Specific duration clause in draft India EFTA pact may affect drug industry (GS Paper 3, Economy)
Why in news?
- A clause in a draft free trade agreement text being negotiated between India and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) could delay access to affordable, generic versions of patented drugs in India by a minimum of six years.
Details:
- A leaked draft of the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) says that within six months of the agreement being signed, signatories should include a “specific duration” during which applicants seeking consent from their country’s regulators to sell a drug would not rely on “undisclosed test data” to gain market approval for at least six years.
- There is also a line in the draft, that suggests this should apply not only to ‘new’ chemical drugs but also a class of drugs called ‘biologics drugs,’ that involve complex mixtures of organic and inorganic entities, and are harder to make copies of. Many Indian biotechnology companies are developing biologics drugs.
India’s generic drug industry:
- India, which has over decades, mushroomed a thriving generics drug industry has resisted attempts by foreign pharmaceutical companies to extend monopoly rights over patented drugs.
- This is mostly because India’s generic drug industry has over the years made affordable versions of expensive drugs and become a large global supply itself.
- The Indian pharma industry is the third largest in the world and produces over 60,000 generic drugs across 60 therapeutic categories and had an annual turnover of ₹3.4 lakh crore.
Patented drugs:
- Patented drugs give exclusive marketing rights to the inventor, or whoever files for the patent first, for 20 years.
- This has often resulted in essential drugs and medicines being unaffordable in several countries, including in India.
- Under internationally accepted provisions of compulsory licensing, Indian law allows drug maker to reverse-engineer and sell generic, or copy-cat versions of the drug, after only three years of it being patented in India.
Australia’s ‘Right to Disconnect’ Bill
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
Why in news?
- The Australian government is hoping to pass a Bill that will institute a “right to disconnect”, regulating whether bosses can contact workers beyond their working hours through calls, messages or e-mails.
- Having passed the Senate, the Bill will now go to the House of Representatives.
- Similar laws are in place in France, Italy and Belgium, while other countries have also toyed with such ideas.
What is the ‘right to disconnect’?
- It comes from a belief that today, with technology making it possible for employees to work from home with ease, many people no longer have definite working hours. A lot of communication and work also happens when workers are not in the office.
- The pandemic also added to blurring the distinction between work and home life.
What does Australia’s Bill say on the ‘right to disconnect’?
- The Bill is part of other changes introduced to industrial relations laws, through the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Bill, 2023.
- It says, “An employee may refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, from an employer outside of the employee’s working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable.”
- The Bill says that factors such as the extent to which the employee is compensated for overtime work, the reason for the contact or attempted contact, and the level of disruption it causes to the employee will all be taken into account to judge whether the contact was reasonable.
- In case an employee-employer dispute over such contact happens, they must first attempt to resolve it at the workplace through discussions between the parties.
- If that attempt fails, they may move to the Fair Work Commission, the country’s industrial relations tribunal. Refusing to follow an FWC order could mean potential fines for the employer.
Have other countries experimented with ‘right to disconnect’ laws?
- France was the first country to have introduced a ‘right to disconnect’ for employees, in 2017.
- It required that companies with more than 50 workers were obliged to draw up a charter of good conduct, setting out the hours when staff are not supposed to send or answer emails.
- In India, Baramati MP Supriya Sule drafted a Private Member’s Bill for such a right, through the Right to Disconnect Bill of 2018, which was never taken up for discussion in the House.
- It proposed that every registered company and society shall constitute Employees’ Welfare Committees consisting of its employees to assist employees in the negotiation of terms and conditions of out-of-work hours with employers.
- The draft Bill also mentions a penalty “at the rate of one per cent of total employees’ remuneration” to be paid by companies for noncompliance with its provisions. If an employee works beyond work hours, they will be entitled to overtime at the normal wage rate.
- However, one criticism says that employees who point out the need to disconnect from work might be passed over for promotions and crucial tasks.
