The politics of medicine in a pandemic

Medical pluralism or the coexistence of several systems of medicine in the public domain has attracted more attention than ever before in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and also generated its fair share of controversies. The acerbic exchanges between the Indian Medical Association, a professional body of biomedical practitioners and, a leading private company selling Ayurvedic products, on the relative efficacy of biomedicine and Ayurveda are illustrative of bringing out certain problems in the response of these medical systems to COVID-19 today. © 2021 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.