The imbroglio over >Baba Ramdev’s ‘Divya Putrajeevak Beej’, the ayurvedic medicine that was allegedly branded to promise the birth of male offspring, has mostly been about its blatantly expressed son-preference. Raised in the Rajya Sabha, the issue hogged the limelight last week, with the Opposition demanding an explanation from the government whose Chief Executive has shared many a platform with the yoga guru in the past. Positing the drug beside the recently-launched >Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (save the girl child) programme of the Central government, critics used the opportunity to level questions at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The outrage was warranted: the 2011 Census indicated a child sex ratio (0-6 years) of 914 — meaning for every 1,000 boys there were 86 girls missing. For years the sex ratio in India has been low, abysmal in certain decades as in 2001-11, skewed in favour of males, thanks to an irrational preference for boys over girls. Amounting to eugenics, in its extreme, involving attempts to influence the sex of the child preconception, son preference is more commonly manifested as insidious termination of pregnancies or female infanticide. Any attempt to perpetuate gender bias must be nipped in the bud.

Baba Ramdev himself subsequently retorted that Putrajeevak was only a generic term for child in its original Sanskrit sense, and that it only promised to target female infertility. He stoutly maintained that any reference to son preference was imagined, not intended, and promised non-ambiguous packaging. However, without splitting hairs over nomenclature, it is important to see the occasion for what it presents: an opportunity to make an emphatic call for a scientific validation of the country’s traditional systems of medicine. When the Bharatiya Janata Party government upgraded the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) into a Ministry in 2014, it was expected that this would result in the scientific validation of various drugs offered by these systems. It has been the argument of scientists that the potency claims with respect to these drugs rest largely on those making or dispensing them, and as such these undergo no proper review or validation — a tried and tested process that allopathy swears by. Some of these claims tend to border on the fantastic, and can even attract the penal provisions of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act. It is absolutely essential that the state, while promoting these pluralistic healing traditions, ensures that when people make the choice to go in for such treatment, they are reassured by science, and not just blind faith.