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New patent regime worries medical reps

The new patent regime, ordained by the World Trade Organisation, will drive a serious dent in the indigenous base of the pharmaceutical industry in India besides pushing the prices of the products to prohibitive levels.

Prior to 1970, the domination of foreign companies in the Indian pharmaceutical sector was to the tune of 80 per cent. But following the introduction that year of the Indian Patent Act and the Drug Price Control Order, which envisaged no patenting of food and medicines, the scenario changed and by the 1980s, Indian companies acquired 60 per cent of market share and the country emerged as one of the biggest exporters of drugs in the Third World.

After the protracted General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs negotiations led to the formation of the WTO and a new international patent regime, there has been a fierce debate both within and outside Parliament on the issue. The Patent (Amendment) Bill, 1995 is now being scrutinised by the Joint Select Committee of Parliament.

J S Mazumdar, vice-president of the Federation of Medical Representative Associations of India, says the process of a kind of ''reverse patent piracy '' has already started. ''A large number of traditional medicines of the country are being pirated through this system without our knowledge,'' he explains. ''There is no law for protection of traditional and naturally available biological resources.''

''Obsolescence of medicines is very fast (about 15 years), and it will be faster under the new patent regime destroying India's pharmaceutical base completely,'' says Mazumdar, who is also general secretary of the Bihar unit of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, affiliated to the Communist Party of India-Marxist. "The country will be converted into an international bazaar,'' he warns.

He feels the trade-related investment measures, one of the main planks of the emerging order, will run down the interests of the masses. ''As per this measure, investment in the country will have to be made free with the area and priorities to be decided solely by the investor,'' he says, and asks, "Where will that leave Indian planning?''

''Now the West is coming up with strange trade barriers in the form of the social clause like labour standards and human rights,'' the veteran trade union says.

''For application of labour standards, free movement of labour and goods should be allowed, but the multinational companies want only monopoly markets,'' points out Mazumdar.

A monopolistic tendency is developing in the global drug industry and large-scale mergers are taking place as a fallout. Patenting has become a very important instrument for the giant monopolies in the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Switzerland.

Some big Indian companies are also aiming to be global players. ''This will lead to massive retrenchment of workers in the country and the worst sufferers will be the small companies which will be forced to use casual workers,'' says Federation of Medical Representative Associations of India General Secretary D P Dubey.

At its recent national working committee meeting held in New Delhi, the FMRAI gave a call for a 'Bombay march' on November 29 to the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India on an eight-point charter of demands including job security in the light of mergers, maintenance of service conditions, recruitment in the permanent category, and rationalisation of work system and implementation of the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act, among other things.

It has also decided on a three-day nationwide strike in the industry in March next for which the date is yet to be fixed.

UNI