Pirates of the traditional Indian knowledge

In the year 1995, some Indian scientists, doing research work on medicinal plants, prescribed in Ayurveda, the traditional medical science of India, made a shocking discovery. An American research outfit, University of Mississippi Medical Center, located in Jackson U.S.A. had successfully taken a patent on the medicinal properties of Turmeric. The antiseptic properties of Turmeric, are part of the traditional knowledge of India and has been passed on to the next generation for thousands of years. The persons applying for this patent had claimed that they had discovered these properties for the first time. US department of patents, without bothering to find out the truth, had granted them this patent and in a way had confirmed their ignorance, about traditional knowledge of India.

As a result of this patent, no one could have used Turmeric as an antiseptic without taking permission from this US outfit. Obviously, they would have gladly given it to anyone on payment of royalty, deriving monetary benefits illegally, from traditional Indian knowledge . Council of Scientific and Industrial Research from India, applied to US patent office in the year 1996 to cancel this patent. They submitted not less than 32 different references, about antiseptic properties of Turmeric. Some of the references were more than 100 years old. After much debate, US patent office canceled the patent.

Traditional Medical Sciences from India, such as Ayurveda or Unani medical systems, know about medicinal properties of thousands of plants, fruits, flowers and roots traditionally grown in India. Taking undue advantage of the ignorance of the US department of Patents, of the traditional Indian knowledge, was truly speaking, an act of Intellectual Piracy if nothing else.

In the year 1990, ‘W.R.Grace’, a multinational agricultural production company from New York, in association with US department of agricultural production, applied for a patent for medicinal uses of the oil extracted from the Neem tree. In 1995 when this fact became known in India, Doctor Vandana Shiva and others filed a petition with the US patents office for rejecting this application as this was again traditional Indian knowledge. After much legal wrangling, this application was finally rejected in 1999.

Ayurveda prescribes use of Bitter Gourd and Aubergine in the diet of Diabetic patients. An attempt was made some time back to take a patent based on this information. In the past, patents have been wrongly granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) on the use of over 285 Indian medicinal plants such as papaya, Indian long pepper, kali tulsi, pudina, ginger, aloe, isabgol, aaonla, jira, soybean, tomato, almond, walnut and methi. These attempts to highjack traditional Indian knowledge, brought forth an awareness in the minds of the Indian scientific community and Government of India to take up some valid action.

A group of some 200 research scientists was formed under Council of Scientific and Industrial Research from India. These people toiled for more than 8 years to produce a comprehensive reference directory of more than 200,000 medical formulations based on Ayurvedic, Unani and Siddha medical systems. This reference document has been put on the Internet now, as Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). This directory can be accessed by any patent office from the world, and is available in five international languages, namely English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. This library presents scientifically converted information of traditional Indian medicine from Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Tamil language references in these five languages. India has now also signed a landmark agreement with the European Patent Office. Under the three-year agreement, which came into effect on February 3, TKDL’s database would be available to the patent examiners at EPO (34 member states) ‘for establishing prior art’, in case of any patent applications based on Indian systems of medicine (ISM). To avoid misuse, this web site can be accessed only by Government Patent Offices of the world.

Opposing any patent, already granted, is a prohibitively expensive proposition.. In the case of patent for Basmati rice, the challenge came only from India although the scented rice is also grown in Pakistan. This country firstly claimed that it too will join the battle against Basmati rice patenting. Pakistan chickened out, when the cost of the legal battle was worked out to something around US $ 3,00,000.

Considering just the legal costs, the importance of TKDL becomes absolutely clear. In fact, Dr. V.P..Gupta, one of the creators of TKDL, feels that every year, TKDL would help in rejecting about 2000 patents applications based on traditional Indian knowledge world-wide and effectively scare away these Pirates of Indian Traditional Knowledge. A job well done!

2^nd January 2013

Frugal Engineering

I came across these words for the first time in my life, about 2 years ago. One of the CEO's of a multinational auto major had come for a visit to India then. He had then praised the frugal enginneing used by designers in India. Since then, I had this question in my mind: what kind of engineering is this stuff, called as frugal engineering? I have studied engineering about 40 or 45 years ago. No one had taught us any such subject then. I therefore wondered, how and where from this animal has suddenly appeared?

