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Digital divide stands exposed

G. Srinivasan

NEW DELHI, July 10

THAT technology and globalisation have blended to foster the Network Age now is universally accepted even as the cost and benefit of such an admixture have not been duly estimated.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has, however, endeavoured to highlight this through its Human Development Report (HDR), released worldwide at a time when it is not fashionable to do an exercise focussing on the widening gulf between the d eveloped and developing world, the so-called digital divide.

The UNDP Administrator, Mr Mark Malloch Brown, put it persuasively in a foreword to this year HDR: ``If the development community turns its back on the explosion of technological innovation in food, medicine and information, it risks marginalising itself and denying developing countries opportunities that, if harnessed effectively, could transform the lives of poor people and offer breakthrough development opportunities to poor countries.''

The kernel of the report is that at the global level it is policy (by implication domestic policy) not charity (by implication aid or other cognate assistance) that will ultimately determine whether new technologies become a tool for human development ev erywhere.

This is by far the familiar litany of all global development agencies. Yet UNDP is not content with this and makes bold to concede that ``national policies will not be sufficient to compensate for global market failures.''

Without resorting to any rotund phrases, UNDP calls for ``new international initiatives and the fair use of global rules to channel new technologies towards the most urgent needs of the world's poorest people.''

At present, it is not even possible to track how much each government or global body contributes to research and development (R&D) to deal with global market failures. Though private foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford and now Gates and Wellcome have m ade substantial contributions to R&D targeted at the needs of developing countries, these are far from sufficient to meet global needs.

As such, UNDP pleads for mobilisation of at least $10 billion in additional funds through bilateral donors, international bodies, debt-for technology swaps, industry, developing country Governments and differential pricing.

Amplifying the last option, it said a producer seeking to maximise global profits on a new technology would ideally divide the market into different income groups and sell at prices that maximise profits in each.

With technology, where the main cost to the seller is usually research rather than production, such tiered (differential) pricing could lead to an identical product being sold in Cameroon for just one-tenth or one-hundredth the price in Canada. Yet it is easier said than done.

Hence UNDP identified the broader challenge for public, private and non-profit decision-makers is to cotton on ways to segment the global market so that key technology products such as pharmaceuticals could be sold at low cost in developing countries wit hout destroying markets-and industry incentives-in industrial countries.

UNDP states that this goal should be "high on the agenda in upcoming international trade negotiations", thereby implying developing world to work out the details in this regard.

UNDP's HDR, 2001 has also favourably responded to the felt concerns in yet another crucial area impinging on developing world's ability to adjust to the WTO-regime.

For instance, the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) pact has become a live wire issue for most of the low-income and developing countries including India which put stress on scarce resources and administrative acumen.

As such, UNDP cautions that ``if the game is to be played fairly, at least two changes'' must be put in place. The TRIPs agreement must be implemented in a way that enables developing countries to use safeguard provisions that secure access to technologi es of overriding national importance.

For instance, TRIPs also allows countries to choose whether or not to permit patented goods to be imported from other countries where they are sold by the same company but more cheaply. Many industrial countries include these measures in their law as par t of their national strategy for using IPRs. Yet under duress and without due advice, many developing countries have not included them in their legislation or are challenged when they try to put them to use.

While industrial countries use them particularly as anti-trust measures to prevent reduced competition and higher prices, these provisions have not so far been used south of the equator. Developing countries should be able to do in practice what TRIPs pe rmit them to do so in theory.

Second, commitments under TRIPs and many other multilateral pacts to subserve technology transfer to developing countries are ``paper promises''; they are seldom redeemed in deed, UNDP said citing the case from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Chan ge to the Convention to Combat Desertification, where commitments to technology transfer have been accorded ``short shrift.''

Answers to all these broken promises need not be far to seek as UNDP put it thus: ``The heart of the problem is that although technology may be a tool for development it is also a means of competitive advantage in the global economy.''

Thus access to patented environmental technologies and pharmaceuticals may be needed for safeguarding the ozone layer and saving lives worldwide. ``But for countries that own and sell them they are a market opportunity.'' Only when ``the two interests ar e reconciled -- through adequate public financing -- will fair implementation of the TRIPs pact become a real possibility. Is it feasible in the face of a market-driven milieu set by the industrial world?

The report rightly warns the global community that the developing world should not forever be held hostage to the research agendas set by global market demand and this is justifiably a just call in defence of all those millions who are mired in illiterac y, ill-health and penury in the midst of a technological and digital revolution.