📰 GIS-enabled portal maps land-related information
Aims to spur policy-making, investment in manufacturing
•In a little over six months beginning February, the Centre has brought out an online database of more than half a million hectares of land assisting industry. The Geographic Information System-enabled database also has details of close to 3,000 industrial parks/clusters, as well as area-wise availability of agricultural/horticultural crops, and mineral production.
•The portal will soon incorporate information on warehouses, power-grid and financial institutions as well as the demand for industrial infrastructure captured on the basis of applications from entrepreneurs for projects. The exercise is to eliminate the information asymmetry that is currently adversely affecting the country’s industrial policy-making and investments in the manufacturing sector.
Boosting employment
•The development comes in the backdrop of the Centre firming up a new industrial and manufacturing policy to push up the contribution of the manufacturing sector in India’s GDP to 25% by 2020 from the current level of about 16%. The aim is to make India a global manufacturing hub and in the process generate employment locally. The details on the database about government-approved technical institutions will indicate the availability of skilled and semi-skilled talent.
•At present, the database has mapped 539,501 hectares of land and 2,978 industrial clusters/estates/parks/regions/areas/corridor/zones including Special Economic Zones and National Investment and Manufacturing Zones. The information available online is a beta version and will be updated and upgraded soon.
•It currently has specific area-wise details in each state on industrial parks/clusters, the focus sectors, common facilities available for industry, industrial land in use and available industrial land, approved and pending projects, infrastructure including state/national highways, airport, ports and railway stations and electricity, Central/state government incentives, investment/employment-targets and what has been achieved, range of land sale price and lease/rent rates, waste disposal facilities, and contact details of nodal officials.
•The database also has information on the distance from airport/port to each industrial area/cluster and a satellite map view of the area.
•Data is available on agricultural crops such as fibre crops, food grains, oilseeds, plantation crops, pulses and spices, and horticultural crops, including most fruits and vegetables. Also available are the details of mineral production including that of agate, apatite, bauxite, chromite, copper, diamond, flint stone, fluorite, garnet, gold, graphite, iron ore, kyanite, lead and zinc ore, lead, limeshell, limestone, magnesite, manganese ore, moulding sand, phosphorite, selenite, sillimanite, silver, sulphur, tin, vermiculite, wollastonite and zinc.
•The database is being developed by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the National e-Governance Division in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as well as the BISAG – an institute for space applications and geo-informatics under the Gujarat Government.
•Shiv Gupta, project officer, DIPP, told The Hindu the success of the project depends on the proactive participation of the state governments. Currently, the states most engaged in the project are Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, and to a certain extent, Odisha, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The Centre will soon hold workshops with other states to make them understand the importance of the database in attracting investments into the manufacturing sector and boost employment.
📰 India, China to join Indian Ocean exercise
Maiden drill to be chaired by Dhaka
•Despite growing tensions with China, official sources said the Indian Navy would join the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in a maiden maritime search and rescue exercise to be chaired by Bangladesh at the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) in November this year.
•“Bangladesh, the current Chair, is scheduling a maiden International Maritime Search and Rescue Exercise (IMMSAREX) in November in the Bay of Bengal to be attended by ships and aircraft of the members and observers of the IONS,” an official source said.
•The IONS is a regional forum of Indian Ocean littoral states, represented by their Navy chiefs, launched by India in February 2008. It presently has 23 members and nine observers.
Conclave of chiefs
•The exercise comes at a time of intensifying competition among regional navies for dominance in the Indian Ocean — navies of China and Japan, presently observers, in addition to member states like India, France, Iran and the U.K.
•In addition, Bangladesh is also scheduling an “extraordinary conclave of Chiefs,” a meeting of chiefs of Navy before it hands over the Chair to Iran next year, the source added.
•Under the charter of business adopted in 2014, the grouping has working groups on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR), Information Security and Interoperability (IS&I) and anti-piracy now renamed as maritime security.
•India has considerably expanded its engagement with countries to further its own interests as well as to check the rapid expansion of Chinese naval forays in the Indian Ocean. Other countries in the region are also engaged in rapid expansion of their military capabilities.
•The working group’s conferences are held annually and India had chaired the one on HADR in May this year and Pakistan had chaired the meeting on IS&I in July.
📰 A deadly disease explained
Gorakhpur offers the only tertiary care centre for JE with 100 dedicated beds
What is Japanese Encephalitis?
