Dhanvantari's continuing institutional presence in Indian public life extends well beyond the Dhanteras observance already noted, into the structure of the Indian government itself. In 2014 India created a dedicated cabinet-level Ministry of AYUSH, an acronym standing for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy, elevating what had previously been a department within the health ministry into an independent ministry tasked with the research, education, standardization and international promotion of these traditional medical systems, Ayurveda foremost among them as the oldest and most institutionally developed of the group.
The ministry has pursued formal recognition of Ayurvedic practice and products both domestically and internationally, including engagement with the World Health Organization on traditional medicine standards, and it oversees a national network of Ayurvedic teaching colleges, hospitals and research institutes that trace their intellectual lineage back through the classical texts, the Sushruta Samhita and the companion Charaka Samhita foremost among them, to the tradition's own account of Dhanvantari as its founding source of authority. This represents a striking case of an ancient deity's associated body of knowledge acquiring formal, government-level institutional infrastructure in the twenty first century, placing Dhanvantari in the unusual position of being the traditionally credited founder of a medical system that is simultaneously an object of religious devotion and the subject of active contemporary scientific research, regulatory standard-setting and international diplomacy conducted by a modern nation-state ministry.