Patently in trouble

It was too good to be true. The coming together of the BJP and the Congress in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday may have made it seem that the ...

It was too good to be true. The coming together of the BJP and the Congress in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday may have made it seem that the amendment to the patents law, after a long and troubled history in which the BJP itself played no mean part, was finally set for passage. With the sine die adjournment of the Lok Sabha, matters may not be back to square one but they have resumed their accustomed uncertainty.

In a political situation where positions change daily 8212; witness the Congress games on the IRA Bill 8212; who is to say what this Bill8217;s fate will be in an early Budget session? This time the matter is urgent. India has until April 19 next to amend this law, failing which the US and the European Union could be justified by world trade rules in imposing retaliatory trade sanctions on it in any sector of their choosing support for this Bill: it committed India to the amendment. Yet even given that no political party took the trouble since the signing of the Uruguay Round trade accord to educate public andpolitical opinion, the trade dispute settlement process itself allowed sufficient time. India got over a year after losing the patents case in the WTO to the US and the European Union.

Far from using it to build consensus, the BJP frittered it away with its own hopeless divisions, its ministers going to absurd lengths to sabotage the Bill. It is an open secret that Murli Manohar Joshi, well knowing that allowing exclusive marketing rights itself was controversial, propagated India switching immediately to product patents when it need not legally do so until 2005. His subtle aim: subversion of the amendment.

Well, Joshi and others like him may have their wish granted if the Lok Sabha in the Budget session has yet another change of mood. What then? If the devious minds of the swadeshi wallahs can be read with any accuracy, it could be their hope that Indian failure to pass the Bill, provoking US and European retaliation, would help them whip up nationalist hysteria about the WTO harming Indian interests andadvocating Indian departure from it. This is not in the realm of fantasy. Indian politicians have in the past considered doing this but were firmly told by those who are neither ignorant nor motivated like them that this would be an unmitigated disaster. The time to warn against such a thing happening is now. Sane politicians would do well to keep this in mind and prevent momentum building up for such madness.With luck, the Congress and the BJP would have the sense to hang together and push the Bill through in the next session. That failing, the US and the EU might just show restraint and allow India a little more time, though the portends are not good: the world8217;s patience with the fractiousness and manipulativeness of Indian politics wore thin long ago. Indian democracy may have its compulsions but that is not the world8217;s problem.

This newspaper dearly hopes that the next session will be the last Indians will hear about patents for a time. If not, the fireworks would follow should the US or the EU beprovoked into retaliation. As so often in India8217;s shamefully partisan politics even on issues of fundamental national interest, events may then be triggered which would have very unfortunate consequences for this country.