India now should focus on having its own pharmaceutical standards: FM

India now should focus on having its own pharmaceutical standards, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while inaugurating a two-day India Ideas Conclave here on Friday.

“You don’t need a U.S. FDA standard. You may take it very well. Please do take it because that helps you exports. But can we in India not have a Bharat FDA, Food and Drugs administration, which can give global standards of benchmarks?,” she asked a packed audience comprising corporates, start-ups and innovators.

“If you reach a benchmark, your pharmaceutical products are going to be good enough, or even unsurpassed,” she said.

The FM further said India should use its quick commerce innovations to brand itself as destination of innovative solutions.

“Our gig economy start-ups, especially quick commerce for instance, are truly one of the kind of innovation that only India has. No doubt, we need to hand hold and support our brick and mortar retail. But let us use this to brand India as a destination of innovative solutions to modern urban needs,” she said.

Ms. Sitharaman further said this would serve as an incentive or call to scale up internationally, catapulting Indian enterprise with a strong ‘Bharatiya’ identity to become some of the biggest players in the international tech business space.

On branding India, the FM said India had to become a “responsible capitalist country.”

“Economic well being has to be guided by dharma and should be devoid of elements such as expansionism, exploitation and aggression,” she pointed out.

“We are recontextualising India, its characteristics and values which have been notoriously continuing for a long time. To build brand Bharat we want to remove all the notorious branding happened much to our dislike,” she emphasised.

She further said suddenly India was getting these diktats coming from buyers from the West, saying there was sweat labour, asking not to employ children in carpet industry or silk industry, etc. “We take care of our children. They are educated and skilled well. If customers want products from India that are master class, we do not want to be told we employ sweat labour. We want to stand up and speak this if even this is not music to many.”