The quality of Ayurveda education in India has been a matter of concern since long and has attracted criticisms of various kinds. Inadequate exposure to basic clinical skills, poorly structured curriculum, mushroom growth of sub-standard colleges, and, ambiguities in the policies on integration - are a few points among others- that have been raised from time to time to suggest that the quality of Ayurveda training is poor. This work is based on a nationwide survey that included interns, postgraduate students and teachers from 32 Ayurveda institutions spread across 18 states of India and tries to record the perceptions of students and teachers on the quality of Ayurveda education. This is an abridged version of the doctoral thesis submitted to Banaras Hindu Uniiversity.
At the time of independence in 1947, India inherited an educational system which was not only quantitatively small but was also characterized by striking regional, ethical and structural imbalances. Only very small population was literate and a child out of three had been enrolled in primary school. The levels of enrolment and extent of literacy were compounded by acute regional and gender disparities. Recognizing that education is being vitall component in a personality development process, the reform and restructuring of the educational system was needed as an important area of state intervention. Accordingly universal education for all children in the age group 6-14 was provided with a precisely defined and delineated frame work in the Indian constitution as well as in successive five year plans.
This handbook is an important reference work in understanding education systems in the South Asia region, their development trajectory, challenges and potential. The handbook includes the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries for discussion---Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka---while also considering countries such as Myanmar and the Maldives that have considerable shared history in the region. Such a comparative perspective is largely absent within the literature given the present paucity of intra-regional interaction. South Asian education systems are viewed primarily through a development lens in terms of inequalities, challenges and responses. However, the development of modern institutions of education and the challenges that it faces requires cultural and historical understanding of indigenous traditions as well as indigenous modern thinkers and education movements. Therefore, this encompassing referenc e work covers indigenous education traditions, formal education systems, including school and preschool education, higher and professional education, education financing systems and structures, teacher education systems, addressing huge linguistic and other diversities, and marginalization within the formal education system, and pedagogy and curricula. All the countries in this region have their own unique geographical, cultural, economic and political character and histories of interest and significance, and have responded to common issues such as overcoming the colonial legacy, language diversity, or girls’ education, or minority rights in education, in uniquely different ways. The sections therefore include country-specific perspectives as far as possible to highlight these issues. Internationally renowned specialists of South Asian education systems have contributed to this important reference work, making it an invaluable resource for researchers and students of education interested in South Asia.
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. The Practice of Texts examines the uses of the Sanskrit medical classics in two educational institutions of India’s classical life science, Ayurveda: the college and the gurukula. In this interdisciplinary study, Anthony Cerulli probes late- and postcolonial reforms in ayurvedic education, the development of the ayurvedic college, and the impacts of the college curriculum on ways that ayurvedic physicians understand and use the Sanskrit classics in their professional work today. His fieldwork in south India illuminates the nature of philology and ritual in the ayurvedic gurukula and showcases how knowledge is exchanged among students, teachers, and patients. The result, Cerulli shows, is that the Sanskrit classics are presented and applied differently in the college and gurukula, producing a variety of relationships with these texts among practitioners. By interrogating the politics surrounding the place of the Sanskrit classics in ayurvedic curricula, this book reveals a spectrum of views about the history and tradition of Ayurveda in modern India.
This book brings concepts, practices of Ayurveda and its interface with modern health care set-up in Delhi, India. It presents a new conceptual framework in studying public health in India, offers policy recommendations and outlines the challenges of mainstreaming of alternative medical systems in India. Drawing on a wealth of primary data that looks at the social profile of patients, gender, disease profile of patients, prescriptions, average cost per prescription and kinds of medicines prescribed, the monograph explores patterns of health behaviour through the perceptions of doctors and patients, administrators and their negotiations with the bureaucratic health structure. It analyses the power and structures between practitioners of modern medicine and Ayurvedic doctors and the issues of cross referral and formal and informal levels of interaction/network between the two medical systems. Engaging with current debates around public health in India, the volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of public health and sociology of health and medicine, public policy and public administration and South Asian studies.
