One Nation One Subscription (ONOS): Dispossessing Ekalavya to feed Elsevier

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Through what parliamentary process was a three-year outlay of 6000 crore of public money set aside to purchase academic subscription from global capitalist paywalled academic publishers? How and, more importantly, from whom will these costs be recovered? Can this transfer of substantial monetary resources to corporations located in colonial countries be justified against measly returns, if any?

On November 25, 2024 the Government of India approved an outlay of 6000 crore of public money[1] to be disbursed over three years to a consortium of 30 international academic journal publishers in return for centralized access through INFLIBNET to only 13000 journals in government higher education and research institutes. There is no idea (in public domain reports) of any additional publication benefits to marginalized students and researchers, infrastructural support, no commitments towards eventual open access or subsidized and early access to books or research papers. Further, any additional journals (beyond the 13000) would have to be separately subscribed to by individual institutes[2].

The public reports available in various news media tackle this scheme from at least two angles: one, mostly congratulatory and celebrating as-yet-unrealized ‘progress’ towards access to knowledge[3]; the other, posits this scheme against the debates around open access publishing of scientific knowledges[4], GDP percentages and unequal STEM-focused research[5]. Among the latter, however, this article by Muthu Madhan is of particular note as it compares similar failed ONOS strategies already ditched in coloniser countries and educational establishments. Neither of these positions, however, speak to the specific and recent history of legal battles on copyright undertaken by these very publishers in India, attacking free or subsidized access to knowledge. Nor do they seek accountability from the government from the perspective of the marginalized students and researchers in the country.

There are three important aspects to consider here. First, this ONOS scheme involves the country’s public money meant for the betterment and expansion of Indian research and education system being funnelled to colonial big publishers as a specific cost they are extracting against perceived ‘copyright violations’ happening on Indian soil. Second, as a government that is principally against universal access to education this ONOS scheme, passed without due diligence or opposition, opens up the possibility of increasing cost of education by way of introducing charges (under vague heads such as library charges) that will have to paid by unwitting students and researchers. Third, the surveillance that is intrinsic to the project will control the type of research content and centralize records of journals and articles accessed allowing the State to wield even further control over knowledge accessed and produced.

Caste-colonial pound of flesh

List of 30 publishers that will receive the 6000 crores; List as available from livemint

Between 2012 and 2020 two cases were undertaken by some of the ‘top’ publishers listed above in Delhi High Court.

In 2012, Taylor & Francis, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press attempted to sue a photocopy shop named Rameshwari Photocopy Service and the Delhi University for distributing photocopied portions of books and articles to students as part of course material[6]. The Delhi High Court’s expansive judgment in 2016 upheld that such reproduction and circulation for educational purposes doesn’t constitute copyright violations. The only reason given by the petitioning publishers for not pursuing an appeal was that they do not wish to litigate against stakeholder Universities. However, during the pendency of the case from 2012, the photocopy service was placed under surveillance and the publishers were able to secure a temporary halt on the creation of such course packs.

A truly democratic government could have utilized this expansive judgment of 2016 to subsidise the creation of such essential course packs in digital and print formats across various tiers of colleges, as well as to make such services as photocopying and printing of books and course work freely available to marginalized students as an immediate first step. Further, it could have negotiated for heavily subsidized or low-cost publications of global books to be made available in universities and Indian markets, or free access to e-book versions of their theoretical publications and series in Indian repositories. None of this happened of course.

In 2020, Elsevier, Wiley and Americal Chemical Society filed a case of copyright violation[7] against the founder of Sci-Hub, Alexandra Elbakyan, a Kazhakhstani computer programmer, and shadow library Libgen for making journal articles and other published material freely available. Internet service providers and Department of Telecom, Electronics & IT were also made parties to the suit[8]. The case is currently pending before the High Court, but the submissions of Alexandra Elbakyan have unfortunately been construed by the Court as an acceptance on her part that the publishers bear copyright over the published material. The outcome of the case could not only lead to adverse legal action against Elbakyan but also restrict or prevent access to Sci-Hub and LibGen in India.

And now, in 2024, the Indian government has — ‘after negotiations’ — agreed to pay ~2000 crore every year for three years to a consortium consisting of these same publishers who have doggedly pursued with litigation individuals seeking to make knowledge accessible to all. In essence, these publishers are extracting, in true and continuing colonial fashion, what they have deemed as their pound of flesh for the ‘incomes they purportedly lost or will lose’ due to the aforementioned ‘copyright violations’. And the Indian government, a complete supplicant before and ally of such oppressive views of knowledge, has opened its coffers — betraying the people and denying urgent investment in research and education for the most marginalized in the country.

