Lessons are only for foreigners, we can do nothing.

A corporate consultant has written an article about the Ranbaxy-Daiichi deal, being very careful in his choice of words because India has a law against 'criminal defamation', to protect the powerful, and their friends. In 2008, Daiichi Sankyo bought Ranbaxy, an Indian pharmaceutical firm, for $4.6 billion, of which the promoters pocketed $2.4 billion for their 34.82% stake in the firm. Soon after the money was paid the FDA in the US banned drugs produced in 2 of its plants because of safety concerns. In 2013, Daiichi paid $500 million in fines to US authorities and pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and producing fake data to get fast approvals for its generic drugs. Recently Daiichi was awarded $400 million in compensation against the previous promoters for concealing bad practices in its plants. Exhausted by all the problems Daiichi sold the company to another Indian company, Sun Pharma for $3.2 billion in 2014. Ranbaxy was not the only one accused of bad practice. Many top Indian companies have been pulled up by the FDA in the US after inspection of their plants. In 2014, Germany banned drugs made in the Dewas plant of Ranbaxy. The reputation is so bad that the FDA has alleged that employees at drug companies regularly deleted bad quality control results and substituted fake results instead. Are the Americans being paranoid or racist, by nit-picking on Indian companies? In 2014, 13 women died of rat poison, mixed in antibiotics, in Chhattisgarh. So what are the lessons to be learnt from the Ranbaxy deal? The author recommends 6 points. The most important is," Trust but verify ". We would add that foreigners should start by asking Indian consumers which companies they trust. The real estate sector was seen as completely corrupt and controlled by organized crime. The government has passed a real estate law to make the sector transparent, so as to root out black money and collect more taxes. Citizens will benefit as a side effect. Some companies do have good reputation but managers have been trained never to accept any mistake and never to apologize, which means that they go on arguing that anything that goes wrong is the customers own fault, so that the company does not have to spend any money in solving the complaint. At least 80% of Indians believe that businesses are corrupt and 66% of businesses believe that bribery is acceptable. When you pay bribes up front you have to cut corners to make profits, which is why people do not trust businesses. Why are companies so crooked in India? Because the government controlled companies set the standard. We, the people, are the suckers. That is why a defamation law is so popular. In certain sections.