Warm good morning to all of you.
Members of the faculty, very distinguished ones, and dear friends,
I started my career in 1979, the year I was married. The year I was married is relevant because when you get into the legal profession, you have to keep company with a jealous mistress.
I pampered and kept good company with that jealous mistress for four decades—three decades and more as a senior advocate. But it was my good fortune, on the 20th of July, 2019, the day Neil Armstrong landed on the moon 50 years ago, that I was appointed by a warrant. A warrant, as a lawyer, you can understand, is a draconian word. The warrant, signed by the then President Ram Nath Kovind, appointed me as Governor of the State of West Bengal. The travesty of justice was complete for me.
The jealous mistress was gone because it was also my wife's birthday on the 20th of July. It is with great optimism and confidence that I address you today. Most of this has been generated in the last few minutes I have spent on the campus and having looked at your vibrant faces.
Let me tell you, those at the back benches—you are not backbenchers. You just happen to be sitting on the back bench, and therefore, my greetings and salutations to you. You are as important as those who are in the front bench, if not more.
Education is undoubtedly the most impactful mechanism for social upliftment and economic development. It brings equality and neutralises societal inequities, ensuring that the benefits of growth reach even the most marginalised. These days, education defines where you will be.
Earlier, it used to be what was known as privileged pedigree, patronage, or being above the law—not any longer. A big change has come, and the youth of the country must be enthused that there is now an ecosystem in place where you can fully unleash your energy, exploit your talent and potential, realise your dreams and aspirations, and thereby contribute to the marathon march of which you are the most important stakeholder for Viksit Bharat@2047.
Boys and girls, you are indeed fortunate. You are recipients of quality education at this institution, and what an institution it is—second rank in the law category in the NIRF ranking for the seventh consecutive year. I recall a great philosopher of the Pre-Socratic era, Heraclitus. He famously said, "The only constant in life is change," and he further said, "The same man cannot enter the same river twice because neither the man is the same nor the river is the same." You have embraced change and still maintained your position.
I am further delighted by this orientation programme for two reasons.
One, as already reflected by the learned Vice Chancellor.
Secondly, on a global benchmark, you are part of, I think, ten or eleven such programmes, which means you are ahead of others, ahead of the times, in taking India ahead of other nations.
This orientation programme for the joint Master's and LLM in Intellectual Property Law and Management is a collaboration between NLU Delhi and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Congratulations on this convergence. It's a wholesome convergence that will bring about geometric dividends.
Congratulations to all the student participants in this programme. I'm confident you all will make the most of this opportunity. Intellectual property law and management are pivotal to innovation, economic growth, and the protection of creative endeavours, as well as safeguarding our ancient knowledge and research—the latter being more important. In our globalised era, IP has become a cornerstone of international trade.
For India, which is home to one-sixth of humanity, strong IP protection is crucial for attracting foreign investment and fostering technology transfer. Congratulations to the Additional Secretary for doing much in this direction and yielding good results.
India has made significant strides in strengthening its IP regime. Our legislative framework—I am, in some capacity, associated with it—has been progressively aligned with international standards, ensuring robust protection.
We have carefully crafted a regime that complies with obligations in the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or for short and ease, TRIPS, and other bilateral and regional agreements.
India has also been proactive in leveraging technology to enhance IP administration, implementing an online filing and processing system, reducing delays, and improving transparency. As a matter of fact, we can take pride in having a system that is fully digitised, transparent, and accountable, and has reached a high global benchmark. In today's knowledge-based economy, the value of intangible assets often surpasses that of tangible assets.
Look at our civilizational ethos of 5,000 years. Knowledge and wisdom are in our repository. No nation can take pride in being a distant second, if there is one when it comes to the evolution of the knowledge we have. India, with its rich tradition of creativity and innovation, stands to gain enormously from a robust IP ecosystem. Our country is often referred to, and rightly so, and for a very worthy premise, as a gold mine of intellectual property due to its rich cultural and historical heritage.
The Vedas—let me digress for a moment. As Vice President, I also happen to be Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. I found that a lot of people talk about the Vedas without once having seen them in physical form.
I therefore, thought it in the fitness of things to request the education minister, to make in physical form the Vedas to every member of Parliament. I beseech all of you to help by your bedside, the Vedas in physical form and trust me, you will find solutions to everything, and you will get enriched day by day.
Friends, the Vedas, ancient scriptures forming the foundation of Indian philosophy, spirituality, and sciences, are prime examples of this intellectual treasure. These texts, including the Vedas and many others, encompass a vast array of concepts ranging from mathematics and astronomy to medicine and architecture, offering insights still relevant today.
