Acupressure, music therapy, reike, all this and more, is showcased at the Capital's Pragati Maidan. Bringing practitioners of occult sciences, alternate forms of medicine such as Auyurveda, Unani, Herbal, memory retention workshops, yoga etc under one roof, the idea behind the exhibition is to propagate ancient Indian sciences and systems.

Conceptions like yoga, meditation and Ayurveda have already made space in the western countries and has a mammoth export potentiality. "The side effects of the allopathic medicine system has made people in the West look for alternative systems which were closer to nature. This realisation is slowly descending over Indian masses also," says N K Awasthi, director, Radha Swami Free Hospital. The green wave that has gripped the western countries has already made Indianherbal products a big success.

But not everything is hunky dory with these traditional sciences and practices. For instance, the business of alternative systems of medicine is badly in need of a helping hand from the government, say its practitioners. The export potential of indigenous systems also remains largely untapped. "While Rs 10 crore worth of Ayurvedic and Herbal medicines are exported annually from India, this figure can easily be increased five times with a little help from the government," feels Awasthi. He adds, "The government is spending just two per cent of the medical budget on alternate systems of medicine. The remaining goes to allopathic and homeopathic streams."

The quackery is among the chief problems which is hampering the growth of these genres. "Quacks with half knowledge or no knowledge enter the field and spoil the name of the profession and unfortunately we have no body or authority to check such trends," says Husain Ali, executive director, Universal Medicants Pvt.Ltd.

Further, lack of organised developmental programmes is proving to be a bottleneck. "These are stagnant sciences, but not dead. Lack of R&D has hampered growth. What we need is joint committed effort from government as well as practitioners," says Dr. Gurinder Singh, Jyotish Prabhkar Shastri. But, the government finally seems to have realised the major export potential this holds. Thus, to match the changing global scenario government is planning to redefine its policies for ancient medical sciences. The plunder of traditional knowledge in Ayurveda and other Asian systems of medicine was hotly debated at the first-ever Asian regional seminar on intellectual property rights issues currently being held.

Union health minister Dalit Eezhilmalai noted that 70 per cent of health care in the rural areas of India were being provided through traditional systems of medicine. Ezhilmalai stressed the need to document oral traditions besides redocumenting existing codified knowledge in a language which isacceptable and understandable internationally. According to the trade related intellectuals property rights (trips) agreement, anything which falls under the public domain automatically becomes non-patentable."This will serve as a caveat for providing protection from the patents on existing traditional systems of medicine," Ezhilmalai said.

The three-day seminar organised by the world intellectual property organisation (wipo) has representatives frm 18 countries in the Asia-pacific region. The challenge for the next decade is the daunting task of collectively evolving a framework under which both the custodians and practitioners of traditional systems of medicines function in a harmonious way, he said.

India is one of 12 mega bio-diverse countries of the world which despite having only 2.5 per cent total land area accounts for over eight percent of the recorded species of the world.

The rich bio-diversity of India has facilitated significant advances in the life science and ancient systems of medicine.Exhibitions such as Mystique India gives much needed exposure and helps this largely unorganised industry to establish contacts with foreign buyers.

Bhandari says that alternate medicines must get a budgetary allocation of at least 25 per cent of modern medicine. "The government should propagate these sciences by including them into the syllabus and its own publicity material."