This scheme is being undertaken at a time when scholarships for SC, ST, OBC students have been almost completely rolled back, denied or barely disbursed, when hostels are in shambles, and scholars and graduates across the country are seeking clarity on stipends and other facilities, and the entire infrastructure of primary education is being eroded from the core. Of course none of these facilities are even being imagined for transgender students.

According to certain unverified reports[9] there are two ‘eligibility’ conditions placed by the ONOS scheme in order to access said journals. One is permanent residency and second is institutional affiliation to central and state government-run HEIs or research institutes. Having run the reservation policy into the ground through arbitrary and opaque admissions procedures (evidenced by the growing number of litigations around admissions in multiple courts) to keep marginalized students out of educational institutions, a superficial and unacceptably expensive plan, NOT discussed in the budget, is being undertaken in the name of ‘free access’ to research. If we understand the global flow of resources historically, and read this scheme against the current background of imperialist nations’ offering debt relief to their students – a relief not available here, it is safe to say that marginalized students of India are directly and indirectly subsidizing and fuelling knowledge production by imperialist nations.

Which brings one to the second question – ‘free access’ for whom? Having already placed insurmountable obstacles to entering education institutions within the country, the education system is rife with unexplained costs and lack of clarity on the nature of extraction of various fee and charges from students. In order to study in ‘premier’ institutes of technical and research education a student faces costs anywhere from 03-30 lakhs only by way of tuition and attendant charges, depending on the course, city, and duration of study. In 2022, for the first time, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) recommended establishing a minimum fee limit at 79,000/- for undergraduate engineering courses as a result of lobbying by private engineering colleges[10]. The irony being that these recommendations came as a result of a committee set up by the Supreme Court to prevent commercialization of technical education!

The ONOS scheme, and the associated ‘digital infrastructure’, ‘record-keeping’ and other real or perceived administrative costs, it must be presumed, will be recovered by an extortionist governance mechanism directly or indirectly from the very persons it claims to be benefitting. First, various open or hidden charges might get added to the total tuition fee extracted from the students enrolling in government-run institutions. Second, because private institutions are not covered by the ONOS scheme in the first phase, a process of paid enrolment for such institutes might come into place – the additional ‘burden’ of which these private institutes will then pass on to the students. Thereby completing the vicious cycle of caste-colonial extractive costs for ‘free access’ to education and knowledge. It is safe to assume that there will be no public declaration of costs and benefits from this fanciful scheme.

A key element of the ONOS scheme involves centralized surveillance of journals and articles accessed through the unified portal and monitoring of publications by Indian authors from registered institutions – information which will then be used to identify (or even block?) ‘under-used’, ‘contrarian’ and / or ‘anti-establishment and seditious’ research content. Steps that will run contrary to the stated ‘democratization’ impetus behind the ONOS scheme. Further, there are only 13000 journals under consideration: this, according to general estimates, is less than 50% of all the journals across disciplines available in the world. It bears repetition here, no stage of the scheme covers free and/or subsidized access to books.

Why is this a specific concern for transgender persons?

The centralization and control of knowledge anywhere is a concern for transgender persons everywhere.

In recent times one has a seen a drastic shift towards open and virulent transphobia among all political ideologies and identity groups globally. At present there are two cases in the US and the UK respectively that will delve into ‘defining’ transgender persons in one way or another. The US Supreme Court is hearing the matter of one of their states denying gender-affirming medical care to transgender minors[11]. Meanwhile the UK Supreme Court will be hearing a challenge from (cis) women’s rights groups on whether the ‘definition of woman’ includes transgender women[12]. Alongside the lack of access to public spaces for transgender persons and the weakening of the movement globally since the pandemic, the court systems (and the legal language) will depend heavily on ‘evidence-based research’ reports funded or accepted by the ruling political system to adjudicate such matters. A majority of these research material is biologically deterministic, rooted in the medical industry and intrinsically transphobic (despite many authors claiming a ‘supportive’ stand).