Aryabhatta, Vishwakarma—look at the kind of treasure we have. That is our intellectual property. It is the intellectual property we need to monetize, preserve, sustain, and disseminate.
It will create wealth for us. India's traditional practices, such as Ayurveda and Yoga, have gained global recognition, demonstrating the potential for commercialization of these ancient ideas. Imagine a country like ours where Ayurveda is practised. We didn’t have an Ayurvedic ministry; it was only in the last ten years that we had one, and no one globally knew what Yoga was.
Until the Indian Prime Minister went to the United Nations and made a clarion call, there was widespread acceptability among the largest number of nations, leading to the global recognition of June 21 as Yoga Day. Even India has diverse folklore. Go to any part of the country—I had the good fortune to be Chairman of the Eastern Zone Cultural Centre by virtue of being Governor of the State of West Bengal, covering about ten states in the eastern part of the country. I never imagined, could never have dreamed, of the richness in art, folk, paintings, music, and instrumentation.
So, these forms of cultural expression can potentially contribute to our intellectual property landscape. You can do it. You just have to look around. Grab the opportunity, monetize it. You'll be doing it for yourself, for the nation, and for the world. These forms foster creativity and originality, and they emanate from the land of art.
India's thriving innovation ecosystem has helped the country buck the global trend of diminished IP activity, showing rises in patents, trademarks, designs, and geographical indicators—a concept too dear to us. Go to any district of the country, and you will find geographical indicators. Go to any part of Bharat, and you'll find cuisine that is so specific it can achieve global recognition. You can do it. Each one of you has the potential, through your training—particularly in IP, intellectual property aspects.
You can do it. The Indian IP Office reported a 24.6% annual increase in patent filings in the financial year 2023, showcasing the country's rising innovation trajectory. I've checked for your benefit. The trajectory is incremental. IP rights incentivize innovation. As a matter of fact, they spur innovation.
They trigger innovation. They catalyse innovation by enabling creators to benefit from their work. The success of Indian generics in the global market, worth over 20 billion US dollars in exports annually, stems from a balanced IP approach, thanks to the affirmative governance in the IP mechanism by the Government of India.
Young boys and girls, moreover, IP rights have been crucial in protecting traditional knowledge. By traditional knowledge, I mean knowledge that has evolved over centuries. Some forms of knowledge, which concern our health, our hygiene, have come in the shape of give-them-these.
By word of mouth, passed from one Nani to another Nani, from one Dadi to another Dadi. This came quite to the advantage of the nation, even during COVID also. You have to secure it so that it remains ours, not for our benefit alone, but for the benefit of the world at large.
IP rights have been crucial in protecting traditional knowledge, and we have taken a big lead in this—a structural lead, a lead that was needed and fortunately is in place—and that is, the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library has successfully prevented several attempts at biopiracy, safeguarding India's rich heritage of traditional medicine. But the challenge in this direction is rising by the day.
We have to be alert 24X7. In the digital era, India faces unique IP challenges along with the world, particularly software and digital content. This is the time when there should be a wholesome convergence of all stakeholders, and that will go a long way in strengthening the preservation and protection of our IP rights; they are valuable to us.
There is no reason why India should not be number one in intellectual property, because we are. We have to discover, then we have to make it subject to the regime, to take its ownership, then fructify its dissemination, create Indian wealth for the nation and welfare of the world. Initiatives like the National IP Policy 2016, and this happened for the first time, aim to strengthen the IP ecosystem, underlining its importance in driving innovation and economic growth in the Indian context.
Our economy, boys and girls, is on the rise as never before. The rise is unsurpassable. We are already the fifth-largest global economy, ahead of our colonial rulers, UK and France, to name countries. Matter of a year or two, Japan, Germany, we would have overtaken. In that, this becomes all the more relevant, that intellectual property regime is absolutely up to the mark to sustain our economic growth and rise, and the mechanism, the policy aims at socio-economic development for a Creative India, Innovative India (रचनात्मक भारत अभिनव भारत), underlying this in the foundation is intellectual property regime.
India's exponential economic rise and ambitious targets would gather momentum with robust IP protection that is gaining ground, but you have to be its warriors. You have to be warriors with a knowledge different than other parts of the world. You who have in place a system here, this compass, there is faculty that you can do it. These boys and girls will be instrumental in many ways—one being foreign investment attraction, encouragement of technology transfer, and positioning controversy as an innovation hub. It is not without purpose that global institutions that were trying to pull strings with us and give advice.
I know it as a person because in 1989, I was a member of Parliament. I was Union Minister in 1990. I know then what happened—IMF, World Bank, our foreign exchange permitting, gold being transferred in physical form to two banks in Switzerland to sustain our fiscal credibility.