Many western nations have this misleading belief that all the research and development work that goes on in India, is mainly done by only multinationals. A research paper by Singapore's National University was published, last year. The subject of this paper was to find out, whether research and development centers run by the multinational companies in India, carry out original innovative research in India or work only on applications for company's inventions found out or discovered outside India. Authors of this research paper had tried to find out data about number of applications for patents made by multinational companies in India. They had found out that in the year 2000 only 50 such patent applications were received. But in 2007, 500 such applications were received by the patent office. Certain corporations like Texas Instruments, IBM,and General Electric were leading applicants for patents.

They also found out that the innovative research carried out by these multinationals in India is mainly concerned with the India specific situations like availability of power or raw materials, economic and social conditions in India and in general situation in India. The authors had termed this method of research mainly adopted to Indian conditions as Frugal Engineering and were generally of an opinion that such Frugal engineering research would prove to be of great importance in changing global situation. After reading findings of this research paper, I soon realized that even though, for authors of this paper form Singapore or for multinational companies now operating in India, this might have been a revolutionary or a brand new concept, but for indigenous manufacturers and mainly those from the small or medium sector, this was a matter of routine as they have been doing and carrying out same kind of research and development work for last several decades.

 Post Office Box made in 1930's; historic frugal engineering

 

My grand father, way back in 1930's and 40's, used to manufacture basic scientific apparatus, required by school and college Physics laboratories. He has written his memoirs, in which he describes the difficulties faced by him to get raw materials imported from England or particularly from Germany during second world war years and how he had to design and develop things in innovative fashion so use of imported materials was kept at minimum. This is nothing but frugal engineering and my grandfather's reminiscences prove that this concept of frugal engineering is as old as 70 or 80 years.

Prior to policy of economic liberalization adopted by Indian Government in 1990's decade, the industry and trade in India was heavily controlled by the Government in a typically socialistic pattern. I had the misfortune of running my manufacturing industry mainly in those years and have a first hand knowledge of how industry operated during those days. There was no guarantee of availability or price for any raw materials. If a certain raw material was available today, no one knew, whether it would be available after few months or next year. Just to get an electrical connection for his factory, one needed all kinds of Government clearances and permissions. The labour laws were and probably still are draconian. A business owner had to face visits of all kinds of Government inspectors to his shop, whose main purose used to be to find out, which rules or laws are being violated to enhance his cut. But in spite of all this, businessmen in India, still found their way out and grew.

The manufacturers, traders, businessmen of India developed their businesses facing all these obstacle every day and night. The methods evolved by them were nothing but Frugal engineering. This is how Frugal engineering got developed in India and that is why Indians are masters of that technique.

Singapore researchers give few examples of Frugal engineering such as small terracotta cups developed in Kolkata to serve tea to poor at the cost of Rs. 1/- or small battery operated refrigerators that can work with complete unreliability of availability of electrical power. I would like to extend this argument and say that almost everything that is made in India for Indian consumers, is always done only after consideration of the spending power of the consumers. The extensive use of plastics in place of metals or wood is another example of this principle of Frugal Engineering.

Frugal engineering concept is no more limited to manufacturing sector only. Earlier in India, mobile phone operators used to have rate of 1 Rupee per minute as the call rate. Since most of the calls are short, this was changed to 1 Paisa (1/100 Rupee) per second. This made calls cheaper for people and they started talking for longer periods, with the result that there was no revenue loss for the carriers. To innovate such an idea to fix the call rates for different basic time unit (From minute to Second) and then develop required software for this change is a great example of Frugal engineering.

Almost all companies operating in India have started adopting to this model of Frugal engineering. All new products or services being introduced in Indian markets, have befriended a new three cornered policy of lowest possible manufacturing expense, high volume production and minimum acceptable profitability. The companies are adequately compensated by unforeseen increases in cash flows and make dealing in such products acceptable or affordable to the company. Since consumers get better products at lower cost, they have nothing to complain.

