May 22 2013

Cricket and the rise of modern India

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Posted in: Economy, Society and Culture

LSE’s Mukulika Banerjee moderates a discussion on the rise of cricket in India and its relationship to the country’s politics and culture.

What can cricket tell us about modern India? Last week, at the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature, James Astill and Ed Hawkins attempted to answer this question. Astill is the author of “The Great Tamasha: Cricket, Corruption and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India”, a new book that traces how cricket became an outlet for Indian nationalism both under colonial rule and in the decades since independence, and how it contributes to Indian culture and politics. While Astill focuses on how Indian cricket articulates the country’s experiment with modernity, Hawkins, the author of “Bookie, Gambler, Fixer, Spy”, gets at the game’s underbelly—the corruption that has come to define the sport in recent years.

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At Asia House, Hawkins discussed the anatomy of match-fixing in India, a timely concern. Last week, three players from an Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise, the Rajasthan Royals, were arrested by Delhi police. They allegedly performed pre-arranged actions, scripted by bookmakers, during matches in this year’s tournament. One of the accused, S. Sreesanth, was part of India’s 2011 World Cup-winning squad. Indian cricketing authorities have been criticised for their relative reticence on the matter.

Hawkins’ book focuses on the World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan in Mohali in March 2011, inspired by a ‘script’ of the match he received from a bookie before the game. As part of his investigation into whether or not that seminal match was fixed, Hawkins spent time in India with a bookie, watching him bet on matches, bribe police officers and engage with members of India’s mafias. During his talk, Hawkins argued that the roots of present-day match-fixing lie in India, but was careful to point out that there has always been corruption in cricket—the first recorded instance of match-fixing occurred in the 1700s, and the laws of cricket were drawn up in the first place to settle betting disputes.

Taking a broader view, Astill argued that corruption in Indian cricket reflects the weaknesses of Indian institutions, and the fact that the game is growing at a time of soaring wealth within the country. Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 22, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , ,

May 20 2013

भारत के राज्यों में आर्थिक संवृद्धि असमान क्‍यों है?

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Posted in: Economy

संघमित्रा बंधोपाध्‍याय का कहना है कि भारत की जीडीपी वृद्धि को कुछ राज्‍यों में केंद्रित अर्थव्‍यवस्‍था के फुटकल क्षेत्रों से गति मिली है।    

Click here to read this blog in English. 

आर्थिक विकास की प्रक्रिया अक्सर असमान होती है।  विश्वस्तर पर असमानता की मौजूदगी इस बात को प्रमाणित करती है कि दुनिया के अलग-अलग हिस्‍सों में विकास की दर असमान रही है। पिछले 50 वर्षों के दौरान ब्राजील, चीन, दक्षिण अफ्रीका, वियतनाम और श्रीलंका जैसे देशों ने भारत, पाकिस्‍तान और युगांडा की तुलना में अधिक तेज गति से विकास किया है।  इसलिए कोई आश्‍चर्य नहीं कि विकसित और विकासशील दोनों तरह के देशों में, देश के भीतर होने वाला विकास भी असमान  है।

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विकासशील देशों के मानक के हिसाब से देखें तो भी नजर आता है कि भारत में क्षेत्रीय विकास, खास तौर पर, असमान रहा है।  बीसवीं सदी के साठ के दशक से लेकर अब तक, भारत में क्षेत्रीय विकास का ध्रुवीकरण हुआ है- नतीजतन एक तरफ ऊंची आय वाले क्षेत्र हैं तो दूसरी तरफ नीची आय वाले क्षेत्र।  समृद्ध-क्षेत्र के भीतर  गुजरात, महाराष्‍ट्र, पंजाब और हरियाणा आते हैं और हाल में तमिलनाडू और कर्नाटक भी इसमें जुड़े हैं।  निम्‍न आय वाले क्षेत्र  में अन्‍य राज्‍यों के अलावा ओडीसा, बिहार, राजस्‍थान, मध्‍यप्रदेश और उत्तर प्रदेश शामिल हैं।  चिंताजनक बात यह है कि इस ध्रुवीकरण की बुनावट पिछले चार दशकों से अब तक मोटामोटी एक-सी बनी हुई है।

