Now accusing the vested interests of malicious campaign against the generic drugs and medicines, standing committee of Parliament in its report presented in Rajya Sabha recently has stated that all categories of medicines, whether imported or manufactured, are required to comply with the standards specified in the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules. Therefore, a generic medicine is equivalent to the branded product, meeting the same standards of quality asking the government to make efforts to give wide publicity to this fact, so that the apprehensions of the general public fuelled and fanned by interested quarters about generic drugs not being of good quality could be dispelled.

The committee has suggested that both the Central and the state governments eliminate middlemen by procuring generic drugs in bulk straight from the manufacturers and dispense them directly to the patients through health centres. Expressing dissatisfaction over the fact that just 46 Jan Aushadi (people's dispensary) stores opened till date across the country; it said that it was unlikely to make a significant dent in a country of over 110 crore people.

Similarly, the issue of multinational pharma companies acquiring major Indian generic medicines manufacturing companies even at exorbitant prices has been raised repeatedly by this scribe. The standing committee of the Parliament while expressing serious concern over the issue has asked the government to pay attention to the selling out of major Indian pharma companies to multinationals, whose increasing hold over the drug market will make essential medicines costlier.

The committee noted that a large number of pharma companies have sold majority of their shares to multinational companies adding that promoters of some Indian pharma companies like Piramal Healthcare, Ranbaxy, Shantha Biotech and Dabur Pharma have already sold their controlling shares to United States, Japanese and German multinational companies. It has asked the government to ensure that major Indian pharma companies remain in Indian hands stating that it would appreciate if the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare takes up the issue with the Ministry of Chemical and Fertilisers without any delay and come up with the policy to ensure that major Indian pharma companies are in Indian hands.

Pointing out that 61 drugs worth over 80 billion dollar are going off patent between 2011 and 2013, making it possible for domestic pharma companies to produce cheaper version of the drugs expressed concern over the increasing hold of multinational companies. The committee has observed that these developments would result in multinational pharma companies gaining market supremacy and essential medicines are bound to be costlier. India it may be recalled as the third largest producer of generic drugs in the word and exports medicines to nearly 156 countries.