Bio capital in India - Essay Example

Bio capital in India Chapter I 1.1 Introduction Biotech companies in India are in itself part of the start-up industry. It has relatively recent history and most companies operate like an academic professor developing a technology in a university. They raise venture capital funds and start a company. The Silicon Valley start-up culture is what most Indian companies and public labs are trying to incorporate. According to Rajan, India is a long way away from having a start-up culture and certainly not in biotech. It requires long-term capital commitment, the ability to take risks and creativity for entrepreneurial culture to take root. Kaushik Rajan believes that the local political ideologies of indebtedness constitute globalization. Biocapital implies biotechnological innovation and drug development as well as constitutes biopolitics in the process of global capitalism. This implies that biocapital includes understanding the basis for innovation and how life itself is impacted as technology develops. Rajan’s analysis of biocapital swings between technology and capitalism on the one hand and nationalization and globalization on the other. 1.2 Biopolitics In biopolitics, life is the center of political calculation. Transition from absolute monarchy to a modern state takes place as institutions and techniques like prisons, clinics and asylum emerge. These calculations are based on certain disciplines like biology, demography, psychology and political economy. All these have to develop simultaneously for progress. Under the circumstances, globalization presents questions of rationality of global governance. The state is now an agent of political calculation and has a lot at stake. The nation is in the midst of a shift in the state’s role. Corporations today take up responsibilities which were traditionally state services and the state is adopting corporate strategies or forms of governance. Today governance is a melding of state and corporate forms and rationalities. There is a reconfiguration of the relationship of imperial power to colony into one of vendor to client. 1.3 Indebtedness Indebtedness is found at all levels and especially in interactions between corporations and their investors (1)1. Even entrepreneurs are indebted to the venture capitalists and are forced to relinquish control over their companies. Consumers also remain indebted to the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries for undertaking high-risk, decade long drug development ventures for therapies for otherwise untreatable diseases. This indebtedness is the symbolic capital for the industry. Thus indebtedness operates at multi-level even in India, observes Rajan. When India was in the midst of a crisis in 1991, it was suggested that India take further loans from IMF which would put India into a further state of indebtedness. The terms of loan made India more fiscally responsible for the debts. A stage was thus created for moral reforms. Chapter 2 2.1 Biocapital in India The strategic articulations of India do not resist the global orders of techno-scientific capitalism. Rajan has tried to establish a relationship between global capital and local forms of indebtedness. He has shown the ways in which biocapital touches down in different contexts in India. ICICI Knowledge Park in Andhra Pradesh and the Genomed/Wellspring Hospital, Mumbai are the two locations where Rajan concentrated as both there are institutions and they represent the political ecologies within which they are situated (2)2. These two start-ups have the same start-up culture like the United States. The Park is capital and technology intensive and its function is to enable the incubation of biotech start ups on its premises. Both these projects have state involvement coupled with high technology and they want to demonstrate that India is now a global player with state involvement. Both these are examples of biopolitical instruments and strategies. Through a culture of innovation they have been able to attract global capital flows which have changed the lives of the people of the state in which these projects thrive. In both cases there has been access to land, and rural space was captured through urban expansion; indebtedness too is common to both. The ICICI Park is in the state of Andhra Pradesh where the Chief Minister, Chandra Babu Naidu believes that speed, information and selling should be the key modes of governmentality (3)3. He marketed his state through power point presentations at every domestic or foreign investors’ forum. He viewed each state as corporate entity. He also brought about changes in his regime for the people of the state. During the regime of Rama Rao people were provided with cheap rice and huge agricultural subsidies but Naidu reversed all of these at the altar of fiscal management, structural adjustment and pragmatism. He made the state attractive to investors and the electorate and set milestones for himself and his government. Through his vision he managed to silently reverse Rao’s legacy. He believed that vision was the promissory horizon and speed the means to narrow the distance to achieve the vision. Through venture capital, Naidu brought in the NRI entrepreneurial community in Silicon Valley. Naidu set up a system of public investment as ‘venture capital’ funds and the contributions came in from APIDC, SIDBI and APIICL (4)4. Through fostering entrepreneurial culture Naidu could remove agricultural subsidies but introduce subsidies in technology service