इसके अतिरिक्‍त मध्‍यम आय वाले राज्‍यों का एक ‘गतिशील’ समूह और रहा है जिनकी किस्‍मत में फेर-फार होते रहता है।  उदाहरण के लिए, बीसवीं सदी के साठ के दशक में पश्चिम बंगाल एक समृद्ध राज्‍य था लेकिन सत्तर और अस्‍सी के दशक में वहां गिरावट आई।  दूसरी ओर, तमिलनाडु में जीवन स्‍तर में निरंतर सुधार देखा गया है और आज उसे एक समृद्ध राज्‍य माना जाता है।

सामा‍जिक-आर्थिक विषयों पर केंद्रित लेखन का एक बड़ा हिस्सा इस असमान वृद्धि को समझने की कोशिशों से भरा पड़ा है। इन कोशिशों के अंतर्गत राज्‍य की प्रकृति से लेकर नियोजन और विकास, राजकोषीय संघवाद, कर-प्रणाली, निवेश, शिक्षा तथा आधारभूत ढांचा जैसे कई अलग-अलग कोनों से स्थिति की व्याख्या की गई है।  परंतु विकास की किसी एक गतिधारा की बात करें तो उसमें, अंतर्राष्‍ट्रीय अनुभवों के हिसाब से, एक खास स्‍थानिक पैटर्न देखने को मिलता है : देश (जैसे कि यूरोपीय यूनियन में शामिल देश) और देशों के भीतर के क्षेत्रों (उदाहरण के लिए, अमेरिका, ब्रिटेन, जापान और चीन के भीतर) में विकास के ऐसे पैटर्न दिखते हैं जहां आर्थिक विकास पास-पड़ोस के इलाकों में “छलक कर” पहुँचा है Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 20, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

May 20 2013

Event cancelled: A multi-pronged strategy to address the housing deficit in urbanising India

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Posted in: Development

The event scheduled for Wednesday, 22 May, with Ajay Maken on strategies to address the housing deficit in an increasingly urban India has been cancelled.

Ajay Maken is the current Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister of India and member of the 15th Lok Sabha of India. In 2006 he was appointed Union Minister of State for Urban Development. During this time he oversaw the formulation of the current Delhi Master Plan 2021. He has also previously served as Minister of State for Home Affairs, and for Sports and Youth Affairs in the central government. He represents the New Delhi constituency of Delhi in the Parliament. He has previously been elected to Delhi’s state legislative assembly for three consecutive terms in 1993, 1998 and 2003. In 2001 he was appointed Minister of Delhi’s Transport, Power and Tourism Departments. Delhi’s public transport system switched over to CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) while he was Minister for Transport in the Government of NCT Delhi, and he held the Power Department portfolio in the period when electricity privatisation reforms were implemented in Delhi.

The public seminar will take place on Wednesday 22 May 2013 in the Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Click here for more information about the event.

Posted by: Posted on May 20, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , ,

May 17 2013

Novartis vs Union of India: Against elastic claims and why specialisation may still be for insects

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Posted in: Development, Health

Siva Thambisetty discusses the implications for standards of disclosure of the Indian Supreme Court’s recent decision on a drug patent for Novartis. This post first appeared on Spicy IP.

I was really stimulated by Darren Smyth’s post on the Indian Supreme Court’s decision on Novartis, since I also wrestled with this part of the court’s logic but resolved it very differently. I have also read the same author’s expressive post on IPKAT. The primary claim in both blog posts is that the Novartis decision conflates infringement, with disclosure that anticipates novelty. It’s a complex and important decision and here is how I see it at the moment:

The comparison the court is in effect making is not between infringement and anticipatory disclosure, but between sufficiency of disclosure and anticipatory disclosures both of which have to be enabling. If there is a failing in logic it is that they do not make more of ‘sufficiency’ when analyzing the significance of claim construction in the infringement action for anticipatory disclosure.

