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?
In a major win for Indian drug companies which manufacture generic drugs for major ailments, the India’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board revoked Swiss giant Roche’s patent for a hepatitis C drugs. This means that the patent that could have prevented the Indian companies from copying this formula have a free hand.
The “Patients Advocacy Groups” are ecstatic, for they can get cheaper drugs:
“If we get the manufacture of lower-costing generic drugs, millions suffering from hepatitis C — both in India and globally — will benefit,” said patients’ rights lawyer Anand Grover. “This is a big win for hepatitis C patients,” Grover told AFP
The Appellate Board actually overturned the patent granted to Roche by Indian Patent Office earlier. The reason was that the company failed to prove that this was a “new class of drug”.
It seems the multinationals are having it very tough in this large $12 billion Indian market.
Earlier this year, the same board allowed a local firm to produce a vastly cheaper copy of Bayer’s patented drug Nexavar for liver and kidney cancer, saying the $5,300 price charged by the German company was “exorbitant.”
This can mean that the Multinationals may not be wanting to come to India to sell their products, given that the system may be stacked against them. But on the other hand, given the size of the market itself, the returns in other areas may be large enough for them to come in. In any case, the Indian drug manufacturers will continue to make generic drugs out of the patented drugs being brought out by the global MNCs.
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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