The Nano car produced by Tata motors is often mentioned as one of the finest examples of frugal engineering. Very few however know that even before this car ever came on the road, this company had revolutionized the urban road transport vehicle or pick up van with their frugally engineered product called as, 'Ace', which was available at much lower cost, was very cheap to run and because of these reasons, the demand for it was so high that the company could produce it in huge numbers and made a reasonably good profit from it. This is Frugal Engineering at it's best. When this new technique is used by other nations to improve their businesses, it would be India's gift to the world.

2 January 2013

Ginger Tea and British Patent Office

I do not know, what the readers  of this blog are reminded of, on a rainy wet day, with  chill, dampness and biting cold winds.  As far as I am concerned, I long and yearn on such days, for a steaming hot cup of tea, boiled with a finger of Ginger.  A cup of such Ginger tea, drives away immediately  all thoughts of dampness and chill from my mind, as it  goes down and burns my throat. One does not have to make  such ginger tea only at home  in India. Any road side shack will sell you such a cup of Ginger tea with that burning sensation, which  would give you the same feeling of comfort. Actually ginger tea is just one of the recipe from a range of eats or drinks, that can be made with Ginger. The Ginger candy or the soft candy balls made with dried ginger powder, sugar and lots of Ghee,  are equally tempting and popular. There are other uses of ginger too. My grand mother used dried Ginger powder mixed with water,  to mask the forehead in case of colds and headaches. All these teas, candies and home remedies are really part of our traditional knowledge handed over to us by generations.

 

 

Any Indian would feel aggrieved if someone starts claiming that this traditional knowledge, which has been handed over to us by generations, has been discovered by him only now and tries to make a fast buck from the lie.  Five or Six years ago,  a person from London, Nicolas John Larkins, applied for a patent  to British patent Office under a name ” Pharmaceutical composition for the treatment of excess mucous production”. In his application he claimed to have found a wonder drug using  Ginger (Zingiber officinale) and Kutki (Picrorhiza kurroa) to cure cough and lung diseases. This application was filed under patent number (GB2436063).

Government of India found out about this false claim in 2011. They made a demand with British patent office that no such patent should  be granted. When necessary proof was furnished by Government of India, British Patent Office rejected Larkins’s application and canceled the provisional patent. I would not have been surprised, ,  in case this patent had been approved, that this Larkins character would have asked the Indians, to pay royalty to him for drinking ginger tea.

Really speaking,  this is not the first attempt by westerners to loot the traditional knowledge of India. In 1995,  European patent office approved a patent regarding medicinal uses of Neem tree. After India’s complaint and a legal battle of 10 years, the patent was eventually cancelled in 2005. In 1995 only,  US patent office approved a patent about medicinal properties of Turmeric. After India’s complaint it was cancelled in 1997.

CSIR or Council of Scientific Research in India has prepared a database of Traditional Indian knowledge. This has been made available on the web and is known as ‘ The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library or TKDL’. There are 24 Million pages in this database and systematic search is possible. The database includes old Sanskrit manuscripts and facility to translate in German, French, Spanish and Japanese is available. No country approves a patent application,  if the information given in that application is pre-published. Publication of this database on the internet should have stopped this attack on India’s traditional knowledge, which is available for everyone’s use. Indian Government has requested patent offices of all other countries to refer to this data base,  before granting any patent in the related fields. So far no patent office had responded to this call. European patent office has now agreed to use the database. Only the future can tell us the effectiveness of this database in preventing such frivolous patents.

Fighting legal battles to counter such frivolous patents is very expensive and time consuming and therefore can not be done in each and every case. Besides this,  TKDL data base lists only the medicinal properties. Patent applications,  regarding other uses such as preparation of organic colour from Turmeric for example, can be still approved.

The people of Indian origin,  now settled in the western countries,  can help to  prevent such use of traditional Indian knowledge for individual advantage. They should keep watch on such frivolous patent applications and block these in time to prevent issue of patents. Otherwise looting of  this traditional Indian knowledge may continue.