UNFINISHED BUSINESS

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

The bottomline is that patents will create more monopolistic conditions and distort prices and these could hurt the interests of patients. The business of medicine is after all one that concerns life and death. But what is also clear is that while the trips agreement binds India to have an effective system of patenting, it does not define what this effective system is. What we have is the majority way of doing things -- primarily because trips has been engineered largely by large us corporate interests and the government has then worked hard to push the formula in countries across the world.

But its not really necessary to be so subservient. There can be, and are, less minimilistic approaches to trips, which comes with a flexibility that allows governments to comply and yet protect the interests of their people, and in particular, the interests of poor patients. But the current amendment goes no further than the thresholds of us -compliant regimes.

It's depressing. It's also surprising. And its impact, however poorly understood today, may just become the straw that breaks the back of our already crumbling healthcare system. This amendment leaves India in no position to take centrestage as the champion of the developing world. It presents no new approaches, exercises no imagination and certainly has no provisions that stretch the frontiers of the rules laid down by the Northern corporates. In fact, it goes out of its way to adopt the very provisions that it found offensive in the negotiations under wto.

What, then will Kamal Nath, the minister of commerce and industry do the next time he goes, as the champion of the South, to argue in global forums, ? Roll over and play dead? 12jav.net12jav.net