The way our patent act!

Lifesaving drugs, patented after ’95, will not come cheap

While India’s IT industry hogged media limelight for its breathtaking pace of growth over the last decade, the pharmaceutical industry too kept up the momentum, marching at a decent pace of around 13-14 per cent annually in a market that is estimated to be around $11 billion. The catalyst that got the juices flowing for the pharma industry was the Patent Amendment Bill (2005), which in line with the WTO agreement, got the ball rolling for both MNCs and indigenous companies in the sector. The Bill gave MNCs a strong regulatory framework that acted as a bulwark against cheap copy of their discovered drugs while local companies benefited by getting opportunities to tap the off-patented medicines. Indian pharma companies got another shot in the arm with the new Patent Act stating that only drugs invented after January 1, 1995, can be considered for product patenting.

Eight years hence, India is one of the five biggest pharmaceutical producers in the world, contributing to 10 per cent of the world’s drug production, amounting to $22 billion, up from $7 billion in 2005. And if growth comes can employment generation be far behind? A Department of Pharmaceuticals report indicates an employment figure of 340,000, which is split among 20,000 pharma companies across the country. Armed with such growth opportunities, India could become the potential pharma-superpower over the next two decades – a credit that goes singularly to the Patent Bill, 2005.

However, the Bill has had its fair share of controversies too. The main apprehension has been that it would allow the patenting multinationals to charge high prices for their drugs! The low elasticity of demand for pharmaceutical products, coupled with the aggressive marketing by big pharma companies, entails the risk of encumbering the low and middle income groups with financial stress. However, the recent Supreme Court ruling denying patent rights to Novartis’ anti-leukemia medicine, Glivec, has given reasons to belie such concerns. For instance, Glivec costs an unaffordable Rs. 1.2 lakh per month. But its generic formulation, made by domestic manufacturers, costs no more than just Rs. 8,000. The SC ruling came on the basis of the drug being developed before 1995, which made it ineligible for protection under the new Patent Act.

But the jubilation at the SC verdict is ephemeral. With the passage of time, chances of a drug being formulated before 1995 will gradually grow rarer. And that’s where the danger lurks. Abnormally high priced lifesaving drugs, formulated after ’95, will no longer be affordable.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Book Review: The Revenge of Geography

Reductionist scholarship

19th century American journalist and educationalist, Ambrose Bierce, in what was termed a bout of often frequent farsightedness, once quipped that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” Who would have known that even exactly 100 years after his demise, this man’s observation would still stand relevant.

By sheer coincidence, this also happens to be the year when American journalist Robert D Kaplan came out with his latest book, The Revenge of Geography: What The Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts And The Battle Against Fate. As the title suggests, the book is an effort to know how geography has played its part in shaping geopolitics and how it does not plan to call it a day yet.

I am not exactly a fan of Kaplan’s writings or even thought process. I generally consider his previous works, including the better known Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea and Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a case of fish-out-of-water at the best and attempts towards utter reductionism at the worst. These books, although full of ingredients that make a non-fiction bestseller in the US, fared miserably at the Nielsen. In short, even average chest-thumping Americans took a very dim view of his writings. And that is quite low.

But still, these books tell a lot about how he constructs his arguments. Another book of his with the self-explanatory title Balkan Ghosts was again a non-starter. But somehow or other, President Bill Clinton got hold of a copy, and as legend follows, used the arguments put forward in the book to launch an attack on Yugoslavia. Kaplan’s star rose overnight, albeit for the wrong reasons. When George Bush was mulling an attack on Iraq, Kaplan supported the idea in a then secret meeting with Bush administration insiders. However, these days, he admits he made a mistake. This book is supposed to be the product of that learning curve. 

So, let’s look at the premise of the book. The book explores a new paradigm, or if we believe the author, an omnipresent but rather ignored paradigm, that geography has pipped ideology as the anchor-stone of geopolitics in a post-Cold War world. That essentially means that nations decide upon their bilateral and multilateral relationships driven by compulsions of geography and not ideology.

While this analogy is as fresh as any, there are works of other theorists that the author draws on. In fact, Kaplan dedicates a substantial number of pages exploring often debunked theories of these geniuses. So, at the very beginning, readers are thrown into the world of English geographer and academic Sir Halford J. Mackinder, who’s ‘Heartland thesis’ is pitted by Kaplan against the ‘Rimland thesis’ of Dutch geo-strategist and his contemporary, Nicholas J. Spykman. Kaplan explores these ideas for the benefit of the readers and helpfully illustrates why they failed. The problem starts when he presents some of his vague ideas and seeks to draw examples from the contemporary world.