which were exported. It may be noted that subsidies were not for technological innovation but for export of services. The growth of the state took place at the cost of rural development. The state concentrated on biotechnology, tourism and information technology to attract foreign investment. Infrastructure facilities were developed at the Park in collaboration with the private venture capital and financial services company ICICI. This was done apparently because multinationals were keen to carry out scientific research in India because of availability of high quality scientific manpower. A similar set up in the West could have been done at a fraction of the cost but here subsidies were granted for services to be exported. To convince the local people, Naidu claimed that some of the value generated would remain in India. Dedicated sources for water and electricity are set up and manufacturing units are not allowed due to fear of pollution. The state has even relaxed the import policy for research materials coming into the Park. With all the benefits being provided to the Park, the question that haunts the common man is whether this is a huge step towards a developed India, or towards being a global player. Besides, this park is forty kilometers outside the city whereas the city itself has some top research institutions in the country. The gifting of land by the government resulted in a spate of farmers’ suicides as a consequence of unbearable debt. Initially the state government was compensating the family of suicides, it gradually realized that the compensation provided to the family after suicide became an incentive for the farmers to commit suicide. The state’s Vision 2020 was embedded in a dream of fast technological progress and material prosperity through globalization and embracing the free market. India’s balance of payments crisis led to the implementation of IMF/World Bank structural adjustment policies but this only aggravated the indebtedness of the local farmers (5)5. 2.2 Science and Capitalism Genomed Mumbai, in addition to genomic research on schizophrenia, also studies pharmacogenomic drug response in clinical trials. Wellspring is more of a hotel than a hospital. This is of great interest to the Western biotech and pharmaceutical companies as India is the melting pot of clinical trials (6)6. Wellspring is an interesting institutional component of a genomic assemblage. It is located in Parel which was once home to textile mills and now teeming with unemployed mill workers. These people are recruited as clinical trials that are compensated. This may not have been premeditated but all hospitals in Mumbai are located in elite areas whereas Well spring is located in a mill area. What is at stake here is the understanding of the relationship between national global enterprises of clinical trials and local forms of indebtedness. 2.3 Nationalization and Capitalism Corporate scandals in America are not a new phenomenon but admitting failure of free market capitalism is laden with American values. It is considered as undermining not just a political economy but a national value system whereas nationalism in India is more openly expressed and regularly interrogated (7)7. This perhaps was the reason why venture capitalists in America prefer to play safe. GeneEd, an e-learning company sells online courses to physicians to educate them about emergent life sciences or therapies (8)8. It provides perspectives not only on drug development marketplace but also on Silicon Valley, on entrepreneurship and on Indian diaspora. Starting a company requires some sort of crisis to make the risk worthwhile. The CEO’s disenchantment with the bioinformatics company pushed him into starting this company. GeneEd has been unable to raise venture capital money which means the CEO will have to relinquish considerable hold over the company. This had serious long-term consequences as it was molded by the personalities of the management and employees and it was dependent on constant sales. Location is important to start-up companies and GeneEd being in the Silicon Valley it could hire the best managers and workers, had easy access to customers and collaborators. What is striking is that in Silicon Valley too it was Indian entrepreneurs at work. Not being able to raise venture capital was a boon in disguise for the entrepreneurs according to Rajan. It enforced a certain fiscal discipline and it allowed them to stay within the company’s vision which might have been hard to maintain if the capital was diluted. Nevertheless, for any start-up significant amount of capital as cushion is essential because the loans that came in would have to be paid back irrespective of the sales that the company achieved. When the company started having steady revenue flows, venture capitalists became interested in investing. This implies that each one is concerned with risk minimization. There is a difference between risks and uncertainty – entrepreneurs are concerned with uncertainty while venture capitalists calculate risks. GeneEd had a changing client base, critical operational locale, and the CEO did not fit into the corporate American stereotype. What can be surmised is that when the state is involved and in emerging economies, venture capitalists step in and exploitation takes place. Local land is seized forcibly which clearly changes the life of these people. The developing nations aspire to become global players and they believe that development and growth would require sacrifices. The poor are invariably