•Japanese Encephalitis (JE) is a mosquito-borne viral infection of the brain. There is, however, a debate about the origin of the disease and whether it is enteroviruses — caused by virus found in pigs and birds. There is no cure for JE.
Why only Gorakhpur?
•While Gorakhpur has a considerable burden of disease, it is incorrect to assume that JE cases are clustered in Gorakhpur district alone. JE epidemics are reported from many parts of India however, it is highly endemic in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. Gorakhpur is a nodal point not because there are more cases in the district but because the only tertiary care centre with 100 beds dedicated to JE is in Gorakhpur. So, cases from nearby districts like Kushinagar and Deoria districts are referred to there for treatment.
Why does vaccination not work?
•It is a misconception that the JE vaccine will eradicate the disease in a short span of time. While vaccination is critical, at the heart of U.P.’s crisis is lack of infrastructure, unclear data on disease burden and a lack of access to clean water and toilets. In March, the State government launched a JE vaccination drive in 38 districts in U.P. but it was not supplemented with access to clean water and sanitation.
•The efficacy of the JE vaccine is between 85-90%. The lessons learnt from polio vaccination drives is that people left out of each round of vaccination are the most disenfranchised, most likely to take ill and least likely to seek medical care in time.
The Gorakhpur mystery..
•Over the years, there have been cases in the area which are clinically different from one another. JE is one kind of encephalitis which falls under a spectrum of diseases called Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES). Doctors in endemic regions in U.P. have found cases with similar symptoms but without the virus, leading to some debate over the cause of the disease. While public health experts have found a difference in case definitions across Eastern districts of U.P., this is something Indian scientific community is still trying to understand.
•However, specific research on this has not been supported by the government so far, despite decades of annual outbreaks. Due to lack of research, U.P. government gets their burden of disease data from hospitals, essentially leaving out cases that do not come into public health facilities. This results in wrong forecasts as the government budget for next year’s JE intervention. Because of the lack of reliable data & research, UP’s policy intervention to curb JE cases has failed for decades.
Were all those who died in BRD Hospital suffering from JE?
•No. The State government is yet to release data of exactly how many of the patients were admitted for JE treatment.
📰 How low can interest rates go?
Not much more, for savings to be meaningful after accounting for inflation
•If you’re a retiree subsisting on income from bank deposits, you’re probably dismayed by the ‘bungee-jump’ in interest rates.
•The interest rate on the one-year term deposit in India’s largest bank has nosedived from 9% in July 2014 to 6.5% now. Interest rates on the three-year term deposit have dropped from 8.75% to 6.25%.
•In pegging down their deposit rates, banks have taken their cues from the RBI. The central bank has pared its repo rate, the rate at which it lends overnight money to banks, from 8% three years ago to 6% now.
How far?
•So, with bank deposit rates dropping by a steep 250 basis points in three years (50 basis points more than the repo rate), how much further can they fall? And will they rebound at all?
•History suggests that we may be quite close to the bottom of this falling rate cycle.
•Looking back at trends in Indian interest rates over the last fifteen years suggests that the debt markets, just like the stock markets, go through cycles.
•The repo rate, which hovered at 9% in April 2001 drifted down to 6% by March 2004, but reversed direction to recapture the 9%peak in July 2008. But, with the global credit crisis hitting India and recessionary trends in the economy, RBI was forced to effect a swift and brutal reduction in rates again from 2008. This time around, the repo rate dropped from 9% in July 2008 to 4.75% by April 2009.
•As growth limped back and inflation began rearing its head, the RBI embarked once again on a hiking spree, taking its rates from 4.75% in 2009 to 8% in 2012. The years 2012 to 2014 saw a sideways crawl in rates. But with inflation moderating and the economy going into slow motion, RBI pruned its repo rate again, from 8% in 2014 to 6% by August 2017. In its recent policy reviews, RBI has shown reluctance to hack away any further, issuing warnings about inflation risks.
Predictable band
•This brief history of interest rates tells us two things. One, benchmark interest rates have broadly gyrated in a band of 6%-9% in the last fifteen years. When the rate sinks to the lower end of the band, circumstances conspire to flag off the next rate hike cycle.
•Rates have dipped below 6% only under extra-ordinary circumstances, such as the global credit crisis. When they do, they have seldom stayed there for good. In 2004-05, the policy rate stayed at 6% for 18 months before the uptrend started. In 2009-10, it stayed below 6% for 15 months before a turnaround.
