New Delhi: The first occupant of Bhagirath Palace, built in the 1820s in what was then central Delhi, was Begum Sombre, a mercenary queen. “Sumroo,” as her name got corrupted locally, lent her forces to the last feeble Mughal emperors to help drive away invaders and quell minor rebellions.
Nearly two centuries later, today’s crowded Bhagirath Palace in Chandni Chowk, a bustling locality in Old Delhi, still has its soldiers of fortune. Mercenaries who make and sell fake drugs, copies of the most complex medicines, for any distributor and retailer who wants to make a quick buck or exporters who sell them to unsuspecting health administrators in Sub-Saharan Africa, who receive some of the millions in aid money that is trying to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis.
Nobody is sure of the extent of India’s fake drugs industry, but what is for sure is that the country neither has the enforcement resources nor, as it increasingly appears, the political or corporate will to stop such practices. India has only about 1,200 drug inspectors to monitor drug manufacturing firms that, depending on who you ask, number anywhere between 6,000 and 15,000.
Just miles from Bhagirath Palace, already watered-down federal legislation that seeks to impose fines and prison terms for those who make and sell counterfeit drugs is gathering dust in the Parliament since 10 May 2005.
India’s drug giants—often cited as global success story in making cheap drugs—as well as their foreign rivals don’t want to talk openly about the fake drugs problem for the fear that their own brands get bad publicity. They point the fingers at the government, which in turn, points the fingers straight back at the drug industry.
Health minister A. Ramadoss and other ministry officials didn’t respond to several attempts by Mint to discuss the fake drugs situation or reasons why legislation isn’t moving forward. “The Drugs and Cosmetics Act (the law that lays down punishment for such offenders) is a social legislation where everyone has a responsibility, from the manufacturers, suppliers, consumers to the government, that counterfeit drugs don’t enter the market,” says M. Venkateswarlu, the drug controller general.
But, at a licensed medical store in the narrow by-lanes of Bhagirath Palace market, all a reporter had to do was ask for a cure for an ebbing libido.
“Have it after dinner, just before you start you-know-what,” said the drugstore owner, pushing across a a packet of four red, triangular tablets of “sildenafil citrate,” the chemical name of Viagra, Pfizer Inc.’s blockbuster erectile dysfunction drug. These tablets, sold as Vigora, in a graphic blue and black box that doesn’t leave the affect of the drug to imagination, comes with a clear warning that the Schedule H drug is “to be sold by retail on the prescription of a Registered Medical Practitioner only.” A maximum retail price of Rs106.33 is also clearly marked on the side.
“How much?” “