India-US Ties Bolster | India To Assume A Bigger Role? (NewsX)

 

Timely Biden's Warning To China-Accountability To Control Xi? (NewsX)

 

China probe will determine Democratic Party fate ( The Sunday Guardian)

It is a matter of astonishment that Biden believes that the WHO will conduct a credible investigation into the origins of SARS2.

President Donald Trump and his successor Joe Biden ensured that billions of dollars flowed to US corporations. The stated intention was to keep job losses caused by SARS2 to as low a level as possible. While those at the upper end of the income scale have had their wealth enhanced during 2020, others less well-off have seen drops, often sharp, in their incomes during 2020. Many “safe” investments were rendered useless as a consequence of the global impact that was the consequence of the flights that took off from Wuhan to destinations across the world between November 2019 and the close of January 2020. This was when Xi Jinping implemented a total lockdown of the city and surrounding areas.

An example of losses made is the scheme for “ownership of holiday stays” by a hotel chain with franchises across India, and which is headquartered in the US. An acquaintance has lost $23,000 by investing in the scheme in October 2019. The person decided to opt out altogether when a “maintenance plus” bill of an additional $4,000 was suddenly slapped in the middle of the SARS2 second wave. This was to cover “maintenance plus” expenses (on zero stays) until May 2021. It is uncertain when the devastation caused by Covid-19 will end in much of the world. Given that travel during much of 2020 (and in many parts of the world, thus far in 2021 as well) was not possible, charging a hefty “annual maintenance fee” for 2020 seems to have been somewhat insensitive. However, what matters is the fine print, and the fine print did not mention Covid-19 at all, not surprising as it was presented for signature in October 2019. What was included in the fine print was that legal disputes would need to be adjudicated exclusively in the US. This stipulation rendered courts elsewhere irrelevant for the citizens of countries in which they operate. Who looks at the fine print anyway? Most only listen to the salesperson as one after another claim of wondrous rewards gets mentioned. From that to handing over a cheque for $23,000 was seen as but a small step for a lifetime of attractive benefits and rewards. There are others who paid much more in the same scheme, in the expectation of travel volume estimated in the pre-pandemic era. Rather than keep paying substantial amounts of money annually on “maintenance” in a world where travel seems unlikely to recover for years, many opt out of the scheme of the US-based hotel chain. They are promptly informed that little if anything of their original investment will be returned to them. What was presented as an attractive, indeed irresistible, contract in the plush New York offices of the hotel chain will be foreclosed. The hotel chain taking the entire amount paid by a customer for the scheme in question is acting no differently from other reputed brands in seeking to gouge as much as possible from a diminished stock of customers. An individual who joins with countless others in seeing investments turn into dust in the storm of the pandemic is likely to accept meekly the entire loss of the capital invested, a loss caused by the circumstances created by a pandemic, in the emergence of which he or she had no role. Justice, after all, is blind, although not in the manner displayed by the hotel chain. Not reading the fine print of an agreement before signing it is something that most of those who are being besieged online with social media platforms telling them to agree to conditions loaded with one-sided fine print also do.

