Which battle will matter most in the general election campaign?

Unlike the last two general election campaigns, this one could actually affect the result. Labour went into the 1997 and 2001 elections so far ahead that only the degree of Conservative humiliation was in question. For the election on May 5th, that's not true: Labour's lead is just a few points. The oddities of the electoral system mean this should still bring a solid overall majority, but the Tories' chances of recovery are now great enough for them to be taken seriously.

Labour's small lead and the likely low turnout give the parties two clear tasks. The first is to reach waverers in the 100-odd seats that have a realistic chance of chang­ing hands. The second is to persuade lukewarm supporters to get out and vote. That is particularly important for Labour, which has greater underlying support, but more disillusioned voters. To win those battles, the parties are fighting on two fronts: national and local-the air war and the ground war respectively.

Political parties are not allowed to buy advertisements in the broadcast media, so the air war chiefly involves politicians taking swipes at each other on national television. They can pull tricks, such as refusing to be interviewed with an opponent, or answering every question with a monologue on the campaign theme of the day. But the rewards are limited. The wavering, disillusioned or apathetic voters whom the parties most need to reach are those least likely to be persuaded by set-piece political blather on telly. An added problem for Labour is that their success in getting media coverage in the past eight years makes audiences even less receptive.

One way round this is to get party heavyweights on to normally apolitical programmes such as daytime chat-shows. Tony Blair recently gave a television interview to two ten-year-old boys. After asking him silly questions such as why he didn't just print more money to give to poor people, they thanked him for his time with gifts that included patriotic-themed panties for Mrs Blair. That may strike the political classes as cheesy, but party managers think it reawakens interest among disengaged voters.

A second tactic is to take questions from audiences of "real people", rather than from professional interviewers. Mr Blair was recently berated on live television by a woman from Cardiff who had resorted to pulling out her teeth herself because she couldn't find a publicly funded dentist Such encounters might seem damaging to the point of masochism, but strategists reckon they make Mr Blair look in touch with the public, dispelling the notion that he is preoccupied by foreign affairs. And the public can, occasionally, be nice.

Text 19

Patently unclear

A crucial new intellectual-property regime disappoints

India's emergence as an economic powerhouse was supposed to take another big step forward this year with the implementation of a new regime for protecting patents. The weak old regime long deterred foreign firms from setting up in India to use the country's ample supply of educated workers to develop new products. Foreign drug firms, in particular, looked forward eagerly to the new patent protections that India was obliged to introduce this year to meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Alas, when India's government duly issued an ordinance (presidential decree) on patents in late December 2004, foreign firms (and some enlightened Indian ones) were almost as disappointed as the anti-WTO protesters around the world who had long opposed stronger patent protection.

For India, the WTO rules meant, above all, recognizing product patents. These stop any other firm making or selling a similar product without compensating the innovator. Lacking such a patent until now, Indian drug firms, for instance, specialized in making copycat drugs and selling them cheaply to India's huge population and beyond.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the world biggest drug firms, has long aspired to do much more of its drug development in India. In 2003 it even formed a partnership with Ranbaxy Laboratories, one of India's leading drug firms, to identify new drugs and conduct early-stage clinical trials. But the weak legal regime severely limited what the partnership could do.

Yet GSK says it is disappointed with India's new patent regime. It wants legislation to back up unambiguously the ordinance. But the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-one of the backers of the otherwise mostly market-oriented government-has decided to oppose the new legislation when it comes up for debate in Parliament in February.

And the proposed legislation is worryingly weak on some crucial issues. GSK says the government has failed to recognize the need to ensure data exclusivity for product patents, so that no other firm can make or market the same drug using the data released with the product. It is also unclear about when, exactly, the government will be able to overrule a patent with compulsory licensing on the grounds of making a drug available cheaply to the poor.

And even a good law would still have to contend with India's inefficient bureaucracy and legal system. With over 12,000 applications already filed with the patent office and the new team of evaluators it may at least 18 months for the first product patent be issued.

Text 20

Most people who depend on underground railways try to avoid thinking about them. All being well, the immense difficulty of running closely sequenced trains at depths of as much as 250 feet, along tunnels that may be over a century old, will not make itself apparent during the slog from home to office. When the challenges become evident, misery is the result. So entreaties to pause and consider the engineering marvels running under London and New York may strike the natural audience for these books as perverse.

Yet subways have literally shaped both cities. Before they were built, roads were clogged with horses, carriages and pedestrians-one count of London's commuters in the 1850s found that two-thirds walked. Underground railways meant that the middle classes could combine city jobs and culture with patches of grass. They also enabled the poor to escape overcrowded tenements: the population of New York's Lower East Side fell by 60% between 1910 and 1940.

London's was the first underground railway – nearly all of it built in the half-century after 1860-and one of the trickiest. It runs under streets so twisty that they could not simply be dug up in order to lay track-the "cut and cover" method used for much of New York's system. Another difference is London's historic lack of civic government, which meant that the money had to be scrounged, mainly from private investors, all of whom had their own ideas on how the system should work.

The lines that now form the backbone of London's tube system were initially financed and run by a motley crew of domestic and foreign money-men, nearly all of whom ended up poorer as a result. An urban rail system is a natural monopoly, and competition, while it lasted, led to endless disputes. One squabble over a siding in 1884 was resolved by chaining a District line train to the track: three Metropolitan engines tried to pull it loose but failed.

Text 21