FOREWORD

October  2004

Dear Sirs/Friend,

                                    Sub: Patentmatics.com – October 2004 Issue.

October is a month of great significance for our country, being the ‘birth month’ of Mahatmaji. When we remember him on the 2^nd, we are also reminded of the resonant words of his great disciple late Jawahar Lal Nehru speaking soon after the assasination on January 31,1949 over the All India Radio “The Light has gone out and there is darkness everywhere. The Father of the Nation, Babu as we used to call him, is no more…The Light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong….that Light represented living Truth”( As exquisitely summarized by the well-known historian Ramachandra Guha the other day, these two great men would ever be remembered in our country, the former as the chosen leader who led the nation to political independence and the latter for his crucial role in laying the foundations of republican democracy thereafter). Undoubtedly the nation continues to suffer from the “miles to go” syndrome to inherit the proud heritage. On the one hand it is not unusual that along with giving customary tributes, many present day political/administrative leaders in authority profess quoting Gandhiji in support of the ‘opening-up’ through the New Economic Policy! Its proponants highlight that thanks to a one-and-half decade of the NEP, India’s gross national income is now at at $3,068 billion and per capita income at $2,880 by purchasing power parity, ahead of Pakisthan, as summarised in the recent World Bank Development Report; and in turn they champion futher ‘liberalisation’,ignoring the fact that, as emphasised in the latest EPW analysis, “A detailed re-examination of the NSS consumption data for 1999-2000 shows that the poverty ratio fell at most by 3% between 1993-94 and 1999-2000, and it likely that the number of poor increased over this period”? In other words, even though India is “shining”for many, with some like the Chief of WIPRO entering into even the Forbes List of the Super-rich under the liberalised economic-political regime, the inequality levels have only gone up tremendously under the same political-economic dispensation. In a similar manner and thanks to the post-WTO-TRIPS political-administrative  policy scenario, the basic strenghts of the existing techno-industrial-agricultural base, built assiduously during the past five decades, are under severe creticism and steadily losing its ‘shine’ without a truly national and ‘core-competent’ alternate in place. With fundamentalist ideologies of differing hues and definitions spreading far and wide and with  FDI being essentially projected as the true succour for future development, will the nation slowly and steadily slip into a pseudo ‘banana republic’, to quote the senior economist Prabhat Patnaik from one of his recent and very cogently articulated lecture? The thoughts on the occasion of the 135^th Birth Day of the Father of the Nation are truly haunting.

“TODAY was another important day for the Indian Space Research Organisation, as the GSLV-FO1 rocket took off into the skies as per plan and put its cargo, the Edusat satellite, into the designated orbital slot. The 1,950-kg Edusat is the heaviest satellite to be launched from India. The rocket, which carried it marked a `hat-trick', being the third successful GSLV launch in a row. At 4.01 pm on this damp afternoon, the 49-metre, 414-tonne-heavy rocket thundered skyward from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, the launch base at the coastal town of Sriharikota. Seventeen minutes after the lift-off, the Rs 160-crore rocket completed its mission (and its life) by ejecting the Edusat into its orbit”, so wrote the Hindu Business Line on September 20,2004, describing the great event. In more than one way this is true. It is also the consummation of the Founding Father Vikram Sarabhai’s “dream come true” – starting with the SITE experiment by recource to a US based satellite in the early seventies, he demonstrated the use of satellite television for education and rural development. Through the nearly 2T EDUSAT launched by GSLV from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, ISRO has truly honoured its founder most appropriately. Patentmatics joins the dedicated ISRO community in celebrating the great achievement. It is in this context that we perhaps have to critically analyse the implications, opportunities and challenges of the recent developments in India-US relations with respect to the strategic sectors.Perhaps the most crucial S&T news item in the contemporary context of US-India relations is that after talks between Foreign Secy Shyam Saran and US officials, including Under-Secy of State Marc Grossman:
• US eases curbs on supply of equipment and technology for India’s civilian space and nuclear programmes
• ISRO removed from a prohibition list, clearing a major obstacle in indo-us strategic ties.
• “The first phase (in the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership or NSSP) is, of course, more fixed on the space side. When we get into the second phase, it will be focused perhaps a little more on the nuclear stage,’’ Saran said.

