A proposal moved by India and South Africa for waiver from certain provisions of TRIPS pact would enable poor countries to gain free access to Covid vaccines
On Gandhi Jayanti this year, India did somethingtruly phenomenal and very meaningful. Teaming together with South Africa, India sent a Communication to the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) entitled “WAIVER FROM CERTAIN PROVISIONS OF THE TRIPS AGREEMENT FOR THE PREVENTION, CONTAINMENT AND TREATMENT OF COVID-19”.
This proposal is a path-breaking international initiative to enable the world to gain free access to Covid-19 vaccination. Even when new diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19 are developed world over, there are significant concerns, how these will be made available promptly. Now, this defining step from Bharat is aimed at meeting global Covid-19 vaccine demand in sufficient quantities at affordable make therapeutics more people friendly. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), especially, patents, pose an insurmountable institutional and legal barrier for the developing countries for structuring the response architecture for combating Covid-19.
Bharat is advocating for waivers and flexibilities to be made available in the TRIPS Agreement to allay fears of nations with insufficient or no manufacturing capacity. Bharat, through this Communication, is developing a developing nations’ antidote-conglomerate for easing of cumbersome barriers and lengthy processes for the manufacture, import and export of pharmaceutical products in these crisis times.
Leading this global engagement to waive off the IPR barriers for vaccination and treatment,Bharat is fast emerging as a natural leader of the developing world. Bharat’s has received unconditional support from thirty-three nation global group – G-33, a coalition of developing countries with Bharat at its vanguard, which includes even China and Pakistanbesides the support from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), popularly rendered as Doctors Without Borders. In sum, with sole exception of Brazil, the entire developing world, often termed Lower Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), cutting across continents, has accepted today Bharat as its natural leader. Recently, Bharat has even reached out even to Switzerland and may in the future days garner substantial support from the unexpected quarters of the first world.
There are those who argue that waiver of IPR is the minimal threshold response that world community must accept to prove its concern for humanity. Most perceive it to be a humanitarian requirement, if not a concession that the first world must extend to the rest of us. But Bharat’s espousal of waiver of IPR is not shaped as mercy petition but is built with abundant legal logic. All Agreements, especially, international trade agreements like TRIPS are designed and envisaged for the peacetimes. A pandemic situation like Covid-19, universally acknowledged as a Force Majeure event, calls for an extraordinary response. Bharat’s espousal architecture is founded on suspension of the contract during a Force Majeureas no charity but a rightful contractual entitlement.
What Bharat is doing is not just momentous from a humanitarian or strategic perspective but is invaluablyimportant in terms of jurisprudence of geopolitics. A nation of Bharat’s stature alone can lead and unite the world on this issue. Bharat is not doing it out of any desperation. Way back in early October, 2020, Serum Institute of India (SII) was readying one billion doses of five different vaccines against Covid-19. So, we are in the most comfortable zone in terms of our vaccination program. What Bharat is doing is for the voiceless world community that forms majority of the mankind.
Bharat leading the TRIPS waiver global response based on unity, solidarity and multilateral cooperation comes at the opportune time when we are celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of PujyaDattopantThengadi. In a small fifteen-page booklet published sometime in late 1990s, this is what Thengadi prophetically wrote on the banes of the WTO-GATT:
Founder of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, Dattopant Thengadi
was the first one to point out the dangers of Market Globalisation
was the first one to point out the dangers of Market Globalisation
India leading the TRIPS waiver global response based on unity, solidarity and multilateral cooperation comes at the opportune time when we are celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Pujya Dattopant Thengadi
“Why is the ‘Mancha’ opposed to Amendments to the Indian Patents Act that would follow our acceptance of certain proposals at GATT, or as demanded by the United States (failing which India faces ‘retaliatory’ action against her exports to the USA under the special 301 section of the US Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act)?”
Because these Amendments would have, as pointed out by the Indian School of Social Sciences, Bombay, several implications. For instance, such amendments would not only recognise the product patent of the foreign company manufacturing the drug, they would also recognise the company’s right not to manufacture the drug in India despite having taken out a patent on it here.”
This is how Thengadi’s booklet elucidates on the then evolving world regime on trade agreements and its incursions into our intellectual arena. We can unendinglyand inconclusively debate on whether we, as an economy, polity or as society have lived up to the cherished ideals that Thengadi stood for. Conclusions can be controversial and inconvenient; but what we must wholly acknowledge is the stature and sincerity of this political dispensationin living Thengadi’s vision. Toad, by uniting the world with the bond of fraternity, India achieved something most significant, too very convincingly. The internationalism of the Maoists looks too shallow and shabby in juxtaposition to this silent attainment.
(The writer is a Bengaluru based legal Practitioner & columnist)