Tens of millions have experienced monetary losses similar to the individual who for no fault except gullibility saw $23,000 melt away into the coffers of the US-based hotel chain during the pandemic. Hundreds of millions have lost their jobs, while those who have suffered a loss of income may number in the billions. Which is why the virus that the WHO failed to alert the world in time has become such a radioactive issue in the politics of so many countries, including India and the US. The pandemic felled Trump in the 2020 presidential polls, and may neuter the Democratic Party in 2022 should President Biden follow the course suggested by Trump administration holdovers, who have inexplicably been retained by him. It is a matter of astonishment that Biden believes that the WHO will conduct a credible investigation into the origins of SARS2. Or that Health Guru Anthony Fauci will ever admit that the funds poured by Peter Daszak in the direction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have in any way have caused SARS2. Or that most of the results of the experiments may have gone to the PLA rather than to US authorities. Since the final weeks of 2019, US health experts who were frequent visitors to the Wuhan institute and the WHO team stationed nearby seem to have ignored warning signs that appeared from November 2019 onwards that something had gone badly wrong. That the absence of warnings from either US experts or the WHO until what was a localised eruption of the disease grew into the scale of a pandemic is obvious. That both the initial as well as the latest conclusions of WHO seem to be based on trust rather than scientific analysis is the conclusion being drawn by those virologists and epidemiologists around the world who are unconnected to SARS2 Gain of Function research, and who have the courage to risk the wrath of the influential individuals who have sought to label as “conspiracy theories” any hypothesis other than the direct movement of the virus from animal to human, without any laboratory equipment coming in between. President Biden needs to ensure that facts come out, not as they are now in droplets contributed by a growing number of individuals of conscience, but through an impartial commission that excludes any individual directly or indirectly linked to the SARS2 experiments at Wuhan. Thus far, his actions have failed to meet this test. Should this continue for longer, should the notion of a cover-up of the origins of SARS2 take hold in the public imagination, the Democratic Party will suffer a devastating defeat in the 2022 midterms that will transform Biden into the lamest Lame Duck President in the US for over a century. Contrarily, should he ensure that such an enquiry not get derailed by those in the administration with an interest in a narrative that takes the spotlight off their own actions, it may be difficult for the DINOs—Democrats in Name Only—to defeat his transformational proposals on infrastructure in the US Senate. The handful of Republican Senators who are opposed to their party becoming the Voice of Trump may ensure that Biden gets what is a Biden revival plan that is immensely popular with voters of all hues.

China probe will determine Democratic Party fate

Lessons: 9/11 and SARS2 ( Chanakya Forum )

It would be a difficult task to judge whether Angela Merkel or Henry Kissinger echoes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) line more faithfully. The country that Merkel leads gets a substantial surplus from its trade with China, although the CCP is working hard to ensure that this gets converted into a deficit with China within a few years, through copying and improving German technology. Henry Kissinger has moved far in wealth from his childhood history of privation, and much of this is owing to moneys earned through the PRC. A grateful CCP favours him for quickly backing President Nixon in his outreach to the PRC against the USSR. He has long served as a gateway to policymakers in Beijing owing to his status as the most respected informal ambassador of the Peoples Republic in the US. Even in the Trump administration, which initiated a number of fireworks displays to appease the growing number of domestic voters who are awake to the danger to US primacy posed by Beijing, key elements such as Senior Presidential Advisor and the country’s First Son-in-law Jared Kushner were in thrall to the ideas floated by Henry.

When Kissinger made his infrequent visits to India, despite his history of Indo-phobia, the country’s elite fawned over him as it did another Indo-phobe, Bill Clinton. Except for the final months of his stay in the White House, Clinton applied constant pressure on India to make concessions on strategic defense capabilities and on issues of sovereignty, and belittled India’s potential as a partner of the US while exaggerating the benefits of boosting the PRC, through for example opening wide the high technology tap and ensuring its admission to the WTO. It need hardly be mentioned that in line with the settled Lutyens Zone policy of ignoring the interests of friends while pandering to the demands of foes, among the most vociferous supporters of such an entry into the WTO was India. This was just another link in the long chain of unilateral favours done by India to China that was reciprocated in reverse gear, the latest being the February withdrawal of the Indian Army from the Kailash heights. As is commonplace in the Lutyens Zone, any individual who counseled against such a move was ignored within the bureaucracy as “alarmist” or as a “conspiracy theorist”, despite proving correct time after time.

If the virus that made its appearance from Wuhan made 2020 less than a good year, 2021 is unlikely to be much better, and not simply because of the aftershocks caused by SARS2.  To the good luck of enemies of India, the country was hit by a second wave just when livelihoods were recovering from the shocks they were subjected to in the recent past. It could be bad luck or more of there were to be a third wave that lasts early into 2022. A lingering pandemic would douse much of the enthusiasm for India among global investors may be at risk. Those looking after policy in India need to factor in the fact that the CCP Central Military Commission (CMC) appears to be in the driver’s seat within the PRC where policies relating to India are concerned. This institution, certainly since the takeover of the CCP by Xi Jinping in 2012, appears to have bought into the false hypothesis peddled by its “all-weather” ally GHQ Rawalpindi. This is that India is a fragile state, and that a combination of kinetic and asymmetric action has the capability of pushing the country into meltdown. To assume that efforts are not being made across several fronts to carry forward such a process would be an error. India is too strong and the social cohesion and economic resilience of the country too firm for such efforts at engineering disaster to succeed, but smart policy is needed to ensure that the effects of such efforts by the GHQ-CMC combine are kept at low intensity and finally eliminated altogether.

