The SSIs may withdraw its support to the Union chemicals ministry's ambitious Jan Aushadhi project (generic drug stores) if the Union health ministry goes ahead with its efforts to push through the CDA Bill in the ongoing session of Parliament. For the Jan Aushadhi project, aiming to make quality medicines available at affordable prices to the poorer sections of the society, the support of the SSIs is crucial as they have agreed to provide generic medicines at much cheaper prices while the big companies have expressed their reservation to support the project.

Urging the Union chemicals minister Ramvilas Paswan to stop the CDA Bill, under which the licensing of manufacturing units will be centralized much to the chagrin of the SSIs, the SME Pharma Industries Confederation (SPIC) said that once the Bill is passed and the CDA is formed, the SSIs will be struggling to survive.

"To cope with the change, SMEs will struggle to survive once again. With reduction in number of items manufactured by each unit, support to Jan Aushadhi stands jeopardized as survival takes precedence. Loss of SME brands will be colossal but they are left with no other alternative except direct selling to ensure offtake of the limited number of items manufactured by each SME. The outlet chains are being supported by many NGOs and State Governments in the interest of employment, revenue and affordable priced medicines. Since SMEs refuse to die, this is their answer to the CDA Bill and multinational takeover", SPIC said.

Questioning the logic of the CDA Bill, SPIC said that in view of the fact that the government has recently amended the law and mandated life imprisonment for those making spurious drugs, it has no logic. "The GOI pretext is that some state governments were allowing permission to manufacture new drugs which they were not empowered to, especially when stability data was not available. To this the easier solution was codification of a list of drugs permissible in the country, which would effectively eliminate corruption, something widely reported in the past. In any case, if a drug is unstable it would be sooner or later be caught as a spurious drug (punishable with Life Imprisonment). Around 40,000 samples are lifted in the country annually, which can very well be increased. In Any case, less than 0.2 to 0.3 per cent have been found spurious as per government's own admission in parliament Question 1084", it said.

The SSIs are so angered over the post haste in which the CDA Bill is being rushed through Parliament, allegedly at the instance of MNCs, that they are seriously thinking of withdrawing their support to Jan Aushadhi stores. "Why should we support the government, when it is playing to the tunes of MNCs to finish off the SSIs in the country?", a senior association leader representing the SSIs asked.

Under this project, the government proposes to set up Jan Aushadhi stores in each district of the country, preferably in the premises of the district hospitals. The support of the SSIs for this project is crucial as they have agreed to provide generic drugs at cheaper rates. Though the public sector pharma undertakings like IDPL will also provide drugs to this project at cheaper rates, the government has to procure a large chunk of the drug requirements from the private companies for these stores. 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.

The government has already launched the project and it has sought the NGOs participation to run the project on not-for-profit basis in the breadth and length of the country.