I quote from the decision: “Under the scheme of patent, a monopoly is granted to a private individual in exchange of the invention being made public so that, at the end of the patent term, the invention may belong to the people at large who may be benefited by it.”

The phrase ‘made public’ tells us that the court is implicitly relying on Novartis’ claims in UK courts to assume that they had sufficiently disclosed Imatinib Mesylate, which therefore amounts to an enabling disclosure that anticipates a future patent application. In terms of evolving jurisprudence, the UK has taken care to whittle down the breadth of claims using sufficiency as a principle; and courts here would hardly countenance effectively using two standards of disclosure – one for sufficiency and one for novelty.  It is precisely to avoid such situations that infringement and validity are addressed together in UK courts.  Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 17, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , ,

May 15 2013

Notes from the field: Democracy under threat in West Bengal

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Posted in: Politics

Fernande Pool explains how villagers in West Bengal are responding to delays in panchayat elections and related violence, and what impact these may have on the public’s faith in democracy.

“Let us win first, and then there will be democracy,” says a grinning Trinamul Congress (TMC) leader to me in a village in West Bengal. And when we think we cannot win, democracy will have to wait a little, he could have added.

The political situation in West Bengal has gone from tense to tumultuous over the last few months. Panchayat elections were due in West Bengal in April. But because of a disagreement between the state government and the State Elections Committee (SEC), the poll did not take place in April, is unlikely to happen in May, and may be postponed until a much later date altogether.

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Meanwhile, the number of victims of political violence has been rising. The suspicious death of Students’ Federation of India (SFI) leader Sudipto Gupta in a Kolkata jail was retaliated by Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM) and SFI activists heckling Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and manhandling Finance Minister Amit Mitra outside the Planning Commission office in Delhi on April 9. This resulted in a cycle of violence across West Bengal, with CPIM, Congress and TMC activists alike attacking the offices of their rivals. Most widely deplored was vandalism by alleged TMC supporters at the Presidency College in Kolkata. (Separately, the TMC is also involved in a chit fund scam, which may require a CBI investigation.)

The state election commissioner (LSE alumna Mira Pande) filed a petition in the High Court against the state government because the latter insisted on two polling dates, rather than three, and planned to proceed without the help of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Ever since the panchayat elections have been put on hold, the security situation has deteriorated to a degree that elections without such forces now are inconceivable.

At first I thought that the insistence on two polling dates – the first for those districts that favour the TMC, and the second for the three Congress strongholds – was a tactic by Banerjee to increase her chances of influencing and winning the elections. But in an interview, Amzad Ali, a senior laywer who was a Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha member in the 1970s, suggested that Banerjee was trying to keep the elections at bay for an indefinite period. Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 15, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , , , , , ,

May 13 2013

Help India to live in its villages

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Posted in: Development, Education, Gender

LSE’s Ruth Kattumuri argues that technology can drive inclusive rural development across India. This article first appeared in the Hindustan Times.

A visit to some villages near Kolar district, near Bangalore, evidenced positive developments in these rural areas. This suggests a case for coordinated efforts by the public and private sectors to enhance inclusive rural development. This region benefits from good government initiatives, some private sector projects and good interventions by NGOs. The infrastructure development in this region is commendable with roads from the villages being very good and easy connectivity exists to Bangalore city and the airport.

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Primary and secondary schools have excellent committed teachers as well as adequate buildings. Children are able to conveniently get to and from their schools. All Class 8 children attending government schools are given bicycles; additionally, public transport – motorised vehicles and buses – operates regularly to go to nearby towns for high school and college.

An important social indicator, the status of women, was positive and refreshingly encouraging to behold and worth emulation. Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 13, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

May 10 2013

What prospects for improved India-Pakistan relations?

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Posted in: Politics, Security and Foreign Policy

In the run-up to Pakistan’s general elections on May 11, India At LSE publishes three posts reflecting on India-Pakistan bilateral relations and democracy in South Asia. LSE’s Athar Hussain concludes the series with a discussion about challenges and opportunities for improved India-Pakistan ties.   

