[ajays]

On the other hand: the rest of the world has benefited a lot from the Indian pharma industry's growth. The same companies that you're criticizing are actually subcontracted by Bayer, etc. to produce their products so they can be sold in the developing world. If Indian did not produce these medicines, they would not be available to the poor at all. So at least they're saving lives that the developed world wasn't interested in saving.

Secondly: historically, Indian pharma growth was stunted due to old British laws. Once the industry was unshackled, it grew at a breathtaking rate, mostly by building generic variants of well-known drugs. This has allowed the Indian pharma industry to develop enough local expertise about formulation, manufacturing and distribution. Now they're moving up the food chain by patenting new drugs. Ranbaxy Labs, for example, is busy filing patents[1].

You can't expect the domestic industry to just sprout up organically. The Indian government never spent much money on R&D, so there wasn't much local drug research. But now that they're under the same patent regime, the Indian industries will have to figure out a way to survive.

Having said all this: please don't assume that Western drug companies' hands are clean. They are busy trawling the jungles of Amazon (among other places) to find new compounds, often taking knowledge from local shamans, etc. without any respect for their "IP".

[1] http://www.financialexpress.com/news/ranbaxy-tops-third-worl...