BIS holds Ayush standards sessions in Belagavi and Leh on Ayurveda, Sowa-Rigpa

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India's national standards body, held two national events in mid-October 2026 on setting common standards for traditional systems of medicine, according to a government release issued on October 19, 2026. In Belagavi, Karnataka, it ran a national seminar on standardisation in Ayurveda and Yoga, called PRAGATI 2026, with KLE Shri BMK Ayurveda Mahavidyalaya and KLE Academy, attended by around 600 participants. In Leh, Ladakh, it held a brainstorming session alongside the fifth meeting of its Sowa-Rigpa Sectional Committee. The events looked at standards across education, research, manufacturing and clinical practice.

A standard is an agreed rule written down so that everyone uses the same definitions, methods and quality levels. In modern industry, standards decide everything from the size of a plug to the purity of a medicine. Traditional medicine has often lacked such shared rules: the same herb or preparation can be named, made and described differently from one region, college or company to another. That makes it harder to teach consistently, to test products, to compare research and to protect patients.

The topics on the table show where BIS is starting. Uniform terminology means agreeing on what each term, condition and preparation means, so that a prescription or a research paper is read the same way everywhere. Educational benchmarks set what a student or practitioner should know. Clinical guidelines describe how care should be delivered. Standards for manufacturing affect the quality and safety of medicines that people buy.

Sowa-Rigpa, the traditional Tibetan system of medicine practised in the Himalayan regions of India, including Ladakh, is among the systems covered by the Ministry of Ayush. Holding the Sowa-Rigpa committee meeting in Leh brings the standards work closer to the practitioners and communities that use it.

It is important to separate standards from evidence. A standard makes a product or practice consistent and describable; it does not by itself prove that a treatment works. Claims about health benefits still need properly designed scientific studies. Standards do, however, make that research easier and more reliable, because researchers can be sure they are testing the same thing.

Short-term: Inputs from teachers, researchers, manufacturers and practitioners at the two events will feed into the work of the BIS sectional committees as they draft or revise Indian Standards for these systems.

Long-term: Common standards can make Ayush education more uniform, help regulators and buyers judge product quality, and make it easier for Indian traditional medicine products to meet requirements in other countries. Their usefulness will depend on whether colleges, manufacturers and clinics adopt them.

Who is affected: Ayurveda, Yoga and Sowa-Rigpa practitioners and teachers, students at Ayush colleges, manufacturers of Ayush medicines, researchers, regulators, and patients who use these systems.

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