Falsely dangerous

Baba Ramdev, a Yoga Guru and also promoter of the Ayurvedic company- Patanjali- shot into prominence by campaigning against the “corrupt” Congress regime under UPA and also even came up to Nagaland where he held a rally at Kohima combining yoga and politics. Not surprisingly, the anti-corruption theme of the yoga Guru was unmasked as a pro-Modi/BJP stand. Thus after the Modi regime came to power in 2014 and barely few years later, his Patanjali products became a household name. Ramdev’s meteoric rise serves as a prime exam-ple of how he has successfully exploited his closeness with the Modi government at the Cen-tre. A big supporter of Narendra Modi, Ramdev has launched many high-profile business campaigns since the friendly BJP government came to power at the Centre. A friendly regime at the centre could benefit the Baba’s empire even disregarding any intellectual property rights. The BJP government could help Patanjali make major inroads into large institutional markets like the armed forces’ and public sector canteen, among others. Despite several con-troversial claims made by the Ayurvedic company of Ramdev, the government had only made feeble clarifications instead of taking it seriously by issuing warnings.. Patanjali is one of the biggest advertisers on TV. A report by Tam Media Research in August this year found that it’s the third highest advertiser in TV news ads. These ads – for toothpaste, ghee, Ramdev’s infamous “Covid cure” – are splattered across every mainstream news channel.The product criticised the most for “misleading” claims is Coronil, introduced in the middle of the Covid pandemic as the “first evidence-based medicine for Covid-19” that has a “100 percent recovery rate”. It was “certified” by India’s AYUSH ministry in 2021. The dubious claim of having found an ayurvedic cure for Covid-19 and advertising the ‘kit’ purportedly concocted to treat patients has landed Ramdev’s firm, Patanjali Ayurved, in a multi-pronged legal trou-ble. The false claims were noticed even by the Supreme Court, which , last week directed Patanjali to immediately stop its “false and misleading advertisements” or be imposed with costs of Rs 1 crore for every false claim made in Patanjali’s ads. The Supreme Court on No-vember 21 cautioned Patanjali Ayurved, a company cofounded by yoga guru Ramdev and dealing in herbal products, against making “false” and “misleading” claims in advertisements about its medicines as cure of several diseases. “All such false and misleading advertisements of Patanjali Ayurved have to stop immediately. Most ayurvedic drugs are concoctions of two or more ingredients. This is because unlike the pharmaceutical industry, which also derives some of its active ingredients from plants, the Ayush industry does not isolate its active in-gredients from its plant based sources; rather, it uses the entire leaf or herb or root in its con-coction. Perhaps the warning from the apex court require setting up of an independent body to probe various medicines sold by Patanjali that are promoted by the government under its ‘Make In India’ policy in the larger interest of the people.