US expects its restraint on IPR to pay off after polls

The Obama administration wants American big business, especially Big Pharma, to pause before reviving the push to prise open the Indian market. That is the message of the US government’s decision to desist from labelling India as a prime offender in the matter of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). 

In the ongoing trade dispute between the two countries, instead of being named as a “Priority Foreign Country”, India has been retained on the “Priority Watch List” of countries in the Special 301 Report of the US Trade Representative (USTR). That means that the US would bide time — until autumn, when the situation would be reviewed — before escalating the trade war to the level of sanctions.

The US wants India to put in place and police a patent regime — for medicines, agro-chemicals and green technology, but especially for medicines — that subserves the interests of American companies, especially Big Pharma which feels particularly threatened by less expensive drugs from India and other developing countries. 

The US and its regulatory authorities are committed to upholding the interests of these pharmaceutical firms. At their behest, the USTR carries out unilateral investigations as to whether India (as well as other countries such as Russia, China, Indonesia and Thailand) is abiding by US domestic law. 

The US resorts to these high-pressure tactics periodically in the hope that sooner or later developing countries would give in. Now, as in the past, India remains firm in its opposition to such unilateral investigation because its patent regimes are in consonance with international commitments. 

Even as India, rightfully, rejects the demands of US law, it is open to wider discussions for removing the irritants in bilateral trade relations. Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher reiterated this position again after the recent US decision. The reiteration was necessary to drive home the point that, regardless of the political changes resulting from the elections, India would not subject itself to any unilateral investigation by the US. The reiteration should disabuse the impression that a change in government would be followed by a change in the Indian position on IPR.

Kher’s tough talk is all of a piece with the line, which is now — in the aftermath of the Khobragade case —  being adopted by New Delhi in dealing with Washington. 
Doubtless, the next government would be more business friendly and keen to improve relations with the US on a range of tracks where they have been vitiated by insensitive acts on the part of Washington. At the same time, irrespective of the many political differences between the Congress party and the BJP, the latter was supportive of the UPA government’s handling of the Khobragade case. When outgoing US ambassador Nancy Powell met Narendra Modi, he was equally critical of her government’s ill-treatment of Devyani Khobragade.

Similarly, for all the dirt and drivel surfacing in the electoral battle between the BJP and the Congress, there is the silver lining of their speaking as one when it comes to foreign affairs. Both the BJP and the Congress have condemned and rejected the Pakistani army chief General Raheel Sharif’s claim of Kashmir being Pakistan’s “jugular vein”. Earlier, the two parties had flayed Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan for his objectionable comments on Modi.
Just as Pakistan and the challenges it represents would not go away after the elections, so also US pressures to make India bend on the IPR will remain. While the next government would be no pushover on the issue, it is important for the main parties to impress on the US and its business lobbies that any expectation of India bowing to pressure in this matter would be misplaced.

The author is an independent political and foreign affairs commentator