The government has misled the nation in four ways on the EMR issue.

Firstly, it has led the people to believe that granting exclusive marketing monopolies to corporations is a WTO obligation. This is not true. India does not need to grant EMRs under WTO rules. It can adopt the alternative route of making our patent laws stricter, stronger and better able to address the contemporarychallenges of bio-piracy and bio-hazards. However, pressure for EMRs is coming directly from US and European corporations and from the northern governments acting on behalf of global corporations.

The second myth the government has spread is that EMRs will promote scientific research in India. Since the EMR ordinance is for exclusive marketing rights in India on the basis of foreign patents, and since it bypasses patent laws, Indian R&D will not be protected or enhanced. In fact R&D budgets will shrink as exclusive monopolies destroy the economy.

A strict domestic patent regime which prevents trivial modifications being counted as inventions and discriminates between discovery and invention would protect indigenous innovation. Bypassing patent protection and granting marketing monopolies as a right will undermine our economy, innovative capacity and scientific research.

A third myth that the government has spread is that products for which EMRs are granted will only arrive in the market by year 2003since it takes approximately eight years for product development and commercialisation, and EMRs will be granted only for patents granted in another country after January 1995. However, Glaxo Wellcome's Global Intellectual Project manager Dr Alan Hesketh, in a letter dated April 28m 1998 to the European Commission, has already provided the information that two companies are likely to file applications in India for marketing exclusively during 1999 itself.

Further, the majority of patent applications in the mail box arrangements for product patents are not for new products and new products and new molecules. While only 20 to 30 new molecules are patented each year worldwide, and hence only 120 patent applications could be for genuine innovation, more than 3,000 applications are already in the mail box and are thus candidates for EMRs. These applications are either junk applications or patents based on bio-piracy, ie, the piracy of indigenous knowledge and innovation.

The IDMA Bulletin XXIX (27) of July 21,1998 has done an analysis of the 668 pharmaceutical patents filed during 1997. Most of the new patent applications were for ayurvedic knowledge. On the basis of these bio-piracy-based patents applications in India and patents granted in any other country after 1995, a corporation can claim exclusive marketing monopoly on formulationsl based on ginger, pepper, harad, bahera, amla etc, with minor modifications in methods of extraction and processing. Unfortunately the present patent amendment bill just passed by the Parliament allows such trivial and obvious modifications to be counted as inventions.

Since 70 per cent of Indian health care is provided by herbal medicine, EMRs based on bio-piracy will immediately deprive the poorer two thirds of India of their right to health care. Further, since many of the plants we use for medicine are also used for food, EMRs on formulations based on indigenous knowledge will crate monopolies on food items, raise prices and thus undermine food rights and foodsecurity.

Finally, granting EMRs against product patent applications in the area of pharmaceuticals and agro-chemicals without substantial changes in the patent laws will flood the market with bio-hazardous products, since EMRs do not allow examination and rejection: they are a claim to marketing as a right.

For example, Monsanto has been carrying out trials of its genetically engineered Bt-cotton "Bollgard" with MAHYCO in 40 states in India and would like to market Bollgard by the year 2000. In the US Bt crops are marketed as a pesticide, largely to escape from food safety regulation. Since the Patent Law Amendments allow EMRs on agro-chemicals, genetically engineered crops such as Bt crops could flood the Indian market in spite of being known to be inefficient at controlling pests and in spite of being sources of known risks to bio-diversity and ecosystem health.

Similarly, if Monsanto is ready with its terminator seeds in the next few years it can use the fact that it already controls the patentgranted after 1995 to US Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land to claim marketing terminator seeds as a right. By not changing our patent laws up to the year 2005, and instead opting for grant of EMRs, the government has in effect opened the floodgates for bio-piracy and bio-hazards.

We urgently need a new patent law which addresses the new challenges of the age of biology. The 1970 Act is an excellent piece of legislation for the chemical age, but as the world moves from the chemical age to the age of biology, our laws need to evolve to respond to the new challenges posed by genetic engineering, patenting of life forms and patenting indigenous knowledge.

The fundamental anomalies in the Patent Act which occur when EMRs are granted on the basis of patents on life forms and living material obtained in foreign countries, need to be removed as an urgent task. We cannot wait till 2005 to undertake this task of substantial revision of the patent laws to stop patents that promote bio-piracy,bio-hazards and violation of bio-ethics. This is the sovereign right of the Indian people and the sovereign duty of the Indian state.

The agenda for total destruction of the Indian economy, bio-diversity and public morality through EMRs has been justified on grounds of the WTO dispute. However, it is the US which is taking India to the dispute settlement mechanism again because the EMRs are linked to compulsory licencing. The US wants India to offer unrestricted market monopolies to its pharmaceutical and agro-chemical corporations and delete the compulsory licensing clauses. Instead of giving up more and more of our rights by dismantling the patent system, it is time for the government to turn directly and immediately to the job of strengthening our patent laws on our terms to protect the rights of Indian citizens.

The Indian public needs strict and strong patent laws which stop bio-piracy, bio-hazards and prevent monopolies in the field of health and agriculture. This is a fundamental right guaranteedby the Indian constitution. It is time the government started to carry out its constitutional obligations to the people in India instead of carrying out the instructions of pharmaceutical and agro-chemical MNCs. Instead of crawling when asked to bend, the government should start to stand up in the defence of the fundamental rights of the people of this country.

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