On June 21, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led nearly 36,000 people in a mass yoga demonstration at Kartavyapath, setting two Guinness World Records on the very first International Day of Yoga.
It was a moment of symbolism, but it was equally a declaration of policy. Over the next decade, under PM Modi, that declaration was backed with budgets, institutions, and a level of personal political commitment rare in public health governance.
AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy) was, before 2014, a departmental afterthought. Today, it is a Cabinet-level Ministry, a foreign policy instrument, a Rs. 4,408 crore national budget line, and a sector projected to grow from US$43.3 billion to US$200 billion by 2030. This transformation is structural, measurable, and citizen-facing.
Yoga: From Cultural Heritage to Global Health Movement
No single AYUSH achievement better illustrates the Modi government’s capacity to move from vision to scale than yoga. In September 2014, PM Modi proposed at the UN General Assembly that June 21 be declared International Yoga Day (IDY).
Within 90 days, 193 member states unanimously endorsed the resolution, being the fastest adoption of any UNGA resolution of its kind. Participation has grown from 9.59 crore people in 2018 to 24.53 crore worldwide in 2024, breaking Guinness World Records once again.
The clinical case for yoga is equally compelling. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 30 randomised controlled trials in PLOS ONE found yoga reduced systolic blood pressure by a mean of nearly 8 mmHg, comparable to low-dose antihypertensive medication.
Another WHO registry analysis of 2,919 yoga clinical trials confirmed that the majority target India’s most pressing non-communicable disease burden: diabetes, hypertension, obesity, anxiety, and depression.
For IDY 2025, synchronised sessions at over one lakh locations under the ‘Yoga Sangama’ programme are planned, alongside 1,000 new Yoga Parks for long-term community wellness infrastructure, ensuring yoga’s public health dividend reaches the neighbourhood, not just the headlines.
The Budget Behind the Vision
Numbers, placed in sequence, reveal intent. The Ministry of AYUSH recorded actual expenditure of Rs. 1,069 crore in 2013-14. By 2026-27, that figure stands at Rs. 4,408 crore, a more than three-fold increase in twelve years. In 2024-25, the National Ayush Mission directed Rs. 1,200 crore toward state-level infrastructure and healthcare integration.
Institutional investment means little without ground-level reach, and here the numbers are equally striking. Undergraduate Ayurveda colleges grew from 261 in 2013-14 to 497 by 2024-25, with seats expanding from 13,585 to over 40,000. As of December 2025, 12,500 AYUSH Health and Wellness Centres are operational nationwide, embedded within the 1.84 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandirs that reach aspirational districts and tribal areas.
At the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj, over 9 lakh pilgrims accessed AYUSH services through 20 OPDs, 90-plus doctors, and 150 healthcare workers, making a mass public health delivery that would have been inconceivable a decade ago.
Complementing this, the ‘Desh Ka Prakriti Parikshan Abhiyaan’ campaign recorded over 1.29 crore Prakriti (Ayurvedic body-type) assessments, exceeded its one crore target, and earned five Guinness World Records, translating personalised preventive care into a national conversation.
The Economic Case
Beyond national achievements, the past two years have cemented India’s position as the world’s convener, not merely its practitioner, of traditional medicine.
India hosted the first WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit in Gandhinagar in August 2023, producing the Gujarat Declaration. The Second Summit in December 2025 brought health ministers and scientists from over 100 countries and produced the Delhi Declaration, a shared roadmap through 2034.
Economically, AYUSH and herbal product exports rose to Rs. 5,907 crore in FY25, with export volumes growing 21% year-on-year. The sector’s combined manufacturing and services value now exceeds US$50 billion.This economic boost is directly linked to credibility, results and validation of the AYUSH medicines.
Evidence That Holds Under Scrutiny
The COVID-19 pandemic was an unplanned stress test. Over eight lakh AYUSH doctors and hospitals were mobilised nationally. The Ayu-Raksha Kit, developed by the All India Institute of Ayurveda and distributed to the Delhi Police, showed a 55.6% lower risk of COVID-19 infection compared with general population controls.
The Ayush Sanjeevani app captured data from 1.35 crore individuals, with 85% reporting utilisation of AYUSH preventive measures.
That credibility is now codified globally. The WHO’s 2025 ICD-11 update introduced a dedicated module for Ayurveda, Siddha, and Unani, enabling dual coding alongside conventional medical conditions and systematic global reporting.
Additionally, the CCRAS operates over 30 research institutes and has published 522 peer-reviewed papers by 2024–25. The Pharmacopoeia Commission for Indian Medicine and Homoeopathy (PCIM&H) has completed 21 quality monographs since 2020, with 62 more in progress, building the export-ready standards the sector previously lacked.
A Health System with a Mandate
To sum up, what the last decade has accomplished in AYUSH is not merely institutional, it is civilisational in ambition and democratic in reach.
Where once traditional medicine was an inherited practice left to run on goodwill, it is now a funded, researched, globally recognised pillar of India’s health architecture.
On that measure, the trajectory is clear, and the momentum, for the first time in modern India’s health history, is on the side of traditional medicine.