Economics is at the core of security, and agencies tasked with the protection of the 1.38 billion citizens of India need to be aware that from February 2021, entities linked to China have sharply increased their purchases of food items on international commodity markets, including food grains and pulses. Should there be a shortage of such items in the coming period in a country as populous as India, international prices are likely to be much higher than formerly because of such unusual increases in purchases from China. This will have an impact on prices, a key factor in societal stability, especially in a period of tough economic conditions. Some social media handles created for the purpose on “Right” and “Left” are being used by hostile actors to amplify voices in the US and India (besides other countries) to sharpen the divide between the fringes of debate and which constrict the middle ground that is the bedrock of societal stability. Sending some from a particular fringe to prison in some states and some from the rival fringe in states run by opposing parties is hardly a solution. What is needed is to identify and defend against planned efforts (internal and external) at causing division within the population of the country. We have, as a country, common interests and face common threats, and these need to be confronted united. This, for example, has been the ethos in the armed forces. Whether on a land border that GHQ-CMC constantly seeks to shift to the detriment of India or the conflation by misdirected elements of the global media of the actions of a few from the lunatic fringe of Indian society as representing the actions of the billion-plus Hindus of India, that the country is under fire is obvious. What is needed is an achievable and consistent strategy that draws not just on India’s resources but on that of present and prospective allies facing a similar threat.

Unfortunately for the democracies, as took place in internally democratic countries in Europe in the 1930s, policymakers in several countries seem at present unaware of the extent or even the nature of the threats they are collectively facing. At a time when 9/11 took place with assistance provided from within Pakistan (that “Iron Ally” of the PRC), President George W Bush was focusing on the challenge (it had not yet developed into a threat) faced by Washington from Beijing. Once the New York twin towers went down and a section of the Pentagon in Washington crumbled, China morphed in the minds of US policymakers from a future challenge to an essential partner in the present. Serial errors made by the Bush-Cheney duo ensured that victory was converted into defeat, culminating in the surrender last year of the Trump administration to the Taliban. Now the flare-up in Gaza has been put into the spotlight, displacing much of the coverage of SARS2 and its origins. It was fortunate for the PRC that 9/11 shifted the spotlight of the Atlantic Alliance from East Asia to South Asia and the  Middle East at the start of the 21st century.

Since last year, mutations of the virus which appear to have a common genomic root to the original variant have appeared across the world, and promptly been labeled with country-specific names by international media in a manner that they have hesitated to do in the case of the virus that began its trajectory in Wuhan. Once again, when questions were rising about the activities of the PRC across several parts of the world, violence erupted in Palestine and Israel. As in the past, these have shifted the focus away from China. Such coincidences been extremely fortunate for the Chinese  leadership.

There appears to be a method in the manner in which the CCP has been cultivating the Wahabbi International. In the early part of the 20th century, Wahabbis were used by Britain to dislodge Turkey from the oil-rich locations of the Middle East. Subsequently, they came in handy for the Atlantic Alliance to fight back the tide of Arab nationalism championed by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Ahmed ben Bella. In the 21st century, Wahabbis have found a new champion in China, which has not flinched from protecting even declared terrorists in the UN Security Council on the urging of GHQ Rawalpindi. Under President Erdogan, Turkey has joined Pakistan in its embrace of Wahabbi (as distinct from pure Muslim) principles. Ankara (which NATO has still not found the courage to call out) has joined Rawalpindi in its allegiance to Beijing. The Sino-Russian alliance has in the Wahabbis a formidable diversionary force that can draw the attention of its geopolitical rivals away from, possibly enough to attempt a takeover by force of Taiwan, or a further kinetic expansion into Indian, Nepalese and Bhutanese  territory in the Himalayan massif. Or ensure through military means that a chokehold gets established throughout the South China Sea such that vessels can move along these waterways only with the consent of the PLA. Or any two or all three of the above. Each such outcome would be a collective defeat for the democracies, which is why they need to be battled united. In the meantime, fringe elements continue to grow throughout the Atlantic Alliance and in India, roiling the social climate in these countries and affecting economic sentiment. Much greater effort needs to be made in “tracking, tracing and eliminating” the sources of funding for the violent protests that are being witnessed in several parts of the world, including against Muslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus. Given the rival geopolitical interests involved, expectations of a “peace breakthrough” in the Middle East seem difficult to justify.

