument in favour of this approach is: small donors are likely to be the least influential in the government and most vulnerable to partisan victimisation, while large donors are more likely to strike quid pro quo arrangements with parties.

Establishing National Election Fund:

• Another option would be to establish a National Election Fund to which all donors could contribute. The funds could be allocated to parties based on their electoral performance. This would eliminate the so-called concern about donors’ reprisals.
• During the hearing, the apex court, however, flagged a new issue — the possibility of misuse of money received by political parties for activities like funding terror or violent protests, and asked the Centre whether it has any control on the end use.