Suchergebnisse

The National Medical Council Bill, 2017, was tabled in Parliament on 29 December 2017 with the proposal to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI) as the regulatory body for medical education and practice in the country. This was the response of the PMO-NITI Aayog Committee, which was formed after the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Health and Family Welfare in its 92nd report strongly indicted the functioning of the MCI and recommended a complete restructuring. The Bill sets out various proposals with the aim to regulate the quality of doctors produced as well as the ethics of their practice. Its content has raised much contestation from the medical fraternity. A host of issues have emerged, such as, what professionalism should mean and what forms of regulation should be put in place, and what mechanisms have to be considered in order to balance the interests of the public and the medical fraternity so that the restructuring that is sorely required can go through.

Nalini Jameela's autobiography, Oru Lyngikathozhilaliyude Athmakatha (The Autobiography of a Sex Worker), dictated and written in Malayalam, an instant bestseller in 2005, touches upon a number of issues that should have raised a stormy debate, but has not. This article attempts to understand Jameela's experience of initiation into this 'occupation' and her purpose for relating it to a wider audience, particularly in the context sex as legitimate work in the context of the HIV and AIDS epidemics. The book's societal meaning is explored by placing it along with various other perspectives on the institution of prostitution/sex work and prostituted women. The range of approaches articulated by the women involved in this, from one of total rejection to its very glorification as an occupation 'like any other', are exemplified through historical and contemporary testaments of individual women and the organizational manifestoes of sex workers.

Traditional Health Knowledge (THK) has been a resource for modern pharmacology and the pharma-ceutical industry since its inception. Until the 2000s, there was little obligation to acknowledge the use of THK by the pharmaceutical industry. Now, with the intellectual property regime becoming a prominent mode of regulating use of pharmaceutical inventions and innovations, and attempts by the pharmaceutical industry to patent products based on THK, rights of THK holders are being fore-grounded. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is seeking to protect the rights of THK holders through international legal instruments under the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) framework. This article discusses dilemmas arising from this attempt at bringing together two diverse knowledge frameworks. It draws upon existing literature on the nature of THK and upon the debates of the WIPO's Inter-Governmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expression (WIPO-IGC), and analyses them from the standpoint of a holistic health systems approach (HHSA) in an era of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The approach leads to the conclusion that deliberations and promulgations of the WIPO-IGC will have long-lasting implications for the survival of diversity and context-specificity in healthcare. Therein lies the significance of thinking through the policy and legal measures to be adopted nationally and internationally.

In this paper we discuss how transdisciplinary development research (TDR), if approached in particular ways, can not only to produce new knowledge, but also foster deeper systemic changes in the knowledge system itself. We are concerned with systemic change that supports pro-poor sustainability transformations, and conceptualise the processes that contribute to this type of systemic change as 'transformative space making' (TSM). TDR as TSM can generate possibilities for the integration of diverse knowledges into decision making, whilst also creating new opportunities for subaltern knowledges to achieve greater influence, through enhancing the transformative agency of the poor. Thus, our conceptualization goes beyond the idea of TDR for the co-creation of solution-oriented knowledge, and recognizes the need to address structural injustices in knowledge systems. In TDR as TSM the development of strategies to reveal power relations and navigate the politics of structural injustices becomes as important as refining the principles for robust collaborative knowledge production. To demonstrate the operationalization of TDR as TSM, we draw insights from our long-term involvement in TDR case studies of emergent environmental and health challenges in peri-urban contexts in India. We identify mechanisms which build legitimacy of pro-poor knowledges, whilst simultaneously creating 'readiness' to take advantage of opportunities for interventions to support change in policy and practice at multiple scales. We highlight the politics of alliance building both within and beyond the research team; arguing that attention to alliances is central to understanding the role of TDR in creating possibilities for transformative change. Finally, we argue that development research funding and commissioning agencies should pay attention to the mechanisms of TSM, alongside more recognised aspects of the planning, monitoring and evaluation of TDR initiatives, in order to provide appropriate support for enhanced impact.

Traditional knowledge (TK) is under debate in the contemporary world for its inherent value and need for protection from 'biopiracy'. International consensus is proving difficult on defining its scope and ambit of protection. Traditional health knowledge (THK) is a promising domain of TK which, due to its immense economic and commercial value, is prone to misappropriation. International provisions exist for protection and definitions of TK and related resources at various fora such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. Proposals to protection of TK under Intellectual Property Right regimes are being addressed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The text of a proposed treaty is being debated at WIPO's Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC-GRTKF). This article spells out the issues being negotiated at the WIPO-IGC-GRTKF. With THK characterised in a tiered manner based on its secret or diffused public availability, consideration of customary law is an imperative. India proposed that the national governments be given status of knowledge holders for THK in the public domain and fiduciary rights in case of closely held/associated THK. The article finds that a comprehensive national policy instrument and sui generis law for the protection of THK have become especially urgent in the light of international debates. It also proposes that, rather than Intellectual property (IP), the framework of a 'knowledge commons' for just sharing of TK and its innovations may be a better option.

This paper explores the potential of a range of peri-urban environmentalisms to come together in support of sustainable urbanisation. The present-day 'urban,' along with the dominant planning visions of urbanisation, lack in inclusivity, deliberative democracy, grassroots innovations, and bottom-up processes of knowledge generation. To sustainably transform this scenario, there is a need for the participation of various sections of citizens, who should be seen not just as subjects of planning, but as creators of a planning framework that emerges from both contestations and innovations in everyday living. Our earlier research on a peri-urban village situated between Delhi city and Ghaziabad town suggested that there is little support for continuation of agriculture in such areas, despite its strategic importance for sustainable urban development. Agriculture could contribute to the greening of urban spaces while enhancing the livelihoods of the poor, recycling urban waste and producing perishable food items for the urban populations. However, we found that present-day government schemes, as they unfold–often under the banner of sustainability–tend to exacerbate peri-urban inequalities. Having observed local citizen environmental action in Ghaziabad, we wanted to understand the potential role it could play in dealing with the environmental crises facing the district and region. During the course of our research we came across a distinctive peri-urban civil society activism, which cannot be viewed in binaries and reflects a pluralist spectrum that allows for alliance building. This environmentalism in Ghaziabad is distinct from the 'environmentalism of the poor' practiced by rural and forest dwelling groups; from the dominant elite urban 'green development' practices and discourses of 'bourgeois environmentalism'; and from the urban politics of the poor. It reflects the possibility of creating bridges across sectional interests–rural and urban, red and green ideological streams– and across classes.