In writing about the effects of the World Trade Organisation on the Indian pharmaceutical industry, Sudip Chaudhuri provides an incisive account of the 1994 international trade agreement known as TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). Through the course of this informative, well-researched work, Chaudhuri scrutinises how inefficient government is often what limits the public benefit of TRIPS – indeed, as much as patent protection itself. In the end, such analysis makes this work necessary reading for Southasian supporters and critics of the WTO alike.
Such arguments are particularly important in the current Indian context, amidst assertions of the government's commitment to rebuilding the country's skeletal health system. Other Southasian readers will find interest here as well, for The WTO and India's Pharmaceuticals Industry is a warning about how the jeopardy that India's low-cost drug industry faces will threaten the health care industries of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and others.
Chaudhuri's cardinal conclusion is that the patent protection demanded by TRIPS is not necessary for the stimulation of the international pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, application of such commitments in the developing world puts public health at risk without serious economic benefit in other quarters.
The author analyses the strong foundations of the Indian drug industry as it stood at the end of the 1980s, just before the 1994 passage of TRIPS by 125 countries. Chaudhuri links that strength with several factors: Indian public-sector interest in bulk drug production during the 1960s, a patents regime set up in 1970 that revised one leftover from 1911, and strong regulation of foreign-capital investments in the industry during the subsequent decade. These developments had fundamentally altered the prevailing situation, wherein India used to import life-saving drugs, and local production was of marginal importance to health care. While major multinational companies (MNCs) did have a presence in India, their job was to sell drugs designed elsewhere – at extremely high prices