Daily News Compilation(HINDU) for 24th March

Friction over drug patents

Differences over intellectual property rights (IPRs) have emerged as a strong undercurrent in India’s economic relations with the U.S.

Columbia University Professor Arvind Panagariya calls “the hijacking of the economic policy dialogue between the U.S. and India by pharmaceutical lobbies in the U.S.” 

Issue - Piqued by India’s decision to use the flexibilities that are available in the existing TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement, big pharma in the U.S., along with other influential business groups, is using its considerable clout to pressure the U.S. Trade Representative into designating India as a “priority foreign country” in its 2014 Special 301 Report, due on April 30. 

Consequences - That label is reserved for the worst offenders of IPRs, and as a follow-up the U.S. could impose trade sanctions such as withdrawing tariff preferences for Indian exports. In an election year, India will most likely retaliate through anti-dumping duties or tariff hikes on U.S. imports.

The genesis of this issue goes back to 1994 when at the Uruguay Round of trade talks India, while not being wholly successful in resisting U.S. attempts to have a 20-year product patent on medicines and chemicals, managed to incorporate certain flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement. However, since 2005 when India incorporated patent protection into domestic laws, it has used the flexibilities only twice. 

1. In March 2012, it issued a compulsory licence to an Indian firm for a cancer drug, whose patent-holder, the German multinational Bayer, had priced it well beyond the reach of a majority of Indian patients. 

2. Under another provision, countries have the option to deny a patent to a drug that involved only incremental innovation over an existing drug. In April 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the 2006 decision of the Indian patent office denying the Swiss multinational Novartis patent on a drug that involved only incremental innovation. 

Clearly, not just these two instances but the prospect of other countries emulating India has rattled big pharma. India, which has not violated the treaty obligations, can challenge any prospective action by the U.S. by taking it before the WTO, whose dispute settlement mechanism has a good record of impartiality. Developing countries as also a few developed ones expect India to act effectively to safeguard its domestic commitment to public health.

Employer of the last resort?

India Human Development Surveys of 2004-05 and 2011-12, organised by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, surveyed about 27,000 rural households in 2004-05, before the Act was passed, and in 2011-12 when the programme was implemented in all districts. Hence, it provides a unique opportunity to examine household well-being before and after the implementation of the Act.

Our scorecard on MGNREGA focusses on three issues: 

(i) The reach and targeting of the programme; 

MGNREGA website claims that 500 lakh households — about 36 per cent of rural households — obtained employment from MGNREGA in 2011-12.

IHDS Survey : 25 per cent and National Sample Survey of 2009-10 : 25 per cent 

Regardless of the discrepancy between administrative statistics and actual usage, the programme is remarkably well-targeted. This targeting operates at three levels. 

At the village level, the uptake in villages with low levels of infrastructure is higher (28 per cent) than in villages with better infrastructure (21 per cent). It is more difficult to organise new programmes in more backward areas, so MGNREGA’s success in achieving this goal is quite remarkable.

At the household level, households from the marginalised communities — Dalits and Adivasis — are far more likely to participate in MGNREGA (36 per cent and 30 per cent respectively) than other households (20 per cent). 

At the individual level, older workers are disproportionately more likely to participate in MGNREGA than in the general labour force. Women, too, have higher participation rates; although only 29 per cent of all non-agricultural wage workers are women, 44 per cent of all MGNREGA workers are women.

(ii) Experience of the households that participated in MGNREGA; and 

However, even for those households doing MGNREGA work, the number of MGNREGA work-days is not very large. About 50 per cent of participating households work 40 or fewer days. MGNREGA administrative data shows that less than 10 per cent of the households complete their full 100 days; the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) data record about 15 per cent of the participating households completing 100 days. In the run-up to the election, the government has raised the limits for Schedule Tribes (ST) households living in forest areas to 150 days, from 100. But 85 per cent of the participating ST households and 95 per cent of all ST households have not exhausted their current limit of 100 days. When asked by IHDS interviewers why they had not completed the full 100 days, 75 per cent of the MGNREGA participants cited “No Work” as the primary reason. It would seem more important to focus on ensuring the full 100 days of work for everyone than to increase entitlement to 150 days.

