New Delhi, July 7 (IANS) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi on Tuesday strongly advocated for exploring and harnessing the country’s inherent potential in traditional pharmacy, given its long-standing legacy in the field and called for greater focus on shoring up the sector.

The Rajya Sabha MP lauded the Narendra Modi government’s proactive approach in identifying the opportunity and also taking major step towards establishing the country as a global hub of traditional medicine.

“The headquarters of World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Centre for Traditional Medicine was set up in Gujarat’s Jamnagar. India will now serve as a centre for validating, documenting, and sharing knowledge of traditional medicine with the world,” Trivedi said.

He also criticised the previous dispensations for being ‘ignorant’ of the country’s inherent potential and for not doing enough to explore it.

Citing the example of Nobel prize 2016, Sudhanshu Trivedi said: “The Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded to Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi. He received this honour for his research on autophagy — a process by which cells purge themselves. If one fasts for 12 to 14 hours, the body’s cells weed out waste elements, and the process of generation of new cells improves.”

“We (India) have had a tradition of fasting for centuries. Had we scientifically validated our traditional knowledge and presented it to the world, it is quite possible that the credit for such a discovery would have gone to India,” the BJP MP added.

Speaking to the press, the BJP Spokesperson Trivedi also praised the growth trajectory of the country in various disciplines ranging from electronics to i-Phone manufacturing to smartphones and pharmaceuticals, suggesting how the country was moving from a globally non-entity to a vital economic player.

He said that in today’s new global economic order, only three nations — United States, China, and India are emerging as three major powers and it is time that India makes remarkable progress in sectors like electronics, smartphones, and pharmaceuticals.

Trivedi also added that besides China, India is the only nation today producing the high-end iPhones on massive scale.

“Today, India supplies nearly 40 per cent of the generic medicines used in the United States. Global confidence in India’s quality and reliability has consistently grown,” he noted.

–IANS

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