New Sourcebook | RIS Bibliography on South-South Cooperation, 2016

RIS Bibliography on South-South Cooperation

edited by Beena Pandey with Kashika Arora, Akanksha Batra, Pratyush, Divya Prakash, Jyoti, and Sushila. Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi, India, 2016.

Summary: The RIS Bibliography on South-South Cooperation includes selected books, documents and research articles on five broad sectors, viz. Broad Themes, Trade and Investment, Sectoral Studies, Technology and Technology Transfer and Miscellaneous. It is a result of collective efforts made by a research team and the RIS Library team.  This is an on-going work, not an exhaustive bibliography.

Table of Contents

1. Broad Themes

2. Trade and Investment

3. Sectoral Studies

4. Technology and Technology Transfer

5. Miscellaneous 

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CfPs | CCI National Conference on the Economics of Competition Law | 2-3 March 2017 in New Delhi

CCI's National Conference on the Economics of Competition Law 

2-3 March 2017 in New Delhi

Call for Papers

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is organizing the second annual two-day National Conference on the 'Economics of Competition Law' on 2-3 March 2017 in New Delhi. Papers are invited from Economists on the following

broad themes:

• Market definition and measuring market power
• Economics of cartels and collusion
• Economics of abuse of dominant position
• Economic analysis in merger review
• Any other theme related to enforcement of the Competition Act, 2002.

Interested scholars are invited to send an abstract of 100 words and an extended abstract of 1,000 words of original research papers along with their bio-data and professional contact details to ecoseminar@cci.gov.in. The last date for submission of abstract is 5th September 2016. Authors of the accepted papers will be invited to present their papers in the conference. Depending on the quality of submissions, some papers may be considered for publication by the CCI. The authors of the selected papers will be considered for honorarium. Those from outside Delhi/NCR would also be eligible for reimbursement of TA/DA on the submission of original bills and invoices. For details please visit http://www.cci.gov.in.

NITI Aayog, India | Report of the Expert Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Report of the Expert Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
by NITI Aayog, New Delhi, India, August 2015.

