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Time of India
a day ago
- Health
- Time of India
Little progress on govt push for integrated MBBS-Ayurveda degree
Representative image (AI) A dual degree of MBBS and BAMS (bachelor of ayurvedic medicine and surgery) through an integrated course at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research ( JIPMER ) was announced with much fanfare, but information obtained through Right to Information shows that it is far from becoming a reality. While the health ministry has been pushing the issue, statutory bodies regulating the different systems of medicines, which were supposed to meet regularly to design modules to 'promote medical pluralism', have met just two times. JIPMER had not responded to the health ministry's reminders on the issue till July 10. In response to RTI queries, the NMC in its response on June 25 stated: 'The third joint meeting of NMC, NCISM (National Commission for Indian System of Medicine) and NCH (National Commission for Homeopathy) was earlier proposed to be held on September 23, 2024. However, due to non-availability communicated by NCISM the same could not be held and the matter regarding convening the meeting in 2025 has not yet been decided. ' The union government had announced in May that the new integrated course combining MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) and BAMS would be started in JIPMER. File notings on the 'proposal regarding setting up of an institution for providing Integral Medical Education leading to dual degrees MBBS and BAMS' shows that the proposal came from the Auroville Foundation in January last year. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Learn More - How Donating Sperm May Boost Your Income SpellRock Undo Gujarat cadre IAS officer Jayanti S Ravi, who was serving as principal secretary in Gujarat's Health and Family and Welfare Department was appointed as Secretary, Auroville Foundation in Tamil Nadu, on deputation in June 2021. In January 2024, she wrote to the union health ministry that the Foundation, which comes under the HRD ministry, 'had undertaken an effort to integrate both the systems of medicine (Ayurveda and Modern) to have a holistic approach to health care'. It was further stated that in collaboration with ayurvedic universities and JIPMER 'a draft curricula was prepared for the proposed integral medical education to grant dual degree of MBBS and BAMS' and that the curricula was 'being fine-tuned for detailed integrating methodology of the two streams of science'. However, in response to RTI queries on the issue, JIPMER stated that the requested information of records or communications were not available and hence could not be provided. File notings provided by the health ministry showed that despite reminders from the ministry on February 13, 2024, December 31, 2024 and May 10, 2025, till July 11, there was no response from JIPMER on the issue. Separate laws for setting up the three commissions to regulate modern medicine, ayurveda and homeopathy have one clause in common, which states that there will be joint sittings of the three commissions at least once a year 'to enhance the interface between homoeopathy, Indian system of medicine and modern system of medicine'. It further states: 'The joint sitting may, by an affirmative vote of all members present and voting, decide on approving specific educational and medical modules or programmes that could be introduced in the undergraduate and postgraduate courses across medical systems, and promote medical pluralism. ' 'Integration and joint curricula cannot be dictated by the government or pushed by any foundation. There are statutory bodies regulating the three systems of medicines. It is for the commissions to design curricula and approve an integrated course, if at all,' pointed out Dr KV Babu, an ophthalmologist and RTI activist who has been tracking the integration issue over the years.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
I do. Twice! Modern Draupadis and the polyandry debate
I do. Twice! Modern Draupadis and the polyandry debate Sneha Bhura TNN Jul 26, 2025, 19:47 IST IST One bride, two grooms — a viral Himachal wedding revives interest in a fading custom in high, hard places Indian weddings have a way of making the world sit up and watch. Think star-studded Bollywood nuptials in Lake Como or extravagant pre-wedding galas. But this month, another kind of wedding went viral: Sunita Chauhan, a young woman from Shillai village in Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh, married two brothers, Pradeep and Kapil Negi , from the Hatti tribe. Their three-day wedding—complete with folk dances, blessings from the village panchayat and shared vows — catapulted the word ' polyandry ' into our living-room discourse. But how did this practice of a woman marrying multiple men find its way into our news feed in 2025? It's not that polyandry is flourishing in the country. Researchers confirm its steep decline, driven by more educated women, men migrating for jobs, legal curbs and the rise of nuclear families. Still, polyandrous households persist in parts of Himachal and elsewhere, especially where arable land is scarce and joint families endure.
