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paralleled by the extremes of institutionalised deference and powerful social exclusion based on caste system. Thus Stalinist and Maoist notions of socialist developmentalism continue to have a wide appeal. This dualism has pushed the Indian left in opposite directions. The left parties in I ndia the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have been co-opted into the bourgeoisie democratic system. They have lost the c apacity and willingness to carry out mass mobilisations beyond the standard forms of trade union economism. Armed Maoism which has grown has moved in the opposite direction of eschewing electoralism and parliamentarism pursuing instead the classical strategy of countryside surrounding the c ities and

the establishment of liberated zones, albeit mobile. Vanaik argued that in their attempt to crush the armed insurgency, even the weaker states like Sri L anka have ultimately succeeded despite the insurgents having their own navy and armed forces. The long-term strategy of armed Maoism cannot hope to defeat an Indian state far more powerful than that of Sri Lanka, nor is this Maoism prepared to recognise the key strategic problem of how best to address the reality of an existing and stable capitalist bourgeois democracy. The bankruptcy of the existing Indian left requires a process of recomposition that will involve splits and fusions as well accretions from unexpected sources. V anaik argued that this will be based on a political-theoretical foundation that

n egates Stalinism and Maoism, practising a socialist demo cracy far superior to what currently exists. The success of the conference was ref lected in the massive presence and lively participation in the discussions that followed the presentations, from an audience primarily comprising university s tudents and young activists. For many of them, it was a rare occasion to engage with anti-Stalinist radical Marxist perspectives. It was altogether tting that amidst the great media hype about Obama and the India-US relationship, a far more critical perspective about what was happening around the world and of how we need to orient ourselves to future change of a much more humane and decent kind, was also made available.

B K Keayla: A Personal Reminiscence

Amit Sen Gupta

Bal Krishan Keayla, a key gure in the National Working Group on Patent Law and an indefatigable campaigner for two decades against the GATT/WTO agreement on intellectual property,died on 27November. A colleague in the working group reminisces.

This being a personal reminiscence, readers may pardon the author for some lapses in facts, sequence and names mentioned. Amit Sen Gupta (mail.dsf@gmail.com) is associated with the Delhi Science Forum, the Jan Swas Abhiyaan, the All India Peoples S cience Network and is based in New Delhi.

wenty-two years ago, but the day is still fresh in my mind. We (Amitava Guha of the Federation of Medical and Sales Representatives Associations of India and myself) had, with hesitant steps, made our way into the corporate ofce of Ranbaxy in Nehru Place. We were curious why a director in Ranbaxy would want to meet two anti-corporate activists. That is how I rst met B K Keayla, then director, corporate environment, in Ranbaxy. We had gone prepared for a 15-minute meeting and left after two hours. Keaylaji (as he was soon known in our circles) captivated us with his thorough knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry, and his deep commitment towards the need to sustain the domestic generic industry. We came away with sheaves of data on multinational corporations operating in India, their sins of omission and commission, but more than that a feeling that we had met someone who we wanted to meet again and again. Later, we pieced together Keaylajis history. Keaylaji had spent much of his life in the government and had retired as commissioner of payments. He had been

associated with the Hathi Committee in 1974 which had charted the path for the development of the generic industry in India. We kept going back to him, because he always had some new insight to offer about the pharmaceutical industry. We developed a relationship that is hard to dene that of very dear friends though Keaylaji was a year older than my father. He was a mentor, a colleague and above all a marvellous h uman being. When we rst met him Keaylaji was nearing 70, but had the energy and patience that all of us envied. Those were the heady days when self-reliance was not a bad word even within government and I ndia was battling it out in the negotiations in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Dinesh Abrol, my colleague in Delhi Science Forum, mentioned the issue one day. Keaylaji had broached the idea of setting up a working group to discuss the issue of patents and the negotiations in the Uruguay Round on a proposed agreement on intellectual property rights. He proposed a group that would include civil society organisations such as ours, the generic i ndustry, lawyers, academics, and trade unions in the pharma industry. The idea was novel our rst experience of Keaylajis ability to think out of the box. For some of us it was perhaps too novel to start with. We had never worked with the industry and saw them as uncompromising

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enemies. This was the year 1988 when few in the drug movement had even heard about patents. But Keaylaji persuaded us as only he could we were later to sample this unique ability of his to work across sectors and to bring together people s everal times. Thus was born the National Working Group on Patent Laws.

