Indian Medicines - Part 2

Some of you might have read my earlier article on "Indian Medicines". I guess I am entirely right in pointing out the need for standardisation in the said piece.

Today's ET carried a news about Canada banning the ayurvedic drugs from India, after detecting the presence of metals (lead, mercury and arsenic) in higher levels by Health Canada (Canadian equivalent of US FDA). Here is the story in the official Health Cananda site. And, don't get surprised to know that the banned drugs are mostly from market giants as Dabur, Zandu, Himalaya.

This is infact a sure sign for the government, the industry and medical practicioners to wakeup and make amends. The Health minister Dr. Anbumani, would do good, if he can initiate concrete actions in this instead of focussing his guns to ban smoking scenes in movies.

The complete Indian medicine sector requires focussed attention and concious and concrete efforts need to be taken to revitalise the system by assimilation of modern techniques, surggeries & instruments and standardisation into the time-tested system of indian medicines.

Coastal Regulation Zone and T R Baalu - Then and Now

The much hyped about SethuSamudram Canal (SSC) has finally been inaugurated early this month, despite stiff opposition from environmentalists and fisherfolk. You may wonder well, this in itself is nothing new. True, I am not going to talk about the merits and demerits of the project itself which has been discussed in media thoroughly mostly concluding as financially unviable and ecologically disastrous. But, there is some history related to this, which nobody seems to remember.

Just board a time machine and lets go to 2003 and don't worry, we'll definitely come back to present. It was the year Ms. Jayalalitha was pretty serious about building a new secretariat building, instead of the present Fort St. George. Mr. T R Baalu was then the Minister of Environment and Forests in the erstwhile Vajpayee-led NDA government. It was the same Baalu, who put spokes in all her plans to build a new secretariat.

When Jaya, decieded to demolish the Queen Mary's in the Marina to make way for the secretariat complex, Baalu intervened with an ultimate weapon in terms of central government order, which potentially overruled the state (so much for the 'fedarilsm' that the DMK raises hue and cry for). Thus was introduced an amendment to the Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) Act without the usual 'notice period'. The notice period for done away with for the sake of 'larger public interest'. This amendment meant that heritage buildings (buildings of archeological or historical importance and buildings of public use such as schools, colleges, places of worship etc. can be demolished and reconstructed only after prior approval from MoEF. If that was not enough, another sub-clause was added, probably as a second level of safety mechanism- any construction activity with more than Rs. 5 crore investment within the CRZ should have to be approved by MoEF. Curiously, Congress was then with the AIADMK and oppposed the amendment tooth and nail. In fact, one of its member of Parliament , Dr. P Saroja supported by several other Congress colleagues brought a private members' bill suggesting certain amendments to Baalu's plan. The debate in the Lok Sabha was a pointer to the political alignment of those days.

Sensing the students protest and public dissatisfaction, Jaya decided to shift the project and this time to Anna University. The land being used by a school run by the university was identified for this purpose and it was even decided to shift the university hostel o some new place. Again, it was Baalu who intervened,just two-days prior to the foundation stone laying ceremony for the project. This time he can not invoke CRZ, because Kotturpuram - the project site is slightly inland. So, he came up with a notification that mandated Environment Impack Assessment (EIA) for office complexes with 1000 persons and above or discharging sewage of 50,000 litres per day and above or with an investment of Rs. 50 crores and above. The proposed Rs. 400 cr. secretariat project was clearly the target, though the ministry claimed the notification to be in response to 2001 SC directive to mandate EIA for purposes of town planning Acts.

Now, coming back to 2005, it is completely puzzling to see the speed of Mr. Baalu. It seems that the CRZ Act is not important for a major project such as SSC. It is being cleared and inaugurated hastily despite doubts being raised by the PMO and stiff opposition from the NGOs and fisherfolks, even before the public hearings on the project are completed. There could not be more than one reason for pushing this environmentally disastrous and economically unviable (much has been said and written about these) project - Assembly Elections 2006. This could be the costliest election to be held for a state assembly in India (the total outlay for the project is a whooping sum at Rs. 2400 crores).

Long Live Indian Democracy!

External links:

• SSC official site
• Interview - O Fernandes, Co Convener, CAN
• Wiki page on SSC
• Sethusamudram Technical Issues - A Blog
• Sethusamudram News - A Blog
  

This one is for aspiring Politicians and Bureaucrats

T N Seshan - the man who introduced the Election Commission to the public. He is now donning a new role. Probably irritated by the activities of politicians and bureaucrats in his times, he has taken up the task of grooming the next generation of netas (politicians) and babus (bureaucrats). MIT School of Government (MITSOG) launched on June 7, 2005 is to focus on training the wannabe netas and babus about the intricacies of governance, rules, budget & finance, management so on and so forth. Seshan has a tough task as its Chairman and Dean in running the institute successfully.