The National
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Willy Maley's poetry reaffirms humanity's protean potential
WILLY Maley retired from the University of Glasgow in 2024. For over a quarter of a century I worked with him, at times quite closely, co-supervising research students or teaching in the same courses. He is internationally known as a scholar of Renaissance and Modern literature and a symposium on his retirement gathered a company of brilliant scholars all united in their respect and – more remarkable – their great liking for Willy as a colleague, scholar, teacher and friend. His loyalty to his subject, his students, his profession and colleagues was a constant lodestar quality. When these new books of his poetry came to my attention, I was immediately delighted and well-disposed to like them. More than that: I was curious to know what his poetry would be like in terms of subjects, techniques, skills and language. As an academic, your knowledge of the great poets and writers might – perhaps should – act as a caution when you try your own hand. As Hugh MacDiarmid puts it, 'Wha hear a Burns or Shakespeare sing, / Yet still their ain bit jingles string, / As they were worth the fashioning?' So it's a delight to report how good these books are, what a replenishment of positivity they bring, what qualities they endorse and enhance, what strengths they convey, so deeply. She Wakes Me Up and Other Poems (Edinburgh: Main Point Books) is a collection of love poems dedicated to the poet's wife, Dini. It's difficult to quote from the poems in She Wakes Me Up simply because each one is a singular coherent statement in itself, lyrical or anecdotal, gestural or meditative. Supplied Short extracts might show up as fragments, extracts, incomplete – which they would be – or else they might appear uxorious. That's a word a reviewer once used of a love poem of my own. It means, 'inordinately in love with one's wife'. It wasn't intended as praise but that's what I took from it, so, running the risk, here's 'Sound Mind' in its entirety: Sucked in by the sound they make, I strain to hear the words you say hear them like they're being sung through throat, through lips, through teeth and tongue, a voice that has your body in it: warm, earthy, tender, true, it has in it my childhood streets, the taste of all my favourite sweets. The poems note and record 'moves, changes, / years of exile, loss' and all the vicissitudes of almost missing each other, but then there is finding the connection, and 'The Click': 'that jolt when the juice kicks in / between two strokes of the clock' or 'when something becomes / 'suddenly clear and understandable' / like when two people turn out to 'become friends / or be compatible from the outset''. It's something that has been 'lost in time, but there all along'. Time is the key and the enemy at once. It unlocks the moment and its prospect opens out but it's always coming towards us. Therefore the poems balance love in the moment of discovery with the longer presence of its pleasure and enactment. READ MORE: The Scottish poets whose lines feature on our bank notes But then, what makes it possible to value it at all is an awareness of its mortal limit, a limit that looms larger for some than others. The poems in this collection are carefully judged neither to exaggerate the personal, biographical or autobiographical story, nor to sentimentalise uniqueness. They recognise the cyclical, regenerative power love confirms. And they connect that physical, visceral experience with the reading that we all do, one way or another. 'Book For Life' begins: 'I dream that we are working on a book, / or editing, since others play their part' and ends: 'you look at me just as the penny drops. / It's better if the writing never stops.' And 'Future Perfect' plays gently yet profoundly with time, love and lastingness: Every time we say goodbye We say hello again That's our fortune and our trouble. We live between two times In memory and in the moment As in the old days of cinema When you left halfway through Saying this is where I came in One day, the poem wishfully concludes, the future will have become 'The perfect place / for our wishes to come true / And they did, and they do'. In contrast to these personal, delicate poems, there is also a poised discursive application of James Joyce short story 'The Dead' to personal circumstance. Supplied Scrap Mettle Collection (Glasgow: Seahorse Publications) is a much more varied collection of poems: tributes to a father, a grandfather, reflections on being a stepfather, portraits and praise-poems, observations of people in contemporary society at large, poems about Glasgow and Glasgow's people, meditative perceptions, and sharp explosive squibs of observation, like 'Bookface': I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by social media barking hysterical half-baked dragging themselves through twitter feeds at dawn looking for an angry fib. This goes with 'Twitteronomy', a torrential cascade of a poem listing the negative things a certain form of 'social media' technology enables, to the belittlement of humanity. But if these are outward-facing poems, justified condemnations of one of our society's failings, they also display an understanding of human susceptibility to the temptations of easy self-indulgence. And there are other poems where compassion for humanity carries its power through understatement. 