Agencies/New Delhi/ Mumbai

Indian drug retailers shut up shop for the day yesterday to protest against the country’s growing online pharmacy industry, and threatened to close indefinitely if the federal government did not shut down e-pharmacies.
The nationwide protest was widely supported, with as many as 850,000 chemists closing their doors, leaving patients waiting in long queues at any pharmacies that were open.
“I have been to seven-eight shops that were closed. My son has fever, and he needs medicine urgently,” said Sukanti Bhoi, 55, as she waited for her turn at a government hospital pharmacy in the eastern state of Odisha.
Shops inside and around hospitals as well as 24-hour pharmacies did not join in the one-day strike.
Online pharmacies are a relatively new phenomenon in India, where mom-and-pop stores have long dispensed drugs. But online retailers pose a threat to their bricks-and-mortar peers in a market IMS Health estimates is worth about $13bn.
Companies including Zigy and Sequoia Capital-backed 1mg have set up e-pharmacies over the past couple of years. Healthcare company Apollo Hospitals Enterprise plans to start online sales if the government regulates the business.
Drug retailers are worried.
“It is a matter of our livelihoods, we must be prepared for a fight,” said pharmacist Satish Vij, who travelled from northern Haryana state to take part in a protest in New Delhi, where about 1,000 people, mostly pharmacists, wore black arm bands, held placards and shouted slogans against e-pharmacies.
“We will struggle if multinationals enter this business,” he said.
J S Shinde, president of the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists which called the protest, said the retailers’ trade group will consider an indefinite strike if the government does not stop online drug sales within two months.
“It is going to be a 100% strike. Approximately 800,000 chemists will be on strike,” Shinde said.
The dispute pits drug retailers, many of whom belong to the middle class voter-base of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, against the leader’s push to encourage tech and digital entrepreneurship in India.
Late on Tuesday, in a last-minute attempt to get pharmacies to stay open, the health ministry said it was studying several representations on how the online pharmacy business should be regulated. It said the views of all stakeholders will be considered.
“A sub-committee has been constituted to look into the matter, which has so far undertaken only preliminary discussions with the stakeholders to ascertain their views,” the ministry said in a statement Tuesday.
A ministry spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday.
But retailers do not even want the government to consider online pharmacies as a legitimate business. They say online sales will lead to more cases of drug abuse as medicines will be sold without proper verification.
“Our own investigation has shown that anti-pregnancy pills, sleeping pills and steroids are being sold freely online,” Shinde said.
E-pharmacies say they have safeguards in place. Prashant Tandon, president of the newly formed group of e-pharmacies - Indian Internet Pharmacy Association - said the Internet will also help small drug stores grow faster.
“I wanted some medicine but all chemist shops were closed,” Balbir Singh, an employee in Chandigarh, said.
Patients and their attendants complained they were unable to buy medicines.
“The chemists and the government should have sorted out the issue. Why should patients suffer?” asked Monica Sethi, a housewife whose relative was admitted to a hospital in Gurgaon.
However, Shinde claimed that the strike was “in public interest since the sale of medicines through Internet was illegal, increases the risk of adverse drug reactions, and would ease entry of low quality, unbranded and spurious medicines.”
He said online pharmacies were threatening the jobs of nearly 8mn people employed by chemists.
“This strike has troubled patients. It is happening at a time when a large number of seasonal diseases like dengue and malaria are being reported,” said a doctor who did not wish to be named.