India too must protect its intellect

Anil K Gupta 

 

Largely because of the pharmaceutical sector, the impression that India pirates and is incapable of inventions dies hard. This is despite strong pressure for intellectual property protection emanating from the software, music and film industries and the success of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research labs. There is also a related impression that inventions require the R&D backing of huge multinational companies. This may be true of certain sectors, but is not universally true. The database compiled by the Ahmedabad-based Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Innovations and now selectively available in a compact disc brought out by the National Innovation Foundation proves the point. SRISTI and NIF have organized annual competitions to discover grassroots technological innovations and the database captures these sparks of ingenuity. As Dr Mashelkar of CSIR has often remarked, several such inventions fall by the wayside because the inventor doesn’t often realize that there has been an inventive step and or its commercial value.

 

Alternatively, venture capital funding to commercially exploit the invention is not available. The SRISTI and NIF-type initiatives help eliminate these constraints. If IP is recognized as capital, some day it might provide collateral for borrowing, as other capital does. The perception about India generalizes to the entire Asian region, regarded as the copy shop of the world. Partly to counter this perception, the Far Eastern Economic Review has organized annual Asian Innovation Awards. The awards are based on three criteria (level of creativity or innovation; quality of execution; and impact on society or quality of life). This year, one of the two gold awards has gone to Srinivasa Gopalakrishnan from Chennai for an all-fuel (including diesel) catalytic converter that pre-treats fuel for clean combustion. The claims that the converter reduced harmful emissions by 60 per cent and increases fuel efficiency by ten per cent are not universally accepted. However, since the commercial launch eight months ago, 8,000 such converters have been sold at $100 apiece. More important is the spirit of innovation such awards capture, such as lightweight artificial limbs in Thailand, which won the second gold award. Within India, the law to protect IP is changing, although very slowly and driven usually by external pressures. Given India’s strengths in human resources, education and science and technology, India should strengthen protection of the intellect it possesses.