•Two, India’s central bank prefers to prioritise inflation targeting over growth. It is usually prompt with pre-emptive rate hikes to quell inflation, but doesn’t hurry to cut rates in a downturn.
•Two years ago, RBI’s role as an inflation warrior was further cemented by the Monetary Policy Agreement it has inked with the Centre. The Agreement specifically tasks RBI with ensuring that retail inflation stays within the 2%-6% band. With this new framework in place, RBI is likely to maintain an even closer vigil on inflation and undertake rate cuts even more sparingly than before.
•This is probably why, despite consumer price inflation dipping below its 4% target a good eight months ago, RBI held off further rate cuts for almost ten months until it acted this month.
Variables considered
•But is not just history which suggest that rates could be close to their low point in this cycle.
•Other variables hint at it too. Current inflation rates apart, the central bank considers two other variables in its rate decisions.
•The first is the need to maintain positive real interest rates for savers. RBI officials have indicated that for savers to prefer financial instruments, it is desirable to maintain a real interest rate of anywhere between 1.25% and 2% above inflation.
•Now, while recent inflation readings in India have been at the 2% mark, sustainable inflation rates are believed to be much higher. RBI’s own projections expect inflation rates of 3.5%-4.5% for the second half of this fiscal.
•Assuming a durable inflation rate of 4%, for savers to receive a 1.25%-2% real rates, policy rates need to be pegged at 5.25% to 6%. At worst, therefore, depending on the inflation trajectory, this allows room for the repo rate to dip by 75 basis points from here.
•But remember that bank deposit rates have already been cut by 50 basis points more than repo rates and so have only very limited room to fall further.
•The second variable that RBI considers is the inflation expectations of households for the future. RBI’s recent surveys show that these expectations remain quite elevated despite the rock-bottom official inflation readings. In the latest June survey, households perceived current inflation rates to be 6.4% and expected inflation one year ahead to be at 8.6%. Unless those expectations fall sharply, this puts a floor to rate cuts too.
•If you’re a bank depositor, all this number-crunching suggests two courses of action. Don’t despair, as bank deposit rates may not fall too much from here. And as there’s a live possibility of rates rising again, once they complete their bungee jump, it is best not to lock into these rock-bottom rates for more than a year.
📰 Investors ‘shell’ shocked over SEBI order
Diktat puts at risk shareholder wealth of Rs. 13,000 crore though consultants say action was needed to protect larger interests
•A recent order from markets regulator SEBI brought to a halt trading in more than 170 actively traded stocks on the stock exchanges. These firms formed part of a larger group of 331 ‘shell’ companies whose names the Minsitry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) shared with the regulator for initiating action.
•The order issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last week put at risk investor wealth amounting to almost Rs. 13,000 crore.
•A look at the financials of the companies show that most of them reported at least some income in the last financial year with a few even reporting a positive bottom line.
•There are seven companies that reported a net profit of more than Rs. 20 crore in the financial year ended March 31, 2017. One of them — J Kumar Infraprojects – registered a profit of Rs. 105.51 crore in FY17.
•Further, there are 25 entities that reported a total income of more than Rs. 100 crore in FY17 with Prakash Industries, Kkalpana Industries, J Kumar Infraprojects and Pincon Spirit reporting incomes of between Rs. 1,400 crore and Rs. 2,500 crore.
•From purely a stock price perspective, there are at least 20 companies with a market capitalisation of more than Rs. 100 crore each with the biggest three — J Kumar Infraprojects, Prakash Industries and Parsvnath Developers — having a market capitalisation of more than Rs. 1,000 crore each.
•Interestingly, eight entities, including the biggest three ‘shell companies,’ have already managed to obtain a stay on the trading restrictions by way of interim relief from the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), that observed in clear terms that the capital market watchdog passed the diktat without an iota of investigation.
•“... it is apparent that SEBI passed the impugned order without any investigation... we are prima facie of the opinion, that the impugned communication issued by SEBI on the basis that the appellants are ‘suspected shell companies’ deserves to be stayed,” said SAT.
•However, though many companies may not appear as shell firms purely based on numbers, the list prepared by MCA was based on inputs received from various agencies, including the Income
•Tax department and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), the details of which are not in the public domain.
•“I do not think that SEBI operation on shell companies is over with the SAT order,” said Sumit Agrawal, partner, Suvan Law Advisors and a former SEBI law officer.
