Blood boiling stuff! The prototype of idiotic Indian public is furious at a doctor who received ₹2.5/- in commission for poorly manufactured cough syrups -the quality of which was cleared by THE GOVERNMENT HEALTH REGULATOR probably taking bribes from the manufacturer... ....BUT not furious at public and government officers taking ₹1000000/- to ₹100000000/- as bribes from companies that are destroying this country since decades. Make doctors the scapegoat of systematic healthcare failure by the government. Easiest way out of accountability in the playbook.

I have been asked to comment on this absurdity multiple times in my direct messages. Here are my thoughts on this situation. The Central Ministry of Health in India decided that a new medical course needs to be introduced - one combining modern medicine (MBBS) and traditional medicine (BAMS, Ayurveda) integrated at graduate level. They plan to roll this out at one of the premier most central medical institutes in India, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research, (JIPMER, Pondicherry). This is an important matter that sheds light on so many things with respect to Ayurveda as a career option. Ayurveda is waaaay past its expiry date. People understand this and students understand this. It's value as a profession is now deeply low, and considered "comical" and "regressive." You know this, and the Government understands this. In large supermarkets, when products near expiry, they club those products together and sell them as "buy 2 or 3 for the price of one," or club them along with other 'non-expired' products and give them for free. Ayurveda is one such expired product and the only way it can survive as a professional course is to give it free or club it along with another credible and valid course, such as MBBS. In the current BAMS curriculum, students are already taught modern medicine subjects along with primitive, primal and obsolete Ayurvedic subjects. So this new integration makes little sense, because if someone is already trained in MBBS, they would only choose to practice modern medicine from a rational and scientific point. Because in Ayurveda-based treatments, burning patients with hot rods, giving herbal enemas, putting herbal oils inside nose and anal canal and making leeches suck out blood is the highest level of treatment they can offer and no student would ever want to do that when they have modern technology, therapeutics and drugs that work at their disposal to realistically treat patients. The other point is, why only Ayurveda? It is because the Government is playing at the religious and political sentiments of a specific group and majority here. Nothing to do with improving healthcare or healthcare education. If not, then there should be MBBS+BHMS (Homeopathy), MBBS+Naturopathy, MBBS+Unani and MBBS+Siddha too, not just Ayurveda. This bias and bigotry from the authorities is an open secret. This MBBS+BAMS course is a method to keep Ayurveda alive and kicking, and not to make healthcare education better. The Government knows that dogmatic views in medicine, pseudoscientific traditional practices and unscientific garbage like Ayurveda will not see the light at the end of the tunnel if they don't give it "borrowed air and water" from other sources. No one would ask students in a pilot training programme to first learn how to operate a bullock-cart before they are put inside a cockpit. Same here. It makes zero sense to teach students an extinct and expired healthcare practice based on religious dogmatism and primitive cultural observation inside a modern scientific course. Students must also realize this. Someone in the regulatory authority has smoked up too many herbs before this decision was made. Students must not opt for this rubbish course - their future might be affected because good foreign universities will not accept caveman healthcare degrees such as this integrative medicine abomination; and the clinical and healthcare educational societies must come out and fight against this absurdity of a medical course called MBBS+BAMS. This is a shameless, regressive, integrative medicine fraud. Nothing less. Only if we help students to live, learn and practice science and rationalism, can the country progress. Otherwise we will have a whole generation of doctors offering urine & dung therapy, blood-sucking leeches & hot rods and chanting hymns while pushing herbal enemas along with prescribing antibiotics and ordering CT scans. A mish-mash of chaotic medical care that serves no purpose, but can harm.