Articles by Arun Bal

one party, is to miss the point that the protection clause was nevertheless a fact.
This leads to the question whether India could have taken recourse to legal action by approaching the international monetary bodies on the issue of the iniquitous protocol exchange rate, in the extreme case choosing to renege on (apart of) the debt. It seems that in view of the written agreement between our countries the burden of legal opinion could hardly have weighed on our side (quite apart from the virtual impossibility of deciding such a bilateral matter in a multilateral forum). Further, on account of strategic considerations, exercising such an option may not have been desirable.

Arun Bal Anil Pilgaonkar MODERN drugs are now part of the armamentarium of medical practitioners at every level and are universally perceived to have powerful effects. Of the 5 billion people in the world, between 1,3 to 2.5 billion have little or no access to the essential drugs. In India only 20 per cent of the population has access to essential drugs. Between 1952 and 1983 the number of the production units grew three-fold, investment 24 folds and bulk drug production 18 folds. Yet the production of essential drugs in 1980 accounted for only Rs 3.5 billion of an overall total production worth of Rs 12.6 billion. In the five years between 1978-79 and 1983-84 the industry's sale of essential drugs with the lowest price mark up actually dipped from Rs 554.7 million to Rs 493.5 million while sales of the other drugs for which government allows higher mark ups grew by 25 per cent from Rs 1544,4 million to Rs 1983.8 million. Thus essential drugs constituted only 16.8 per cent of the total drugs consumed. This means that resources are being used for products that arc not essential, at a time when a large pro portion of the population is without access to even the most basic drugs. India provides a paradoxical example of the overproduction of the drugs (total production Rs 2500 crore) existing simultaneously with the shortage of essential drugs for some of the major diseases. The main reason for this anamolous situation is that the drug production is not consistent with the disease pattern of the country. There is plethora of non-essential, hazardous drugs. It is estimated that at present there are anything between 40,000 to 60,000 Tlrugs formulation in the market. More than half of these are non-essential or hazardous. WHO estimates that some 500 million dollars have been mobilised to support national drug programmes. At first glance that seems to be impressive figure; however this is only 5 per cent of the amount being spent by the industry to promote all drugs. (Towards Rational Drug Use', Health Action International.) MANAGEMENT OF PAIN Analgesics or painkillers form a major part of the aggressively marketed drugs.

replenish these resources by adequate afforestation and water conservation measures such as those adopted by a voluntary organisation, Gram Gauray Pratisthan, in Purandhar Taluka of Pune district. At the same time, ground water organisations in all the states need to be reorganised and suitably strengthened in term of material and manpower resources so that they can monitor and regulate withdrawals of water from critical zones both from the point of view of saturation and saline instrusion.