Here in India, the entirety of negotiations around transgender rights (and superficial knowledge among general public about transgender persons) rests on the Indian Supreme Court’s partially useful NALSA v UOI judgment of 2014 stemming from the Constitutional provisions. Simultaneously the ruling dispensation, RSS and other Hindu outfits are intent on rendering transgender persons as ‘ancient and divine’ and also locking certain visible groups of the transgender community within the ‘Hindu fold’ performing caste roles of begging and sex work.

When the research and knowledge production corridor gets firmly organized in the manner proposed by ONOS, the entirety of global ‘knowledge’ around transgender persons will be stuck within these two extremes of the Race-colonial North and the Caste-colonial South. And the same will be utilized to continue to spread hate and misinformation about transgender persons, our identities and histories. Dispossessed of access to rights and just representation, only such unilateral ‘knowledge’ will be utilized in adjudicating matters and thereby rolling back even the marginal gains we may have had.

Further, if alongside this scheme India ends up banning or restricting access to spaces like Sci-Hub and Libgen, independent transgender scholars and researchers, who are not part of any academic networks or institutions and depend on these platforms to subvert poor medical and legal practices and gain access to global research by other transgender persons pertaining to our healthcare and other scientific advances, will be left with nothing.

From the socio-historical perspective, unlike any other singular marginal identity on record in the world at present, transgender persons deal with a near-complete absence of grounded, transformative and critical histories and independent commentary and research on various dimensions of public domain not limited to governance. Any effort to put such positions forward are either dismissed or considered less relevant than ‘painful human interest’ stories preferred by news media, popular culture and sometimes even the community.

The silence of academians

When global publishers filed the 2012 and 2020 cases, some members of the liberal academia expressed concerns and wrote to the publishers about inequality in access and such. With the public celebration of ONOS, however, these members of the academia may have no ‘clear position’ on the matter of inequality and access. In fact, the only persons who will benefit from this scheme are permanent faculty members and already established researchers. Among them the liberals, anti-colonials and decolonials may only defer to an uncertain philanthropic exercise of making their access available to independent activists or researchers personally known to them, without taking a clear and collective stand for the repatriation of the proposed outlay of 6000 crores to the urgent needs of most marginalized students and researchers in the country and for the democratic development of the education system.

The unscrupulous and subservient stance of the government can be further clarified by the fact that domestic regulatory bodies are pursuing penal measures against universities and colleges within the country while kowtowing to global publishers. Take, for example, the National Medical Council’s recent public actions against medical colleges in various states that have failed to pay stipends to their residents and interns. While oversight and regulation are essential, there is no interest in democratic resolution including: arriving at the core reasons and sustainable funding solutions, clarifying the nature of stipend funds within private and public colleges, nor any direction or assurance from the government (especially with respect to government colleges) to clear the stipend arrears forthwith. Essentially, in the field of education, the government is constantly at war with its constituent states and universities.

In such a state of internal war, academicians are likely to continue exiting the discussion to ‘safeguard themselves’ rather than take a knee to safeguard public resources. As such, they will remain silent beneficiaries and witnesses to the continued plundering and transfer of resources from the Ekalavyas to the Elseviers, via the central government of India.

The government’s primary claim, therefore, that it is not a ‘slave’ to ‘colonial masters’ appears to be thoroughly bizarre if not outright false.

[1] https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2077098

[2] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/one-nation-one-subscription-9691391/

[3] https://www.livemint.com/education/news/cabinet-approves-one-nation-one-subscription-all-about-the-scheme-to-ensure-access-to-academic-journals-11732547891622.html

[4] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-plan-explained/article68938128.ece

[5] https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/can-onos-transform-indian-research-1503373742.html

[6] https://blog.ipleaders.in/oxford-v-rameshwari-photocopy-service-case-study/

[7][7] https://csriprnusrl.wordpress.com/2022/03/11/section-51-52-and-fair-use-analysing-the-elsevier-v-sci-hub-case-in-the-context-of-fair-use-and-the-interests-of-authors-and-seekers-of-information/

[8] https://lexjuralaw.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/copyright-disobedience-elsevier-ltd-vs-alexandra-elbakyan/

[9] https://www.rjdchn.in/one-nation-one-subscriptiononos-scheme-2025-explore-benefits-features-and-how-to-apply/

[10] https://indianexpress.com/article/education/panel-fixes-maximum-and-minimum-fee-for-engg-tech-institutes-7863073/

[11] https://www.statnews.com/2024/12/04/supreme-court-transgender-rights-tennessee-bars-minors-from-gender-affirming-care/