 I wanted to get your perspective on another controversial issue, which again is a longstanding issue, which is the attack on India's patent laws. It's an issue that the U.S. has been targeting India from the late 80s, from the Uruguay round of negotiations itself. And specific to this visit, you have issues around also medical equipment on stents and knee implants, and of course, provisions in the Patent Act such as compulsory licensing, 3D against evergreening, etc. And I was just looking at a Reuters report that said it looks like the Cabinet Committee has passed some sort of a pact on IP in lieu of this visit. And there's no details about it. Is that a serious area of concern? We are overwhelmingly dependent on medicines in the healthcare, because we don't have curative, we don't have preventive healthcare system, it's all curative system. And therefore, dependence on medicines is very high. Some estimates say almost 65-70% of out-of-pocket expenses on healthcare is only on medicines. And India has been very lucky that we have had a pharmaceutical industry in the country, which is supplying medicines to both us and many countries, including the U.S. ironically, at extremely affordable prices. Now, if Indian producers are selling it cheap, which means that the high-cost producers in the U.S., for instance, and many of these major pharma industries are from the U.S., they don't get a market stranglehold here. So what has been the U.S.'s position? U.S.'s position has been that India is using certain provisions in its patent law, which favor the Indian industry, which is unacceptable to them. And you mentioned some of these compulsory licensing, section 3D, where evergreening, and you don't give, we are not supposed to give, the reality is slightly different. We are not supposed to give patents on minor innovations. But one area which is very important and U.S. is flagging this issue is something called patent term extension, which is that the patents are granted under the WTO agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights for 20 years. And the U.S. is now arguing that there is a certain period of time which is spent on giving the regulatory approvals. So you apply for a patent in the patent office, it takes about 2-3 years to grant the patent. So they say that no, the actual period of protection should be 20 years and net of all the regulatory, the time spent on regulatory processes. They have actually put this, U.S. has put this issue in the agreement they had with China, which was the first phase of the agreement. And then one other issue which is very important for us is about data protection. And this data protection is that, it's not about patents per se, but it affects the pharmaceutical industry because our companies are not in the forefront of innovation and our companies actually take cue from the marketplace, the products which are there and then they try to re-engineer those products in India and produce them, that's why they are called generic firms. And so there will be a leading firm which will be a proprietary firm which has the patents and they would come and seek market approval before anyone else and our companies come later and then seek marketing approval. And our drug controller uses the data submitted by the first applicant, not the entire data, but some amount of data to also check whether these Indian companies, they are the safety and efficacy of drugs are as per international norms. So the U.S. now says that no regulator can use those data for regulation thing, which means that Indian companies will be left behind. And on stents, I must say that everyone, I think every family has had this experience of going to the hospitals with a cardiac problem and they have to pay heavily for any of this procedure involving the stenting. And the Government of India had responded to the calls made by the patient groups and they have regulated the prices of stents and which has made these procedures a little more affordable. But U.S. of course doesn't want it because they want their companies to get the kind of profits they want to earn without being restrained by the Government. And I want to ask a broader question about the digital economy and data, which Prime Minister Modi himself has said that it's the new oil and the new gold and India is in a process of nascent regulatory process around data in terms of privacy, in terms of data localization. There is an e-commerce policy and that's another big arena of attack, both in terms of bilateral deals, but also at the WTO and what is the Indian position on e-commerce? On e-commerce, there are two issues. The first, let me address the data issue first because the e-commerce companies are collecting all this very useful data about the Indian market and about Indian consumers and quite rightly as you said that Prime Minister even admitted that this is the new oil and we know as economists that it's the control over information that allows companies to actually dominate marketplace. So I think that is one of the motivations which is behind this demand made by the multinationals that the data should be allowed to move freely and that simply means that the data will freely move out of India. All this critical data about each one of us will move and then this will be part of the planning that these big companies make, big monopolies make in the market to dominate this market even further. So I would put it in a very simple way that the data will now become the next instrument for market domination by these big companies and as you know that the government is hesitant to regulate the marketplace, so which means that consumers are going to be exploited and by these big companies and that's what the future holds for us if the data is freely allowed to move out. The government understands this and therefore there was a draft bill that came out and this was only about personal data. Now personal data is neither here nor there because personal data is what the data we are talking about. Personal data is also involving data about our behaviour in the market. Now is that personal behaviour or personal data or not? It's not just about our own self, our body, body and soul but it's also about how we interact in the market. Now is that personal data? There is a question mark about that. So the best thing for the government would have been to clamp down on any free flow of data which is what we call data localization and data would be kept here for the use of the Indian companies. Now here again I find an irony because when US is dealing with Huawei they show a lot of awareness about how Huawei is taking away critical information and all that you know it's doing this kind of a thing they insert you know sort of chips in their instruments and so if US is bothered about what Huawei is doing shouldn't we be bothered about what Amazon is doing in India you know this is simply poor. Just one last question because so far we've spoken about you know mostly a one-way street the sort of litany of complaints that the US has about India in terms of opening up agriculture IP laws but what is it that India hopes to gain out of this trade partnership is there something I mean there was a few years ago this concern about the movement of professionals the H1B visa issue which also is something that the US has pushed back on in terms of the quotas have been kept but in terms of the Indian delegation what is it that they will push if you can just share your thoughts on that. Yeah yeah you know this is what I find you know this whole narrative about you know President Trump's visit and the trade deal you know this is something I find way you know extremely strange because trade is about give and take yeah and all that we have been discussing and we also discussed you know here is about what US wants from India yeah and what US wants India to give now the piece missing from this narrative is what does India get what are we asking from the US and trade is not a one-way street yeah so there has to be give and take and like you correctly mentioned that at least few years back we had a negotiating counter we used to say that well you know this is what we want because we have this very large trained manpower which is for various reasons is not getting adequately you know absorbed in this economy but if larger you know the developed countries which are inherently labor short and also skilled short they could import there are manpower then you could see better equity in the global trade scenario. Now this time it is completely missing it is not there it could be because of the fact that in the election year American presidents actually go hammer and tongs against you know H1B visas and stuff like that so immigration issues of course this is not an immigration issue this is this is just temporary movement for a person to go and do a job in the US and then come back but US likes to put it in the larger context of immigration so this is a strict no so it could well be a the case that the government of India understands the sensitivities that the US has and particularly President Trump who is completely against immigrants and is therefore not raised this issue at all so all that we see is you know our big brother the largest trade partner coming here and demanding everything from us while we just stand there and keep assessing what we can give and what is going to be least costly and in government of India's view at the end of the day the government's assessment could be wrong because they haven't actually talked to all the stakeholders and understood the sensitivities and we could be in a in a in a worse situation that we are today. Thanks a lot Dr. Dhar for taking us through I mean the very complicated terrain of trade policy negotiations and getting into the details of specific issues we'll come back to you post the visit if something else comes out of it thank you very much thank you for watching NewsClick and like I said post the Trump visit NewsClick we'll be sharing our analysis through our website and through the YouTube page thank you