Foreword
Late in the spring of 2015, I was privileged to be asked to chair a committee on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, constituted under the auspices of NITI Aayog. The committee was pulled together in rather short order - a testimony to the good spiritedness of my colleagues who were willing to carve out time from their incredibly busy schedules - and we met formally to initiate the work on May 1, 2015, in the NITI Aayog offices in New Delhi.
Subsequently, there has been a whirlwind of activity, a near-continuous virtual meeting to brainstorm and write the report these past months, punctuated by occasional physical meetings in New Delhi, Bangalore, and Boston (my adopted home).
We took care to ensure the committee was drawn from very diverse walks of life, to include entrepreneurs (with track records of building for-profit and social enterprises), financiers, scientists and academics, heads of academic institutions and, finally, several who have experience liaising with government. Each member has, in turn, helped us access an incredibly broad network of individuals not on the committee, both in India and in parts of the Indian diaspora, who have all unfailingly and generously given of their time.
Through all this, my colleagues in NITI Aayog, led by Arvind Panagariya and his able team, and, informally, colleagues in the Prime Minister's Office, have been nothing short of spectacular.
Our approach has been to take a big-tent view of entrepreneurship, to think of the innovation and creativity that underlie successful entrepreneurship in a variety of walks of life, far transcending the exciting but ultimately rather limited remit of current entrepreneurial hotspots in information technology and e-commerce. These hotspots have given us much to be proud of, the "re-Bangalorization of the world" as the media sometimes puts it, but we cannot rest on these (limited) laurels. This has meant that our report is intentionally broader than past reports that have tended to emphasize venture capital and private-equity as handmaidens of entrepreneurship. There is an important role for such financing, and we suggest how to nurture it. However, at the end of the day, such financing is but one of multiple factors that need attention.
That said, we surely stand on the proverbial shoulders of giants. The committee laboured hard to acquaint itself with the myriad reports related to entrepreneurship produced by prior government committees and bodies, as well as numerous superbly qualified groups from the private sector and civil society. We are mindful of learning from these, as well from some other groups of people working in parallel in India on, for example, skill-development and securities markets issues.
Finally, consistent with India's desire to reimagine its future as a world leader, we seek to learn from the experiences of others and to contribute to these. So the reader will find an openness to experiments from far and wide. Chile, China, Israel and the United States, are sites of some of these that receive mention in these pages.
All this has led us to a conceptual model of an Entrepreneurial Pyramid that offers a prioritization of the many efforts that will propel entrepreneurship forward. First, we recognize that success breeds success, so, in the interests of building a constituency for change, we must identify actions that yield short-term payoffs. The so-called 'top layer' of our pyramid model does this. In particular, it identifies a dramatic upgrading and broadening of the incubators that pepper the Indian landscape already, a commitment to using competition and prizes to encourage grass-roots innovation, and the initiation of a symbolic but also substantive national entrepreneurship movement. The use of novel methods to stimulate innovation—including a special focus on science and technology—will affect the social inclusion that is sorely needed to empower the disenfranchised.
From there, we sequentially identify longer-range actions that will yield longer-term and more systemic payoffs, and will amplify the efforts of subsequent short-term initiatives. There is no use pretending that these investments– often in the form of public goods that have received short shrift from Indian society in recent decades—will yield results immediately, but there' s also no option but to embrace the need for these changes.
Through all this, we repeatedly emphasize the importance of some behavioural traits that we' d all do well to embrace—a bias to action, a willingness to be accountable with output rather than input metrics, an openness to ideas from wherever they emerge, and a partnership ethos, the last especially important to overcome the huge trust deficit that exists between the public and private sectors. These 'can-do' attitudes will, we are confident, ensure that our report does not gather dust in some cabinet.
As the Honourable Prime Minister said in his Independence Day address on August 15, 2015, to the people of India, "Startup and Stand-up". I couldn' t agree more. Let's do it sans partisanship and with team spirit. | Tarun Khanna, New Delhi and Cambridge

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New Book | Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies | by Calestous Juma

To be released soon
Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies
by Calestous Juma. Oxford University Press, New York, Hardback, 432 Pages, ISBN: 9780190467036.Description: The rise of artificial intelligence has rekindled a long-standing debate regarding the impact of technology on employment. This is just one of many areas where exponential advances in technology signal both hope and fear, leading to public controversy. This book shows that many debates over new technologies are framed in the context of risks to moral values, human health, and environmental safety. But it argues that behind these legitimate concerns often lie deeper, but unacknowledged, socioeconomic considerations. Technological tensions are often heightened by perceptions that the benefits of new technologies will accrue only to small sections of society while the risks will be more widely distributed. Similarly, innovations that threaten to alter cultural identities tend to generate intense social concern. As such, societies that exhibit great economic and political inequities are likely to experience heightened technological controversies.
Drawing from nearly 600 years of technology history, Innovation and Its Enemies identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order, and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. It reveals the extent to which modern technological controversies grow out of distrust in public and private institutions. Using detailed case studies of coffee, the printing press, margarine, farm mechanization, electricity, mechanical refrigeration, recorded music, transgenic crops, and transgenic animals, it shows how new technologies emerge, take root, and create new institutional ecologies that favor their establishment in the marketplace. The book uses these lessons from history to contextualize contemporary debates surrounding technologies such as artificial intelligence, online learning, 3D printing, gene editing, robotics, and drones. It ultimately makes the case for shifting greater responsibility to public leaders to work with scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to manage technological change, make associated institutional adjustments, and expand public engagement on scientific and technological matters.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Gales of Creative Destruction
2. Brewing Trouble: Coffee
3. Stop the Presses: Printing the Koran
4. Smear Campaigns: Margarine
5. Gaining Traction: Farm Mechanization
6. Charged Arguments: Electricity
7. Cool Reception: Mechanical Refrigerated
8. Facing the Music: Recorded Sound
9. Taking Root: Transgenic Crops
10. Swimming against the Current: AquAdvantage Salmon
11. Oiling the Wheels of Novelty

About the Author
Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of Science, Technology, Globalization, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University.
Calestous Juma, a national of Kenya, is an internationally-recognized authority on the role of science, technology and innovation in economic development. He is Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and serves as Faculty Chair of Harvard's Innovation for Economic Development executive program. Juma is a former Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and Founding Director of the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi. He was Chancellor of the University of Guyana and has been elected to several scientific academies including the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, the UK Royal Academy of Engineering and the African Academy of Sciences.