•“There may be thorough examination through brokers, investor associations and registrar and transfer agents (RTAs).
•The challenge would be to delist those really non-operational companies or to penalise the brains behind them. My hope is that it does not affect overall sentiment for investment,” added Mr. Agrawal.
Entity verification
•Incidentally, stock exchanges have already asked their member brokers to verify if any of the unlisted entities, that were part of the MCA list, were registered as their clients.
•The brokers will have to verify the credentials of such entities and submit a report to the exchanges by August 31.
•A lot of companies, directors and promoters are going to go to SAT as this order will create an ineligibility for many other things such as directorships in other companies and fund raising, said Mr. Agrawal.
•While the capital market regulator has begun hearing the companies on an individual basis, the proceedings and an order — even in the form of an interim relief — might take time due to the sheer number of companies and the lengthy verification process.
‘Larger interests at stake’
•J.N. Gupta, managing director, Stakeholders Empowerment Services, a proxy advisory firm, said he felt that while one may debate as to whether SEBI could have managed the whole issue better, the larger interest of shareholders was at stake and an immediate action was required.
•“This is a preventive order by SEBI and companies can approach the regulator with proper credentials,” he said adding that the MCA list was not only about shell companies but also those that might have a link with a shell entity.”
‘Not genuine’
•The order assumes significance as the government, in April, had said that during the last three financial years, ie, from 2013-14 to 2015-16, investigations by the Income Tax department led to the detection of more than 1,155 shell companies used as conduits by more than 22,000 beneficiaries.
•The amount involved in non-genuine transactions by such beneficiaries was more than Rs. 13,300 crore, it had said.
•According to Mr. Gupta, companies that have got interim relief at SAT should be told to submit an affidavit stating that they do not have any connection with a shell company and that they have not violated any rules related to disclosures in their balance sheet.
•Meanwhile, there was a clear impact of the regulatory action on the stock market. While there was an overall negative trend due to disappointing quarterly numbers and global geopolitical concerns, the mid-cap and small-cap universe bore the maximum brunt.
Indices decline
•On Tuesday — a day after the diktat — the BSE MidCap and BSE SmallCap indices lost more than 1% each even as the benchmark Sensex declined only 0.8%. Well-known stocks that made to the MCA list were locked at the lower circuit level as investors frantically tried to offload their positions as trading restrictions were being imposed.
•The restrictions include allowing the shares to be the traded only once a month and not allowing any upward price movement beyond the last traded price. Further, an additional margin of 200% of the trade value is to be collected from the buyers.
•SEBI has also advised the exchanges to appoint an independent auditor to audit such listed firms and if necessary, even conduct a forensic audit to verify the business credentials of such firms. If the exchanges are not able to to find appropriate credentials, they can initiate delisting proceedings against the company, as per the order.
📰 Sound and fury
The U.S. President needs to wind down war talk and initiate direct talks with North Korea
•U.S. President Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric against North Korea and equally strident counter-threats by Pyongyang have made the situation in the Korean Peninsula drastically worse. After reports emerged that North Korea has developed a miniaturised nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, Mr. Trump said that the country would be met with “fire and fury” of the sort the world had never seen if it continued to threaten the U.S. If Mr. Trump’s tough talk, which he repeated again in the following days with even a reference to America’s nuclear weapons, was intended to deter Pyongyang from escalating the situation, it was an instant failure. The North issued a specific threat, saying it was considering a plan to fire missiles towards Guam, the American territory in the Pacific. It is appalling that there’s no substantial effort to defuse tensions even as two nuclear powers are steadily escalating threats against each other. Though the State Department has tried to play down Mr. Trump’s remarks and countries like Russia, China and Germany have counselled calm, it’s not clear whether there are any efforts from either side to reach out to the other diplomatically. More worryingly, the U.S. and South Korea are going ahead with massive sea, air and land exercises later this month.
