“Clearing the air” on this issue, during the inaugural ‘International Energy Week’ here, Union Minister for Science and Technology, Kapil Sibal, said the world “must move away” from the accent on patents in this domain. He was intervening during the question-answer session that followed the inaugural ‘Singapore Energy Lecture’ by elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew, who is also the City-State’s Minister Mentor.

Commending China’s ‘eco-city’ project, Mr. Lee had said: “I do not sense that urgency in India yet.” However, he traced this situation to a host of factors, including India’s “very low” industrialisation in comparison to China’s current economic profile. India was really focussing on “high-tech industries” as also “outsourcing” now, he noted. Prefacing these remarks, Mr. Lee said: “In Bali [at the recent multilateral talks on climate change], the Indians and the Chinese reserved their positions, as they must do even as a bargaining tactic.”

Sensing these comments and the general thrust of Mr. Lee’s speech as a sign of “some scepticism about India’s commitments” to combat global warming, Mr. Sibal said: “I don’t know how you got the impression. There is, perhaps, a lack of communication somewhere. ... We need a global solution. ... We need different technologies, at different prices, which are accessible and affordable at different levels. I don’t think that the global community has gotten to that level. There needs to be a global mechanism, and indeed we must move away from patents. What are your thoughts?”

Insignificant contribution

In response, Mr. Lee emphasised that India and China “did not commit themselves, in Bali, to the resolutions that were put up.” In the big picture of global warming issues, though, he would not blame India, because its per-capita consumption of energy was still “that low.”

Not being industrialised on the same scale as China, India’s “contribution to global warming is insignificant” so far.

And, in a futuristic scenario, “whoever discovers” a scientific answer to the global challenges of climate change, by expending enormous time and money, “is not going to give that technology to India or China,” Mr. Lee cautioned.