Bit-player’s predicament

India has announced it will appeal the ruling. That will buy it time, not respect, because in this dispute India is wrong. Instead of behaving like an adult and standing up for its achievements as well as mistakes and learning from them, New Delhi has gone into its famous and pathetic long-whine about imperialism, colonialism, greed and such litany of virtues it usually hurls at the west. The enemy continues to be outside. In the ancient land of sages and saints it can never be within. Too bad if the WTO does not understand that. The Prime Minister is in search of a political consensus. In the case of TRIPS, that’s slamming the barn door after the horses have fled.

As the sting of what we have agreed to unfolds, our politicians would like the rest of the world and all of India to believe that their hands were tied by those who warmed their chairs before them and that nothing imaginative can come from this weak government. The truth, unfortunately, is less romantic. India first agreed to the basic outlines of a US- and EU-dictated TRIPS agreement in April 1989. It was a very strong government then that stood certain principles on their head. India was hoping for a TRIPS-for-textiles deal. It got neither. Successive governments, whether of the left, right, top or bottom simply buckled further and signed on the dotted line when the TRIPS agreement was produced. Publicly the rhetoric continued. We were told that India would “show” the Americans, it would “show” the EU, it would “show this and show that.” Now, all we have left to “show” insofar as this debate is concerned is a clean pair of heels. And the responsibility for this mess lies with us. Truth is such a bore.

The fact of the matter is that the Indian TRIPS debate, if one can call it that, and the search for political consensus is ten years too late. It was clear to those who followed the Uruguay Round trade talks (late 80s through early 90s) of which TRIPS is one dossier that through new and deep patent protection laws industrialised countries were seeking to protect the monopoly rentier incomes of their transnationals. In addition, developing countries would be denied access to knowledge, their capacity for innovations and technical change would be blocked and the new laws would prevent any serious competitive capacity in the new emerging economies including India. The basic imbalance with TRIPS and its biggest problem was that while it provided protection for intellectual property, there was not much concern shown for the users of that property. India agreed to re-write some of the basic tenets of its 1970 Patents Act.

Several voices during the negotiations sought to raise the issue nationally. Their approach was not anti-West. It was pro-India. A clutch of bureaucrats, political scientists, journalists and non-government organisations were calling for a national consensus on TRIPS and other issues in the Uruguay Round as these were going to affect the way India looked at itself in the next century. When information about what was really going on in Geneva started trickling out, it was deciphered for the rest of the country by a clutch of self-serving bureaucrats eager to please their political masters.

In private many of them complained that India was being done in. One commerce secretary told journalists in Geneva that the best thing about TRIPS was that he would have retired when the sting came. In the end, India’s TRIPS story is a betrayal of people’s trust by those whose business it is to protect the country’s interests. The honest thing would have been to stand up and say we had no choice. We had no choice then. We have no choice now. Accounting for less than one percent of world trade, we are no trading giant. Not yet. The honest thing would have been to cut the fiction and concentrate on damage control during the Round and after.

We can argue till the cows come home about the public-utility vs. private profit aspects the patents issue raises. We can talk about the morality of unfettered profit. Or we can learn the Uruguay round’s clearest lesson: that trade is about shameless self-interest and there is no other morality than the one that serves India. All else is fairy-tale.

Now that reality has caught up with fiction, you would think that our leaders would finally grow up, stop whining and see how to implement their TRIPS commitments in an informed, democratic and systematic manner. It is possible. Trade analysts say India should adopt a minimalist approach and not blindly increase its levels of patents protection during the transitional period. While the basic parameters of the pact are set, there is no obligation to adopt expansive coverage. This approach will give India the time it badly needs to arrive at a political consensus. Beyond the issue of specific commitments in TRIPS are larger questions about trade and international relations that have never been intelligently addressed. All this is serious work, the kind that tires our politicians. This approach would mean taking stock. That would mean taking responsibility. Taking responsibility would mean no more rhetoric, no more spreading the blame.Reports reaching Geneva say TRIPS is being compared to CTBT in India. The show goes on!