THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 24 March
Budgetary allocation sought for Children’s Act provisions
•Organisations working for the rights of children, came together on Thursday under Childrights Network, to urge the State government to ensure that Goa becomes a safe haven for children.
•Nishtha Desai of Children’s Rights in Goa (CRG), said, “Make budgetary allocation to implement various provisions of the Goa Children’s Act (GCA), 2003.”
•“The Act is held up in national and international forums as a unique law. But most of its provisions are yet to be implemented as governments have failed to make any budgetary allocation for it,” Ms. Desai told The Hindu.
•She said the Act provides for health cards to children, early intervention for development disorders, gender sensitisation and rights awareness in schools, a child friendly tourism code, municipal and village child committees, and plans to address child labour, children in difficult circumstances, and rescuing children from sexual exploitation.
•The child rights network said the Act came into force 14 years ago. They also said that incidents of child abuse have risen in Goa, with as many as 324 cases reported between April 2014 and July 2015. “Only a handful of village child committees have been set up, but implementation of the GCA could build safety nets to prevent children from being abused or exploited in any way.”
•The 2017-18 State Budget will be presented in the Assembly by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday.
TB diagnosis, treatment sub-optimal in prisons
•Screening, diagnosis and treatment of people with tuberculosis is “sub-optimal” in Indian prisons, says a study published recently.
•Only 79 prisons (50%) screened new inmates at the time of entry, and 92 prisons (59%) carried out periodic or regular screening. As a result, the researchers from the Delhi-based International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) were able to diagnose 80 new TB cases by screening nearly 5,100 prisoners. These people “could have been missed in the existing [TB testing] system” in Indian prisons.
157 prisons studied
•The study was conducted in 157 prisons — central, district and sub-district — that housed 0.2 million inmates. There were 342 inmates with TB in 92 prisons when the study was carried out. The results were published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases .
•The study found an association between periodic screening and TB patients but no such association between the entry-level screening and TB patients.
•“Entry-level screening helps to identify TB patients among those prisoners/inmates who are new in the prison. Regular screening identifies TB patients among those who have been in the prison for certain duration and are at higher risk [owing to prison conditions]. Our study indicates that entry-level screening alone is not sufficient to diagnose all TB patients in prisons and needs to be supplemented with regular screening,” Banuru Muralidhara Prasad from The Union and the first author of the study says in an email.
•The WHO and The Union advocate regular screening. “In this study, regular screening was limited to a few central and district prisons,” the paper notes.
Diagnostic facility
•Entry-level screening is more in prisons which had a doctor and was the least in sub-district prisons. Though doctors are available in 129 (89%) prisons, only 65% were trained under the national tuberculosis programme.
•Though the availability of diagnostic facility in prisons ensures early diagnosis of TB, the study found the availability of diagnostic and treatment services had “no significant” relation to TB diagnosis. Central prisons, where inmates serve more than two years of imprisonment, had better facilities — doctors trained in TB programme (90%), periodic screening (73%) and availability of TB services (65%) — compared with district and sub-district prisons.
The compulsive patent hoarding disorder
•It takes money to make money. CSIR-Tech, the commercialisation arm of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), realised this the hard way when it had to shut down its operations for lack of funds. CSIR has filed more than 13,000 patents — 4,500 in India and 8,800 abroad — at a cost of Rs. 50 crore over the last three years. Across years, that’s a lot of taxpayers’ money, which in turn means that the closing of CSIR-Tech is a tacit admission that its work has been an expensive mistake — a mistake that we tax-paying citizens have paid for.
•Recently, CSIR’s Director-General Girish Sahni claimed that most of CSIR’s patents were “bio-data patents”, filed solely to enhance the value of a scientist’s resume and that the extensive expenditure of public funds spent in filing and maintaining patents was unviable. CSIR claims to have licensed a percentage of its patents, but has so far failed to show any revenue earned from the licences. This compulsive hoarding of patents has come at a huge cost. If CSIR-Tech was privately run, it would have been shut down long ago. Acquiring Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) comes out of our blind adherence to the idea of patenting as an index of innovation. The private sector commercialises patents through the licensing of technology and the sale of patented products to recover the money spent in R&D. But when the funds for R&D come from public sources, mimicking the private sector may not be the best option.