'Covers' deftly evokes the comfort, reassurance and strength that can be given across the generations: If we came home like drowned kittens daddy shook our coats out on the landing. Last night I dreamt I came in soaked to the skin and he said it's okay son, just hang your jacket on top of mine, which was wet through and suddenly I knew I wasn't scared of dying. And there are poems of public pronouncement, including 'Shoeshine on Leith', a splendid short flyting in serious attack mode, revoking the status of Edinburgh as Scotland's 'capital city': 'You curtsey and bow with your overgrown fringe / And a forelock that serves as a cultural cringe / Turning tricks for the tourists with a painted-on smile / You're Scotland with Shortbread, not Scotland with Style.' It goes on: Tattooed and adorned with Westminster largesse you said a loud No when you should have said Yes while proud Glaswegians and Dundonians Sneered at the courtesans, pimps and Etonians Whose favour you curry, you wee Scottie dug that does a few tricks then soils his own rug. It concludes: 'By taking the path of least resistance / You've voted yourself out of existence.' In the long aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum, or should I say in the long interregnum between 2014 and Scotland's coming independence, that's a poem that every honest Member of the Scottish Parliament should know by heart. Why did [[Edinburgh]] fail us so badly? What made the people of Glasgow and Dundee so justified in voting Yes? The answers are complex but finally decisive and they challenge the status quo with an absolute demand that this poem encapsulates precisely. READ MORE: Hugh MacDiarmid's work is the kind of poetry we want Some are referential poems, showing clearly how popular cultural idioms and texts win their way into deep moral meanings and forceful understanding, as in 'Let's Go Get Angel', which delivers a universal human sense of commitment, purpose and value picking up from a line in Sam Peckinpah's astonishing 1969 film, The Wild Bunch. The kind of commitment, courage and humility shown in both film and poem connects with another short poem, intensely personal, publicly stated, becoming universal, 'Love and Death': as in love so in death better to leave than be left better be gone than bereft. Throughout both collections there is humanity and empathy, even in the more angry poems. In 'The Crow's Stone' (the title punning on the exclamation, 'Stone the crows!' – you can work that one out for yourself), the poet tries to help a desperate crow trying to lift a stone with its beak, only to find a millipede beneath it, looking up at him and seeming to say, 'How could you?' Meanwhile, 'Twists and Turns' (a football poem in praise of Tommy Burns, 'the Celtic number 10') is fast, witty and infectiously good-humoured, rippling with fun. In February and March 2023, I wrote a series of articles in The National about a collection Willy edited called Our Fathers Fought Franco (Luath Press). It consisted of accounts by fathers and relatives of volunteers for the International Brigades fighting Franco and fascism in the Spanish Civil War, including Willy's father. In the first of these I wrote: 'In an era when politics and media seem designed to desensitise people and make us feel cynical about what's most essential, this book is an antidote. Reading it reminds you of the lasting value of care, the common sense of passion, the balance of what's right and must be fought for in this world, and what's wrong, and needs to be opposed.' The words apply as closely to these two books of poems. I had a few questions for Willy. How did he come to write them? What was that relationship between work as a poet and work as an academic and scholar and professional teacher, a professor of literature? Alan Riach: Willy, we've known each other as colleagues for more than 20 years but I hadn't read your work as a poet before now. It's such a refreshing renewal of commitment. I can see where the range of reference and the depth of conviction come from, and how they work in poems that are immediate and accessible and yet also packed with emotional investment. Did you come to them fast or were they building up over a long time? Willy Maley: I came to the poems fast but they emerged as a potential collection over a long period of time, arising from particular events or emotions or conversations. They were initially private communications and reflections never intended for publication. I was always pressed for time, painted to the walls, so it was a case, not of emotion recollected in tranquility, but of emotion experienced in the heat of the moment. I did go back through them, editing and selecting, once the decision was made to do something with these scattered verses. Alan: The love poems are very moving partly because of the skill with