On a hot morning in a dusty suburb of Mumbai, a man in his thirties visits a clinic for an HIV med, a process repeated by hundreds of thousands of patients from Argentina to Zimbabwe. On a wall of the clinic, operated by the charity Medecins sans Frontieres, a poster bears the words “Patent on Aids drugs” inside a circle struck out by a thick red line. The phrase “lives before profit” is written below. “Medicine is our main expenditure,” Freya Raddi, the director, tells The Financial Times. “With cheaper drugs, we can use whatever money we have to help more patients.”

Cheap drugs are big business in India, as well as a source of fierce debate, the paper continues. Among India’ls manufacturers of cut-price generics, Cipla has caused the greatest controversy. Its owner, Yusuf Hamied, makes his products by circumventing other patents, a tactic that has turned Cipla into the largest supplier of antiretroviral drugs in the world. The last two decades saw a scientific revolution in the development of HIV drugs. But it is commercial savvy like Hamied’s that has translated these advances into accessible treatment for HIV patients across the developing world.

To his supporters, Hamied has saved countless lives by making meds affordable, the Times writes. But to his critics - above all the large western pharmaceuticals who first developed the drugs - he is a “pirate”, an opportunist who has exploited others’ intellectual property to swell his own profits. In the process, they say, he is undermining investment in future medicines, including the next generation of HIV therapies, the paper points outs.

As the debate about generics gained momentum, India introduced tougher patent rules in 2005, and Hamied’s fellow generic producers have aligned themselves with western rivals to defend patents. Their aim now is to develop and safeguard their own innovative medicines. Yes, the Times notes, these changes are a threat to Cipla’s business model - and to the cheaper drugs that help keep clinics such as Raddi’s going. “I am not against patents, but India cannot afford them,” Hamied tells the Times. “I am against monopolies.”

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