As part of its monthly workshops, the JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a workshop on April 22, 2026, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM (IST) with Prashant Reddy T. Prashant will discuss, “Why did a Rule on Mandatory Prescription of Generic Drugs Fail in India?”

The online workshop is open to the public. To attend, kindly register here (Microsoft Teams).

Abstract:

For a long time now, India has been known as the ‘pharmacy of the world’ for its expertise in manufacturing affordable generic drugs. Yet when the National Medical Commission in 2023, made it mandatory for all doctors in India to prescribe drugs only by their generic names instead of their brand names, Indian doctors vehemently protested against the rule, leading to its rollback in a matter of few weeks. In particular, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) claimed that its doctors lacked confidence in the quality of generic drugs being sold in India. What explains this sharp contrast in the global perception of the Indian pharmaceutical industry as a manufacturer of quality generic drugs and the refusal of Indian doctors to prescribe all generic drugs? The answer probably lies in the fact that the Indian industry is regulated by two different legal systems – one in the developed world which has evolved rigorous quality norms over decades and the other is the Indian regulatory framework under the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 which has failed to keep up with global standards. In this talk, the speaker, Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu, Co-author of The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India (2022), will discuss why Indian law has failed to instil confidence amongst Indian doctors in the quality of generic drugs sold in India.

About the Speaker

Prashant Reddy T. holds degrees in law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru (BA LLB 2008) and Stanford Law School, Stanford respectively. He has experience working in litigation, academia, and think-tank spaces in India and Singapore. His larger oeuvre spans drug regulation, intellectual property, judicial reforms and transparency law. He is the co-author of The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India (2022), a widely noted examination of India’s pharmaceutical regulatory system. He has also co-authored Create, Copy, Disrupt: India’s Intellectual Property Dilemmas (2017) and Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India’s District Courts (2025), and writes extensively in the public fora on questions of law, policy, and institutional accountability.