The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
Cancer in India is growing fast and drugs aren’t there. Ninety percent of children with leukemia in high-income countries will be cured, but 90 percent of those with that disease in low-income countries will die from it. This being the case, it’s important to know what the acute myeloid leukemia types are in order to determine the risk to life and also appropriate treatment on a case by case basis for those with leukemia. The drugs are being developed by the companies in the West and these companies, using the reasons that they spent millions developing the drug – charge exorbitant prices. Prices that Indian consumers cannot pay. Nor of other developing countries. India – more importantly, Indian courts – has put its foot down on granting unbridled licence to these companies for patents. Patents are an issue, and they are being strongly controlled – at least in India.
The current case of Novartis patent case for its leukemia drug, Gleevec is very instructive. It has far reaching implications. For right now, the case decision means Gleevec costs $70,000 per year in the United States, but just $2,500 in India.
Last year, India issued a compulsory license on Nexavar, a late-stage kidney and liver cancer treatment, enabling a local drug firm to produce a generic version of this medicine without the permission of Bayer, the patent holder. India has recently announced plans to grant compulsory licenses on another leukemia drug and two breast cancer therapies.
Obviously the drug companies – use to gouging from the Western patients – aren’t excited about this. But then India is too big a market to ignore. So is China and other developing nations. And other developing nations are following suit.
India is not alone. Indonesia recently issued a compulsory license for a treatment for liver cancer-causing hepatitis B. China and the Philippines amended their pharmaceutical patent laws, making it easier for those governments to take similar measures as India.
What the experts in US are beginning to say, the Indian system is set to obviate. Everyone knows that combination of Drug Companies and the Insurance Companies has created a hell like situation for the medical scenario and patients in the US. There should be a pay back for the scientists developing new drugs surely, but what the drug companies charge is often exorbitant. It is not a pay back for the scientific work, but a pay back for the every hyper investors on the Stock Exchange, who want Month-over-Month returns.
The question that these drug companies ought to ask is how long will the American patients pay 20 times the price that the Indian patients pay for the same drug?? With Medical Tourism growing, they just may not. In fact they may as well lobby the Indian Government and courts to carry on their good work – since the American system is already too bought out anyway!
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
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