I recently read an article about how there has been growing concern in the US about the quality of generic drugs that are made in India. According to the article India supplies 40% of over-the-counter and generic prescription drugs consumed in the US. The article mentioned that "F.D.A. investigators are blitzing Indian drug plants, financing the
inspections with some of the roughly $300 million in annual fees from
generic drug makers collected as part of a 2012 law requiring increased
scrutiny of overseas plants. The agency inspected 160 Indian drug plants
last year, three times as many as in 2009. The increased scrutiny has
led to a flood of new penalties, including half of the warning letters
the agency issued last year to drug makers".
Ranbaxy had to recently pay a fine of $500 million, largest ever for a generic company. In the background of all this I saw a documentary movie called the 'Fire in the Blood' and one of the things I learned from it is that American "Big Pharma" are constantly trying to prove that the generics in India are not safe. They have been running campaigns for decades trying to scare people in the west about how dangerous drugs made in third world are. It is very easy for them to use the stereotype image of the third world countries to scare the patients in America, despite the fact that most of the generic medicine manufacturers in India are world class and follow same safety guidelines as in the US. In fact, even the Big Pharma themselves import lot of their medicines from India. Another noteworthy thing that I learned from the documentary is how much influence the Big Pharma lobby has in the US government.
Combining these two facts it is quite easy to conclude that these recent increase in raids and campaign against Indian drug manufacturers is the result of intense lobbying by the pharmaceutical companies in the US. However, we have to be careful in blaming these conspiracy theories for failings of our regulators. While it is quite possible that at least in part the FDA campaign against the Indian pharma companies could be the result of intense lobbying, it is also true that there are many spurious drug manufacturers in India. The recent deaths in the Bilaspur sterilization program where 18 women died due to rat position contaminated Cipro proves that we have a problem. While we can hide behind conspiracy theories or cry discrimination, it would be in our interest to increase regulation and solve the problem, not only to safeguard our lucrative drugs export industry but also for the sack of millions of Indians'mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-in-india-set-off-safety-worries.html?referrer=&_r=0 health.
There are lessons that we can learn from the experience of other developing countries in this regard. Some years ago toys manufactured in China were in news all over the world because they were selling toys which were painted with paint that had lead in it, which is hazardous for the health of the children. The Chinese effectively dealt with it and they are still selling toys all over the world including in the US. In fact, at that time it was the Mattel, an American toy manufacturer which was forced to apologize to Chinese for selling toys laced with lead. Every developing country manufacturing goods on a large scale to the developed world goes through such controversies at least once, but how it is handled by the government of such developing country that makes the difference in the end.
Another lesson that we can learn from the documentary 'Fire in the Blood' is how much US government protects the interest of its corporations that provide jobs and create wealth. It is not just in this case of Big Pharma where US Government intervened on behalf of the American corporations, but we have seen that on number of occasions when big purchases are involved by other government or private corporations US Government at the highest level takes part in some way in pushing for US manufactured goods, from multi-billion dollar defense deals to big tech deals. Now I am not saying that Indian government help Indian corporations in exploiting poor population of other countries as Big Pharma in US did, but there are many occasions when government should be legitimately involved in negotiation in national interest. For example, I recently read that even when Indian oil PSUs like ONGC Videsh bought big oil fields abroad in a multi-billion $ deal involving considerable geopolotical risk Indian Government was not involved in negotiation and these companies were pretty much on their own. According to the article "the lament of firms such as ONGC Videsh (OVL) has been that India’s diplomats weren’t best suited to navigate the technical and financial complexities of acquiring oil and gas assets overseas." Clearly Indian govt. needs to protect Indian business interest abroad, especially when large amount of money is involved.
