Book Review
“An Unfinished Agenda” My life in the pharmaceutical industry” By Dr. K. Anji Reddy
Dt: 9/6/15
Book Review
“An Unfinished Agenda”
My life in the pharmaceutical industry”
By Dr. K. Anji Reddy
Published by Penguin Books, India in Y 2015
Pages: 270; Price :Rs. 699/-
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
As narrated by Padmabhushan Dr. K.Anji Reddy the book punctured my wonted delight in the great advances we made in telecom services and information technology businesses. I used to think that India’s impress on the world was due to its enormous number of people who in a very short time engaged themselves in rendering IT services to the world’s leading business in all the continents and built up a business of $ 118 bln (2014) of which about 80% are from foreign sources. “Unfinished Agenda” is a master piece in narration of the birth and growth, discoveries and disappointments, optimism and vision of the pharmaceutical companies and the social service organisations that Dr Anji Reddy built up in a career of nearly five decades. It is Indeed a tragedy that so great a visionary and optimist, creator of molecules and discoverer of drugs, founder of pharmaceutical companies; laboratories for R&D and winner of US and EU markets had untimely death at age 72 and of all diseases, cancer for the detection and cure of which his efforts were lately turned on.
2. In telecoms & IT India has produced hardly any intellectual property from which the great telecom network and services and I.T businesses had been built up. But Dr.Anji Reddy’s narration shows how Indian companies, especially his own had done pioneering work . We are now hearing of Make in India as a nation’s war cry but Dr Reddy had this in mind since 1960s when he was still working in the state-owned Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited (IDPL) in Hyderabad. The son of a farmer in the village Tadepalli in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh scaling the heights of discovery entrepreneurship and service to the most disadvantaged is a thrilling life. Foreign scholars and inventors were
stunned by Dr. Reddy the Chairman and Managing Director of a company himself drawing pictures of a complicated molecule and explaining it with ease. It is this great scholarship and profundity, his daring and his determination to prove Indian capabilities that made him to enter the American market, the largest in the world . Many were the trials and legal battles to get his products approved for sale in that country. One of the molecules he discovered had been sold to the famed Dutch company Novo Nordisk. That is the beginning of recognition of India that Indians can discover, invent and invade the foreign markets.
3. Dr Reddy was a voracious reader of books and articles in pharmaceutical science & technology. The farmer’s son remembered how his not so educated father, a farmer was preparing Ayurvedic medicines and how the mother and father duo used to give them free to those who are afflicted in his village and around. This inspired him to his motto: drugs are to prevent and cure and that they must be affordable. For eg: a HIV treatment in South Africa was costing $ 1000 per month. Indi’s CIPLA company offered AIDS medication at an annual cost of $ 350! Many Indian companies starting from Cipla onwards have now become the largest suppliers of medicines for a range of afflictions to the entire world at very low prices. Foreigners are now stunned at the prodigious intellect that is getting unleashed in India. This of course had been facilitated by the end of the permit-licence-quota raj of Nehruvian socialism by the P V. Narasimha Rao the first Bharatiya Pradhana Manthri (Prime Minister ).
4. How Dr Anji Reddy used his personal wealth for bringing hope and cheer to the distressed, disadvantaged and discarded people is also narrated. The number of social enterprises like Naandi that were founded and/ or nourished by him is well told in the book. Long before the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) came to be propagated (and eventually mandated by law) Dr.Anji Reddy founded and funded a number of social service enterprises. Going through the list of scientists from various universities and companies & countries that he was able to attract into his businesses and social service organs I am reminded of what Andrew Carnegie got engraved on his tomb “stone” : “Here lies a man who knew how to enlist in his service men better than himself”
5. Every person whom he got as his associate imbibed the optimism, the entrepreneurship and enthusiasm, commitment and involvement which are characteristic of Dr. Anji Reddy himself. That so many great minds and hands could be got to work harmoniously in his various ventures speaks of Dr. Reddy’s quality as a leader . Dr. Reddy generously praises his associates.
6. Dr. Reddy donated generously for social services. He funded some researches from his own wealth; he did not want share –holders’ wealth on some risky researches. He had immense regard for Bharat’s heritage and spirituality. Two drugs discovered by his Labs were named Bala glita zar, Bala standing for Balaji (Lord Venkateswara) and Raga glita zar, Raga the Samskrit word for melody. When Raga glita zar was withdrawn, (because a mouse under trial died) but Bala glita zar went ahead. Dr. Reddy observed that it was because of the God’s name as prefix and that raga glita zar failed because it was prefixed after him (R-standing for Reddy) !
7. Dr Reddy beautifully explains the diseases like insulin, HIV, Alzheimar etc., and gives brief but fascinating life stories of inventors and discoverers like Yallapragada Subba Rao, Frederic Banting (Insulin 1922); Alois Alzheimer, (observed 1906)
8. This book ought to be in the libraries of all professional colleges especially pharmaceutical, medical, engineering and business colleges and companies. I am glad that the son-in-law and son team of Sri G.V.Prasad and Dr. Satish Reddy are carrying forward Dr. Anji Reddy’s legacy in the most fitting manner. Pragna Bharati the nationalist think tank in Andhra Pradesh honoured him with the Prgna Puraskar in the year 1999. Dr Reddy recalls this and his spirited repartees and defence of his ideas against so formidable a person as Dr Murali Manohar Johsi the then Minister for HRD. Both have great and some times contending ideas especially on patents. Dr. Murali Manohar Joshi who till then was having an unshakeable belief in the Bharatiya view that knowledge should not be patented and should be free, agreed that in this age, our discoveries must be patented as asserted by Dr. Anji Reddy. (1,058 words)
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