Shawdesh Desk:

There is no doubt that Meditation is very much related to health. One may even ask ‘How’? The answer is also very simple. Whenever people face any crisis in family, works or health, we often find them to say ‘O God, I could not think of it,’ or ‘Oh no, my brain is not working.’ It is clear that mental and physical health of that person gets weak and unmanageable while dealing with the problem, situation or even treating disease.  It means the person loses the mental strength to cope with those and cannot take the right decision. And its reflection is then found in health adopting sickness like hypertension, high blood pressure, back pain, migraine, diabetes, bounce syndrome etc., Tension, stress like mental situation reflects in the working ability of brain.

The situation arises as they usually lose the ability to handle a situation or crisis when they could not find the solution or hope to overcome it. In a crisis, that is why one cannot take breathing properly. Only meditation practice can help the person to realize and understand the situation and regain the ability to handle those being mentally sound. The person then can overcome the mental barrier and get back the physical strength.

Because of Meditation linkage with health, it is now universally recognized to deal with mental, physical, spiritual and social fitness. Its importance has been more realized during the period of corona virus pandemic when doctors also suggested Yoga-meditation to be totally fit.

The United Nation also recognizes the importance of Yoga-meditation fixing June 21 as World Yoga Day. It tells us how importance is given in Yoga-meditation in our daily life for both physical and mental benefits. The day is now also being observed in 175 countries. To popular the Yoga-meditation practice, the Indian government has also withdrawn its service tax permanently on it recognizing meditation as ‘charitable activities’ (notification no 20/2015 service tax).

But this is unacceptable and unfortunate for the meditation practitioners when VAT is proposed again on their activities to be fit in all aspect. Meditation is incomparable and considered as alternative to medicine to be mentally sound, lively and calm. A meditative person is more acceptable in family, society and economic activities because of ability of dealing circumstances and working hard. Working productivity of them also increases. So, it is also related to health economy.

If meditation practice can be spread at root level by withdrawing the VAT, gratitude level of people will automatically go up. They will start leading a physical and mentally healthy life. Studies show that poverty level of poor people increases for higher spending in health. Poor gets ultra-poor. So, meditation helps reduce health related expenditure of a family. A mediation practitioner usually visits doctors fewer than non-practitioner. Reduction in health-related cost and healthy lifestyle will certainly reflect in our economy and the GDP growth.

These are not all. More of health issues are also related with Yoga-meditation. Addiction is, now a days, a burning problem as lots of youth have been get addicted. It is the meditation that can help them recover from addiction. Meditation practice can raise conscious level of the youth and can launch a movement to save the society from various kinds of addiction showing the right path of survival. So, it will also facilitate the government’s target to save the youth from addiction and give a healthy generation. Including meditation in education curriculum will certainly give a better result for us to build generation more humanitarian, ethical, etiquette practitioner.

Proposing VAT on meditation services also goes against the government own policy. When meditation is proposed to suggest by the physicians in the hyper-tension policy of the government, the VAT imposition is contradictory to that guideline. So, it will be wise decision for the policy makers to keep the meditation totally outside of VAT.

The writer is is working at the Media Cell of Quantum Foundation