sacrificed. When similar biotech projects were envisaged in the United States, at an excellent location, it failed to attract VCs despite the entrepreneurs having sufficient expertise and knowledge. Chapter 3 3.1 Exploitation and free labor Cultural and technical work is central to the internet but is also a widespread activity in the capitalist society. This is a pervasive feature of the postindustrial economy. The digital economy describes a formation which intersects on the one hand with the post modern cultural economy and the information industry on the other hand. The digital economy is a mixed economy of public element, market-driven element and gift economy. Without involvement of money and politics, there is collaboration and exchange of information. The netslaves have always been vociferous about the exploitative nature of the job. They are no more than sweatshops with 90 or more hours of labor per week. They used to work long hours but felt the pain of being burnt by the digital media. Digital labor has only been glamorized and internet is a thriving and hyper active medium of free labor. These are now known as ‘society-factory’ which sets in motion a truly complex machine (9)9. Free labor on the net is voluntarily given; it is unwaged, enjoyed and exploited. There is a continuous production going on and because of the internet flexibility of the workforce has increased, there is continuous re-skilling, and freelance work available. Through internet collective intelligence network has come into being. Bonding is through mutual obligation of time and ideas on the net. Free labor is a fundamental moment in the creation of value in the economy at large. The capitalist emphasis is on knowledge and this is triggered by the deep rooted culture of creative production. So people worked not merely by force but by their own desire to be creative (10)10. Free labor in the capitalist society is characterized by excessive productive activities which people enjoy while executing it but then very often exploitation also takes place. Knowledge work is essential to stimulate innovation achieve goals of competitiveness. Human intelligence adds value to the economic health of an organization but knowledge workers need open organizational structures in order to produce. Even managing such workers is through team based structures and not the traditional ways of managing people. There is a need to attract and retain these human resources often referred to as assets. It is not merely as the economic needs of the capitalist situation but it creates monetary value out of knowledge/culture/affect (11)11. Knowledge is not pinned down to specific social segments. Skills that are required are in cybernetics and computer control. This does not require high degree of skill and is inherent in every worker but it needs to be awakened. Post modernity wants employable workers otherwise they have to undergo training to become employable. The postmodern cultural economy requires knowledge in fashion and music. Collective cultural labor makes these products saleable through the internet. The importance of internet in the postmodern economy cannot be ignored but not many venture capitalists are keen to invest in websites. Immaterial labor is very essential for the internet business which does not require high level of skills (12)12. Collective intelligence leads to mutual recognition and enrichment of individuals. Computer networks highlight the unique value of human intelligence s the true creator of value in a knowledge economy. Capital is the unnatural environment in which the collective intelligence materializes. The internet and the computer networks are the latest machines and the manifestation of the fixed capital while the workers are the living labors with general intellect. The postindustrial production process consists of humans and machines. There is too much information, too many websites, too many mailing lists which are most often defunct, too many spam mails and humans employed and paid just to visit websites or read emails. This is exploitation of manpower in the modern society. The computer draws on free labor while arguments abound that television and the print media also draw n free labor. They do but then they make use of the free labor of their readers and viewers. The free economy of the internet was lost due to e-commerce and commercialization. During the dot com regime, digital economy was the fastest zone of production in the late capitalist societies. There were always new products, new trends and new cultures to look forward to. Exploitation is still at work because people were employed to build communities. They were not paid in terms of money but some exchange took place and they gained pleasure out of it. This was done willingly because knowledge increased as it was shared. Users also learnt to keep their sites alive through their labor. The ‘open-source’ movement relies on free labor and users’ labor has attracted more in case of open source than in mailing lists and websites (13)13. For instance writing an operating system is still more worthy than chatting for free on AOL. While software is available free on the internet, certain features are available only on payment. Besides, support and maintenance is also on payments. Attractions were freeware and shareware software. The open source relies on free labor both willingly offering services or those who were not paid. These include the amateur web designers, mailing list editors, and the netslaves who worked for excitement. Internet has always been a gift economy and an advanced capitalist economy. There is relation between capitalism and labor force. The digital economy has brought about an immediate interface with cultural and technical labor. Hence free labor helped to develop the internet and e-commerce, while refuge was taken under the guise of pleasure and excitement for the workers. This is nothing but exploitation and the general skilled people are lured into this. Once again, the poor or the average people become pawns at the hands of the capitalist society. 