Biotechnologists seek to bridge South Asian divide

K. S. JAYARAMAN


[HYDERABAD] Biotechnology collaborations have been agreed between India and Pakistan, ending more than five decades of scientific impasse between the two nations.

Last week, a Pakistani delegation to the BioAsia 2004 meeting in Hyderabad signed five agreements — three with Indian biotechnology companies and two with the All India Biotech Association (AIBA). The agreements are said to be the first involving a high-technology area to have been struck between the rivals.

"I will go back to my country extremely pleased," says Anwar Nasim, chairman of Pakistan's National Commission on Biotechnology, who led the delegation.

"We intend to collaborate with Indian companies in the areas of industrial products, vaccines, diagnostic kits and transgenic crops," Nasim told Nature. Under the agreements, the AIBA will help Pakistan to establish its own biotechnology association and will provide a list of Indian technologies that are available for licensing in Pakistan.

B. S. Bajaj, a senior AIBA official, says that in the long term the partnership should benefit both nations. "Indian technology could help Pakistan to bring down the price of its drugs, which are six to seven times more costly than in India," he says. "And Indian biotechnology companies will benefit from opening up a new market in their backyard."

The agreements are general in nature, however, and "we will have to see how they progress", cautions the AIBA's Ashok Sadim Khan. Nasim agrees that "complex issues will have to be dealt with" before the agreements are implemented. But he adds: "All I can say is that weare making a start, and are confident that many avenues will open up for collaboration."

Nasim says that prospects for improved relations between Indian and Pakistani scientists are looking brighter. "Our academy has already received an invitation from the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and we are considering it," he adds. INSA secretary S. K. Sahni told Nature that, because things move slowly at government-to-government level, the INSA had decided to offer to launch discussions with the Pakistan Academy of Sciences on such common interests as agriculture and malaria.



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