which the lover addressed is so evidently given a life in the poems outwith the imagination and apprehension of the poet. They're never merely projections. Is that self-conscious craft, or intuitive character? Willy: My lover, wife, muse, addressee is a writer and archivist and artist and diarist in her own right and not as institutionalised or tongue-tied by convention as I had become over the years, so it was never a question of writing as a poet to a mute muse but writing as one lesser writer to a better one. Alan: The poems in Scrap Mettle Collection are concerned with characters, family, friends, histories of commitment, often struggle, sometimes loss. Sometimes they condemn things that should be condemned. And yet they avoid exceptionalism or egoism. Would you wish them read as tributes, acknowledgements of the achievements of other lives lived, endorsements of specific beliefs? Willy: I never liked the idea of heroism or used the word, despite the fact that my father was a very ordinary everyday hero in his own way, as was my mother, as are so many working-class men and women. So those poems in Scrap Mettle Collection are tributes, homages, acknowledgements of the small acts of courage or resilience that I admire. My father, for example, was profoundly unsentimental. I'm not but I live in the shadow of that aversion to anything mawkish, even if I still fail to uphold the dry-eyed tradition! Alan: If there's a mortal sense of loneliness in these poems, in both books, there's equally a recognition of what being human entails, both solitude and the opportunity for solidarity, mortality and a certain knowledge of what continues, goes on living in the carrying stream. If I've got this right, does this bring into alignment and reinforce the reciprocal worlds of the academy and poetry, the scholar and the poet? They're different worlds, perhaps, but surely they're not opposed, and in these books overlapping in the best of ways? READ MORE: The connections between Scotland and India Willy: The two books were once one, but as it became clear over time that these were distinct poems on love and politics, a decision was made to separate them, and the love poems were gathered together under the heading of Late Life Love, a very particular experience distinct from first love or midlife love. The title She Wakes Me Up was chosen by the publisher Jennie Renton and captured the inspiring nature of the addressee. She wakes me up in every way. Those are private poems made public. None were previously published as poems. The ones now in Scrap Mettle Collection were always public, and some were published. They are occasional verses too, like the love poems. The scholarship or criticism that's always there in the background for an academic definitely played through those poems. The solitary sensibility was never mine. I'm one of nine children and I've always put family, community and class ahead of self. Teaching also plays its part in eradicating any notion of the loneliness of the long-distance researcher or solitary scholar. I taught creative writing for years as a critic and mentor, not as a writer. These late life collections, post-terminal diagnosis collections, have been made possible by retirement. If I was still working, I doubt they'd see the light of day. Being pressed for time made them, and now it's made them public. She Wakes Me Up will be launched at Waterstones, Byres Road, Glasgow, Thursday, July 24 at 7pm. Please email or call to secure a place: glasgowbyresrd@ 0141 357 4759. All welcome, entry free. Scrap Mettle Collection will be launched at Avant Garde, King Street Glasgow, 7pm, Tuesday, August 26. Book available from Willy Maley was diagnosed with terminal cancer in July 2023. His blog posts, including his brilliantly courageous, meticulous and encouraging accounts of living with cancer, can be found at: There, he writes this: 'In August a wee girl fell in the pond in our local park unseen by anyone else, and as I waded in to rescue her I had a fleeting thought: maybe I've been spared to do this one thing. The butterfly effect.' It's a heartening episode, and undeniable. These books only expand upon the sense that there are miracles of serendipity, possibilities that we have been given to live up to. The butterfly effect is everywhere. Wole Soyinka, the African Nobel laureate, wrote in a book entitled Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse and Dissonance in African Art Traditions (2019): 'The primary objective of art is to constantly reinvent itself, its own modes of expression and representation. The objective of art is also to be chameleonic and protean – that is, to change shape and colour at will, to supersede both reality and expectations. Yes, indeed, the goal of transformation is not only desirable, it is an integrated element of what art does.' Soyinka's words are apt to remember when we read Willy Maley's poems. They are reinventions, reaffirmations of humanity's protean potential, revelations of openness to all that's best in our marvellously chameleonic capacity to 'supersede both reality and expectations' – and to be transformative.