Q. An increasing number of people believe that a stable Pakistan is in India’s best interests. What are your views on this? 

A. This is a universal truism. To reach an agreement you must negotiate with one body that has a monopoly over state power. If it’s a free-for-all, an agreement is not worth the piece of paper it’s on. As such, only a stable Pakistan can be an effective negotiating power.

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Q. Are mutual security concerns the main point of contention between India and Pakistan? 

A. Security is a problem, but it is never an independent issue. Take, for example, the war in Afghanistan, which is another source of contention between India and Pakistan. Pakistan regards Afghanistan as falling within its sphere of influence and views any Indian interference as strategically harmful. There are security concerns in the sense that the Durand Line is a porous border, but there are larger dynamics at play here as well.

Q. What impact will India’s recent push towards militarisation have on bilateral relations? 

A. India wants to maintain parity with China, hence the militarisation. This can cut both ways with regards to Pakistan. On the one hand, the dispute with Pakistan could become a huge distraction that India seeks to rid itself of. Pakistan cannot militarily defeat India, but it can be a significant nuisance that ties up Indian forces etc. On the other hand, India might decide that its aim to become a regional power is best furthered by finally coming to terms with Pakistan.

Q. How does China influence the India-Pakistan dynamic? 

A. China wants to maintain some balance of power in South Asia; Beijing doesn’t want India to dominate the region. But the Chinese position towards Pakistan has undergone a radical change since the 1980s. On the Kashmir issue, for example, China no longer supports Pakistan’s position, and instead adopts the exact same position as the United States or Britain—that Kashmir is a disputed territory and that India and Pakistan should solve the problem through negotiation. China no longer says anything about upholding the UN resolution supporting Pakistan’s case. In a separate context, China has also become very alarmed by the infiltration of violent extremist groups [allegedly trained in Pakistan] into its north-western Xinjiang region.

That said, in my opinion, the impact of China’s own interests on the Indo-Pak equation is exaggerated. It is true that China wants access to ports in the Gulf region, from where the bulk of its oil comes. But the idea that the Chinese want a land route to the Arabian Sea (via Pakistan) is far-fetched. Such a route cannot be economically viable not only because sea transport is so much cheaper, but also because China’s economic and industrial hubs are on the eastern side of the country. Taking goods westwards across China to get to the Arabian Sea is not a serious proposition.

Q. Can trade facilitate improved India-Pakistan relations? 

A. India and Pakistan have such little economic contact that if the situation between the two countries worsens, no group on either side of the border complains that it is being adversely affected—no one suffers a loss if relations remain strained, and this is a problem. Consider China and Taiwan as a counterpoint: that situation is even more politically explosive than Kashmir because at least India and Pakistan have respected international borders (with the exception of the Line of Control). But trade between China and Taiwan has boomed, creating a huge stake in the bilateral relationship. Given the huge border between India and Pakistan, too many fruitful opportunities for beneficial trade are being missed out.

Q. Will the competition for increasingly scarce water resources in South Asia further strain India-Pakistan relations? 

A. The growing shortage of water is a cause of concern across Asia, not just for India and Pakistan. In this context, the Indus Water Treaty has been a major triumph, but it crucially depends on understanding and interpretation. Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 10, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , , , , , ,

May 8 2013

The Indian view on Pakistan’s elections

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Posted in: Politics, Security and Foreign Policy

Aparna Pande explains why India is unlikely to make concrete offers to Pakistan’s incoming government in an effort to improve bilateral ties. This is the second of three posts reflecting on democracy in South Asia and prospects for India-Pakistan bilateral relations in the run-up to Pakistan’s general elections on May 11.  

A stable, civilian-led democratic Pakistan is in India’s vital interests. Every Indian prime minister from Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh has recognised this. The sentiment is not just a catchall phrase for public consumption but also a fact believed by the majority of Indian policymakers, leaders and analysts. This group differs, however, in their thinking on when and how India’s western neighbour will become stable, civilian-led and truly democratic.

