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India, Third World gear up to thrash out patents issue in Budapest

Ranvir Nayar in Paris

India is likely to raise the controversial issue of some Western companies gaining the patents for traditional knowledge at a global gathering of scientists and bureaucrats. Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi will lead the Indian delegation to the World Conference on Science, slated to be held at Budapest in Hungary in the last week of June.

The 156th conference, which is an annual event jointly organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and the International Council for Science, is the last such event of the century, and predictably, its main agenda will be about the state of science in the 21st century and the main issues facing science and scientists.

The main items on the agenda for this WCS include education in public versus private investment in science, science, gender in science, science for development, indigenous or traditional scientific practices, the free flow of scientific information, international cooperation, the effects of globalisation on science and society, the role of basic sciences and development of science policy.

According to scientists, the agenda for this conference is loaded with issues that are of prime importance to the global role of science, especially with the developing countries in mind. Among the more important issues are the patenting of traditional knowledge and the free flow of scientific information -- the two stumbling blocks for the development of the Third World scientists.

India has played a major role in the preparation of the agenda for the conference, largely due to its concerns on the success of some American companies in getting patents over products and processes that not only do not belong to the United States but are also part of the traditional knowledge that has been handed down from generation to generation for tens of centuries.

Notable among these attempts are the patent application for neem and turmeric by companies in the United States.

India has also been advocating liberalising the channels of flow of scientific information, especially from the developed world to the developing countries. ``The developing countries feel they are being bled white by the western countries for transfer of any technology, even in the case of life-saving drugs. Under the cover of patents, the developed world always tries to find ways of blocking the transfer of technology or the information flow to the developing countries. Either they prohibit the transfer of knowledge or they make it prohibitively expensive,’’ points out an observer.

The world conference will be attended by representatives of over 140 countries. Besides a host of scientific institutions, research and development centres and non-governmental organisations are expected to be present at the Budapest conference, which is perhaps the last such gathering of scientists and governments before the next millenium. And it is appropriately titled as ``Science for the 21st century A new commitment’.

And the world conference is expected to draw up the agenda for scientific and technological community for the next millennium. The conference will discuss this final resolution over five days between June 26 and July 1 at Budapest. The observers say that the developed countries could try to change the draft before it is adopted due to some of its controversial aspects dealing with intellectual property rights, freedom of access to information and scientific advancement vis-a-vis ethics.

The draft calls for greater access to information and pooling of scientific knowledge, especially the latest findings and results of R&D, among all the nations. The current draft says, ``Everyone has the right freely to share in scientific advancement and benefits and access to scientific knowledge is part of the right to education and the right to information belonging to all people.’’

Such language may not go down very well with the developed countries which are obsessed with patenting and intellectual property rights and hence are less than enthusiastic about such scientific exchanges. Representatives of these nations may very well take a hard stance at the conference.

Recent developments such as cloning could also figure in a rather controversial manner at the conferene. Unesco has already condemned such moves as cloning to be against the ethics and morals of science and the draft does refer to ethics to be followed without actually bringing up the subject of cloning. This again may face the wrath of the developed world which is at the forefront of such developments.

The conference in Budapest will also refer to other international agreements like the Rio conference or the Earth Summit of 1992, last year’s Kyoto Conference on emission standards, etc, to look at how far the world has come in implementing the recommendations of these conferences which had been freely adopted by a vast majority of the countries in the world.

However, observers say the implementation of these agreements is nothing to talk home about with most countries pushing the recommendations, which call for drastic steps to alter modern, lifestyles, under the carpet. But at the Budapest conference, the governments could be under tremendous pressure from the environmentalists who have been criticising major countries all over the world for ignoring their commitments to the environment and the international treaties signed by them.

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