While some of them do hold water, the others fall flat. Take for example Panama Canal. Kaplan maintains that it was the specific geography of Panama that led to the canal and dominance of the US in both Pacific and Atlantic. Had Panama not been there, it would have not been easy for the Americans to surpass Brits at sea. Kaplan theorizes that since Britain was positioned as an island west of mainland Europe, it was geographically well placed to outmanoeuvre Portugal and the Netherlands, which it eventually did, in the war of dominance on water. The US did the same with Britain with Panama Canal. This I concede is a remarkably fresh idea.

However, he fails when he  draws parallels between Saudi Arabia and Iran by asserting that these are loose conglomerations of ethnic groups, peoples and lands. And their political centres more often than not cannot hold their distant dominions. Anybody who knows the region will only laugh at this. Similarly, he concedes, rather miserably, that autocrats in Russia, from Stalin to Putin, were necessitated by its ruthless geography.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year

BBA Management Education

Book Review: Cell Phone Nation

India without the wires

The cheap mobile phone is probably the most disruptive communicative device in history. In India its potential to stir up society is breathtaking, argue well known historian Robbin Jeffery and leading anthropologist Assa Doran.

The authors are familiar with the emerging landscape in India for more than two decades now. Jeffrey is a visiting professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies and Asia Research Institute, at National University of Singapore, and has also written on the rise of vernacular dailies in India. Doron, a research fellow in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, too has an earlier India book - Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges: Passages of Resistance.

“Like shoes, mobile phones have become an item that almost everyone can afford and aspire to. Unlike shoes, mobile phones often get taken to bed,” the duo writes in Cell Phone Nation: How Mobile Phones have revolutionised business, politics and ordinary life. The authors explore this theme in the context of India to understand the impact of the cheap mushrooming of communication devices, a revolution for a country that until 1991 had only one phone for 165 people.

All this changed in the first decade of the 21st century and by 2012 mobile phone subscribers in India exceed 900 million out of the 1220 million population. It is ironic  that India had far more mobiles than it had toilets of any kind; 53 per cent of the country’s 247 million households still defecated in the open; but mobile phone density in 2012 approached 72 per cent.

The impact of the simple version of the device has been deep. Village councils continue to ban unmarried girls from owning phones. Families have debated whether their new bride should surrender them. Cheap mobile phones have become photo albums, music machines, databases, radio, flashlights… Religious images and uplifting messages continue to flood tens of thousands of millions of phones each day. On the other hand pornographers and criminals have found a tantalizing tool.

Each of the eight chapters is worth a book in itself. The canvas has been divided over the concept of three ‘Cs’. The first is ‘Controlling’, which examines how people struggle to control information, beginning with sub-continent’s Mughal rulers 500 years ago but quickly moving to radio frequency spectrum and nexus of big business, politicians and bureaucrats, and discusses the 2-G scam and infamous Radia tapes.

Second part of the book focuses on who did the connecting ranging from the fast living advertising women and men of Mumbai to small shopkeepers persuaded by their suppliers of the fast moving consumer goods to stock recharge coupons for pre-paid mobile services.

Also what made the cell phone revolution possible in the billion-plus nation conscious its caste and class hierarchy is that it developed the cheapest mobile call rates in the world and turned pre-paid mobile phone plans into a complex and much talked about subject. In 2010, a US dollar (Rs 50) bought more 200 minutes of talk time on an Indian mobile phone; in Australia, it often bought less than one minute. At one point of time, the cost of making an international call from India for three minutes was Rs 300. Today, it is as low as Rs 20.

With mobile phones invading every section of the society, authors tell us how masses became consumers. This occupies the third part of the canvas - consuming in a multitude of ways. “Mobiles were used for business and politics, in households and families to commit crime and foment terror. Some of the practices enabled by the mobile phones were new and disruptive,” the authors observe.

At the most phones brought fundamental changes in the lives of people at the bottom of the pyramid whether it was fishermen in Kerala or Banaras with tips on the rough weather on seas or marginal farmers with farm advisory or money transfer in unbanked areas.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

'Global Zero' Possibilities

A nuclear-weapons-free world seems a dream; no harm trying...

The IAEA Director General, Yukiya Amano recently mentioned that “as a human being, as Director General of the IAEA – and not least as a citizen of the only country ever to experience the unspeakable horror of nuclear bombs – I believe with all my heart and soul that these horrific weapons must be eliminated.” What is unique in his statement is that such talk of a nuclear-weapons-free world has almost but vanished even from the lexicons of peaceniks. You see, it’s now considered childish to recommend such paradigm reversing objectives. Nuclear weapons are surely here to stay... or are they? Could there really be a possibility of a nuclear-weapons-free world? Well, as one defence commentator put it to yours truly, if India could eradicate polio, then anything is possible. Not many might remember that the Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) has actually aimed at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Those in the know would remember the global campaign called “Global Zero” which was launched in Paris in 2008 for the elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Yet, against the backdrop of the renewed nuclear race – encompassing Iran, India, Pakistan, Korea, China etcetera – it’s quite unlikely that the philosophies of the NWC or Global Zero campaigns would cut any ice with the global warlocks.

