AYUSH Mission gets marginal hike in Budget

The Centre’s National AYUSH Mission (NAM), which aims to provide comprehensive primary healthcare at the grassroots level, has received only a modest budgetary increase in the Union Budget for 2025-26. The allocation for the NAM has been hiked by just 6.25%, rising to Rs 1,275 crore from Rs 1,200 crore in the previous budget.

Under NAM, the government supports states and Union Territories in establishing integrated AYUSH hospitals with 10 to 50 beds, as well as new AYUSH dispensaries in areas lacking such facilities. The scheme also covers the contractual deployment of AYUSH doctors in these integrated hospitals.

The overall allocation for the Ministry of AYUSH has seen a small hike of 7 per cent, totaling to Rs 3,992.90 crores for 2025-26, up from Rs 3,712 crore in the previous budget.

The significance of NAM can be understood by the fact that the “issue of declining registered AYUSH practitioners” was raised by Opposition MPs in Parliament in 2024.

In response, the government said the number of non-institutional qualified (NIQ) registered practitioners, who got registered on the basis of five or 10 years’ of experience, dropped from 2.12 lakh in 2018 to 1.15 lakh in 2022.