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Good and stable neighbors make not only for good borders and security, but also boost economic growth and facilitate development. From the Indian perspective, a democratic and civilian-led Pakistan has multiple benefits. For one, talks between India and Pakistan have for too long been dependent on whether or not there is military or civilian rule in Pakistan as most Indian governments have been reluctant to deal with military rulers. Further, a civilian-led democratic government is accountable to its people and hence will need to spend more resources on economic growth and development, thus reducing its military spending as well as making it more transparent. Finally, such governments are also reluctant to favour a foreign or security policy that includes asymmetrical warfare and jihad.

In an ideal scenario, this is what should be expected of civilian democratic governments.

However, in the run-up to Pakistan’s 2013 general elections, Indian analysts are asking whether Pakistan’s establishment – the military-intelligence-technocratic-judicial establishment – will let whichever coalition government comes to power have genuine control over foreign and security policymaking.

As I point out in my book, “Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: Escaping India”, over the years Pakistan has evolved an ideology-driven national identity, which has had an impact on both its foreign policy and domestic politics. In the sphere of foreign policy, Pakistan has sought to escape what it perceives as ‘Hindu India’ while at the same time seeking parity with India. In the domestic arena, the ‘India factor’ has helped boost the power of the military-intelligence establishment and their national security narrative, which centres on their role in protecting Pakistan from the perceived existential threat from India.

More than half of Pakistan’s 66 years as an independent nation have been under military rule, and civilian set-ups have been an exercise in semi-democracy as the security establishment has retained controlling power. Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 8, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , , , ,

May 7 2013

Does democracy mean different things in India and Pakistan?

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Posted in: Politics

In the run-up to Pakistan’s general elections on May 11, India At LSE publishes three posts reflecting on India-Pakistan bilateral relations and democracy in South Asia. Matthew Nelson starts the series by asking whether the relationship between democracy and the rule of law operates differently in non-western contexts like India and Pakistan. 

In this post, I consider whether ‘democracy’ might mean different things in different places—focusing, specifically, on the relationship between democracy and the rule of law. Is democracy grounded in elections or a particular understanding of ‘justice’ set apart from ‘the rule of law’? Does this relationship operate differently in western contexts like the U.K. and non-western contexts like India or Pakistan? Does it operate differently in secular and Islamic states?

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In my book, “In the Shadow of Shariah: Islam, Islamic Law and Democracy in Pakistan”, I describe voters who call on their elected leaders to provide a very specific type of patronage—the provision of protection: political protection from the enforcement of existing laws. My work focuses on Muslim families who seek to prevent their daughters from controlling land they are entitled to inherit by a set of Quranic injunctions and, in Pakistan, by Islamic statutory laws. These Muslim families do not seek to change existing injunctions; they do not press for legal reforms. They simply try to ensure that, with the help of their political patrons, ‘accountability’ involves an effort to derail the consistent application of existing Islamic laws.

Beginning in 1948, Pakistan saw a push for Shariah law to replace the tribal ‘custom’ of female disinheritance. This was complicated, however, after 1980, when the promulgation of a new Islamic tax on agricultural production (known as ushr) changed the valuation of land. Owing to the lack of any strong agricultural income tax, the weak implementation of this ushr-based tax effectively reduced the tax on land. Land became increasingly valuable (owing to this lower tax burden), and brothers became even more reluctant to share ‘ancestral’ land with their sisters (particularly those who married outside their family home). Some women began to receive their Islamic shares ‘on paper’. But, more often than not, their control over the land was limited.

While researching my book in the northern Punjab districts of Lahore, Sialkot and Sargodha, I found that, politically, the challenge for most politicians did not lie in promoting a more rigorous pattern of enforcement for existing Islamic laws. Nor did it lie in any effort to amend the laws that local constituents considered irksome. Instead, elected officials were simply expected to massage the work of the district bureaucracy (including the district courts) in ways that might succeed in preserving the substance of tribal ‘customs’ and, more specifically, the integrity of ‘all-male’ estates.

