The Centre's policy of liberalization undoubtedly helped the Indian economy to achieve enviable growth rate in most industrial segments since last six years. But, the government had totally ignored some of the critical sectors like agriculture, infrastructure and social sectors. In these areas, there has been a crying need for government's direct engagement as the private sector initiative is usually weak. This long neglect by the government is quite visible in the economy today. In the social segment, state of public health in terms of annual public expenditure and access to modern medicine has been dismal for several years. The drug policy followed by the government over the years enabled the Indian pharmaceutical companies to become one of the most prosperous industrial sectors of the country. But that has not helped a large section of the Indian public yet to have access to medicine in terms of availability and prices. Most of the widely required medicines are beyond the reach of common man because of high prices. A large number of medicines available in several semi urban and rural areas of the country are also of doubtful quality. The government has, however, realized now that the public sector drug companies which laid the foundation of the Indian pharmaceutical industry, has a significant role to play in making available quality medicines at reasonable prices. The Centre's move to create an apex body to redefine the role of the pharma public sector undertakings and to revive them is with this objective. The apex body with the task of reorienting the role of PSUs, will have Rs 100-crore fund in assisting the pharma PSUs in drug development, patent filing and WHO pre-qualifications. Under the new product patent regime, PSUs can also be an arm of the Government in manufacturing certain patented drugs required to meet emergencies through the grant of compulsory licenses. The body will consider the option of fully utilizing their huge drug facilities on a contract basis. There are five central drug PSUs and six joint sector undertakings in the country. Except Karnataka Antibiotics and Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Rajasthan Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, all others have been in the red for several years. A revival package for Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd and all five sick units of IDPL have been approved by the Union ministry of chemicals. The decision was taken in this regard in September 2005 at a high-level meeting chaired by Ram Vilas Paswan, based on the recommendations of an expert committee set up by the government. The restructuring of the five units of IDPL is expected to be completed within two-and-a-half years. What is required now is to speed up the whole process of revival of these units and provide the managements adequate autonomy to run them like private enterprises. What went wrong with the PSUs all these years is that they have not been granted freedom to evolve a competitive system of drug marketing.