Lack of strategists,Ayurveda not popular
Managing Director of the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy (AVP) Group P.R. Krishna Kumar has said that it was due to the lack of strategists that Ayurveda was not able to become popular, both at the national and international level.“Usually Ayurveda students go in for clinical practice; but now we are able to attract them towards research. AVTAR (AVT Institute for Advanced Research) is now working on a number of projects with right-minded people,” he said at a scientific symposium on “Traditional Perspectives on Food and Nutrition,” here on Sunday.The symposium was organised to commemorate the birth centenary of the founder of AVP Group PV Rama Varier, and the annual day of AVTAR.The Institute, founded in 2003, was engaged in literary, field, drug and clinical research to give a scientific footing to Ayurveda as a back up to the efforts of globalisation.P. Ram Manohar, Director – Research, AVTAR, Coimbatore, said: “When we started the institute we had set lofty goals. Lack of motivated personnel, finance and infrastructure has served as stumbling blocks towards realisation of our goals. When we realise our goals, we can make our place globally.”
The institute had used the four years as a preparation time, he said. He felt that they still had made their presence felt in many spheres. He lamented that the feeling that they were a minority should be overcome to achieve greater heights.The preparation time they had got would be used to perform, act and create an impact, he said. “We want to build a good team to carry forward our research capabilities in order to discover new knowledge and conjure new innovations.”Speaking on the relevance of the symposium, Aarti Sreevatsa, faculty member, said that many people did not want to adopt the Ayurveda system of medicine because they had to avoid certain foods.
She exhorted the students to work on developing new diet plans that could be recommended to patients so that they did not end up starved by the end of the treatment period.The symposium had experts discussing on Ayurvedic management of malnutrition, nutritional significance of traditional foods and conflicts in traditional and modern notions of nutritional principles.
