The Policy Monitor
As much as it sounds like opportunism, a diligent intervention to shore up international food supplies is far from an opportunistic gambit from India’s perspective and, even farther away from war profiteering. The CMI benchmark for wheat prices has risen by >50% since the Russian invasion began with global wheat prices touching $14 a bushel (approximately 30 kg).
The IPR waiver would allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other IPRs related to COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies for the duration of the pandemic until global herd immunity is achieved. This move harkens back 20 years to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when affordable generic HIV drugs, made in countries where patents did not block production, began saving millions of people’s lives.
India’s institutional policy has to complement its industrial policy and not the other way round
This pandemic has exposed the inherent weaknesses of state functioning and questioned the very structure on which modern economies have been thriving.
The medium-term impact of the pandemic on international trade and the degree of efficacy of anti-free trade measures depends on the ability of the domestic producers and service providers to scale up operations