On the S&T front

India and the U.S. sign two agreements on science and technology to put collaboration arrangements terminated after Pokhran-II back on track. Foreign policy considerations seem to have dictated the signing of the agreements.

R. RAMACHANDRAN

FOREIGN policy considerations rather than any real perceived need would seem to have dictated the agreements that were signed in the areas of science and technology (S&T), energy and environment between India and the U.S. during the visit of President Cl inton. It would appear that, in a bid to demonstrate that Indo-U.S. relations are back on track after the setback that followed Pokhran-II, political imperatives required that some agreements be signed and the areas of S&T and energy and environment beca me more amenable to the manipulations of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) than others.

Indo-U.S. collaboration in S&T, under the Indo-U.S. Subcommission programmes - from 1974 till date - as well as under the (Indira) Gandhi-Reagan Science Technology Initiative (STI) - from 1982 to 1991 - had come to a virtual standstill in the late 1980s and the 1990s after the U.S. began to insist on an inter-governmental agreement on intellectual property rights (IPRs) to govern collaborative research programmes. Given the absence of patents in the area of agriculture, drugs and chemicals - there was a major agricultural component in the Subcommission programmes - such an agreement, which was at variance with the Indian Patents Act of 1970, was unacceptable to India.

In 1987, amidst a controversy, the Indo-U.S. Vaccine Action Programme (VAP) was signed to support vaccine and diagnostics development against high-priority diseases in India, among the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), the Indian Council of Medical Rese arch (ICMR) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the U.S. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) for collaboration for five years was signed. It has now been extended until 2002. Funded by the DBT (about Rs.14 crores), the NIH (a matching grant) a nd the Starr Foundation ($4 million), a private entity which took the place of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) since 1997, the VAP too ran into problems on the IPRs issues. However, the issue was resolved in 1992 and the pr ogramme was put back on course after a Joint Working Group (JWG) set up to examine the issue made its recommendations on the modalities to be followed on the IPRs front. So far two projects have yielded products for which Indian scientists have filed for joint patents in the U.S. and the arrangement is that the accruing royalties would be shared equally between the Indian and the U.S. institutions. However, royalties from these products are yet to flow in, according to the DBT.

The bulk of the collaborative programmes under the Subcommission and the STI were funded through U.S.-owned PL480 funds in rupees. In February 1974, the U.S. Government gave more than half of the accumulated PL480 funds to India and agreed to use the rem aining funds jointly to collaborate in S&T, education and culture and agriculture. In February 1987, the two governments signed an agreement that established the U.S. India Fund (USIF) with the remaining PL480 money (which at that point of time stood at Rs.127 crores). With interest, this provided over Rs.260 crores to fund collaborative research in S&T, including in the areas of agriculture and health sciences, over a 11-year period (until January 1998). Under the joint agreement, all funding for this programme was obligated in January 1997 and no new projects have been funded under it.

After the termination of the STI, an Indo-U.S. S&T Agreement that was being negotiated since November 1993, has been put in cold storage owing to differing perceptions on the IPRs front. The U.S. proposed that an agreement on the sharing of IPRs should f orm an integral part of the agreement. Such sharing, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) argued, had to be in accordance with domestic law. However, the U.S. wanted the agreement to be in line with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (G ATT)/ Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The DST proposed that the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors be kept out of it, since these were the only areas where the IPR laws of the two countries differed, but this was not a cceptable to the U.S. As a result, the proposed agreement was relegated to the background with the tacit understanding that it will not be taken up until 2005 when India's laws will change to be in tune with TRIPS as per the World Trade Organisation (WTO ) Agreement.

In 1997, in an effort to find a suitable mechanism to continue S&T cooperation beyond the USIF programme which was coming to a close, U.S. ambassador Frank Wisner mooted the idea of creating an Indo-U.S. S&T Forum. He wrote to Minister of State for S&T Y .K. Alagh. Based on the feedback from the MEA and Indian scientific agencies, the idea of a forum was perceived to be a useful mechanism to pursue S&T cooperation which would allow the contentious IPRs issues to be set aside. A letter of intent to form t he forum was signed between India and the U.S. on December 29, 1997, and it was proposed that the residual funds and interest from the USIF (about Rs.30 crores) would be used to fund its activities. As the proposal was being given final shape in 1998, th e Pokhran tests intervened and it was suspended. So, when the two governments desired that something in S&T needed to be signed during Clinton's visit, this dormant proposal revived. V.S. Ramamurthy, Secretary, DST, agreed that the forum would not have b ecome a reality had the U.S. President not visited India. Ramamurthy clarified that the idea itself is not something hastily conceived to suit foreign policy ends.

Interestingly, however, the U.S. Government raised the spectre of IPRs once again as the idea of the forum was being revived. At the eleventh hour, it produced a piece of paper outlining the understanding on IPRs issues that should underpin the forum arr angement. But, according to Ramamurthy, the DST stood firm and stated that either the creation of the forum should not be conditional to an arrangement on IPRs or, if it is not to the liking of the U.S., the idea of the forum itself be scrapped. It is ev ident that the U.S. relented because the final agreement, which was signed by Union Minister for S&T Murli Manohar Joshi, and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, made no reference to IPRs and specifically stated: "Nothing in this agreement shall require the Parties to act contrary to their national laws or regulations... The Forum shall neither sponsor, nor permit under its auspices, any activity that would be proscribed by either Party's national laws or regulations." The Agreement was signed o n March 21, the first day of Clinton's visit.

