Describing ayurveda as the answer to the country's burgeoning health-care needs, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee promised more funds for the promotion of ayurveda.

Inaugurating the All India Ayurvedic Congress yesterday, the Prime Minister invited a delegation of ayurvedic practitioners for detailed consultations, and even signalled that government could consider appointing a minister incharge of Indian systems of medicine.

Regretting that indigenous systems of medicine were not given accorded enough value in society, Vajpayee said the ``diagnosis of a disease by feeling the pulse is a wonder possible only in India.''

Finding the PM sympathetic to their cause, the ayurveds at the Congress presented a laundry list of demands, including reservation of 20 pc of the health budgetfor Indian systems of medicine, new laboratories, a separate ministry for ayurveda and specialised universities for the study of indigenous medicine in each state.

Ayurveda had cures for every disease, they said, including killer diseases like HIV, AIDS and cancer as well as diabetes, jaundice, plague and malaria.