When Ayurveda doctors are allowed to perform surgeries, the people who they perform surgery on will not be ministers and industrialists. It will be those in smaller towns and villages. When the rich and powerful fall ill, they will go straight for modern medicine. Real medicine.

However, there is an underlying trend here that I like to call "the widening". It involves widening the definition of something to make it look bigger or more prevalent. We saw it when the prime minister widened the definition of employment to include making pakodas on the...

...roadside. That way, statistics about joblessness start looking a little better. Similarly, when the definition of "surgeon" is expanded to include those who haven't gone through the training that actual surgeons have, what is happening is a widening of definitions. Stats...

...about lack of surgeons start looking better. At the end of the day, this is about image. Things just need to look better. It doesn't matter to those making these rules if they actually do get better. This is governance by airbrush. Under it, a nation suffering under the...

...crushing weight of joblessness, poor healthcare, and oppression of dissenting voices can look like a shining beacon of democracy and a super power. Image is everything and they will do everything to protect it because their devotion is towards the image of the nation.