The Union Chemicals Ministry's Jan Aushadhi project, which has been moving at a snail's pace due to bureaucratic apathy, will soon get a big boost in Rajasthan as the department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) will tie up with the 'Confed' cooperative society in Rajasthan for opening the generic drug stores. In the first phase, around 100 of the total 208 branches of the Confed will be selected to run the stores, sources said.

Once materialized, Rajasthan will replace Punjab and Haryana as the number one position in the number of generic drug stores under the Jan Aushadhi project. At present, both Punjab and Haryana have opened eight generic stores each.

Confed is a state-government-run cooperative society which, apart from several other items, markets branded drugs at present. The state government of Rajasthan reimburses the medicine bills of its employees only if the medicines are purchased through the Confed. Confed has its branch in almost all the towns, including smaller ones, in the state. The DoP proposes to tie up with the Confed to open around 100 stores in major cities and towns in the state.

The Jan Aushadhi project is an ambitious project of former chemicals minister Ramvilas Paswan under which the government proposed to open one generic drug store in each district of the country. By establishing the Jan Aushadhis in each district, preferably in the premises of the district hospitals, the government wanted to ensure quality medicines to the poor people at affordable prices. At a time when the prices of medicines are increasingly becoming out of the reach of poorer sections of the society, the Jan Aushadhi stores are expected to prove to be a boon to them. Once implemented according to the prices suggested by the government, the treatment cost is to come down drastically, as much as 93 per cent in some categories.

Though the government launched the project way back in November 2008 with a store at Amritsar in Punjab, it did not pick up momentum after that, thanks to the indifferent attitude of the bureaucrats reportedly due to the pressures being exerted by the big players in the pharma industry who will be affected the most once the project becomes a popular movement in the country, which has a market of around Rs 50,000 crore. Even though the union chemicals minister Shrikant Jena had put an ambitious target of 250 stores by the middle of this year, it has not so far reached anywhere near the target.