Don’t worry. Be Happy! Baba Ramdev has a cure for everything, including economic woe

Baba Ramdev is all you could wish for in a guru. An aggressively luxuriant beard frames his almost manically lopsided smile. Clad entirely in orange, he is fantastically charismatic, occasionally enigmatic and belches with authoritative ease while waxing lyrical on the wonders of yoga.

So far, so cranky. But those under the illusion that swamis such as Baba Ramdev belong to a bygone era - to an India of maharajahs and rope tricks, if one ever really existed - should think again. Baba Ramdev will pull in revenues of at least £20 million this year. He represents a new generation of superstar lifestyle leaders, one that is gaining ever-greater traction both commercially and ideologically among the sub-continent's newly affluent middle classes.

It is an intriguing sales pitch. “I foresee nobody suffering from pain,” Baba Ramdev tells The Times at his 500-acre headquarters in Haridwar, a pilgrimage town built on an especially propitious spot where the Ganges emerges from the Himalayas.

Vegetarianism, breathing exercises and ayurvedic medicinal treatments (which range from having warm oil drizzled over one's body to the less-pleasant-sounding induced vomiting) are central to this vision - but so are population control, compulsory voting, an end to corruption and swadesi (a kind of economic nationalism). “With this, perhaps India will be a superpower in 15 or 20 years,” he says. Hmmm. I wonder what the Kamasutra has to say about that…..

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/health/article4132763.ece