For those households that participate in MGNREGA, the income from MGNREGA forms about 14 per cent of their total income. While the Act mandates payment in cash for people who are not offered work, we found few respondents knew about this provision and even fewer availed of it.

(iii) Broader changes in the rural labour markets between 2005 and 2012.

It is not clear whether MGNREGA is providing alternative sources of work or attracting people who were formerly underemployed or disguisedly employed. The IHDS data document an increase of just five days of work for men over a 12- month period in rural areas and four days for women. This is not a massive increase, suggesting that some of the MGNREGA work may have replaced rather than added to former work.

The IHDS also documents other changes in rural labour markets. Among workers, non-farm work has grown substantially while an exclusive agriculture focus has declined. The proportion of individuals who focus solely on agricultural activities— cultivation, agricultural labour, and animal care— has gone down from 51 per cent of men aged 15-59 to 35 per cent; for women the drop is from 84 per cent to 66 per cent. Much of this drop comes from changes in agricultural wage work and caring for animals; own-account cultivation is unchanged. While we do not know that MGNREGA caused these changes, the alternative non-farm employment is certainly part and parcel of broader changes in rural labour markets.

This declining agricultural employment has accompanied wage growth for daily wage workers, particularly agricultural labour. These wage increases for women are particularly interesting. Historically, the lack of non-agricultural work has constrained women’s wages. If MGNREGA is in any way associated with the growth in women’s wages, this is a positive outcome. But these observations may also point to a real concern for farmers — a possible lack of availability of agricultural workers and high wages during harvest time. Rising agricultural wages for both men and women and simultaneously declining agricultural wage work suggest that it would be a sensible precaution to ensure that MGNREGA work is not timed for the peak agricultural periods.

A million missing patients

Tuberculosis is not just a clinical issue. Its management requires the interplay of clinical medicine, social sciences, factors of equity and right to health. Ironically, this complex interplay is what prevents patients from accessing care early, which is vital to preventing deaths.

DOTS system of delivery under the Revised National TB Control Programme, RNTCP

The patient-centred approach is supposed to be the hallmark where the caregiver becomes entirely responsible for ensuring that the patient takes drugs regularly and completes the treatment. However, the programme has shortcomings:

1. not factored in and adequately addressed a critical issue — a patient’s right to choose the provider. 

2. issue of confidentiality, given the stigmatisation of TB patients in the community and by health providers themselves. 

3. Public health system has not taken into account the need for social and nutritional support. 

4. Structural issues of delivery: TB control services are delivered through a vertical mechanism that is not integrated into primary health care delivery, which is the first point of care in public health services. This is why despite the RNTCP offering free diagnosis and treatment everywhere, patients prefer private providers.

Private Sector

More than 60 per cent of patients choose a provider from the private sector, most often the point of first contact. Why private sector is not good:

1. Patients have no protection against inaccurate testing or irrational prescriptions. 

2. Poor administration of drugs along with irrational prescriptions and unregulated sale of anti-TB drugs fuel the transmission of drug-resistant TB. 

So what is needed:

1. Government should regulate the private sector

2.  activists must seek accountability in the areas of diagnosis and treatment

3. serology-based testing for TB should be banned

4. mandatory notification of TB cases made compulsory

Yet, the government seems disinclined to regulate the private sector.

For the public health system :

1. inclusion of civil society in the planning and review of the anti-TB programme at the national, State and district levels. 

2. Funding to build empowered communities.

3. need to strengthen community engagement to ensure open participation, empower the patient, family and community with information and knowledge to speak out for their rights and for public health safety.

Gyaan

DOTS (directly observed treatment, short-course), is the name given to the tuberculosis control strategy recommended by the World Health Organization.According to WHO, “The most cost-effective way to stop the spread of TB in communities with a high incidence is by curing it. The best curative method for TB is known as DOTS.” DOTS has five main components:

1. Government commitment (including political will at all levels, and establishment of a centralized and prioritized system of TB monitoring, recording and training).
2. Case detection by sputum smear microscopy.
3. Standardized treatment regimen directly of six to eight months observed by a healthcare worker or community health worker for at least the first two months.
4. A regular, uninterrupted drug supply.
5. A standardized recording and reporting system that allows assessment of treatment results.

