India's hosting of the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre is both a health-policy and a soft-power initiative. Discuss.

On 19 April 2022, PM Narendra Modi and WHO Director-General Dr Tedros laid the foundation stone of the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine (GCTM) at Jamnagar, Gujarat [1]. Hosting it serves two goals at once. It builds evidence for safer public health, and it gives India's Ayush systems a larger global voice.

Health-policy dimension

• Evidence base: The Centre's mandate is to use science to build evidence, data and innovation for traditional medicine [2]. This matches the first objective of WHO's Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034, which was adopted at WHA78 [3].
• Link to primary care: The GTMC's Annual Report 2025 connects traditional medicine to primary care, non-communicable diseases and ageing populations [4]. This supports India's push to bring Ayush into its wellness services.
• Safety and regulation: The Strategy's safety objective [3] is mirrored at home by the Ayush Suraksha Portal (2025). The portal tracks misleading adverts and adverse drug reactions and was set up under a Supreme Court order in WP(C) 645/2022 [5].

Soft-power dimension

• Financial commitment: India is providing about US$250 million, covering an interim office, a new building and 10 years of operating costs [2]. This marks India as a shaper of global health norms, not just a participant.
• Summit diplomacy: India co-hosted the 2nd WHO Traditional Medicine Summit in New Delhi (17–19 December 2025). It was preceded by a reception for over 50 diplomats [6].
• Global South outreach: The Prime Minister of Mauritius attended the ground-breaking [1]. 107 WHO Member States have national offices for traditional medicine [2], which gives India a ready audience for capacity-building and Ayush exports.
• Setting the agenda: At WHA78, India backed the Strategy and stressed evidence-based integration [7].

Tensions between the two aims

• Promotion may run ahead of proof. Weak trials would harm patients and India's credibility.
• Enforcement is patchy. States still enforce the rules against false "cure" claims, and the national dashboard came about only after a court order [5].

In short, the GCTM joins health policy and diplomacy, and rigorous evidence is what makes the soft power credible. India should use Jamnagar to run high-quality trials and pool cross-country data on harmful side effects. That would advance SDG 3 and WHO's goal of traditional medicine that is "safe, effective, evidence-informed" [4], making India's leadership both respected and lasting.