Columnits - Shashi Tharoor

Living in a fake world

We've all received those ubiquitous emails in our in-box, though mercifully most of them these days are caught by our spam filters. Emails offering expensive drugs at hard-to-beat prices - drugs against cholesterol, blood pressure, arthritis and baldness, always bearing familiar brand names like Lipitor, Celebrex and inevitably Viagra. The wiser amongst us delete them instantly. Some are, however, taken in. Those who are uninsured, or who can't afford to pay full price, or who in their cupidity simply imagine that they can save a few bucks, even order these medicines from the internet hawkers. The results are often calamitous. Sometimes the paid-for drugs never arrive. Sometimes they do, and that's worse. They're fakes, in some cases made of little more than powdered cement, artfully disguised to look like the real thing. At best, they will be of no medical benefit whatsoever. At worst, they could kill you. Counterfeit drugs are a multi-million dollar industry. The fake medicines market is said to be worth over $60 billion a year, up 25% on three years ago and tipped to rise to $100 billion by 2010. Like counterfeit watches, fake perfumes, imitation designer clothing and pirated films, they thrive in a world where people are all too ready to bend the rules. But what isn't as well known is how these merchants of the meretricious misuse the international trade system to pursue their goals. Places like Hong Kong and Dubai, because of their open and liberal trade policy, their efficient systems devoid of bureaucratic entanglements, and the absence of import and export fees or income tax in their free ports, have become particular targets. Dubai is particularly attractive to counterfeiters for the same reason that it is attractive to regular traders - because of its strategic location on the Arabian Gulf, which makes Dubai ideal for the movement of goods between Asia, Europe and Africa. The fake-drug merchants have not been slow to catch on. Records show that nearly one third of all counterfeit drugs confiscated in Europe last year came from - which really means through - the United Arab Emirates. The Intellectual Property Unit of the Dubai Customs Authority destroyed 293 tonnes of counterfeit products just in the first five months of the year. But there's also a more sinister reason why free-trade zones appeal to the counterfeiters. They use such zones to conceal the real origin of a drug, especially by moving the products from one zone to another, or by relabelling fake or adulterated goods to make them look as if they came from more legitimate sources. The New York Times wrote of "a complex supply chain of fake drugs that ran from (counterfeit drugs manufacturers) in China through Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the Bahamas, ultimately leading to an internet pharmacy whose American customers believed they were buying medicine from Canada." Fake drugs stir rage in all of us, because any of us could be vulnerable to the dangers of being laid low by a medicine we thought was going to help us. Fake booze is another problem. We all know of the bad old days when smugglers sold you bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label which contained some spurious spirit they had injected into an empty bottle with a syringe (India was the world's largest market for empty Johnnie Walker bottles). But if that isn't bad enough, almost half of all alcoholic spirits sold in Russia are counterfeit, killing 43,000 Russians every year. Not all fakes kill, of course, and counterfeiting of other goods often escapes the same level of censure because people tend to think it doesn't matter as much. What's the harm, people ask themselves, if we can "beat the system" and enjoy something without really paying for it? If we get something that others think is genuine and only we know the difference, how does it matter? The short answer is that it does - not just because theft is theft, whether it is of intellectual property or of somebody's wallet. It matters because fakery stifles innovation, depriving the world of the creativity that is our only source of progress. It matters because those of us who buy fake goods are really stealing from creative risk takers and giving our support to the more indolent counterfeiters, who profit from the ingenuity and hard work of others. In the process, we shoot ourselves in the foot, because we deprive creators of the incentive to create - thereby reducing the number of new products we can one day enjoy. Wearing a fake watch may not harm you directly in the way that consuming a fake drug would, but it diminishes you nonetheless, and dilutes the possibilities of the world in which you live. It's up to ordinary citizens to ensure that the fakes don't prevail. If each of us refused to buy, wear or consume stolen goods, the counterfeiters would have to look elsewhere for custom. Everything known to human beings can be faked. Thanks to advances in digital technology, 3D laser scanners and counterfeiting software, there is now little that cannot be quickly and cheaply reproduced - and sold around the world as the genuine article. The result is that one in 10 of all products sold across the globe is now believed to be counterfeit. So, what kind of a world do we want to live in? One in which nothing is real, nothing is what it seems, or one in which there is a premium on genuineness, on high quality - and on the authentic? A non-profit group called the Authentics Foundation has been running a "Fakes Cost More" campaign in Europe recently. Maybe they should bring it to Mumbai too. Authenticity is an under-rated virtue. It's always better to wear a genuine Indian watch than a fake foreign luxury brand, because the latter puts you in the position of pretending to have something you don't, which is as bad as pretending to be someone you're not. Where imagination is usurped by imitation, no one wins.