We need a pharmacist (his certificate) to get a licence either to manufacture or to operate a retail chemist shop. In industry, he is called ‘approved chemist’ and in the retail drug shop, he is called ‘qualified person’. So, to say, nowhere he is called a ‘pharmacist’ though the D&C Act and Rules wants his pharmacy certificate. So, we need pharmacist (his certificate) to satisfy the Rule book though it doesn’t recognise the ‘pharmacist’ as such! What an irony?
 
Then the question ‘who the pharmacist is?’ is a natural fall out. It has been bogging my mind right since my student life. This was quite imperative in me as we were taught formulation technology, pharma machinery technology on one hand and compounding and dispensing techniques based on certain standard prescriptions on the other. That means a pharmacy student can opt into the industry or to dispensing streams.     Graduates have an option to escape from both and get into safer stream to become regulatory officers and academic pundits. Both these category goes so much absorbed in legal procedures and academic core curriculum that they hardly get exposed to the technology and work skill of the field. As such they continue to create generations of their like.

The pharmacists who go into industry or chemist shop or hospital have to learn every thing only in the field while working and fend themselves in the unfamiliar zone of work and work culture unlike other healthcare professionals. He has to struggle for years to establish his existence, identity, professional status. But only a few have succeeded and majority have accepted defeat and withered out.

Opportunities
Pharma industries of India of 1960s, 70s, 80s were more of small scale units (SSIs) except for hand full of major players. The technologies in these units were of very simple and primitive type with many industries having single punch tabletting machine, single bottle filling machine, single tube filling machine, manually operated capsule filling machine with very few having tablet coating facility. Majority of them were depending on outsourced quality testing facility.

Naturally, the employment potential was not that high as each unit could appoint hardly one or two pharmacists and the potential of major players was also not too high to feel comfort on opportunity. The pharmacy graduates had to compete with other science graduates like BSc and MSc. The remuneration was quite low or to put it more truthfully pharmacists were exploited badly by the industry and trade. There were instances where the pharmacist had to wait for the payment from market to get their salary.

The marketing sector was the only potential sector for employment. Even here the competition was still worst as they had to compete with other graduates, undergraduates and even ordinary salesman. The biggest challenge was ‘Talking-Skill-Deficiency’ syndrome. This has not been identified and addressed at all by the pharmacy academe. Lack of command on the language, its grammar, timid and shyness looms large among the graduates and undergraduates. Hence, very few pharmacy graduates could get into marketing and hardly few could sustain and succeed.

Since 1990s onwards tremendous growth has happened in Indian pharma sector. Thanks to the amendment to Schedule M and consequent compliance that ensued quality, the pharma products gained more and more demand both in Indian and from  overseas markets.

The globalization and with the signing of WTO agreement, India has attracted many MNCs to enter Indian market to establish their production, testing and research units availing the benefits of government policies, cheap labour and our ignorance too. The pharmacist had and has no benefit with such an influx like a highway not benefiting the village it passes through. It neither benefited the academe in updating the curriculum or learning pattern and research potential nor raised the employment potential for the graduates proportionate to the academic and industrial out put.

Earlier pharmacy graduates opting for marketing had to compete only with BSc and MSc graduates. Now, they have to compete with graduates from Biotechnology, BBM, MBA besides science graduates. The technology has entered digital era with advanced electronic system from production to market operation but the pharmacy curriculum is stagnating in outdated mechanical era with burette, pipette, pestle and mortar!. His training to just read at home and write in exam (no talking) at the college pulls him down against other graduates. The prospective employer looks at who would perform better and provide better return to him or his company than going just by qualification.

The dispensing counter was and is worst in out-look and returns. The Indian style community pharmacy recognized as retail drug outlets and chemists & druggist had and have no scope for professional work of the pharmacist. The chemist shop is like the grocery shop in the neighbourhood with the only difference that sale of medicine happens on the prescription. Lakh and lakh of pharma products have flooded the market that looks Greek and Latin to the fresher. A fresh pharma diploma or graduate feels nervous when he enters a chemist shop or a hospital to work because he cannot comprehend with the unfamiliar scenario.

No precipitated taste or smell of pharmacy profession can be perceived any where even though lakh and lakh of pharmacists have worked in the hospitals, dispensaries and chemist shops and retired in the past 50 years. All have gone into oblivion with no recognition, identity. The word ‘pharmacist’ hasn’t been able to erase the old term ‘compounder’ in the minds of common man and other healthcare professionals. The current scenario is worst than that of the old compounder era and future is quite predictable and obvious.

Hence the community pharmacy (chemist shop) is not at all attractive for a diplomate for a graduate dreaming to become a professional. Those who opt into chemist shop opt for it as a trade than professional practice. The remuneration to an employed pharmacist (irrespective of diploma or degree) is hardly 3 to 5 thousand per month in stand alone shops with working hours from 9 am to 10 pm and about 8 to 10 thousand in chain shops. He can work as pharmacist in only one shop as per the regulation.

Pharmacist’s life with this income is worse than that of a house maid attending 2 to 3 houses earning around 3 to 6 thousand per month per house with hardly 3 hours of work in each house. Majority of the community pharmacists have (have to) found alternate non-pharmacy occupation to supplement their income and that is the reason why we don’t find pharmacists at the dispensing counter.  
In such a situation the natural fall out is that youngsters do not opt to study and no wonder some of the pharmacy colleges are closing down for want of students. The days are not far when we run into acute shortage of pharmacists at the dispensing level.

Pharma policy makers in academe, regulatory, industry and health sector should act immediately to take stock of the situation and bring out comprehensive reforms in academe, regulatory, industry and health sector to make way for professional pharmacy service.