Related News: Why do people resist new technologies? History might provide the answer | by Calestous Juma

Further Details

World Social Science Report 2013:Changing Global Environments | A global report mapping social sciences research

World Social Science Report 2013: Changing Global Environments

by UNESCO. UNESCO, OECD and the International Social Science Council (ISSC), Paris, 2013, ISBN: 9789264203419.

Summary:The environmental challenges that confront society are unprecedented and staggering in their magnitude, scope, pace and complexity. They have potentially serious consequences for the wellbeing of people all over the world. The consequences of global environmental change are unfolding now; individuals and communities are already struggling to manage often precarious livelihoods; other social, economic and political crises – including persistent poverty, increasing inequalities and social discontent – are intricately linked to and exacerbated by environmental change. Global environmental change changes everything for everyone on this planet – our life support systems, our livelihoods, our ways of life, our actions and interactions with each other. It also changes demands for and on the social, including behavioural and economic sciences.

This is the third edition of the World Social Science Report. Based on a call for proposals, over 150 authors from all over the world have contributed articles. The Report issues an urgent call to action to the international social science community. Social scientists need to collaborate more effectively with colleagues from the natural, human and engineering sciences to deliver relevant, credible knowledge that can help to address the most pressing of today's environmental problems and sustainability challenges. And they need to do so in close collaboration with decision-makers, practitioners and the other users of their research.

A new kind of social science is needed, one that is bolder, better, bigger, different:

• Bold enough to reframe and reinterpret global environmental change as a fundamentally social process
• Better in terms of infusing social science insights into real-world problem-solving
• Bigger in terms of the need for more social scientists to address the challenges of global environmental change directly
  
• Different in the sense of changing the way the social sciences think about and do science – its theories, assumptions, methodologies, institutions, norms and incentives, to help meet the vexing interdisciplinary and cross-sector challenges society faces.
  

This report aims to engage social scientists working in all disciplines in academia, research institutes, think tanks, NGOs, and government agencies all over the world. The ISSC will use the report as a basis for critical discussion with its members and partners to sharpen the social science knowledge base on global environmental change and to support social science leadership in research for sustainability.Report includes two chapters on open knowledge: 11. A new vision of open knowledge systems for sustainability: Opportunities for social scientists, by David Tàbara; 12. Viewpoint: Open knowledge and learning for sustainability, by Tim O'Riordan.

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Innovation and Global Intellectual Property Regulatory Regimes: The Tension between Protection and Access| by N Syam and VM Tellez| The South Centre Research Paper No. 67, June 2016

"Innovation and Global Intellectual Property Regulatory Regimes: The Tension between Protection and Access"
by Nirmalya Syam and Viviana Munoz Tellez | The South Centre Research Paper No. 67, June 2016.
Abstract: The objective of the paper is to assess the global intellectual property (IP) regimes centred on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as the expansion of the scope of IP regimes through bilateral trade and investment agreements, from a development perspective. It will also focus on African efforts to engage with these regimes, including African proposals for rule-making in policy areas of interest to the region such as protection of biological resources and traditional knowledge and an enlarged scope for geographical indications. The implications of rules in these areas for innovation in the region will be explored. Finally, the paper discusses the arrangements that would provide an appropriate intellectual property regime to complement Africa's regional integration programmes such as the proposed Continental Free Trade Area and Treaty commitments.

