[tshibley]

>"Unlike American plants, which matured in an environment where constant oversight made shortcuts risky, the Indian industry evolved in a culture in which outwitting inefficient bureaucracies was an essential skill."

There is an interesting parallel here with the deterioration of regulatory oversight at Boeing that seems likely to have contributed to recent issues with the 737 Max. Similar to how the FDA was only visiting these foreign drug manufacturing operations once ever 11 years on average, the FAA was also resource constrained, to the point that Boeing was responsible for most of it's own oversight.

Maybe the story is just that at a certain point every company becomes rotten in the pursuit of profits (although that seems a contrived conclusion). A better analysis would maybe be what made these companies act in similar ways, skirting regulation at the cost of safety.

[jbob2000]

These problems will solve themselves, but at the cost of human life. I remember someone telling me that governments only move when a lot of people die.

The Indian government will eventually learn to regulate their pharma industry, it will just take the deaths of thousands of Indians before it will happen. We fucked up a lot of people in the Western world before we learned that regulations matter. Thalidomide anyone? That whole period in the early 1900s when we didn't have much of a medical profession and scientists were doing whatever the hell they wanted?

[tshibley]

I wonder if this becomes a cycle - otherwise I'm not sure how it explains the problems at Boeing.

I assume there was a point where the FAA was reasonably thorough (although if anyone knows the contrary to be true correct me), but then a general lack of perceived risk led to a leaner FAA with lower regulatory resources, which then contributed to the problems at Boeing. Maybe this will lead to an increase of regulatory oversight, and then the cycle continues.

[ericd]

It’s not just complacency, there’s been a significant push for deregulation and gutting of oversight by business interests since the economic problems of the 70s. It’s been one of the top issues for the followers of Milton Friedman, of which there are many in government.

[edzillion]

> over-site

It's oversight, like in the quote your provided:

> [...] an environment where constant oversight made shortcuts risky,

[tshibley]

Thanks, fixed