Further to the above, the United States is reported to have now lifted some of the sanctions against Indian space and nuclear entities, taking forward the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) between the two countries. The US Commerce Department's decision to lift sanctions against Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) subordinate entities and Department of Atomic Energy entities would ease export of some high-tech items to India. The Department also said that it had now corrected some "mistakes" in an earlier announcement by the Bureau of Industry and Security. It said for some items there was a case- by-case review and for others a presumption of approval. The ISRO subordinate entities are: ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network; ISRO Inertial Systemsnit, Thiruvananthapuram; Liquid Propulsion Systems Center; Solid Propellant Space Booster Plant; Space Applications Center, Ahmedabad; Sriharikota Space Centre; Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram. The US has also lifted sanctions against DAE Entities like Bhabha Atomic Research Centre; Indira Gandhi Atomic Research Centre; Indian Rare Earths; Nuclear reactors (including power plants) not under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, fuel reprocessing and enrichment facilities, heavy water production facilities and their collocated ammonia plants. In other words, if these developments are explicitly confirmed by official sources, one can see a material change in US attitude towards her earlier ‘embargo’ policies towards India for reasons known to herself. While on the one hand, these changes could hopefully accelerate the national programs in the immediate context, all efforts must be made to see that the imported materials and systems are used only to give us a higher level of  “quick assisted take off”, to use the famous  description of late Homi Bhabha, and to sustain the S&T lead on equal terms with the collaborator/import agencies  through  development of  concurrent IPR audited-and - protected indigenous R&D programs. A Faustian Choice, which ISRO and DAE are certainly capable of.

According to a report from Business Line, rise in Bt cottonseed distribution through both official and unofficial channels  is among the various reasons for the projected increase in domestic cotton output for the 2004-05 season, now poised to cross the record 200-lakh-bale mark, with at least 30 per cent of the crop area under Bt cotton. In other words, the so-called “Gene Revolution” is slowly spreading to our country as well, a process which will steadily gather momentum when more of useful GM seeds become available. In other words, again, the ongoing agricultural policy must take into account not only the task of ‘defending the Green Revolution”, to use the description of Prof Swaminathan, but also to face the GMP Problem  sqarely to our advantage, including the related IPR aspects of New Plant Varieties. The October issue lists four articles on the subject : the WTO “July Package” , two Business Line articles, the first one on ‘demystification’ of fertiliser/agricultural subsidies and the second one “Farming in US & India – the Ground Reality on Subsidy” elaborating the issue through details on the highly capital-intensive US agriculture obviously to meet the shortage in agricultural manpower and her efforts to keep the costs of production of major items at their lowest and the Total Support Elements provided by US government to protect her ‘agricultural security’ (Total Support Estimate TSE to agriculture in OECD countries is paced at $350 billion – EU $137bn, US $94bn and Japan $56bn-), and the fourth on elisting the potential dangers in treating Indian agricuture as a ‘Single Box’ commodity (as invariably done by also India in WTO negotiations) from the point of view of the nation and of the States and, essentially as another WTO-dictated conditionality, the recent decision on the Union government for free import of seeds in the new Import Policy. It is probably only natural that among the many states , already  worried of the developments, a state  like AP with a big stake in food- and nonfood crops based agriculture has lready announced that it will formulate its own Seeds Policy, with more perhaps to follow when the potential dangers start seeping in ! Undoubtedly, the issues are far more complex than what seems to be currently realised at the Union government level from the points of view of IPRs and trade-distorting and non-trade distorting support possibilities, more so from the  need for a ‘composite policy approach’  matching with the food security at national level and the crucial agro-economic security requirements  at States level. The claim of the Union Minister that the latest WTO Round was a great victory for India needs to be re-asessed with “patriotism, principles and professionalism”, the three great qualities attributed by I.G.Patel to the doyen agricultural economist-policy planner Prof Samar Ranjan Sen of the yester  years in his recent EPW article (September 18,2004).