The good news is that US President Joe Biden seems to have understood from the example of his immediate predecessors that the diversions that are dominating media space should not distract his attention from the primary challenge facing his country, which is China. Efforts are being made to weaken him, for example by ensuring the defeat of his $2 trillion stimulus package by those who fail to understand the gift that they are bequeathing to the Sino-Russian alliance through such a weakening of the US administration.

Southeast Asia, India, the GCC and the Atlantic Alliance need to come together to overcome the threats facing them in a manner that Europe and North America delayed doing in Europe during the 20th century until it was too late to prevent two devastating conflicts ( 1914-18 and 1939-45).

Lessons: 9/11 and SARS2

Smart policies can transform India into global medical hub ( Sunday Guardian)

 

The lack of substantive influence of India in the UN is clear from the fact that WHO has not given emergency use authorization for Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin but to China’s Sinopharm vaccine.

Bengaluru: Over the past two months, there has been a welcome change in the functioning of the Government of India while dealing with the SARS2 pandemic. The crisis caused by the second wave seems to have resulted in Prime Minister Narendra Modi looking into several of the decisions made in 2020 for the purpose of coming up with better alternatives. This is a good start, but in India the problem has always been an indifferent finish. There needs to be consistent action on the policy front such as to maximise the natural advantages the country has from its human resources. Lowering some of the Police Constable (PC) era restrictions on NGOs has been a recent example, as also greater efforts at decentralising oxygen supply and distribution, and in ensuring that regulatory hurdles to high-quality innovation and production of vaccines and therapeutics begin to get replaced with differentiated structures more suited to 21st century India. NITI Aayog was set up to ensure policy alternatives to the formulations turned out by the Lutyens Zone. If this is happening, or if it has and the rest of the government has been listening, there has not been evidence of it during the year just past.

THREAT OF

BIO-TERROR

In the US, SARS2 guru Dr Anthony Fauci has been facing criticism for his role in providing the funds ultimately deployed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology to undertake “Gain of Function” research into SARS2. This lab-developed virus has devastated the world by bringing economies to a halt, infecting hundreds of millions and killing millions. In his defence, it must be added that Dr Fauci was probably unaware that a steel wall exists in the Wuhan lab between work done for civilian use as such, and those reserved for examination and deployment by the military.

While he was sanctioning tens of millions of US dollars that he was aware would fund SARS2 researchers in Wuhan, Dr Fauci probably believed that every detail of the findings of the experiments being conducted there with money from US (and some European) taxpayers was being sent meticulously to him. This was a somewhat unrealistic assumption to make, given the structure of governance in China, a country that has been run since 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party. The highly-regarded Dr Fauci (who was among the few from the Trump administration to continue into the Biden administration in the same job) is close to Big Pharma in the US, as are several other researchers. Dr Fauci and his colleagues at the National Institute of Health, together with associates in various foundations, probably acted in the generous manner they did from 2014 to 2019 in the belief that the Chinese scientists would do much of the preliminary (and sometimes unpleasant) work of engineering a virus. Later, Big Pharma could come up with a vaccine for this. In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea to help create a superbug to later come up with an antidote in case a largely man-made killer disease escaped from the confines of the laboratory into the human population. An increasing body of evidence shows that Peter Daszak and others who swear that it is impossible that SARS2 did may be wrong. Why is a question for a future US Congressional or Special Independent Commission enquiry into the causes and consequences of SARS2 may assist in determining. Certainly, such an enquiry deserves US Congressional scrutiny as much as does an investigation into the pell-mell entry into the US Capitol by a mob, many elements in which were violent. Such an enquiry needs to break through barriers created by partisan political interest and examine the role of outside actors (state and non-state) in creating through social media a toxic and divisive brew, variants of which were swallowed by both the “Right” as well as the “Left”.

