Why are there question marks?
Let’s talk about the bridge which had brought us this far. The only problem is that the bridge is in a bad shape and there is a desperate need to change it. The bridge will help us to make up for the lost time. Now, we cannot start saying that we must have salaries compatible to allopathy. In first place, why should you have salaries compatible to allopathy? You should be given a budget of your own. Have your own budget of how to operationalise it. How can we compress the research which over 40 years has not been able to convince people, something that only a handle of Indians are using and not the whole wide public. How is that we are not able to motivate our practitioners to do it the right way? Why is that confidence lacking? What is that our medicinal plants are lacking in terms of quality, growth, cultivation, breeding, storing and all such practices? On the drug side why do we have 20 pharmaceuticals that are respected the world over and then we have a whole lot of other firms who have question marks— Small? Big? How can we bring that credibility? India has all available to do it, but we are not going in the direction which will be new, different.