6 March 2024

• Polity: The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on MP/MLA bribery immunity continued to draw legal commentary, with bar associations debating the scope of Article 105(2).
• Economy: India's International Intellectual Property Index 2024 ranking of 42 out of 55 countries remained in the spotlight, pointing to persistent gaps in patent enforcement and trade secret protection.
• Environment: Discussion of the Union Cabinet's critical mineral royalty rationalisation continued, with analysts noting China's dominance in the processing stage even as India moves on the mining side.
• Governance: The NUCFDC, the new umbrella body for urban cooperative banks, drew attention from banking sector stakeholders as a new layer of oversight in cooperative finance.

GS area: Economy (IPR), Governance

The US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center released the 12th edition of the International IP Index. India's position:

• Rank: 42 out of 55 surveyed economies, scoring 38.64 per cent.
• Top performers: United States, United Kingdom, France in the top three.
• Regional peers: Germany, Sweden, Japan, Netherlands, Ireland, Spain and Switzerland round out the top 10.
• What India lacks: enforcement mechanisms for trade secrets, weak anti-counterfeiting action in digital markets, and inconsistent patent term restoration.

India's framework has strengthened over the years. The Patents (Amendment) Rules 2024, announced in March, reduced the request-for-examination window from 48 to 31 months and cut renewal fees by 10 per cent. The National IP Awareness Mission trained 24 lakh young people. Still, the country ranks below its economic scale because enforcement lags legislation.

Static linkage: Economy (IPR), governance.

GS area: Economy (banking and finance), Governance

The National Urban Co-operative Finance and Development Corporation Limited (NUCFDC) was launched as an umbrella organisation for urban cooperative banks. Key facts:

• Type: RBI-registered non-deposit-taking Non-Banking Financial Company.
• Functions: expanding credit access in cooperatives, facilitating regulatory dialogue, providing liquidity support and building shared information technology infrastructure.
• Background: urban cooperative banks are regulated jointly by the RBI (prudential norms) and state registrars of cooperative societies (management norms). The dual regulatory structure has historically created enforcement gaps.

NUCFDC is intended to serve as a shared backbone for the roughly 1,500 urban cooperative banks in India, most of which lack scale for individual IT investment.

Static linkage: Economy (banking), governance (cooperative sector).

GS area: Economy, Science and Technology

The Cabinet's rationalisation of royalty rates for 24 critical and strategic minerals sets a policy framework for mining. But the deeper challenge is the processing gap:

• China's dominance: China controls over 70 per cent of global rare earth processing and significant shares of cobalt, lithium and graphite refining, even where ore originates elsewhere.
• India's 24 critical minerals: identified under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act 2023, which also opened exploration to the private sector.
• KABIL overseas acquisitions: the government-owned joint venture targets mineral assets in Australia, Argentina and African nations to secure upstream supply.

Without domestic processing capacity, mining royalty rates address only the first stage of a long chain.

Static linkage: Economy (mining, minerals policy).

GS area: Economy (IPR), Governance

The Ministry of Commerce notified the Patents (Amendment) Rules 2024, the first significant procedural overhaul in years. Key changes:

• Examination deadline: reduced from 48 to 31 months after filing date. This closes the long period of uncertainty for both applicants and potential infringers.
• Form 3 filing: the statement disclosing foreign patent applications now required only twice during pendency instead of multiple times.
• Certificate of Inventorship: a new certificate recognising individual inventors within a company-owned patent application.
• Renewal fee reduction: 10 per cent reduction for advance electronic payment.
• Working statement: the statement showing commercial use of a patent reduced from annual to once every three years.

Context: India crossed 100,000 patent grants in the year to March 2024, the first time this milestone was reached.

Static linkage: Economy (IPR), governance.

GS area: Environment (biodiversity)

India hosts the secretariat of the International Big Cat Alliance, a 97-country initiative for the protection of seven big cat species: tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar and puma. India:

• Tiger: largest wild population globally, over 3,600 as of 2022.
• Snow leopard: range in the Himalayas, estimated 718 individuals in India.
• Lion: exclusively in Gir, Gujarat; Asiatic lion population around 674.
• Leopard: 13,874 confirmed in the 2022 census.

The Alliance coordinates under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and received formal launch at the International Big Cats Conference in April 2023.

Static linkage: Environment (big cats, protected areas).

• Swachh Bharat Mission urban targets: the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs tracks three achievement levels for cities: Garbage-Free City (GFC) star ratings from 1 to 7 stars. No city has achieved 7 stars yet. The mission covers door-to-door waste collection, source segregation and scientific landfill management.
• WTO and remittances: India's proposal to reduce cross-border remittance costs to below 3 per cent won WTO endorsement. India received USD 125 billion in remittances in 2023, the highest globally. The G20 SDG 10 target independently sets the same 3 per cent threshold by 2030.