The problem in hindsight is that the creation of a bio-terror weapon of mass destruction (such as an otherwise harmless virus made deadly and transmissible through Gain of Function experiments), when combined with the creation of an antidote, represents the Golden Grail for the military, whether in the US or China. Neither superpower acknowledges the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi to be guiding their actions and policies. Judging by the results, it would appear that China got to the finish line first, flush as its facilities were with funds from the US and other Atlantic Alliance partners. The foundational policy of this alliance (of which NATO is an offshoot) has been that Russia is the predominant threat to their primacy, and that China is an opportunity rather than a threat. But for the support received since the 1980s from Taiwan, Japan, the EU and the US, the PRC would not be the superpower that it has evolved into since the early part of the present century. Slowly, much too slowly, such views appear to be changing.

VIRUS HAS NO NATIONALITY

A virus should never be named after a country. The WHO was quick to condemn mention of SARS-CoV-2 (SARS2) as the China or Wuhan virus, and has given it a simple alternative nomenclature. In contrast, the complex numerical names of some of the variants that have evolved (or been developed, the jury is still out) since the first strain escaped into the human population in 2019 have ensured that these get named in the media for the countries where they were first discovered in the human population: the UK, the Brazilian, the South African and the Indian variants. The latter is what has been devastating large parts of Southeast Asia. The widespread use by the media and the public across multiple countries of the term “Indian virus” (rather than the overly complex numerical nomenclature used by global health authorities) is not a factor that promotes feelings of good fellowship with India or even with those of Indian origin, many of whom are facing discrimination as a consequence. The common factor in such variants is the E484K mutation, thereby strengthening the possibility of a common origin. Viruses mutate, and it is therefore no surprise that the variant in India has mutated into at least three different strains—B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3. As these names are not the easiest to remember, the term “Indian virus” has come into widespread use across the world without attracting the level of criticism (especially from the WHO) that followed any use of the term “China virus” or “Wuhan virus”. There is also no “US virus”, despite multiple strains having been discovered in the human population in that country, such as that once active in California. Being a superpower and a Permanent Member of the UNSC helps in ensuring that the rest of the world does not pick on China or the US in the manner that it does countries that are less influential.

Nobel Prize winner for medicine and eminent virologist, David Baltimore, former President of Caltech or California Institute of Technology, commented on the original SARS2 virus: “The furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2,” (Source: tweet by virologist Prof Richard Ebright, Professor of Virology at Rutgers University. https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1390131060445437955. Others may be cited. Nicholas Wade “The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. May 5, 2021.)

Now we have an even more efficient and more deadly and transmissible version circulating in India, where mutations have occurred in precisely those super-efficient structural parts of the virus that raise the most suspicions of having been developed in a laboratory rather than in nature. Doctors treating cases state that overnight the lung turns opaque on X-Ray once the patient complains of breathlessness, indicating the increased speed of deadly action. Doctors and other frontline warriors are themselves dying in increasing numbers, including the former President of the Indian Medical Association. The world must therefore know how the SARS2 virus originated, as well as have robust biodefence prepared including epidemiological, virological surveillance, threats-assessments, and vaccines/therapeutics/diagnostics remedial measures.

EFFORTS TO HOLD WHO TO ACCOUNT

Dr Harsh Vardhan, the Health Minister of India, was appointed Chairman of the Executive Board of WHO for one year, demits this powerful position at the World Health Assembly being held 24 May to 1 June, 2021. The Union Health Minister must have worked ceaselessly to try and find out more facts about the origins and nature of the pandemic than the WHO has publicly let on. If, as many believe, much of the Wuhan experiments were being done together with the PLA, it is understandable why so little has come out about SARS2 from that country. What is incomprehensible is the seeming lack of success (or effort) by WHO to get to the roots of the pandemic rather than rubber stamp whatever it has heard from interlocuters in Beijing. The Government of India needs to educate the Indian public the ways in which he sought to increase transparency about the origins of SARS2 during this critically significant tenure at the top of the oversight board of that organisation. Dr Harsh Vardhan needs to hold a press conference on the subject when he demits office, preferably in Geneva itself, as he must have worked hard in the powerful position he has held for one critical year to ensure transparency and accountability for a pandemic that has ravaged the country that he has been chosen to serve as Union Minister for Health, not to mention Science & Technology.