Patents and moral hazard
•While it’s true that it costs lakhs of rupees to get a patent in India, government-funded research organisations are likely to spend more money on patents so long as they are not asked to bear the risk. Reckless filing of patents using public funds may be explained by the economic concept of moral hazard. According to economist Paul Krugman, it happens in “any situation in which one person makes the decision about how much risk to take, while someone else bears the cost if things go badly”. In the case of public-funded research, the reckless filing of patents without due diligence results from the moral hazard of the government bearing the risk of patents that don’t generate revenue. In the insurance sector, moral hazard refers to the loss-increasing behaviour of the insured who acts recklessly when the loss is covered by another. Insurance companies check moral hazard by introducing copayment from the insured. Dr. Sahni’s statement that CSIR laboratories need to bear 25% of expenses for their patents acknow
ledges the moral hazard.
•The National IPR Policy released last year does not offer any guideline on distinguishing IPR generated using public funds from private ones — it views every IPR with private objectives by insisting on commercialisation. Dissemination of technology to the masses, participation in nation-building and creating public goods are rarely objectives that drive the private sector. The IPR policy of some publicly-funded research institutions allows for 30-70% of the income generated through the commercialisation of the patent to be shared with the creators of the invention, i.e., scientists and professors on the payroll of the government. Such a policy could promote private aggrandisement and may work against public interest. In contrast, the IPR policy of private companies does not allow for a payback on the share of royalties earned by patents.
Possible solution
•The fate of CSIR-Tech is proof that the current model of commercialisation does not work with respect to publicly-funded research. So, how do we ensure that public-funded research reaches the masses and check the excessive filing of patents without due diligence? A possible solution to preserve the objective of publicly funded research is to devise an IPR policy wherein patents are initially offered on an open royalty-free licence to start-ups. Once start-ups commercialise the inventions successfully, the royalty-free licence could be converted into a revenue-sharing model.
•It is predominantly taxpayers’ money that goes into public-funded research. When research is commercialised by private entities, it tends to be sold back to the public at a price. America is in the midst of such a conundrum, where talks are going on of granting French pharmaceutical company Sanofi exclusive licence for the drug against the Zika virus — a drug which has already cost the American exchequer $43 million in R&D. Granting Sanofi this would defeat the purpose of public funds expended on research as the company would charge the American public again for the life-saving drug.
•Putting granted patents on an open licence can be testimony to the commercial viability of the things we are patenting using public money. Not only would it bring a sense of accountability to the managers who run the system but it would also open up publicly-funded research to a whole lot of people, especially start-ups, who can now test, verify, work and put the patented technology into the market.
Jobs impact of ‘Make In India’ under review
•The Centre is working on a ‘compliance report” of its flagship ‘Make In India’ (MII) initiative that attempts to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub as well as generate large-scale employment.
•The objective of the exercise, among other things, is to find out whether the government departments and agencies implementing the MII programme are meeting the deadlines envisaged in the ‘MII Action Plan’ of December 2014.
MII initiative
•The MII initiative covers 25 focus sectors ranging from automobiles to wellness. The ‘MII Action Plan’ had set short-term (one year) and medium-term (three years) targets “to boost investments in the 25 sectors” and to “raise the contribution of the manufacturing sector to 25% of the GDP by 2020.”
•At a national workshop held in December 2014 on these 25 sectors, an Action Plan was finalised with the help of Secretaries to the Indian Government as well as industry leaders.
•As per the National Manufacturing Policy, “the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP has stagnated at 15%-16% since 1980 while the share of comparable economies in Asia is much higher at 25%-34%.”
•Government sources said a detailed study is also being undertaken on the impact of the MII initiative including a sector-wise assessment regarding job creation and foreign direct investment inflows using the National Industrial Classification Code.
RBI, CSO data
•Data from the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Statistics Office are also being looked into in this regard, they said, adding that inputs are being sought from the State governments as well.
•The compliance report is being monitored and evaluated at the highest level, including by the Prime Minister’s Office, the sources said. Recently, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce wanted an assessment to be done on how the MII initiative has helped the country’s micro, small and medium enterprises.
•It recommended that dedicated steps should be taken to ensure that FDI promotes the MSME sector, and sought to know the factors behind the Foreign Portfolio Investments turning negative and its impact on the Indian industry. The panel also wanted to learn if the MII initiative has seized the opportunity of demographic dividend in the country.
$1 trillion by 2025
•According to the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), “India’s manufacturing sector has the potential to touch $1 trillion by 2025. There is potential for the sector to account for 25-30% of the country’s GDP and create up to 90 million domestic jobs by 2025.”
•“FDI inflows in India’s manufacturing sector grew by 82% year-on-year to $16.13 billion during April-November 2016,” according to the IBEF, a trust formed by the Commerce Ministry to promote of the ‘Made in India’ label overseas.
