M A I N   N E W S

Kalam for on-the-spot justice
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 29
The President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today described judiciary as a prime pillar of the democratic set-up and said it should be able to administer natural justice with speed and nobility.

“The rate of change of national development was directly proportional to the speed and quality of justice delivered with nobility”, observed Dr Kalam while inaugurating a two-day international legal conference being organised here by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The President departed from his prepared text of speech to cite an incident which took place in Madurai 1,500 years ago to emphasise the point that any miscarriage of justice could lead to unpredictable consequences.

He quoted a Tamil epic to emphasise that “people who are in high and responsible positions, if they go against righteousness, the righteousness itself will get transformed into a destroyer. Whoever deviates from righteousness, whether they are individual or states, they are responsible for their own actions”.

The President said India had a vision of transforming into a developed nation by the year 2020. This transformation process required contribution from various sections of society, including the judiciary and the legal system. The administration of law and justice should take into account the overall impact of the judgements on the process of societal transformation and welfare of the citizens at large.

Globalisation was a phenomenon which had to be recognised. “We should be sensitive to the fact that with the dawn of this millennium, the pace of transformation of change governs economic progress and business needs. With this background, international law will also need some degree of redefinition. Particularly for India, there are 30 million Indians providing value added services to different countries. In addition, a number of Indian companies are providing knowledge-based support and services to many international companies and governments in different parts of the world that have become essential and inter-dependent. It is essential to have a legal framework, so that the people could get justice in time.”

India was equally interested in bringing about global peace and development of the whole mankind. Every human had the right to live with dignity and to aspire for distinction while retaining one’s unique identity. The test of any legal framework depended on its capacity and efficacy to ensure social, economic and political justice for an individual not only in his individual capacity but also as a member of a nation or as a member of the global community. “In other words, our individual and localised interests have to be harmonised within the larger pluralistic order so as to give primacy to human rights. It is necessary to work for unity of minds. It is the citizen’s responsibility to do everything possible to make our behaviour civilised to protect the rights of every individual, without stamping out their individual characteristics and basic identity. For a peaceful human life, law and justice have to assist. If justice fails to protect human rights, the nation fails. It is the responsibility of the legal community to ensure that these elements of rights, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity become available to all”.

The President said that laws must protect the indigenous technologies and trade to the extent they impacted people’s living and their welfare as well as ensure national interest. He noted that many developed countries had made laws to restrict or deny export of certain class of state-of-the-art goods and technologies in selective manner to the developing countries even while making international laws which made it mandatory for the developing countries to open their markets to be accessed by foreign entities with very little restrictions. India had successfully faced such technology denial measures adopted by certain countries. “When our laboratories needed certain type of alloy steel or super computers to develop indigenous systems, certain countries imposed a ban on export of such alloy steel or computers to India. As soon as we succeeded in the development of that particular alloy steel or high performance computers, the ban on the export of that steel or supercomputers was lifted. But such unbalanced world order is something on which our legal luminaries may have to think, while framing our commitments to international treaties”. Law and judiciary must play the balancing role so that our technological growth could continue to be beneficial to the people.

In the present law, the jurisdiction corresponded with the location where the crime was committed and where the damage occurred — very often both being the same location. In the digital world, the crime might originate from a strange place even outside India’s shores and might damage organisational wealth which would be in the digital form in multiple locations. The Indian judicial system had to build its capacity to define jurisdictions in a way that any crime committed against India or her assets by anyone from anywhere would be punishable by Indian law.

The President suggested creation of mobile courts that reached the taluk and village levels. The mobile court could visit different villages and towns periodically and deliver on-the-spot justice to the people, based on the facts and evidence.The legal community could also simplify the procedure of filing the cases and nomination of witnesses and unlimited postponements.

He was of the view that the greatest need of the hour was peaceful co-existence of the nations with a powerful United Nations. For this purpose, some basic code, law, ethics had to be followed which could build a general consensus on all major issues faced by the developed as well as developing nations.

Earlier Dr Anmol Rattan Sidhu, president of the Punjab and Haryana Court Bar Association, welcomed the President and delegates to the conference from India and abroad.

Dr D.V. Subba Rao, Chairman of Bar Council of India, noted that the world had changed rapidly in recent years. It was no longer a West versus the rest world. It was no longer a bi-polar or unipolar world. It had now become multi-polar.

Mr B. K. Roy, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, recalled the recent release of eight Pakistani children who were in jail in India and asked how long could the neighbouring countries continue to live in hostility.

The others who spoke included Mr Justice Ashok Bhan and Mr Justice Arijit Pasayat of the Supreme Court.

Mr Alyes Kasri, Ambassador of Tunisia, also attended the conference.

Kalam for documenting medicinal knowledge
Tribune News Service

SAS Nagar, September 29
The President of India, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today said that while there was a need to protect our intellectual property rights for modern medicines, earnest efforts should be made to document Indian traditional medicinal knowledge to prevent IPR piracy in the field.

Delivering the convocation address at the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) here this evening, the President said Indian pharmaceutical research should focus on tropical diseases, generally left out by multinational drug companies for lack of profit margins. ‘‘India should take the lead in these areas to remove the pain of poor masses of the tropics, who suffer from malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, etc,’’ he said.

Stating that the development of the anti-HIV/AIDS vaccine in India was in ‘‘mission mode’’, Dr Kalam said while the vaccine was getting ready for clinical trials, the nation was also on the threshold of breaking fresh ground in the use of gene therapy to cure cardiac ailments and other disorders.

Speaking on “Challenges to pharmaceutical industries”, the President said that the Indian pharma business had grown by over 31 per cent since Independence and the pharmaceutical industry was only next to IT in India with a total business volume of Rs 24,000 crore and an export volume of Rs 11,000 crore.

Referring to a “healthcare in India” report prepared by a panel of doctors and medical technologists, Dr Kalam said the major diseases that would need to be combated in the next decade included tuberculosis, HIV, water-borne diseases, cardiovascular diseases, neuro-psychiatric disorders, renal diseases and hypertension. ‘‘Advancement in technology and IT could be put to use to improve the healthcare system of the country. Such an effort will make cost-effective medical technology and devices available and accessible to all the citizens of our country.’’

Dr Kalam said NIPER, as one of the premier pharmaceutical research centres of the country, should take the lead in stem cell research and bio-informatics, both of which were bound to revolutionise the world of medicine in the near future.

Suggesting that procedural methodologies should be streamlined, Dr Kalam said the West was looking forward to cutting costs of production without compromising on quality. ‘‘Although the governmental agencies reflect such a mood, industries are yet not convinced of such an action, especially in biotechnology,” he said.

Stressing that the pharmaceutical business in the WTO environment would have to be competitive, the President said, “Competitiveness springs from technological strength. Research and drug design, development and acceptance for introduction is indeed a big mission.’’