Retreat from idealism?

THE INDIAN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY SINCE INDEPENDENCE: P. K. Ravindranath; Published by English Edition, 5/105, Jogani Industrial Complex, V. N. Purav Marg (Near ATI), Mumbai- 400022. Rs. 395.

THE AGGRESSIVE socialist euphoria which India had witnessed during the 1970s was targeting the multinational corporations (MNCs) which had entrenched themselves in the Indian drug and pharmaceutical industry. The colonialism for which the MNCs, represented by the powerful Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), had become notorious, had virtually been making India a huge captive market for their medicines which were just ``formulations'' prepared from the basic drugs produced in their parent countries and sold at prices amounting virtually to a loot. The prices charged by the MNCs for their drugs in the importing, developing countries were higher by anywhere between 500 and 1000 per cent. This could be ended only when production of pharmaceutical drugs in India - principally the life-saving ones - went basic starting with the ingredients obtained from the plants and the other inputs and the pharmaceutical firms ceased to be just the marketing outfits for their overseas principals.

It is this pharmaceutical scene in India at which the author takes a look in the book under review. He should have fared much better had his focus been on the Indian pharmaceutical industry - as the title of the book would have suggested to the readers. Instead, the book is very much about Dr. J. N. Banerjee who became the managing director of Sandoz, which was one of the MNCs in India with its headquarters in Switzerland. The justification for this would seem to be the contribution which Dr. Banerjee was making to free India from the shackles of multinational drug imperialism with the forward-looking Sandoz being a MNC with a difference and which he could influence to fall in line with the government's people- oriented drug policy. While the stipulations imposed by the Government on the drug firms were aimed at making basic drugs in India, the way it went about it was making the enforcement of its policy rather difficult though the author should have been a little more enlightening in his presentation of the drug scenario in India. He should also have given a comprehensive description of ``bulk'' and ``basic'' drugs as the understanding of it is restricted to pharmaceutical firms, doctors and media persons who have been covering the subject.

The book gives us quite a few glimpses of how drugs are made from raw materials and ingredients, the correct identification of which should have been an act of discovery. Among the sources of the pharmaceutical drugs were the barks of poisonous plants from British Guyana and they were the subject of a laborious study by a very painstaking Prof. J.J. Lewis. An illustration given in the book of the obduracy of the executives of the multinationals is about Forster of Sandoz in Berne with his refusal to transfer technology until Dr. Dunnant, head of the Department of Planning, told that there was nothing secret about the technology of extraction which had been discovered way back in 1936.

The distinction which Dr. Banerjee won for Sandoz was from the drive he gave to the correct sensing of an ailment which could turn out to be a killer and the spotting of the right medicine for treating it. Dr. Banerjee should have been astonished when during his discussions with the doctors on behalf of Sandoz they had hardly recognised the incidence of heart failure. There was no realisation that a failing heart or a left ventricular failure called for treatment. It was revealed from a market research that intravenous injections were much more difficult to administer and there was need to give intramuscular injections. While demystifying the medical esoteric, the author writes that all doctors think of colloidal calcium as intramuscular.

The achievement of Sandoz under Dr. Banerjee's lead was that they could give not only intravenous but also intramuscular injections in big packs and then it swept the market. It could have been an instance of instinct stepping in when it was needed.

The kind of tough talk which was needed to bring the drug MNCs to heel could be seen from the bluntness with which the late T. T. Krishnamachari told Sandoz about its Sandoz Calcium, ``If you think this chalk is going to save our lives, you are mistaken. We can do without it. If you don't want to bring in technology, you can go.'' This left Dr. Banerjee no choice except to persuade the Basle-based Sandoz to start manufacturing in India and it took a long time. A revealing disclosure made in the book is the unabashed demand made on the drug industry by the then Union Health Minister, Mr. K. K. Shah, for Rs. 75 lakhs needed for campaigning elections. When the industry said that it could not meet the demand, Mr. Shah went round the country complaining that the drug prices were high.

The hazards to which those badly in need of proper treatment, particularly the poor, in the Third World countries are exposed could be seen from the attention drawn in the book to how difficult it is to withdraw drugs once they get into the market. It took 10 years to restrict the use of chloramphenical, a toxic antibiotic, which continued to be prescribed in Third World countries. ``The result was that chloramphenicol resistant typhoid erupted in several developing countries in epidemic form''. The author also mentions the bold and uncompromising stand taken by Halfden Mahler, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), for regulating the activities of the MNCs.

While the 1970s would be remembered particularly by the media in India for the fight the Government was launching against the drug colonialism of the MNCs, it is doubtful whether it had really pushed them into a corner as it was hoped it could. The author writes that the MNCs continue to remain powerful and all that the Indian drug companies could do was to tie up with them. ``Conglomerates like Hoechst, Marion Roussel, Glaxo and Novartis India rely upon their parent companies to spend on R & D leaving the others still continue to copy patented products or collaborate with international R & D effort. Ranbaxy Laboratories had tied up with the 8.51 billion dollar U.S. Eli Lilly since 1995 for a basic research programme in India but the pact fell through on account of weak patent laws in India''. Globalisation has led to the clearing of the field for the MNCs ``in a manner they could not have dreamt of even a decade earlier in India''. It is an example of the retreat from the idealism which looked very promising till the mid-1980s.

This is a very informative book; however it could have been much better written. The attention given to proof reading is also very poor.

CVG

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