Two together

Two picturesque8212;and telling8212;ways of putting it. Time looked back on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice8217;s eight-day-swing ...

Two picturesque8212;and telling8212;ways of putting it. Time looked back on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice8217;s eight-day-swing through Asia and came up with this image: 8216;8216;Every parent knows the feeling. You let the kids go away to camp, and the next time you see them, they8217;ve grown so much that they can look you in the eye8217;8217;. For Time Asia editor Michael Elliot, 8216;8216;that must have been a little how US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice felt when she arrived in Asia last week8217;8217;.

The Economist was reminded of the two protagonists who are obviously meant for each other from the start, but who come together only at a long-ish novel8217;s end. As Rice visited India, India and America had waltzed 8216;8216;closer than ever8217;8217; to the happy ending, sighed the magazine.

Despite the rifts, both old and new, it said, 8216;8216;Democracy8217;s superpower and its most populous nation are enjoying a honeymoon.8217;8217;

Presslering in vain

But as long as we favour dictatorships like Pakistan over free countries like India, the world will be right not to take our words seriously8217;8217;, wrote Larry Pressler in the New York Times this week. The former Republican senator and old India hand was forcefully arguing why it made sense for a Bush administration that goes on about democracy, to effect a 8216;8216;fundamental policy shift8217;8217; in the subcontinent. It would involve considerably improving relations with India, ensuring India and Pakistan were not parcelled out equal footage, being candid in public about Pakistan8217;s failures on the democracy front and not selling it any F-168217;s. 8216;8216;We should also make it clear that we will favour India in all major regional disputes8217;8217;.

Pressler wasn8217;t hopeful that such a shift would come. 8216;8216;Our military-industrial complex, which I believe dominates our foreign policy, favours Pakistan not only because we can sell it arms, but also because the Pentagon would rather deal with dictatorships than democracies. When a top Pentagon official goes to Pakistan he can meet with one general and get everything settled8217;8217;.

Patent worries

India8217;s new patent law was received with uniform alarm by leading American and British papers. The New York Times, for one, had let out its worries in January this year when it reacted sharply to the ordinance that has now been replaced by the law. At that time, its editorial directly addressed India8217;s parliamentarians, exhorting them to 8216;8216;fix the flaws8217;8217; in rules that 8216;8216;have little to do with free trade and more to do with the lobbying power of the American and European pharmaceutical industries8217;8217;.

It was a plea, basically, to protect India8217;s large and accomplished 8216;8216;copycat industry8217;8217;. It invoked the fact that India has become the world8217;s supplier of cheap AIDS drugs to the poor8212;by one estimate, to half the AIDS patients in the Third World8212;a feat made possible by laws that granted patents to the process of making medicines rather than to the drugs themselves. This allowed many companies to produce the same drug by slightly tweaking the process, thus creating competition and driving down prices.

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This week, the NYT admitted that the law that has been passed was 8216;8216;not as restrictive as the drug activists feared8217;8217;, there are still provisions that allow companies that make generics to copy drugs in the future. It also took into account the argument in favour of the law8212;that it would facilitate investment and innovation in research and development in India. But its tone was sombre and unconvinced about the merits.

The Washington Post lingered over fears voiced by aid groups. Aid organisations led by the Paris-based Doctors Without Borders have appealed to Sonia Gandhi: 8216;8216;8230;you are failing to listen to the voices of your people who have entrusted you with their welfare, not to mention the poor of the developing world8230;.8217;8217; The Guardian was persuaded the law was a 8216;8216;body blow to developing states8217; fight against disease8217;8217;. It wondered whether Indian parliamentarians had done justice to the Bill, given that they got only a weekend to read it and a couple of days to debate it.

Terri8217;s choice?

At the centre of the wordspilling is Terri Schiavo. She is the woman, comatose since 15 years, whose feeding tube was ordered removed by the Florida courts. The inflamed debate in the US media has roamed some very large questions. Executive versus judiciary, legislature versus judiciary, principles of federalism. The individual8217;s right to die.

As Conservatives loudly tried8212;through Congressional action and by executive intervention8212;to overrule the courts, some spotted a conflict among Bush supporters: Are they 8216;8216;social conservatives8217;8217; or 8216;8216;process conservatives8217;8217;. If they define themselves as the former, they would support the Federal government8217;s move to keep Terri alive at any cost. If they are the latter, they would surely disapprove of Washington imposing itself on the decision of state courts.

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Many pointed out the hypocrisies and the bad faith. Influential columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the NYT, 8216;8216;Republicans in Congress went into overdrive to protect the sanctity of Terri Schiavo8217;s life. But they were mute when it came to the sanctity of life for prisoners in our custody.8217;8217; He was referring to recent revelations in the US media that at least 26 prisoners had died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002.