Reji K. JosephInstitute for Studies in Industrial Development | (ISID)
Reji K. Joseph
PhD (Economics)
About
44
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186
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Reji K. Joseph currently works at Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID). Reji does research in the broad area of international trade, investment and innovation. He has published on topics of patents and innovation, India and WTO, trade policy making in India, economics and legal aspects of GM crops, international investment agreements and Indian pharmaceutical industry. Current focus of his research is on the impact of FDI on national innovation capabilities.
Additional affiliations
July 2016 - present
January 2012 - June 2016
September 2009 - December 2012
Education
July 2003 - January 2013
Publications
Publications (44)
This article is in the context of the recent report of the Economic Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister of India on investing in the patent ecosystem of India. The major focus of the report is to reduce pendency by increasing the speed of processing patent applications. In this article, I argue that we need to look at the patent ecosystem more...
It has been challenging for researchers to identify the appropriate classification for the identification of pharmaceutical products for undertaking cross-country comparisons in trade as various agencies, international and national, follow different classifications for the identification of pharmaceutical products. This paper proposes a new method,...
Intellectual property rights (IPRs) never received attention in matters of foreign
economic policy until an agreement on IPRs was brought into the negotiations during
the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and subsequent incorporation of the Trade-
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement into the
Marrakesh Agreement leadi...
The outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China and the lockdown that followed had disrupted the supply of APIs and their intermediates and starting materials to India, leading to a temporary restriction on export of certain medicines from India. The PLI scheme that was announced subsequently aimed at attaining self-reliance in the production of 41 APIs/D...
The economic reforms introduced in India in 1991 were a reversal of earlier policies which helped access to affordable medicines by the development of a strong generic pharmaceutical industry. Liberalisation of import restrictions, reduction of tariffs, removal of restrictions on foreign investment and introduction of product patents rights are all...
The use of digital technologies to aid the agronomic decision making of farmers characterizes modern agriculture. Digital farming is expected to enhance the market power of leading innovative firms in the seed industry, which is already having a high level of concentration. The merger of two leading innovative firms—Bayer and Monsanto—is to be seen...
India’s pharmaceutical industry is renowned for selling medicines to the world at reasonable prices, especially developing countries. This has helped Africa in its fight against HIV/Aids, for instance. Such endeavours have earned India a reputation as the “pharmacy of the world”.
Now, the advantages that have enabled India to play this role are in...
This Policy Brief was prepared in the context of disturbances in the supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from China due to COVID lock down and recent decision of the Union Cabinet of India to promote domestic manufacturing on APIs. It is argued that the proposed measures will not be sufficient to meet the objective of reducing import...
In this article we argue that there should be a new approach to public sector units in the context of COVID-19. Public sector enterprises can be used for economic and strategic purposes such as nurturing start-ups and public policy objectives such as providing affordable healthcare to people.
The policy regime governing India’s outward FDI (OFDI) has undergone major changes in the last one and a half decades period. This paper aims to map the changing policies on OFDI since 1960s. It also aims to capture major trends in India’s OFDI in the last one decade. It is found that liberalisation of OFDI by doing away with blanket ceiling and li...
India’s generic pharmaceutical producers face numerous challenges after the country’s patent law was amended to make it compatible with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Two amendments were significant: introduction of product patent regime covering the area of pharmaceuticals, replacing the process pat...
This chapter provides an account of the development of the information technology (IT) and information technology-enabled services (ITES) in India. The IT sector was developed from the early 1960s, wherein only the government-owned companies were allowed to operate in this sector. In the later decades, the industry was opened to the private sector,...
This paper aims to estimate the quantum of inflow of FDI in R&D in India, identify the
sectors which receive FDI in R&D, identify the nature and characteristics of investors and investee firms and examine the innovation performance of investee firms in terms of R&D expenditure, patents and publications. It is found that FDI in R&D constitutes only...
Unlike many other counties, in India, there is a direct link between the price of medicines and the number of people falling into poverty. In 2004–05, 47 million people are pushed into poverty on account of catastrophic health spending, which is caused primarily by expenses on medicines. And the number of people in India who do not get treated on a...
Foreign Direct Investment, especially in R&D, has the potential to have deep engagement with the national innovation system of the host country provided right policy instruments are in place. India and China are the two leading destinations for FDI in general and FDI in R&D. While China seems to have been successful in integrating FDI in R&D with i...
Government of India announced its first ever National IPR Policy (IPR Policy) in May 2016. This Policy Brief provides an analysis of the IPR Policy of India. First part of the policy brief provides an overall analysis of the IPR Policy. The second part is a critical analysis of the link between the IPR Policy and Innovation in India.