Wanted, a vote for education

Effects of education are visible in the long run (If we make changes in Primary education system then the success of it will be visible only after some years). So because of this citizens don't take into account education as a factor while assessing a government's efficiency because they are more concerned with elementary problems like water, electricity, inflation and police. Therefore education does not count as a serious election issue.

So the author says that voice of education can be heard in this Lok Sabha election. It is through the participation of individuals like Medha Patkar, Rajmohan Gandhi and Yogendra Yadav that the power of education is going to make an indirect impact. They are teachers, scientists, lawyers, journalists or simply “social activists” — a category that signifies the vacuum that has been growing around electoral politics since the Emergency.

According to him Education is all about learning, but what is learnt and how it is taught make all the difference. Since the 1990s, India has witnessed a silent crisis in education. While the system expanded and people’s expectations grew, the institutional apparatus was allowed to decay. Commercial interests gained dominance over education and television, giving rise to an ethos in which chicanery gets the better of politics and planning. 

Contrary forces are at work in this election. On the one side we see a vast number of first-time voters, the majority of whom are also first-generation school-goers. Despite a paucity of resources, a vast stratum of the deprived has pushed the process of curricular reforms that aim at “connecting” things so that the young can make sense of things. 

Role of the media

Elections signify a decisive moment in the journey of democracy. Candidates who aspire to represent citizens must take a credible and holistic view of reality, both past and present. Seen this way, elections have a deeply educative role, even as the outcome of any election depends on the education people have received in schools and colleges. 

At the same time, a new threat to the sanctity of elections has emerged. The manufacturing of public opinion has emerged as big business. The rise of commercial television poses a complex challenge to democracy in the kind of society we are. It is not just the specific malaise of paid news about which the Election Commission has expressed its concern. A deeper, more amorphous problem lies in the nature of TV and its commercialised model.

As an image-based medium, TV lends a visual immediacy to ideas and debates. Democracy calls for a relaxed pursuit and exchange of ideas, and TV can provide a reasonable site for such an exchange. But if commercial interests dominate TV, its ability to serve as an educative site gets eroded. This is precisely what has happened to so many Indian channels. The debate format they offer creates the impression of openness, but format alone cannot nurture the spirit and culture of debate. The pressure of time camouflages the compulsions of business. The overarching aim is to entertain the viewer. It is achieved when debates become shrill and sink into incoherent fights. This format suits the prevailing political climate because it sharpens polarities and conveys the message that nothing can be explained. Ultimately, all arguments lose meaning; only faces remain. Thus, politics is reduced to personality choice. Voters get used to the idea that they are dealing with faces and gestures, not ideas and issues.

United Progressive Alliance has demonstrated an amazing indifference to education. It left the field to be harvested by commercial interests at will. If we look at the Opposition parties, the States where they rule offer no stories worth any positive notice. Gujarat showed incredible incompetence in producing textbooks. In Uttar Pradesh, the distribution of free laptops was treated like an educational innovation. The Bharatiya Janata Party government in Madhya Pradesh failed to restore the professional status and dignity of teachers. In Punjab and Maharashtra, smugness and inertia are the hallmarks of educational governance. These States were once regarded as being in the vanguard. Across the spectrum of national and regional parties, the articulation of the educational agenda has got frozen around tired key words, signifying a lack of vision and will. As a social need and national goal, education has become irrelevant to the political process.

Flip side to good news

Amid the generally bleak economic scenario, two recent news items should provide some relief to the government. 

1. The narrowing of the current account deficit (CAD) to $31.1 billion (2.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP)) during the first-half of the year (April-December 2013) from $69.8 billion (5.2 per cent of GDP) during the same period in the previous year 

2. Both CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation (retail inflation) and WPI (Wholesale Price Index) inflation eased substantially in February. 

Perceptive analysts do not discount the achievement but are not so sanguine about the ways in which the CAD has been brought down.

Gold imports

The reduction in the CAD is mainly due to a severe clampdown on gold imports through tariff and non-tariff measures. 

Due to this there has been a spurt in gold smuggling with its attendant deleterious consequences. 