As per various estimates, there are more than 23,000 nuclear warheads active in the world, most with the old foxes (America and Russia primarily); that’s one reason that nouveau entrants into the nuclear club too have all their guns blazing. North Korea, which conducted its third nuclear test last month, stated that they are developing this, targeting the US over its hostile interference in Pyongyang. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who had urged the elimination of nuclear weapons previously, has warned that “no power could stop us if we are forced to build that.” And the less said about Pakistan, the better.

While US President Obama did mention his objective “to secure the peace of the world without nuclear weapons” in his initial addresses in 2009, he ignored such a mention in his January 2013 inaugural address. Even Senator John Kerry recently admitted that “a nuclear-weapons-free world is no more than an aspiration.” Yet, one cannot deny that nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. For instance, the United States and Soviet Union were ready to accept their embarrassing defeat in their wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam rather than use nuclear weapons for a desperate win. South Africa has rejected nuclear weapons post the Cold War.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year

BBA Management Education

Book Review: Tata Log

The company one keeps

Since 1868, when the founder and first chairman Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata established a private trading firm in Mumbai. it has not only grown and transformed into India’s premier industrial house but has also touched everyone’s life with salt to satellite television, steel to supercomputers to automobiles and what not. Not a day goes by when we are not touched by some or the other Tata product or services or news about them. The latest offering was the ascendency of Cyrus Mistry replacing Ratan Tata as chairman of Tata Group.

It is one industrial house in India that has been well chronicled beginning with RM Lala— the man who penned books such as The Creation Of Wealth: The Tatas From The 19th To 21st Century and Beyond The Last Blue Mountain: A Life Of J.R.D. Tata. Three years back, Morgen Witzel, a leading business historian authored a book Tata: The Evolution of a Corporate Brand. What differentiates Tata Log, written by Harish Bhat, managing director and CEO of Tata Global Beverages, from the previous works is that it attempts to portray how Tata companies have broken new ground and set new standards of excellence over the past two decades since the Indian economy was liberalised in 1991. Secondly by focussing on people who were involved in different projects closely and their dreams and dilemmas, crises and challenges, Bhat has captured the subaltern view of the post-liberalisation decades.

An old Tata hand, Bhat, who has been trying his hand at writing besides managing workers and business, has carefully chosen eight stories that reveal the Tata way of life. This lends a human touch to the Tata Group.

The book begins with the making of India’s first indigenously designed car, the Indica, followed by how Tata Chemicals in Mithapur is transforming the lives of a community in a far-flung, semi-arid corner of the country committed to social causes as diverse as raising the water table in a barren area to protecting the endangered whale shark. Equally interesting is the tale of Tanishq, and how Titan Industries is modernizing and transforming the huge jewellery industry in India.


The chapter on the tribulations of Tata Finance that brought out the worst and the best in the group is timely as Tata Capital is trying to emerge as a new player in the market.

Equally amazing is the story on Second Career Internship Programme, or SCIP, of the Tatas, which offers a second career to women who take a break to raise a family, and the building of the world’s fourth fastest and Asia’s fastest supercomputer-‘EKA’ by S Ramadorai and his team. These chapters peep into how Tata Group transformed itself and various communities and stakeholders around them.

Two stories - one on the first-ever acquisition of an iconic global brand by an Indian company - Tetley and the other about how Tata Steel became the first Indian organisation to win Japan’s prestigious Deming Prize for quality - have been showcased by the author to illustrate Tata’s arrival on the global scene more emphatically than ever before.

As a good storyteller, Bhat has taken care to pepper each of the chapters with interesting anecdotes. For instance he quotes Xerxes Desai, the man who founded Tanishq, to reveal that the name was actually inspired by a Harlequin Great Dane owned by him. The dog was called Monishqa.


In all these eight stories Bhat tell us that the Tata Way is all about 4Ps — pioneering, purposive, principled and perfect - and builds his case to exemplify these 4Ps.

If Bhat chooses to tell us how the group transformed after Indian economy began to walk on the path of liberalisation, he ought to have included the Nira Radia episode, the telecom scam, and the withdrawal of Nano project from West Bengal. But none of these finds a mention in Tata Log.
As the title suggests, Tata Log is at best a record keeping or about ‘Log’- people. Of course it is a question whether somebody like Bhat, who is a sensitive insider, would have dared to include these episodes. Also missing is the extraordinary response of the staff of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai during 26/11 attack.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

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