The healthcare sector accounted for 8 per cent of the total FDI inflow into the country
during 2004-05 to 2012-13. Most of the inflows into this sector were directed towards pharmaceutical
manufacturing activities. A very high share of the investment into the manufacturing had the
characteristics of FDI (realistic FDI or RFID), but the preferred ro...
Presentation during the conference on "WTO and SDGs: Issues before the Nairobi Ministerial".
This book examines the impact of economic reforms in India on the pharmaceutical industry and access to medicines. It traces the changing production and trade pattern of the industry, research and development (R&D) preferences and strategies of Indian pharmaceutical firms, patent system alongside pricing policy measures and their shortcomings. It a...
Many developing countries like India were forced to take on commitments under TRIPS agreement due to the principle of 'either take it all leave all' during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. It was feared that strengthening of the IPR regime would lead to rise in medicine prices and would adversely affect not only the access to medicine issue...
This paper highlights some of the provisions in India's Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements that have enabled foreign investors to win cases before international arbitration tribunals. Warning that these disputes with foreign investors signal the emerging struggle between foreign investors and sovereign states in the face of un...
Socio-economic considerations associated with the
application of gene technologies have been a major
concern, especially in developing countries, which are
caught between the potentials of biotechnology for
development, on the one hand, and their adverse
socio-economic impacts, on the other. Globally, the
experience of countries even with the most...
Liberalization measures in the pharmaceutical sector have brought about major changes in the industrial licensing policy, import restrictions, foreign direct investment and production controls. It was feared that firms would shift from indigenous production to imports, especially of bulk drugs, and this concern was aggravated with the change in the...
A set of policy reforms were introduced in the Indian pharmaceutical sector since mid 1990s aimed at incentivizing the private sector R&D. Patent reforms was the most significant policy reform. An implicit assumption that the Indian pharmaceutical firms have become capable of developing new drugs underlined these reforms and it was expected that bo...
It is a Policy Brief on Bio Safety Protocoal
Limitations of the national law in remedying biopiracy led to the negotiations on an international regime on Access and Benefit Sharing. The deliberations were stuck for a long time due to the extreme divergent views of the developed countries on the one hand and of the biodiversity rich developing countries on the other. A compromise was reached r...
India’s current share of the world merchandise trade is 1.1 % and Services trade is 2.7 %. In merchandise trade, India’s target is to reach 5 % of the world trade by 2020. Along with improving export competitiveness, it is also important to improve information base regarding trade policy regime of India’s main trading partners and identify areas wh...
There is the view that in the post-1991 period; India's exports of drugs and Pharmaceuticals have grown rapidly - thereby confirming that India has much to gain by conforming to global drug patent standards. But a close reading of the data shows that the growth of the main drug exports has slowed, while that of imports - especially formulations - h...
It was argued in the context economic reforms in pharmaceuticals sector, particularly in the context of changing patent regime, that growth in exports would be restricted, imports would get a fillip and balance of trade would be adversely affected. The paper looks into the recent experience in exports and imports of drugs and pharmaceutical product...
Questions
Questions (3)
Karl Sauvant, in his Columbia FDI Perspective No.190, briefs the progress made by the Trade and Investment Working Group (TIWG) of G-20. It is pointed out that as it was difficult to form an agreement between those who are in favour of very strong investment/investor protection measures by the host countries and those who hold that there should be investor obligations along with host country obligations, the outcome is the adoption of certain principles which are non-binding and again focused primarily on host country obligations. It may be noted that there is no proper multilateral mechanism to govern investment issues, like the WTO in the case of international trade, which has resulted in non-transparent and inconsistent interpretations by the international investment tribunals. The investor-state dispute settlement mechanism has been viewed as unfair as it does not provide for appeal by the grieving party. This calls for a multilateral system for the governing international investment.
There is tremendous pressure on India especially from United States to amend its patent law to accommodate the interests of MNCs. It is in this context that India's PM stated that India's IPR standards need to rise to global level (although the trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman later clarified that India's IPR laws are already conforming to global standards). But the domestic pharma industry is opposed to any change in the patent law.
India earmarks 80% of its development assistance to countries in South Asia. It has a number of development partnership projects in South Asian countries like Nepal. India also undertakes the capacity building programme through ITEC. Yet, we do not find any collaborative projects in science and technology between Indian scientists and scientists in South Asian counties. But India has S&T collaborative projects from counties in all other region including Africa and Latin America. The Dept. of Science and Technology (DST) as well as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of India have a number of schemes for international collaboration in S&T projects. It is surprising that DST and CSIR do not have any S&T collaborative projects with south Asian Countries that too when the countries in the region face similar challenges in different areas like agriculture, health, etc.