1. The government loses revenue which would have accrued if the trade had remained above ground. 

2. Smuggling has major implications for law and order. 

3. Hawala trade has revived. 

4. Besides, India’s considerable exports of jewellery have been hit by the clampdown on gold imports.

Trade balance

CAD contraction has occurred due to a rigorous curtailing of gold imports. Exports need to go up on a sustained basis but fall in imports is not at all positive.

Inflation

Despite the appreciable fall, retail inflation is still high. Inflation expectations remain high consequently. Besides, the fall in inflation is almost entirely due to a sharp fall in vegetable prices. This was anticipated by the RBI much earlier. The possibility of vegetable prices going up cannot be ruled out. Reports speak of unseasonal rains in some important vegetable producing States.

Importantly, the RBI is shifting monetary policy anchor to retail inflation in line with the Urjit Patel Committee’s recommendations. Moreover, core inflation — non-food, non-fuel manufactured inflation — has been going up steadily. This is a widely watched measure of inflation.

In the present context, all these indicate maintenance of a status quo by the RBI on April 1.

Gyaan

Fertilizer Ministry to move CCEA to slash potash subsidy

Following the go ahead by the Election Commission, the Fertilizer Ministry is gearing to move the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) seeking approval to reduce subsidy on potash nutrient for 2014-15 fiscal, a move aimed at reducing the subsidy component by Rs. 900 crore.

There has been a constant fall in the global prices of potash over the past few months resulting in availability at $320 per tonne instead of $430 per tonne a year ago. The subsidy on other major complex fertilizer phosphate has been kept at last year's level of Rs.12,350 per tonne as the global prices are stationary.
In April 2010, the government decontrolled the P&K (non-urea) fertilizers by giving freedom to the manufacturers to fix maximum retail price (MRP). But, it offers a fixed nutrient based subsidy (NBS) on P&K nutrients to keep domestic rates lower.

ICANN suspends closed generic top level domain bids

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN) has put on hold a controversial decision to allot closed generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) to applicants. Governments and activists had feared that allotting such generic domains would lead to a global corporate monopoly over the World Wide Web, by claiming exclusive rights for domains such as .book or .beauty.

Last week, a newly reconstituted gTLD committee paid heed to the objections raised by ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee, which had in April pointed out several problems in the process of handing out gTLDs under a “single registrant” business model.

This differs from the regular business model for TLD names like .com or .org where the domains names are then resold to other users in an open market on first come, first served basis. Under the single registrant model, companies like Amazon and Google could own exclusively .book or .cloud, both generic name strings, thus paving the way for monopolistic branding. 

In April, the Government Advisory Committee of ICANN met in Beijing and prepared what was called as “Beijing Communiqué” in which it had raised, among other things, objections over applications for the generic TLDs .islam or .halal. It raised fears that the applicants did not have community backing. It also requested ICANN to not proceed beyond initial assessment for the bids for domains such as .shenzen, .date, .spa and a few others. 

Gyaan

What is a TLD?

The right-most label in a domain name (e.g. www.icann.org) is referred to as its "top-level domain" (TLD). 
TLDs with two letters have been established for over 240 countries and external territories and are referred to as "country-code" TLDs or "ccTLDs." 
TLDs with three or more characters are referred to as "generic" TLDs, or "gTLDs." 

The responsibility for operating each gTLD (including maintaining a registry of the domain names within the gTLD) is delegated to a particular organization. These organizations are referred to as "registry operators" or "sponsors."

Types of gTLDs

Generally speaking, an unsponsored gTLD Registry operates under policies established by the global Internet community directly through the ICANN process. .biz, .com, .info, .name, .net, .org, and .pro are unsponsored gTLDs.

A sponsored gTLD (sometimes called an sTLD) is a specialized gTLD that has a sponsor representing a specific community that is served by the gTLD. The sponsor thus carries out delegated policy-formulation responsibilities over many matters concerning the gTLD. .aero, .cat, .coop, .jobs, .mobi, .museum, and .travel are sponsored gTLDs. Entities wishing to register domain names in a sponsored gTLD will be required to meet certain eligibility requirements.