The purpose of the forum, as per the Agreement, is "To facilitate and promote interaction, in the U.S. and India, of the government, academia and industry in S&T and other areas addressed by the earlier USIF... (It) shall promote R&D (Research and Develo pment), transfer of technology, the creation of a comprehensive electronic reference source for Indo-U.S. S&T cooperation and the electronic exchange and dissemination of information on Indo-U.S. S&T cooperation." The forum will be registered as a non-pr ofit society under the Indian Societies Act. In this sense, much like the already well-functioning Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR), the forum will have an autonomous character without governmental intervention in its fu nctioning, Ramamurthy said. A governing body, comprising seven members each from the two countries, will oversee and monitor the forum's activities. Of the seven members from India, four will be from the Government (with the DST Secretary as the permanen t formal member) and the remaining from academia, industry and private organisations. The operations of the forum will be funded through the interest accruing from the Rs.30-crore corpus to which the DST will add a matching fund every year. In effect, th e forum will have an annual funding of about Rs.6 crores.

Keeping IPRs out of the agreement is being regarded as a victory by the DST, and Ramamurthy said that the forum marked a step forward in Indo-U.S. S&T cooperation. However, it is understood that if any project does mature to generating IPRs, it will be r eferred to the governing body which shall take a decision on a case-by-case basis. According to the DST, the issue can be best handled along the IPR guidelines followed by the IFCPAR which have apparently proved successful. Of course, IPR issues are not as contentious with France as they are with the U.S. Ramamurthy is of the opinion that the governing body will ensure that national interests are not jeopardised. The forum, he says, should not be viewed as an alternative to the currently dormant Indo-U. S. Subcommission but as a complementary platform to facilitate direct contacts between the scientific agencies of the two countries. The DST is of the view that the S&T Subcommission also needs to be revived.

At a brainstorming session held in Hyderabad on March 24, senior scientists, scientific bureaucrats and government officials from both the countries agreed that any kind of barrier is not conducive to healthy S&T cooperation. The reference was evidently to the denial of visas to Indian scientists and the termination of ongoing collaborative research programmes in the wake of Pokhran-II. Ramamurthy feels that the forum can function as an intermediary body to raise such issues at the level of the respecti ve governments. He expects the Society to be formed within six months after the necessary Cabinet clearance, following which the governing body will be constituted, rules and regulations framed and an MoU signed to begin its activities.

The meeting in Hyderabad basically called for renewed focus in the area of basic sciences and identified, to start with, areas of biotechnology, new materials, astronomy and astrophysics, mathematics, energy-efficient technologies, fuel cells and renewab le energy sources. It recommended access to national facilities in both the countries, exploring the possibility of setting up of joint facilities and cooperation in higher science education such as reviving the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) exper iment in some different form, perhaps with a focus on information technology (IT). Notably, despite all the hype around IT during the visit, the forum emphasised that preoccupation with IT alone will be detrimental in the long run and that the fundamenta l sciences needed equal focus. The meeting noted that the agreement being not strictly an inter-governmental one, the forum has the freedom to access funds from international financial institutions as well if well-packaged proposals could be made towards a developmental objective. But the forum has drawn some criticism for not involving young scientists in the discussions.

THE other major initiative that was signed during the visit was the U.S.-India Joint Statement on Energy and Environment. This was signed in Agra, during Clinton's visit there, between Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh and Madeleine Albright. Th e intent towards this was already laid during Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's visit on October 26, 1999, when a Joint Statement on Cooperation in Energy and Related Environmental Aspects was signed. The current agreement is more specific, and in fact there are apprehensions that India has bartered away its national interests in its negotiating position in the ongoing negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change by unilaterally committing itself to certain greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions witho ut securing similar commitments from the U.S.

While the agreement seeks to promote cooperation in the area of clean energy technologies through funding programmes of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Exim Bank and USAID (see preceding story), organis ations such as the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) have expressed concern that the agreement provides a vehicle for emissions trading by the U.S., an aspect of the Kyoto Protocol that India, as part of the G-77 position, has resisted. For this reason, India is yet to ratify the Protocol. Now, with The Hague Conference of the Parties due in November, it is felt that India's position with respect to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) component of t he protocol stands weakened, the country having entered into an agreement that is tantamount to permitting carbon credits trading by the U.S.

The Joint Statement carries a commitment by India that it will achieve a 10 per cent share for renewable energy in the capacity-additions nationwide by 2012 and that it will set up a Bureau of Energy Efficiency which will achieve about 15 per cent improv ement in energy efficiency by 2007-8. "These voluntary commitments are being made without any study as to how these are to be achieved, what kind of fundings are required and what kind of technologies are required and such commitments will be used as the basis for emissions trading by the U.S.," R.K. Pachauri, director, TERI, said. According to him, how GHG reductions were to be measured and monitored and how carbon credits were to be calculated are issues that were still under discussion under the Kyot o Protocol. Indeed, the U.S. Senate has rejected the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol owing to political pressure that militates, on the one hand, against GHG emission reductions, although it is the largest emitter of GHGs, and, on the other, against n ot making developing countries such as India, Brazil and China commit themselves to specific reductions in their emissions. To commit, in this context, under a Joint Statement to reduce fossil-fuel-based energy production, without extracting a similar co mmitment from the U.S., is a gross mistake, Pachauri said.

More than the S&T agreement, this Joint Statement seems to have been pushed through for expedient reasons of foreign policy considerations without paying sufficient attention to domestic developmental considerations. Appa-rently, faced with criticisms, Jaswant Singh has promised to do the necessary groundwork on the outstanding issues of climate change and clean energy production before any concrete project under the Joint Statement is taken up. However, such a step will only amount to "locking the bar n after the horse has bolted," Pachauri said.