Given the shape of existing postcolonial laws (i.e. Islamic laws), most of those who travelled to the district courts did not expect to ‘resolve their disputes’ in court. Instead, plaintiffs holding rather small plots of land simply used the inefficiencies of the courts to detain their opponents until, slowly but surely, a custom-friendly ‘compromise’ could be reached outside of the courts themselves. The logic of political society was not a legal logic; the logic of political society was a language of safarish or ‘connections’. Political accountability was the focus of safarish: ‘accountability’ against the law.

Partha Chatterjee (2004, 2011) writes about similar practices in his work on katchi abadis in Kolkata—extremely poor squatter settlements where residents ask politically influential dalals (or middlemen) to negotiate with state officials in ways that protect their (illegal) homes from demolition. Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 7, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , , , ,

May 3 2013

Learning from India? A new approach to secondary pharmaceutical patents

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Posted in: Development, Economy, Health

LSE’s Kenneth Shadlen asks whether a recent Indian Supreme Court decision on pharmaceutical patents will make the country’s patent laws more effective, and how the decision may affect global access to affordable medicines.

With the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling on April 1, the long-running conflict between the Indian Patent Office (IPO) and Novartis over an application for a patent on Glivec has, at last, concluded (see here for background). In rejecting Novartis’s application, the SC upheld and strengthened Section 3d of the Indian patent law, a clause designed to minimise the granting of “secondary” patents, i.e. patents on alternative forms or derivatives of existing drugs.

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In July 2012, as the hearings were set to begin, my colleagues and I discussed the key issues of the case on this blog. As we indicated then, though the Supreme Court case was, nominally, about a specific patent application, broader issues regarding how 3d is interpreted and applied were likely to be considered. The case did not disappoint: in its 112-page ruling – which incorporates analysis of the history of the Indian pharmaceutical industry, patents, and the legislative making of India’s reformed Patent Law – the SC ruled on Novartis’s patent application itself and clarified key aspects of Section 3d for future cases.

The SC decision triggered a flurry of analyses and commentaries. Here I wish to make two sets of observations regarding the implications of the ruling for governments and consumers throughout the developing world  that  rely on Indian firms for the supply of affordable drugs, and for countries’ efforts to establish limitations on the duration of pharmaceutical patent terms.

Access to Medicines

For all the excitement that the case has generated, it is worth keeping in mind the limitations of the SC’s ruling. Section 3d is designed to prevent the accumulation of multiple patents on single drugs that can extend periods of exclusivity. It is not, however, designed to prevent patents on drugs, full stop. New drugs are patentable – and are being patented – in India; the notion that this ruling and Section 3d mean that India does not grant pharmaceutical patents is highly misleading.

To understand these points, it helps to underscore what the case was – and was not – about. Specifically, the SC ruled on an application for a patent on a crystalline form of the compound imatinib mesylate. Both the base molecule (imatinib) and the salt form (imatinib mesylate) are protected in many countries around the world by a 1993 patent, but they are not patented in India because their invention pre-dates the introduction of pharmaceutical product patents in that country. A key point that is often overlooked in discussions of this case is that the 1993 patent does not exist in India for reasons that have nothing to do with 3d, but simply because India at the time was not granting patents on pharmaceutical products—when it began to do so in 2005, it only recognised applications as far back as 1995.

If Glivec had been invented a few years later, however, it would most likely be protected in India. These details are important for two reasons. First, they indicate that, for all the hoopla, Glivec is more a victim of timing than Section 3d. Second, this suggests that just as Glivec would likely be patented were it invented two years later, new drugs based on new molecules are patentable—and are being patented in India.

Taking a measured approach of the effects that Section 3d can have on the existence of pharmaceutical patent protection in India has important implications for access to medicines on a global scale. Continue reading →

Posted by: Posted on May 3, 2013 by Editor   Tagged with: , , , , ,