•This is a dangerous spiral. Even a limited strike by the U.S. to diminish North Korea’s missile capabilities, as advised by some strategists in Washington, could instantly turn into a full-scale war if Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s volatile leader, sees it as a threat to his regime. North Korea has installed thousands of pieces of artillery along the demilitarised zone which can rain down fire on South Korea in minutes. In the same way, if Mr. Kim continues to ignore the threats from Washington and goes ahead with an attack on Guam, it could prompt Mr. Trump, who is equally unpredictable when it comes to decision-making, to pick an option his predecessors avoided because of the risks involved. Mr. Trump’s predecessors have some responsibility for the crisis the world is facing today. They resorted to sanctions and war games in the region to weaken and intimidate North Korea even after the futility of such methods became clear. Sanctions work only in a country where the rulers are responsive to their people through some political process, not in a totalitarian regime whose primary goal is its own survival. If Mr. Trump continues to tread the same track, it could also push the world into a major conflict, putting the lives of millions on the line. It’s time for Mr. Trump to change course and take the road less travelled, but the only promising route currently available: direct negotiations with Pyongyang.
📰 Wages of neglect
The Gorakhpur tragedy demands a prompt inquiry and a holisitic health-care overhaul
•The death of more than 60 children in the span of a few days in a major referral hospital in Uttar Pradesh has jolted the conscience of the nation. This was an entirely preventable tragedy. It will take an independent inquiry to establish why children perished at the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur between August 7 and 11. Such an inquiry should examine whether and to what extent the disruption of oxygen supply to those who were extremely sick was a cause for the deaths. That the two events were not entirely unrelated seemed to be indirectly confirmed with the frantic requisitioning of emergency oxygen supplies and the State government suspending the principal of the college. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s immediate assertion that no deaths took place due to lack of oxygen was inappropriate as it would prejudice any administrative probe. After all, the company that supplied the oxygen had issued notice to the hospital on large unpaid bills, warning of a crisis. Only a high-level judicial inquiry will have credibility. That no lessons have been learned by the State government and the Centre is evident from the unremitting annual peaks of disease and death in U.P., particularly in the eastern districts: data show that Japanese encephalitis, which afflicted many of the children who died last week, has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the State between 1978, the year of the first major outbreak, and 2005. High mortality has been witnessed in subsequent years as well. As a parliamentarian representing Gorakhpur for almost two decades, Mr. Adityanath was only too familiar with the epidemics that wracked his constituency frequently. Previous State governments have done little to address this problem, but that cannot be Mr. Adityanath’s response to the tragedy.
•Reducing the incidence of fatal or crippling disease calls for robust medical infrastructure, which governments can create quickly, if they have the will. In the case of U.P., the epidemics have their roots in weak social determinants such as housing and sanitation, coupled with ecological changes. Encephalitis is correlated with expansion of irrigation and construction of dams four decades ago, resulting in an increase in disease-transmitting mosquitoes. Proximity to pigs and birds created viral transmission pathways. The Centre has a vaccination programme in place and a stated commitment to build paediatric intensive care units in priority districts, but these have not had significant impact. The way forward would be for the Indian Council of Medical Research to launch a special commission for U.P., treating it as a public health emergency. It is also an appropriate moment for the Centre and the States to consider their poor record. They trail even other developing economies, such as neighbouring Thailand and some African countries, in moving to universal health care. Such a system should be non-commercial and regulated to contain costs, giving everyone affordable access to doctors, diagnostics and treatment.
📰 Beauty and the regulatory beast
Data from gene trials should be open to the wider public for greater transparency and abundant caution
•India is known for its designs and designers, one more colourful than the other. But more importantly, we are known for our babies, rapidly proliferating even as our population threatens to overtake China. What if the two came together? I speak of designer babies, the new threat on the horizon. And yet, how real is this? And what should we do to regulate this threat?
•First off, designing babies is not anything that’s new for India. Indeed, if a recent pronouncement by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh health wing is anything to go by, we have a medley of mantras to ensure that our babies are born “tall, fair and smart” — an “uttam santati” (ideal progeny) of sorts!
Threat of designer babies
•Indeed, even as the narrative of “modern” science gets suffused with an alternative epistemological wisdom of the past, it becomes difficult to separate the wheat (of wisdom) from the chaff (of conjecture). But we’ll leave that for another day. Within the realm of modern science, we now have the impending threat of designer babies, stemming from a revolutionary technique entailing the editing of our genes by bacterial DNA scissors called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats). The gene editing technique using such DNA scissors is titled “CRIPSR/Cas9” and was the subject of an intense patent battle between the University of California, Berkeley and MIT/Broad Institute. The verdict was somewhat Solomonic, splitting the patent pie between these two rivals.
