Kerala plans to take Ayurveda to the world

To promote Kerala as a global destination for sourcing ayurvedic products and a centre for ayurvedic services of international standards, the Confederation for Ayurvedic Renaissance Keralam Ltd (CARe-Keralam), a joint venture between the Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Kinfra), and private-sector ayurveda products manufacturers, will start a Ayurveda project in the state.

Proposed to be set up on 5 acres of land at Kinfra Industries Park at Koratty in Thrissur district, the project would boast a variety of common facilities under the consortium. These would include a common raw material supply facility, a quality control (QC) lab, a research and development facility, branding of Kerala ayurveda etc. CARe-Keralam will work on documentation of various Ayurvedic products, which is a pre-requisite for the marketing of Ayurveda products as drugs in the foreign market, a Kinfra official said. The total project cost would be Rs 17.88 crore.

Approved by the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) under the Union Government, the project has been conceived to upgrade the technological processes of ayurvedic drugs so as to compete in the international market and develop a research and development centre in the field of ayurvedic medicine, promote the exports of ayurvedic products, reduce all bottlenecks involved in the export of ayurvedic products and develop a centre for excellent for research in ayurveda, which would be approved by international and national bodies such as the WHO and the Department of Science and Technology.

The project would also aim at establishing a Kerala brand of ayurvedic products and train the manufacturers of ayurveda products on the importance of safety, quality and efficacy in medicinal plants.

The project also aims to protect ayurveda from adulteration and lowering of standards in both manufacturing and treatment and to protect the intellectual property rights of ayurvedic manufacturers and provide plantation facilities to farmers by supplying free or subsidised seedlings to reduce threats for local community.

The Kinfra official said the project will also look to enhancing the quality and cost competitiveness of cluster firms and supply of skilled labour force to the industry. The need for the project has been felt because of the current situation where spurious and invalidated products abound, which end up spoiling the reputation of the ayurvedic system of medicine.

Though the central government has taken a number of initiatives to address the issues faced by the herbal and medicinal plant-based drug manufacturers, the official said said units do not have enough resources to enhance their quality and acceptance level. Such small and medium industries function as a cluster.

“It is in this background that Kinfra has identified the potential and need for setting up a R&D and QC laboratory for the benefit of the cluster of ayurvedic and herbal drug and health food manufacturers located in central Kerala,” he said.

According to the plan, the project would work toward building a full-fledged QC and R&D laboratory for herbal and ayurvedic products. The project will also aim to set up toxic study centre and a process validation lab for scale-up operations, a raw-material store and mini lab, IT and marketing infrastructure, a common facility centre for production and packaging and a herbal nursery.