Billed as the Asia's first, it offers one-year, three-semester, residential post-graduate diploma programme in government. You should be under 35 years and willing to shell out a hefty 2.74 lakhs fee plus 75,000 towards hostel expenses. What is the use of being Politician, if you are not traveling abroad, ostensibly to learn how something works in UK/USA? Relax, the fee also covers a international study tour apart from a laptop for each student.

The intake is 60 students a year, but the site doesn't talk about any entrance examination/interview if more people apply (otherwise, they may not qualify). The programme contains 9 core and 9 optional subjects. Though the list of full-time faculty is not available in the site, list of visiting faculty reads as who's who of the Indian political arena, with maximum coming from BJP. Some serious names include Advani, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Sitaram Yechury, Bardhan, Chandrababu Naidu, Aroon Purie, Kapil Sibal, Ramoji Rao and so on.

Interestingly, while a report in Hindu mentioned Rahul Gandhi, the site doesn't say anything about it. If indeed Rahul is in the list, I would be curious to know, what he has done so far to deserve a place. In last one year of his presence in Parliament Rahul has just spoken once or twice, and had lead a dharna in from of the Parliament at the height of Lalu crisis during which got disproportionate amount of column inches in newspapers and air minutes in digital media. The youngest, soon-to-be-nominated-to-AICC and yet-to-prove-his-credentials scion in the Nehru family can probably teach dynastic politics or how democratic principles are upheld in Congress party. Compared to Rahul the youngest of Deoras and Scindias has performed well.

Coming back to MITSOG, many would find it useful to go the correspondence course root myself included. Hope, it would be there soon!

Indian Medicines - Are they just 'Alternative Medicines'?

Saturday's (July 9, 2005) Hindu carried a report on Indian medicines. The report was about the inauguration of a national level seminar on 'modern vistas in standardisation and good manufacturing practices of Indian system of medicine drugs.'

It talks about the lack of standardisation in the Ayurvedha/ Siddha drugs. But, what is surprising is that these comments were made by Union AYUSH secretary, Uma Pillai (AYUSH stands for Ayurvedha, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy and comes under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare as Department of AYUSH). This probably indicates that the Ministry is not planning to introduce measures to standardise the Indian system of medicines, though the official site claims as one of the objectives to "evolve Pharmacopoeial standards for Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoeopathy drugs." Without the government playing the larger role in regulating & monitoring agency, it would not be possible for a large number of medical practitioners (significant number of medical practitioners even prepare the drugs on their own) and drug companies to come together and formulating the standards in each of these systems. The commercial interests and the fear of revealing the composition of drugs to competitors are enough reasons to prevent any meaningful standardisation initiatives.

The Ministry should rather work towards setting up a high-powered committee (one each for each system of medicine), with members from renowned practitioners, academicians, researchers from drug manufacturers and other experts towards the standardisation of drugs. This committee can approach the task in phases (considering the number of drugs to be standardised) and in a time-bound manner for each phase. The recommendations of this committee should be made binding on all drug manufacturers and practitioners. It is also essential to promote research and development of new drugs in each of these systems and ministry should think of giving research grants to colleges and renowned practitioners for this purpose. At the same time, it should also set up a separate board for these systems on the lines of US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), US and Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), India.

Incidentally, a recent report in Rediff is about the Health ministry's initiative to revamp the Indian drug regulatory structure and make it on par with FDA for quality control of drugs.

But, to me there is another issue with Indian medicinal systems. The focus has always been on the drug based treatment. The hidden message is that we failed to catch up with the modern developments in medicines, such as surgeries, electro medical instruments (ECG, EEG etc.), Lasers and so on. It is sheer irony that it was Sushruta, who performed the world's first surgery dating back to 2nd century BC. It is a puzzle to learn that the BAMS course, which is the basic course for studying Ayurvedha doesn't teach anything about the modern treatments including surgeries. Why shouldn't the eminent academicians and experts join together and work towards integrating the modern medical treatments with Indian systems. Without this integration and alignment with modern techniques, Ayurvedha, Siddha etc. will be continued to be referred as "alternate systems," which is grossly unfair.

Hope, Ministry of Health and Dept. of AYUSH soon wakes up from its sleep and take steps to revive the Indian systems.

Comments from experts are welcome!

PS:
While reading articles for this blog, I came across this interesting slide, thanks to Google. It raises question about how the surgical methods completely disappeared from Ayurvedha after 5-6 centuries AD. It is said that Sushruta Samhita describes over 120 surgical instruments and 300 surgical procedures and 8 different categories of human surgery. any scholarly insights?