Guiding the group

The rst meeting of the group was in Ranbaxys boardroom the rst time some of us had been in any boardroom. I remember looking around the room Dinesh A brol and Usha Menon my colleagues in Delhi Science Forum, Mira Shiva from All India Drug Action Network, Amitava Guha from the FMRAI, Ashok Rao of the Confederation of Ofcers Associations of Public Sector Undertakings, B S Chimni from Jawaharlal Nehru University, senior journalist Balraj Mehta, several stalwarts from different generic companies, and Keaylaji himself (and some whom I am probably forgetting to mention). Who would have thought that history was to be created. For, the national working group did create history. It initiated a process that today reverberates across the world in the form of the access campaign on medicines. But 22 years ago, amidst the plush carpeted ofce in Nehru Place, perhaps only Keaylaji had a true sense of what we were setting out to do. The next two years were like a blur of activity, with Keaylaji like a general marshalling his troops. A prolic writer himself, Keaylaji egged on all around him to attempt to match him. The national working group produced scores of documents on intellectual property rights and India positions in the Uruguay Round. Others joined eminent lawyer Rajeev Dhawan, Biswajit Dhar, and more. Justice Krishna Iyer and Nityanand from the Central Drug Research Institute became our chairpersons. Keaylaji was our convenor and remained so till the end. It was a heady b attle as we familiarised ourselves with unknown concepts, brushed up on law and the nuances of international negotiations. We received two jolts in the space of a year. In 1989, India made a u-turn in the GATT negotiations and agreed to negotiate the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual

Property Rights (TRIPS). It had one happy fallout for us. S P Shukla, then our ambassador to GATT refused to go along with the change in position by the Indian government and was called back to India. Keaylaji, in a trice, recruited him into the n ational working group. The second jolt came in the form of change of guard in Ranbaxy and their consequent withdrawal of support to the working group. Keaylaji had, by then, left Ranbaxy and overnight we were left without a space to operate from. For about a year we functioned from the small ofce of Delhi Science Forum, but Keaylaji remained unfazed. He subsequently organised an ofce for the working group in Okhla, where the operations of the group shifted. Remember this was b efore the day and age of computers and the internet. All communications were drafted by Keaylaji and sent out through the postal system, and followed up with telephone calls from him.

Involving the Polity

By the early 1990s we realised that India was on a slippery slope in the GATT negotiations, and would agree to a TRIPS agreement. What followed was a masterstroke by Keaylaji. He formed the Forum of P arliamentarians, that united all non- Congress parties, and also mobilised a few from the Congress. Only Keaylaji could have brought together Ashok Mitra, George Fernandes, and Murli Manohar Joshi on one platform. Keaylaji remained a diehard optimist till the end, and with an a lmost demonic zeal the national working group reeled off a series of events that were designed to create public awareness in India and across the world. The working group organised a series of consultations, both Indian and international and lobbied incessantly with Indian lawmakers. Keaylaji and his ock in the N ational Group of Patent Laws (of which we were part) were instrumental in at least a small way (though we would like to believe it was more than small) in starting to lay the ground for the global access campaign against patents and intellectual property. The deed was done on 31 December 1994, and India along with others signed on to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement. Keaylajis zeal did not ag and he exhorted all of us to battle on. He

fought the 1999 amendment to the 1970 Act that provided for mailbox applications, the 2002 amendments and nally the 2005 amendments. It needs to be put on record that it is not an accident that I ndia was the last holdout and made use of the full 10 years of transition period, nally amending its Act in 2005. It was not an accident that many public health safeguards were incorporated in the 2005 Act, including some that are held out as examples to be emulated. Behind all such small victories one can see Keaylajis hand (and of those he was able to get to move and act), always urging on, never agging, always believing that things can be made to change. In between he was also asked by the World Health Organisation regional ofce to advise a number of Asian countries regarding how their patent laws could best reect national interests. Even after 2005, while his health started failing and many of us thought it was time to move on, Keaylaji did not give up. He battled the patent ofce on its draft manual for patent examiners and took up cudgels against the proposed bill on private utilisation of public funded IP. It is an unreal feeling that I shall never again hear his voice on the phone urging me to attend the next meeting of the n ational group. But all of us who were touched by his work know that his spirit lives on amongst us. That smiling benevolent presence that urged us along when we decades younger than him had almost given up. When Keaylaji and I travelled together outside India, he would tell his family not to worry because I was with him as a doctor. Unfortunately when he passed away, I was 1,500 kilometres away. But I know Keaylaji. If he could read this he would say, I have lived a full life and given my best it is now unto all of you to take it forward.

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december 18, 2010 vol xlv no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly