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A POWERFUL trade dispute these days between the United States and India is brewing, and has the potential to boil over into a trade war.
At issue is the price of medicines. American pharmaceutical producers are saying that companies in India reverse-engineer new life-saving drugs put out by American companies, then market them as generics. In one case, when a Swiss pharmaceutical company brought a new drug to the Indian market and wanted to patent it, the Indian Supreme Court disallowed the patent.
This has caused enormous friction between the American and Indian governments. The Americans argue their company’s invest huge amounts of money in pharmaceutical research and innovation and are entitled to recover that money by patenting their drugs and selling them at stupendous prices.
The Indian Supreme Court, on the other hand, argues that Indian law gives a higher place to the rights of the poor who find life-saving medicines priced beyond their reach under American patent law. As such, the Indian law places a higher bar than American law does to determine when exactly an innovation is eligible for a patent.
The narratives marshalled by both sides dovetail with their history and peculiar cultural priorities. In America, business calls the shots, but in India the rights of the poor have to be safeguarded by the law. The Indian Supreme Court makes reference to India’s colonial history in its judgement, and the role that the colonial-era patent law played in placing agricultural and medicinal advances beyond the reach of the poor. It argues that today’s patent regime must be interpreted in such a way so as to prevent those injustices.
Whose story is one to believe? Is each side trying to protect their own industry? It comes down to whose story you want to believe, although the Indian story sounds a lot more appealing to the ears than the American one I must say.
The clash of the narratives is so powerful it might well be the backdrop to the whole Khobragade affair. This too has mobilised its own narratives.
This is how a New York Times editorial put it: “It is not unusual in India for domestic employees to be paid poorly and required to work more than 60 hours a week. But such practices are not allowed under American law, and abuses by anyone should not be tolerated, regardless of their status.”
Stripped off its sanctimonious language, this American outrage translates into this as the narrative enters the realm of the day to day: ‘What’s with these South Asian elites and their domestic servants? How come they can’t get by without domestic help?’ A bit rich coming from a society whose average resident has a carbon footprint five times as large as the world average, according to an MIT study. Let’s talk about who can’t get by without what.
India and Pakistan are labour-surplus economies, and it’s very common to find human labour doing work that is otherwise performed by machines in economies where labour is scarce — work such as washing dishes, or sweeping the roads.
Let’s face it: the only reason Americans don’t use domestic labour is because they cannot afford it, that’s all. So they buy a dishwasher instead. And how exactly is domestic labour any more morally repulsive than sweatshop labour? Of course “such practices are not allowed under American law”. They outsource these practices. Out of sight, out of mind.
On the flipside, the story being put out by the Indian Foreign Service, is also somewhat distasteful. Is a domestic helper more important than our bilateral relationship? they ask incredulously. Yes, indeed, how dare that lowly creature demand her rights as a human being!
Behind this clash of narratives may well lie a growing series of trade disputes, that are getting very intense indeed. But behind those trade disputes lie other narratives, and behind those, yet others about colonial history and the obligation of states to safeguard a collective interest and so on forever.
Policy decisions and economic outcomes are intimately woven into narratives and stories if they are to find a place in public life, and sometimes the warp and weft of these narratives gets so dense, so intricate, that it sparks an endless conversation. Speaking of which, something bears mentioning here. Last week, I wrote about KESC, and vented some indignation at the public relations campaign that is under way to lionise their management and their achievements. I felt it’s a bit soon for them to start polishing their trophy or writing their epitaph just yet.
I was contacted by somebody who had served as a member of the core team that took charge of KESC in 2008. This person took issue with my description of the 560MW project. Specifically, I had said that KESC management is taking credit for a project that was begun by their predecessors, even though implementation was done by them.
The person who contacted me argued that whatever beginnings they inherited from their predecessors were negligible compared to the work they themselves put into the project. He shared details, but there are space restrictions here. He felt I had been unfair in asserting that credit had been taken for other people’s work. I promised him I would convey his sentiments to my readers in my next column, and hopefully that promise stands fulfilled.
The writer is a business journalist and 2013-2014 Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington D.C.
Twitter: @khurramhusain
