By Evaristo Johny Coutinho 

Panaji Sept 25, 2007: Roque Fernandes is moving his finger gently over the neck of Russian tourist Andrei as he lies on his back. After working on the neck-area Roque removes a white coloured solution and applies it all over his back.

Yes, Roque is at work. Work of massaging Andrei's body. It has been livelihood for the last 20 years for the fifty something Goan residents from the coastal village of Benaulim in the western state of India.

He is not an Ayuverda practitioner. He is using Aloe Vela solution and gives massage to his client the way he was taught by his father. On a day, he does three to six massages in the peak tourism season of November to February. He charges from a starting US$10 to $15 per massage.

He is not facing competition from his Goan competitors but from the southern state of Kerala-based massagers who move into Goa with the onset of the tourist season every year.

Massagers who charge as low as low $5 for a massage on the beach-side beds or a small room sub let by a shack owner to the massager, who has sprung up in Goa trying to take advantage of the craze for Ayuverdic treatment among foreign tourists visiting the tiny coastal state of India.

Ayurveda is an ancient Indian form of medicine which has traveled the world over and is continuously trying to make deeper inroads.

With 7,000 private and 500 government clinics and hospitals as of today, as well as 59 accredited Ayruvedic Spa Resorts, Kerala is the nerve centre of this form of alternative medicine.

With Kerala having turned into a saturation point many a practitioners are moving into another tourist-frequented state of India-Goa. Many have set up clinics in Goa.

Some genuine practitioners, some quacks. But how to differentiate a genuine from a quack is an answer which many a foreign tourist are puzzled.

Thousands of foreign tourist's bodies thus pass through the hands of unqualified medical practitioners of this ancient form of Indian medicine.

The patients who pay thousand of dollars towards their treatment and contribute towards the Indian economy but the tourism department is yet to streamline the functioning of the Ayurvedic massages clinics in both tourist and non-tourist frequented areas of the country.

In Goa too which received some 3 million tourists in 2006-2007 no guidelines have been framed for the setting up and for regulations of the massage parlours.

"No clear cut guidelines have been specified for the setting up of Ayuverda clinics and there is no mechanism to check the numerous quacks which operate from the state and no one is sure who is a real practitioner from a fake one," laments Flora Fernandes, a woman who regularly gets massages, and who is not related to Roque Fernandes.

The Goa state tourism department has no head count on the number of ayurveda practitioners in the state or so does the health department.

The health department only has record of the ayurvedic doctors operating from the state and Doctors who have passed out after completing their five year course through the only ayurvedic college in Goa.

But rough figures put it around 300-400 functioning from the coastal belt. Some armed only with just a No Objection Certificate from the local self-governing body of the village (Panchayat body) to conduct business and with no permission from the health authorities.

The southern state of India, Kerala has been the hot bed for producing thousands of such alternative medicine practitioners over the years. The medicine is facing challenges from within the country and from overseas as it makes an effort to have a larger share of the medical tourism market.

Ayurveda operates on the principle of balancing the body’s "dosha," a type of mind and body combination, similar to the Greek concept of humours.

In the southern state which is know in also known by its tourism brand name- gold's own country -- it is a industry and has an official status. District and village hospitals of ayurveda are established all over the state by the government. Around 350,000 foreigners visited Kerala in 2005-2006 season.

Meanwhile another challenge awaits the medicine with the advent of spurious drugs.

Global Ayurveda experts from Kochi, Kerala have advocated new testing facilities for ayurveda drugs. The ayurveda industry is very much concerned with the infiltration of spurious drugs and wants a state of the art testing facilities to deter others from preparing spurious drugs of Ayurveda.

Ayurveda they informed has made way into Argentina a relatively new country even as India does not have a program to promote the ancient form of medicine at the world level and whatever promotion has come from the tourism department and Kerala government they said.

The next threat for these medicine is European union regulation where Ayurveda is classified as a herbal medicine and under the clause any medicine has to be in European union for 15 years to be accepted by the European union. That deaths kneel for Ayurveda if the regulation stands.

"I for one has traveled to Kerala and have met a few practitioners of the trade but I am waiting to have my massage in Goa and that only after making sure that I am in right hands," says FIFA Assistant Referee Benjamin Silva, summing up the concerns of going under the massage table and passing through un-safe hands.