The Intellectual Property Rights Regime and the Changing Structure of Scientific Research in India: Lessons from the Developing World

This paper examines the actual and potential impacts on developing countries such as India and the global trend towards a stronger protection of intellectual property rights, and captures the changing scientific practices, cognitive and political, in the wake of this new institutional regime. It briefly discusses the organization of scientific research in post-colonial India and then reflects on the shifts in the nature and scope of scientific research in India and the associated practices that are contingent upon the WTO provisions on the IPRs, as illustrative of the new scenario that is emerging in regard to the participation of developing countries in international collaborative research in the areas of science and technology. The scientific community in India is confronted with the dialectic of resistance and accommodation under the stringent norms of IPRs regime.