3.2 Biological turn Communication networks are self-organizing, evolutionary and the explosion of the internet phenomenon was the ‘biological turn’. The evolutionary process could produce the variety of life. Biological computing refers to a cluster of sub-disciplines within the computer sciences – like artificial life, mobotics, and natural networks. The field of biological computing is now a well-funded and profitable field of research in areas as different as animation and cancer. It is bound only by local rules and can outperform the programmers’ instructions. Bottom-up companies have computers which are abstract and lack in quality. It is basically an abstract machine of soft control. The biological turn in computing is a part of the larger techno-scientific re-conceptualization of life. The living organism is the aggregate result of the interaction of a large population of relatively simple machines. These machines are active at the molecular level, the cellular level, the organism level and the population-ecosystem level. It is organizing a population of machines to bring their dynamics alive. In biological computing the act of perceiving and the act of remembering are the same. It is concerned with the power of the small – small in terms of overall relation to a large number of variables (14)14. The Silicon Valley is similarly analyzed as a kind of ecosystem for the development of disruptive technologies. Its growth and success can be attributed to the incessant formation of diverse entities that support and interact with each other. Dawkins’ formulation of the genes finds its application in the biological turn. Genes is defined by means of the cut that gives a program a functional beginning and an end. Contemporary scientific knowledge and research has to be applied. Biological turn can actually manage to translate ideas into actual working pieces of software. Chapter 4 Conclusion In both cases biopolitics with global capital flows leads to indebtedness. Concentration on global techno scientific capitalism raises questions of exchange and governmentality. The poor is always sacrificed at the altar of growth and development. The investor seeks security for his money and so do the poor people for their livelihood. Is this globalization? Capitalism plays a vital role in turning the economy of a nation. The state can take the role of giant operators to attract funds and change the scenario. Both the authors have expressed concern over the society and the people in their own ways. Location plays a vital role in attracting foreign investments and developing nations have been successful in doing so. This is especially in view of cheap labor and research costs compared to the West. Using science and research as the base, people and their talents have been exploited. In each of the cases, strategy plays a vital role towards extraction of work and profits. Profit is at the core of any strategy and both the books have studies how capitalism is full of vested interests. The capitalists are least concerned about the outcome except for the profit element. In the name of technology, science and research, in the name of progress and growth, free labor is extracted. The society and its people become stooges in the hands of the monarchy. The rich become richer and the poor poorer. It fails to bridge the gap between the two and the poor continue to suffer maybe in a different form. The difference in strategy between an entrepreneur and the VCs lies in the risks and obligations. An entrepreneur is more concerned about uncertainty while the venture capitalist calculates risks. As such, VCs decline from investing in a capitalist society but do so when they can see tangible profits. They are eager to invest in developing economies or emerging capitalist societies, where they are sure of returns. The analysis of the capitalist societies of both the authors is the same in this moment of capitalism. References: 1. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 2, Life and Debt, p81 2. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 2, Life and Debt, p83 3. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 2, Life and Debt, p86 4. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 2, Life and Debt, p87 5. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 2, Life and Debt, p92 6. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 2, Life and Debt, p94 7. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 5, Salvation and Nation, 8. BioCapital by Kaushik Rajan, Chapter 6, Entrepreneurs and start-ups, 9. Network Culture by Tiziana Terranova, Chapter 3, Free Labor, p75 10. Network Culture by Tiziana Terranova, Chapter 3, Free Labor, p77 11. Network Culture by Tiziana Terranova, Chapter 3, Free Labor, p79 12. Network Culture by Tiziana Terranova, Chapter 3, Free Labor, p81 13. Network Culture by Tiziana Terranova, Chapter 3, Free Labor, p91 14. Network Culture by Tiziana Terranova, Chapter 4, Soft Control, p103 Read More