New Indian Express
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
PC Sorcar's brand returns to Chennai after a decade
The lights dim after three bells, and the beats of a nostalgic theme song fill the auditorium. Children lean forward on the edge of their seats — some in eager anticipation, and others simply trying to see past the heads in front — but all of them concentrate with their wide eyes on the stage. Grandparents and parents, seated beside them, whisper stories from their childhood, when they experienced the same thrill, waiting to watch Sorcar senior step into the spotlight. As applause echoes, a magician emerges from the seemingly empty 'Family Album Box', continuing the tradition of 'Indrajal'. After nearly a decade, the Sorcar magic legacy comes to Chennai, and bringing this is Pourush, the grandson of PC Sorcar Sr. — fondly known as the 'Father of Modern Indian Magic' and 'The Maharaja of Magic' — and the son of PC Sorcar Young. PC Sorcar Sr. built the Sorcar brand nearly a century ago as he picked up the hitherto neglected practice of magic from Indian street magicians. Later, he went on to awe people across the globe, starting from Japan, Australia, and USA. A few of his notable tricks are the disappearance of the Eiffel Tower for five seconds, changing the time in Japan, and cutting a lady in half. Following in his footsteps, his son and grandson are upholding the legacy.
Indian Express
09-07-2025
- Health
- Indian Express
Maharashtra government's decision to mix homoeopathy and allopathy could jeopardise lives of patients
Written by T Paulose George The Maharashtra government's recent decision to allow homeopathy practitioners to prescribe allopathy medicines invites both medical and legal questions. The average citizen is unaware of the long-term implications and ill effects of this so-called reform. This is certainly not the first time a state government has attempted to blur the boundary of fundamentally different systems of medicine. In the 1980s, the Kerala government attempted to impart surgical training to Ayurveda undergraduate students which met stiff resistance from people of the state and the government backed off. The state government made another attempt in 2015 – the Kerala High Court quashed the government order. Modern medicine is governed by the NMC Act of 2019 which lays down clear standards for training and practice of allopathy. Each system of medicine – Modern, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Unani – has its distinct formulary (list of medicines) regulated by the government through the Drug Controller of India. Diverse, often conflicting scientific principles underpin these different systems. Mixing and matching these dissimilar systems is fraught with danger due to unpredictable effects that can often be fatal. A new drug in modern medicine undergoes extensive scientific evaluation including safety trials in humans after completing animal and cell culture studies. Once deemed safe, the next step is to study the desired effect and side effects. This is followed by large, randomised controlled trials involving a large number of participants to see if the drug is beneficial and if the risks do not outweigh the benefits. All this is published in scientific journals allowing scientists and specialist doctors around the world to scrutinise independently and only then the drug enters the formulary in India. The undergraduate training in modern medicine regulated by NMC includes basic science and research methodology. The student is also given skills to interpret the results of research in addition to studying pharmacology over the four-and-a-half-year course. Basic pharmacology theory itself is taught over a year and applied pharmacology is taught over three years as well as during the year of compulsory internship. Believing a six-month certificate course for homeopathy doctors will equip them to prescribe medicines from modern medicine formulary is like living in a fantasy world. To ensure minimum standards, quality and safe clinical practice, the Government of India has introduced the National Exit Exam, starting this year for all medical graduates after completing undergraduate training in their respective system. This applies to all medical graduates from India and abroad to get mandatory registration to practice in their chosen field, speciality and sub-speciality. On the one hand, the Centre is trying to drive up the standards and on the other hand, the Maharashtra government is working against those core values. Citizens of Maharashtra should use the fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution and get this legally and medically unsound proposal quashed because human lives could be jeopardised by untrained homoeopathic practitioners practising outside their field of training. Homeopathy doctors should confine clinical practice to their system based on their undergraduate training. Patients do have a right to make informed choices regarding which system of medicine they would like treatment and for this reason, different systems should maintain their purity. Modern medicine doctors also have a duty to educate the unsuspecting people on the dangers of the Maharashtra government's new decree. The modern medical community and pharmacists should mount a legal challenge through their professional organisations if all else fails – we are duty bound to protect our patients. The writer is a retired consultant gastroenterologist