But you can do it now. As future experts in this field, you will play a crucial role in shaping policies, promoting innovation, and protecting intellectual property rights. I would strongly urge young minds: don’t fear failure. Fearing failure is working against your mind, against your mindset. Failure is natural. Chandrayaan-3 would not have been a success but for the great effort made by Chandrayaan-2.
History shows it all throughout. So, if you have a brilliant idea in IPR, execute it. Don’t allow it to be parked in your mind.
Friends, you are also facing another challenge equivalent to another industrial revolution. Disruptive technologies such as 6G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, machine learning, and blockchain hold the potential to revolutionise every aspect of our lives. These are challenges but also opportunities. India has a rich human resource. Our DNA is very, very strong. We need to monetize it. These disruptive technologies pose a different kind of challenge to IP protection. You have to come up to the arms. Your armoury must be strengthened on that count.
Enforcement of IP rights continues to be a major concern in some areas because some of us are very genius. Howsoever protective a form you may create, they know how to pierce it. You will have to meet the challenge.
We have piracy, counterfeiting, and most importantly, inadequate awareness posing significant hurdles. People use pirated material, use counterfeited objects because they are not aware of the dangers they are playing with, so awareness also has to be another aspect of it.
Let me remind you of the wisdom from our ancient Veda, the Rig Veda: “Let noble thoughts come to us from every side.” Something similar was said by Bismarck, the German gentleman, much later: “Let the winds of change blow from every direction.” This is there in our Rig Veda thousands of years ago.
Look at the first form of intellectual property we have not been able to monetize. People often quote Bismarck, whereas we should be quoting the most authentic source. This verse encapsulates the essence of intellectual property: the free flow of ideas and knowledge for the betterment of society. Remember, the future of Bharat lies in your capable hands. You are the architects of Viksit Bharat@2047. Your actions, decisions, and innovations will shape it.
Friends, a few months back, I had the occasion, out of pain, to reflect on young minds for your welfare. Now, I find soothing that extravaganza of coaching centres, advertisements all over the newspaper—page one, page two, page three—putting boys and girls who made it, and the same face is being used by multiple organisations. Advertisement—look at the extravaganza, the cost. Every penny of that advertisement has come from those young boys and girls who are in pursuit of securing a future for themselves
Time has come; let us be out of the silo of seductive civil service jobs. No longer—why should we be in that silo? We know the opportunities are limited. We have to look away and find that there are enormous vistas of opportunities, far more lucrative, that enable you to contribute massively. This can happen in disruptive technologies, it can happen in space, and it can happen in the ocean blue economy.
You just have to look around, and you will find it. It was rightly said by the International Monetary Fund that India is a favourite destination for investment and opportunity, but we are already here; we need to grab them. I call upon the youth—the most vital stakeholders in sustaining growth and nurturing democratic values—to optimally contribute, ever keeping the nation first above all. Under no situation can we allow the nation-first concept to be relegated to the second category.
Here, I seek your assistance, and I beseech you: our youth must equally rebuff and utilise forces that keep partisan or self-interest above that of our nation. We cannot allow it. It happens, and it is at the cost of our rise. You are law students; I will leave you with two thoughts. One, scratch your brains and find out: Jurisdiction of institutions is defined by the Indian Constitution. Be it legislature, be it executive, be it judiciary—jurisdiction, of course, is decided.
Look around the globe; look at the Supreme Court in the US, the highest court in the UK, or other formats. Has there been so much cognizance even once? Has a remedy been created beyond what is brought in the Constitution? The Constitution provides original jurisdiction, appellate jurisdiction; it provides, it provides review also, but we have curative. If you do not focus on these nuances, I wonder who shall do it.
Think about it. I got extremely worried when a person holding a constitutional position, just last week, declared in a well-publicised way that the media—I would say campaign—is in the Supreme Court, invoking jurisdiction to give wings to a narrative aimed at destroying our economy. You have to think about it in the right papers.
I conclude, boys and girls, with two aspects. One, I will request the Vice-Chancellor, the Registrar, and the faculty to spare time so that I can receive each one of you in batches of around 70 as my guests at the Indian Parliament, so that you can see for yourselves where law is made and how things happen. Going by your present strength, 10 batches should be good enough, am I right? I will spend time with each of the batches.
Number two, I am also President of the Indian Council of World Affairs, an organisation that keeps in touch with global trends. An MOU will be signed between the Indian Council of World Affairs and this prestigious university, National Law University of Delhi.
May you be ever blessed to be in the service of the nation, to be significant parts of the marathon march for Viksit Bharat@2047, of which you are the most important vital stakeholders.
Thank you so much.