•It said, “The government has an ambitious plan to locally manufacture as many as 181 products. The move could help infrastructure sectors … that require large capital expenditure and revive the $27.75 billion Indian capital goods business.”
Do we need a presidential system?
•This debate is academic. A switchover to the presidential system is not possible under our present constitutional scheme because of the ‘basic structure’ doctrine propounded by the Supreme Court in 1973 which has been accepted by the political class without reservation, except for an abortive attempt during the Emergency by Indira Gandhi’s government to have it overturned. The Constituent Assembly had made an informed choice after considering both the British model and the American model and after Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had drawn up a balance sheet of their merits and demerits. To alter the informed choice made by the Constituent Assembly would violate the ‘basic structure’ of the Constitution. I must clarify that I have been a critic of the ‘basic structure’ doctrine.
Abuse of power worries
•A presidential system centralises power in one individual unlike the parliamentary system, where the Prime Minister is the first among equals. The surrender to the authority of one individual, as in the presidential system, is dangerous for democracy. The over-centralisation of power in one individual is something we have to guard against. Those who argue in favour of a presidential system often state that the safeguards and checks are in place: that a powerful President can be stalled by a powerful legislature. But if the legislature is dominated by the same party to which the President belongs, a charismatic President or a “strong President” may prevent any move from the legislature. On the other hand, if the legislature is dominated by a party opposed to the President’s party and decides to checkmate him, it could lead to a stalemate in governance because both the President and the legislature would have democratic legitimacy.
•A diverse country like India cannot function without consensus-building. This “winner takes it all” approach, which is a necessary consequence of the presidential system, is likely to lead to a situation where the views of an individual can ride roughshod over the interests of different segments.
What about the States?
•The other argument, that it is easier to bring talent to governance in a presidential system, is specious. You can get ‘outside’ talent in a parliamentary system too. Right from C.D. Deshmukh to T.A. Pai to Manmohan Singh to M.G.K. Menon to Raja Ramanna, talent has been coming into the parliamentary system with the added safeguard of democratic accountability, because the ‘outsiders’ have to get elected after assuming office. On the other hand, bringing ‘outside’ talent in a presidential system without people being democratically elected would deter people from giving independent advice to the chief executive because they owe their appointment to him/her.
•Those who speak in favour of a presidential system have only the Centre in mind. They have not thought of the logical consequence, which is that we will have to move simultaneously to a “gubernatorial” form in the States. A switch at the Centre will also require a change in the States. Are we ready for that?
Arc to West Asia
•By hosting the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Israel, the two heavyweights in West Asia that do not have formal diplomatic relations, in consecutive weeks, Beijing has sent yet another signal on its growing appetite to deepen ties with the region. During the visit of King Salman last week, China and Saudi Arabia announced an investment cooperation deal worth $65 billion that will boost partnerships in fields such as energy, finance and aerospace. Days later, Chinese President Xi Jinping met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Beijing, where both leaders vowed to strengthen cooperation in the technology and agriculture sectors. Over the years China has built strong economic ties with countries in West Asia, while staying clear of the region’s several crises and hostilities. It is one of the top buyers of oil from Saudi Arabia and a key trading partner of Israel. For Iran, Beijing remained a trusted ally even during the time of sanctions. China was one of the few countries that continued to buy oil from Iran when most others, including India, either halted trade or implemented massive cuts in imports under American pressure. China’s economic ties with West Asia assumed greater significance after Mr. Xi unveiled the One Belt, One Road initiative. West Asia plays a major role in this Silk Road revival plan, which the Chinese believe will fortify their global standing.
•Of late, China has shown a greater interest in expanding its engagement with the region beyond the economic sphere. Its relationship with Iran has already acquired strategic dimensions. It is one of the supporters of the Bashar al-Assad regime in civil war-stricken Syria. In the UN Security Council, China, along with Russia, has consistently vetoed U.S.-backed resolutions on Syria, while at the same time offering to broker peace between rival factions. China has also recognised Palestine as a state and offered support for the Palestinians. During his meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Xi said peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine would be good for both parties and the region. The Chinese have also urged Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together to attain peace. All this indicates that China is ready to end its strategic reluctance in dealing with West Asia and to adopt a gradualist proactive policy that suits its profile as a fast-rising global power. But there are risks as well. Unlike the U.S. and Russia, China has traditionally played a risk-free global role, staying focussed on economic development. It lacks experience in navigating the political, religious, sectarian and tribal tensions in West Asia, both among states and within countries. The three major pillars of China’s West Asia policy — Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel — are rival powers. The challenge before Beijing, if it wants to enter the troubled political waters of West Asia, is to maintain a perfect balancing act.