•Since its evolution, CRISPR/Cas9 has been tested across an array of domains, such as human health (gene-based therapy) and agro biotech (pest-resistant crops). In fact, trials for gene-based therapies are already under way, with scientists successfully editing out genetic mutations that code for disorders such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a functional impairment of the heart) and retinitis pigmentosa (a degenerative disorder of the eye). The question now is: if we can edit out medically problematic gene sequences, can we also alter genes to make us look more attractive? Smarter? Stronger? Fairer? In other words, can we beautify the babies of tomorrow? It is this scary spectre of a new age eugenics that forms the starting point for this piece.
Safety, efficacy of techniques
•Given that the line between “cure” and “cosmetics” is a fast blurring one, one has to first acknowledge a rather nebulous slippery slope here. Assuming, however, that one could make this distinction, the solution appears seemingly easy: prevent the purely cosmetic in baby design, while paving the way for life-saving medical interventions. But is the science so certain that we can rest easy, without worrying about the “side effects”?
•And this is where the regulatory beast steps in. For we need to ask: how do we establish the “safety” and “efficacy” of these techniques? Most drug regulatory regimes insist that drug makers submit clinical trial data to establish that their drugs are safe and effective. Gene therapies and the defect-free babies that flow forth ought to be subject to a similar regulatory standard.
•However, the question is: how long must these trials last? Genetic changes and alterations take years to manifest and side effects perhaps even more so. Do we put all these potentially life-saving medical advances on hold till then? Or do we tinker on, not bothering ourselves with the fate of the future? For in the long run, as Keynes famously noted, we’re all dead anyway!
•Clearly, the line must be drawn somewhere. Perhaps, much like judge made common law, one could adopt an incremental case-by-case approach. For, evolving a precise principle that will account for all possible cases in future is a quixotic feat, to say the least. Unfortunately, insisting on foolproof safety data at the budding stages of a breakthrough technology might bury it altogether. Indeed, even within the realm of standard drugs (based on chemical molecules), the most voluminous of safety data still does not ensure that the drug is safe; there are plenty of instances of adverse effects reported well after the drug has been cleared. If we are to wait for the perfect safety data, that wait may well be forever.
Innovation and ethics
•One must therefore balance out the innovation imperative with that of ethics. Unfortunately, for way too long, these two domains have operated in largely different silos, and the twain seem to have hardly ever met. But now, with some of the leading tech evangelists expressing their ethical concerns in public, its kosher to cross over. Indeed, the fight today is more about which of these threats rate higher on the Frankenstein index: Artificial Intelligence (AI) or gene editing? Elon Musk “trumps” in favour of the former, while India-born tech maverick Vinod Khosla plonks in favour of the latter. As for the zesty Mark Zuckerberg, even as he took umbrage at Mr. Musk’s cautionary call on AI, his own bots went ahead and apparently invented their own language.
•As these tech titans fight it out, one shudders at the prospect of a fearsome future, where AI robots begin to edit our babies! Given these concerns, the line between the permissive and the prohibited will always remain contested. However, we could begin by establishing certain baseline principles. First, one might insist on a more rigorous regulatory standard (safety/efficacy data, etc.) for interventions that cuddle close to the “cosmetic”. And a less onerous one for critical life-saving therapies.
•Second, and more importantly, all data relating to safety and efficacy of these new technologies ought to be put out in the public domain. This is where most governments get it wrong — cosying up to big corporate behemoths who argue that this trial data is a “trade secret”, a valuable intellectual property of sorts! This argument was recently endorsed by the Indian regulator before the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) in the context of clinical trials for GM mustard. Fortunately, the CIC ruled that the wider public interest trumped any potential IP interest in the trial data.
•Data may be the new oil. However, unlike oil, which often requires the incentive of exclusivity (a prospecting license) to trigger heavy-duty investments, one cannot afford any exclusivity for health data. It is far too valuable to be tucked away in the secret IP cabins of corporate conglomerates. For, even the best of regulators can never really spot all the “bugs” in the bountiful data that is piled up before them.
•We need to therefore encourage more transparency and openness; and open up this trial data to the wider public, and to scientists and doctors. That way, even if our regulators don’t get it right, we’ll at least have the prospect of someone somewhere spotting a glitch. That someone could well be you and I — the aam aadmi so to speak.
•In the end, only a democratic regulatory enterprise premised on openness and public participation can ensure that we rein in the dangers of designer babies and the like. Lest a utopian future become a dystopian nightmare.