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Critical Reviews of Indian National Intellectual Property Rights Policy, 2016

Indian National Intellectual Property Rights Policy, 2016, receives mixed reactions from the policy analysts, activists, industry experts and scholars of innovation studies. Some of the observations have appeared in the following online articles:

Original Texts 

• Indian National Intellectual Property Rights Policy, 2016 | Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion: Government of India | May 12, 2016 | Download

 Critical Reviews

• India releases National Intellectual Property Rights Policy. by Anasua Mukherjee Das | Current Science | October 2016 | Download.
• Market Impacts of Patent Reforms in Developing Countries. by Aparajita Goyal | World Bank Blog July 2016 | Download. 
• India-US Relations: The IPR Conundrum. by N K Singh | India Foundation Blog | July 2016 | Download. 
• Indian National Intellectual Property Rights Policy, 2016: Some Highlights. by Anasua Mukherjee Das | The Nationalist | July 2016 | Download.
• National IPR Policy and Innovation. by Reji K. Joseph | Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi, 2016 | Download.
• Who Will Gain From the National IPRs Policy?. by Dinesh Kumar Abrol | Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi, 2016 | Download.
• Making Quality Medicines Affordable: An Interview with CIPLA CEO. by Catherine Jewell | WIPO Magazine | August 2016 | Download.
• National Intellectual Property Policy Suffers from a Lack of Conceptual Clarity. by Srividhya Ragavan, K. Subramanian | IndianExpress.com | June 11, 2016 | Download | The best aspects of the document are contained in the third objective discussing the legal and legislative framework.
• The Wrong Incentive: The National Intellectual Property Rights Policy Must Be Opposed. by Dinesh Abrol | Economic and Political Weekly | 11 June, 2016 | Download.
• Why New IPR Policy Is Inadequate: Pressure from US Is Unstated Reason. by K M Gopakumar | Economic and Political Weekly | 21 May, 2016 | Download.
• National Intellectual Property Rights: Patently a Missed Opportunity. by Achal Prabhala & Sudhir Krishnaswamy | The Hindu | May 25, 2016 | Download
• India's New IP Policy: A "Bare" Act? by Shamnad Basheer | SpicyIP.com |  June 6, 2016 | Download
• Modi's New Intellectual Property Rights Policy Will Only Benefit Players with Deep Pockets. by Anubha Sinha | The Wire | May 21, 2016 | Download | The new policy fails to enact a balanced regime and instead is tilted in favour of rights-holders.
• Why You Just Can't Have a One-Size-Fits-All IPR Policy. by Sushila Ravindranath | June 13, 2016 | Financial Express | Download | The National IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) policy was released on May 11. This 38-page document will give directions to the government to promote 'creative and innovative India'.
• India Calls for Flexibilities in Intellectual Property Rights to Combat AIDS. by PTI | IndianExpress.com | June 10, 2016 | Download
• Ahead of Prime Minister Modi's Visit, Doctors Without Borders Urges India to Put People's Health Before Pharmaceutical Profits. by Doctorswithoutborders.org | June 02, 2016 | Download | India must resist pressure from US lawmakers and pharmaceutical industry groups to block access to key medicines for millions of people worldwide.
• At EU-India Summit, India Must Defend Its "Pharmacy of the Developing World". by Doctorswithoutborders.org | March 29, 2016 | Download | MSF urges Indian Prime Minister not to cave into pressure from EU to accept trade deal that could prevent millions of people from accessing lifesaving medicines.
• Wither Away the Pressure on India's Patent Law. by  Saradindu Bhaduri | Vikalp | December 21, 2014 | Download
• Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: MNCs in Pharmaceutical Industry in India after TRIPS. Sudip Chaudhuri | Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi, 2014 | Download.
• Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Globally: Impact on India's Pharmaceutical Exports. by Jaya Prakash Pradhan | Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi, 2006 | Download.
• Public Health Perspective on Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines: A compilation of studies prepared for WHO | by Carlos M. Correa. The South Centre, Geneva, 2016, ISBN 9789291620470 | Download.
• Intellectual Property and Access to Science | by Carlos M. Correa | The South Centre Research Paper No. 69, July 2016 | Download