In continuation of  “Total Factor Productivity and Core Competence” of  one major manufacturing sector, namely the oil PSUs, the current issue deals with similar aspects on another  equally crucial one, though from the infrastructure sector, namely telecom. The article on “Whither Indian Telecom Sector”  summarises the current situation whereas “State Support for Industrial R&D in Developing Economies, Telecom Equipment Industry in India and China” reproduced from EPW highlights the major maladies of the Indian sector as contrasted with the valuable lessons from the policy experiences of China. Importantly enough, much remains to be learnt by us not only on managing modern PSU industries but also on using ‘industrial science’ – to use the description of late JN Tata – in effecting steady technological progress. Whereas the article on “The Much Maligned Public Sector – Mohan’s SAIL Model Revisited” deals with the former, the one on “Economic Role of Science” by the doyen economist-science policy researcher Nathan Rosenberg, written even as early as the seventies, examines “Marx’s treatment of rising resource productivity and technological change under capitalism. Little attention has been given to Marx’s view of the role which science plays in these processes. It is obvious that Marx (and Engels) attach the greatest importance to the development of modern science, but the way in which scientific progress meshes with the rest of the Marxian system has not been fully understood. The paper analyzes Marx’s treatment of the factors which account for the growth of scientific knowledge as well as capitalist society’s changing capacity to incorporate this knowledge into the productive process”. Is it true that through the latest developments in the Finish telecom industry, the predictions of Schumpeterian Innovations have become a reality or is it only through a still higher level of ‘labour saving’ innovations when ‘the capitalist enlists science in its service’, to quote Marx from his Capital ?  Patentmatics hopes to continue this discussion in later issues also as applied to different basic industries.

Contuining the analysis of the New PCT Regime, the number of PCT applications on “anticancer drugs” - many of which have India also is a destination – currently works out to 38, the latest being “Monoclonal Antibody, Gene Encoding the same, Hybridoma, Medicinal Composition & Diagnostic Reagent” WO 2004/ 076658 dated Feb 27,2004, in favour of Mitsubishi Pharma Corpn et.al. The number of EMR (Exclusive Marketing Rights) Applications in India at present is as listed below:

            LIST OF EMR FILED IN INDIA AND ITS STATUS – as on  September 2004

The article by NS Subbaram summarizes elegantly the varying aspects of the Indian EMR Act . With the Glivec case still awaiting for the final decision of Supreme Court (almost an year has already passed since the judicial procedures were started), the arguments of the Justice Rajagopal Ayyangar Committee in  championing the cause of “Licenses of Rights” after three years for drugs will continue to haunt the conscience of the nation under the New IPR Regime, till the relevant constututional authority orders that judiciary must deliver its judgements within a stipulated time schedule on at least life-saving drugs!

Last but not least, patentmatics pays its homage to the memories of the doyen nuclear scientist late Dr Raja Ramanna by republishing an obituary written by his distinguished colleague Dr P K Iyengar in The Hindu and of the Amul’s Tech Wizard late Shri Dalya  through an article from Hindu Business Line. Though Ramanna was often described as the Father of Indian Nuclear Bomb, he was also, unlike others of similar description, the same person who was instrumental to formulate the  “Not The First One To Use” Policy for India, a unique person with a unique deterrent doctrine indeed. A multiple personnage of very great distinction, he will always be remembered in the annals of our modern age. So also late Shri Dalya for his pioneering role for ushering in the White Revolution in our country by the trio – late Shri  Tribhuvandas Patel described often as the Father, Dr Varghese Kurien the Son, Dalya himself as the Holy Ghost of the proverbial saga, which in turn has made India the second largest producer of milk (even the first now?) and concurrently also ensuring an equitable share for the millions of farmers spread all over the villages. Astounding contribution for a nation crying for such ‘appropriate’ development strategies in her onward march to better prosperity with also equity and human dugnity. May their souls rest in peace!

Finally, being a purely educational and voluntary non-profitable activity, patentmatics has been reproducing a number of relevant articles under the ‘fair use’ doctrine. It is hoped once again that the authors and publishers will aptly condone the IPR issues if any!

Yours sincerely,

A D Damodaran.

NOTE : Kindly note that without much delay, www.patentmatics.com will be www.patentmatics.org

A D Damodaran.