One tablet at a time

Everyone knows how Bollywood has helped popularise Brand India. Perhaps, less well-known is the fact that India’s vaccine and drugs industry boosts the country’s image as much. Between 60 to 80 per cent of the vaccines bought by Unicef for the world’s poorest countries, for example, are made in India. Millions of people living with HIV/AIDS across the world have access to affordable life-saving anti-retroviral drugs because of Indian generic pharma companies.

This is good news for India as well as Brics, the acronym in mode. Can acronyms change the world? Or, will some acronyms remain forever in search of a role? As Delhi plays host to the fourth Brics Summit this week, the questions come hurtling, fast and furious.
More than a decade after Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill came up with the catchy acronym — Bric — to refer to what he predicted would be the four fastest-growing economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the buzz around the group continues to mount. Despite the sceptics, membership of the club is much sought after — South Africa formally joined the foursome last year, expanding Bric to Brics.
That Brics is rapidly gaining traction is also evident by the fact that we now have a growing tribe of Brics-bashers in addition to the Brics-enthusiasts. The brickbats hurled at the Brics are livening up things. Pundits typically love summits. For the rest of us, the onlookers, it is always more fun when pundits don’t agree with each other. So, the questions go on: Does Brics matter? Which are the good Brics nations? Which are the bad ones? Which country has a financial bubble? Which one will crumble? Which one would always struggle? The ground reality lies somewhere in between the hype and the gripe about Brics.
It is hard to say what will be the outcomes of this week’s gathering of Brazilians, Russians, Indians, Chinese and South Africans. Much of the discussions are behind closed doors. Personally, I am excited by the progress that Brics are making in revving up their soft power. The expanding influence of the Brics countries is impacting not only global economics, politics and culture but also areas like science, technology and healthcare. India’s vaccine industry offers one compelling example of how Brics countries are influencing the global discourse in key areas.
“Shifting Paradigm — How the Brics are reshaping global health and development”, a report released this week in Delhi by the Global Health Strategies initiatives (GHSi), an international NGO, makes the interesting point that “while growth in the Brics has recently begun to slow, they have shown much greater resilience than the US and Europe in the face of the global financial crisis, and their foreign assistance spending has been increasing at very high rates.”
While rich countries still provide far more in total assistance, the rising profile of the Brics — the new donors — is significant. Incidentally, Brics don’t like the term “foreign assistance”. They prefer “development cooperation”.
Take India, for example. At a time when the country’s domestic troubles and a visibly wobbly government bring to mind that famous line from Irish poet William Butler Yeats — “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold” — lots of interesting things are happening in the external arena which can be leveraged. Same is the story of other Brics nations. Many countries are managing their “soft power” in the outside world better than turmoil at home through a mix of policies and activism.
India has a poor record in routine immunisation of its children. But India’s vaccine industry has the maximum number of WHO-approved vaccines and is pivotal to the global immunisation programmes run by UN agencies and NGOs.
Brics countries are also succesfully using medical missions. The GHSi report points out that Chinese medical teams have been a critical element of Chinese health assistance since the 1960s. Chinese medical aid teams were among the first to arrive in Algeria and Iran after the 2003 earthquakes and in Southeast Asia after the 2005 tsunami. Indian medical missions appear modest in comparison. India is most active in helping construct or improve hospitals and clinics in neighbouring countries and in Africa. Then there is information technology where India has a very strong reputation. India’s pan-Africa telemedicine and tele-education project is one of its most important.
Brazil plays up programmes that emphasise health equity drawing directly from successful domestic initiatives, such as the famous “Bolsa Familia”, which encourages families to immunise their infants and to enrol children in school in exchange for cash. Brazil’s ministry for social development and hunger alleviation has implemented Bolsa Familia-inspired projects in more than 50 countries with support from international agencies.
Brazil’s hardline position on specific health issues add to its soft power. This has been most visible in the health diplomacy around intellectual property rights and tobacco control. Since the late 1990s, it has remained a staunch advocate for flexibilities in Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights to facilitate low-cost production and distribution of essential medicines in developing countries.
Russia supports many global health multilaterals, such as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. In 2010, a polio outbreak in neighbouring Tajikisthan spread to Russia and the country lost its polio-free WHO certification. Since then, Russia is engaged much more in polio-eradication efforts not only on its soil but also in Central Asia.
South Africa’s official health-assistance programmes are far smaller than other Brics countires, but its energetic health activist community provides inspiration and models that have helped to shape the international response to HIV and AIDS.
How can countries who are still struggling with high
burdens of infectious diseases and lifestyle diseases afford to help others? That is a valid and oft-asked question. There is a simple answer. The health/development diplomacy mounted by Brics countries is qualitatively different from the traditional health assistance offered by the developed, rich countries. Brics countries are undergoing rapid transition. Their health successes and failures are happening at the same time as in many other developing countries. So Brics are uniquely positioned to provide relevant models and templates.
One telling example is India’s recent success interrupting polio transmission. Many countries want to tap India’s expertise in this regard.
Brics lead in frugal innovation. All the member countries are investing quite heavily in science and technology. China has pledged to raise expenditure on research and development to 2.5 per cent of its GDP by 2020. India has just launched a $1 billion innovation fund to deal with problems specially afflicting the developing world.
Brics is not a ladder to the moon. But as Brazilian political scientist Oliver Stuenkel argues, “The internal differences should not overshadow the unique opportunity emerging powers have to use the Brics summits as a vehicle to turn into international agenda setters.”

The writer can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com