India’s unexplained push for homeopathy

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Editor's note: Homeopathy is hokum, say scientists. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t seem to think so. At the National Homeopathic Conference in 2012, he explained how he had experienced its benefits first-hand. “This was in 1991-92,” Modi, then Gujarat’s chief minister, recalled. “I was on the road for 45 days as part of the Ekta Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Every 15 kilometres, we would stop at a village, give speeches. It’s obvious that one’s throat would give out. Then, [actor] Manoj Kumar sent some homeopathic medicine for me. For the next 45 days, it made sure I was okay.” For decades, scientists have rejected homeopathy’s efficacy. In 2010, a report by the UK’s House of Commons found that homeopathy is little more than a placebo. In 2015, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council analysed 225 papers on the alternative medicine system to reach the same conclusion. Last year, the health minister of Germany, where homeopathy originated, said that homeopathic medicine has no place in the statutory health insurance system. France stopped reimbursing patients for homeopathic treatments from 2021. Despite …