ওয়াশিংটন বাংলা রেডিও Washington Bangla Radio USA

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By Samir K. Brahmachari

The author is Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt. of India

New Delhi, Aug 12, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio / PIB India) TKDL is a collaborative venture between Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Ministry of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, and Department of AYUSH, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and a maiden Indian effort to prevent misappropriation of traditional knowledge belonging to India at International Patent Offices. TKDL has overcome the language and format barriers by scientifically converting and structuring the traditional medical knowledge of Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga in 34 million A4 size pages of the ancient texts in languages such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Tamil into five international languages, namely, English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish, with the help of information technology tools and a novel classification system - Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC). Today, India through TKDL is capable of protecting about 2.45 lakh medicinal formulations similar to those of neem and turmeric. TKDL access has been given to eight International Patent Offices which are European Patent Office (EPO), Indian Patent Office, German Patent Office (GPO), United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKPTO), United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), IP Australia and Japan Patent Office (JPO) under Access (non-disclosure) agreement. Based on the third party observations submitted by the TKDL team so far 53 patent applications of the pharma companies of United States, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, China, etc. have been either set aside or withdrawn/cancelled or declared as dead patent applications based on the information present in the TKDL database at no cost and in few weeks time after filing of the third party observations whereas cancellations of patents have been known to take 4-13 years of legal battle. Considering the novelty, utility and its effectiveness in preventing the grant of wrong patents several countries and organizations have expressed their keenness in replicating the TKDL model for their own countries. World Intellectual Property Organization including the global community has recognized India’s leadership in the area of Intellectual Property Rights and Traditional Knowledge.

Genesis of TKDL Initiative

New Delhi, Aug 10, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio / PIB India) The Government is a vast store house of information that is critical for decision-making. Automating the internal functioning of the Government is one of the key components for bringing in total and effective Governance. In the past, every department had developed systems based on its individual needs, resulting in the creation of independent systems with very little information sharing even across the systems of one department.

New Delhi, Aug 9, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio / PIB India) The Overseas Indian Citizenship (OCI) Scheme was formerly launched in January, 2006 by amending the Citizenship Act, 1955 to facilitate life long visa free travel to India and certain economic education educational and cultural benefits to Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs).  As on  on 30th June,  2011, a total number of 8,61,726  PIOs have been registered as OCIs.

Voting Rights To NRIs

The Representation of Peoples Amendment Act 2010 has been passed which gives voting rights to overseas Indian passport holders. Notification dated 3rd February 2011 has been issued allowing overseas electors for their names to be included in the roll pertaining to their locality in which his place of residence in India as mentioned in his passport is located. Overseas electors are required to apply in the requisite form alongwith copies of all the documents mentioned in the said form to the concerned registration officer directly or send the application to him by post.

The Rules allow self-attestation of documents by the applicants.

Overseas Workers Resource Centre

New Delhi, Aug 4, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio / PIB-India) Recognizing the importance of strong coupling among various components of the earth, viz. atmosphere, oceans, cryo-sphere and geo-sphere the Ministry of Earth Sciences was found in 2006.  Soon after in 2007 came in a virtual organisation, an executive arm of the Ministry,  the Earth System Science Organisation (ESSO).  It has three major branches of earth sciences viz., (i) Ocean Science & Technology (ii) Atmospheric Science & Technology and (iii) Geoscience and Technology. The sole purpose of the endeavor was to address holistically various aspects relating to earth processes for understanding the variability of earth system and for improving forecast of the weather, climate and hazards.

Primarily  aimed to develop  and improve capability to forecast weather, climate and hazard related phenomena for societal, economic and environmental benefits including addressing aspects relating to climate change science, climate services and integrated Himalayan meteorology, the ESSO is also responsible for development of technology towards the exploration and exploitation of marine resources in a sustainable way for the socio-economic benefit of the society by taking into account the global developments in the field of marine environment.

The Vision

New Delhi, August 1, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio / PIB-India) The urban population of India has grown rapidly over the past few decades. In 2001, 27.8 per cent of Indian citizens (286 million) lived in urban areas[1], which has increased to 31.2 per cent (377 million) in 2011[2]. In addition, India is expected to represent 26 per cent of Asia’s proportion (54 per cent) of the world’s urban population by 2050[3]. However, this large growth in urban population has posed a serious challenge with regard to the provision of civic amenities, shelter and livelihood for the vast sections of population especially those that belong to the Lower Income Groups (LIG) as well as the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS).   A majority of these  reside in slum- 93 million in 2011[4]. The housing shortage, estimated at 24.71 million in 2007, is expected to grow to 26.53 by the end of the current plan period[5].