SINOpharm BUT NOT COVAXIN: WHY?

Irrespective of the variants, a combination of vaccines and complementary therapeutics will reduce further the mortality and morbidity due to Covid. This has been the case with every epidemic in history. India is well-positioned in both, and all that is needed is a hundred smart policies just as earlier the concept of a hundred smart cities was developed. It must not be forgotten that SARS2 shows the potential efficacy of engineered and disseminated biological agents in paralysing economies, melting down societies and in causing millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of severe morbidity casualties.

To assume that such tactics will not be used would be to court collective danger. Unfortunately, at every step of the way, bio-terrorism provides opportunities for deniability. Therefore, the onus cannot be on the party suspected of malfeasance to allay concerns via “spin” or otherwise. There must be a clear-cut and immediate way for affected countries to be able to rush to verify as to what happened in the “culprit” country or entity. The Quad needs to work on this, with India in the lead. Relying on the UN as India has consistently done (despite its lowly status compared to the P-5) may not work. As has been said, the UN P-5 system of vetoing the rights of others to inspect the potential cause of the bio-terror or lab-leak is unacceptable. Organizations such as WHO are under the control of the P-5 that can block access for the affected/impacted to visit the source of the problem.

This was in stark view in the case of the hiding of everything for over a year by PRC. Which is why an operational arm should be with the Quad to monitor and take action. The lack of substantive influence of India in the UN is clear from the fact that, as has been pointed out, WHO has not given emergency use authorization for Bharat Biotech’s vaccine COVAXIN but on 5 May 2021 stated: “WHO today listed the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, giving the green light for this vaccine to be rolled out globally.”

It is a sign of the world we live in (rather than the world the Lutyens Zone assumes we live in) that authorities in China have been distributing five types of SARS2 vaccine before WHO approved even one of them (or before May 5, 2021). The Chinese vaccine was the one mainly used in Seychelles “the world’s most vaccinated nation” using Chinese vaccines donated by the UAE. Seychelles only has a population of 100,000 and has vaccinated 60%. Despite this, it has a high infection rate. SE Asia too uses PRC-made vaccines liberally. The region is now going through a second wave. For whatever reason, the PRC itself seems to have recovered from the pandemic and seems in much better shape than either the US or India, the two biggest democracies on the globe.

STRATEGY FOR VICTORY

The “Vaccine Maitri” program thought up by Prime Minister Modi and implemented by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar needs to be combined with a strategy for (a) identifying and boosting production of vaccines from the present low number of suppliers to more. Given the wealth of expertise in pharma in India, this is entirely possible, (b) identifying drugs that are proving effective against SARS2 as well as those (including some pricey items) that are more hype than reality and hold more hot air than hope, (c) decentralising oxygen production and supply through increase in the number of oxygen concentrators. The cores need to be imported into India from Europe and the containers made in India, rather than importing the entire equipment from China at inflated prices. Health infrastructure needs to be improved. North Block and the RBI need to stop acting like Uncle Scrooge and ensure flow of funds to those individuals and enterprises in pain caused by the effects of the pandemic. 5:5:5 needs to be the goal. An additional expenditure of 5% of GDP annually over three years, especially to small and medium enterprises and to the unemployed and under-employed. Fiscal rectitude or monetary timidity needs change should such policies cause economic contraction.

India can emerge as the vaccine and pharma hub of the world, not in the indefinite future but by the close of 2021 itself, if a hundred smart policies are developed and implemented. This makes not just political sense but still more importantly, it makes humanitarian sense as well. 2021 needs to be much more productive and much less disruptive than SARS2 made 2020. This is the challenge facing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and those who have been chosen by him to man the higher reaches of the policymaking establishment.

 Smart policies can transform India into global medical hub - The Sunday Guardian Live

CM Adityanath, protect India from charges of hate ( Sunday Guardian)

 

CM should order immediate release of list of religious structures of multiple faiths that have been demolished on account of non-compliance with regulations.

Teachings going back millennia point out that the concept of sacrifice (tyag) in the teachings of the seers of ancient India was relevant only for those few who chose the lifestyle of a renunciate. Sacrifice formed part of their “dharma”, as it involved the exchange of a better life for an existence filled with privation. The renunciate (sanyasi) accepted this cheerfully, as he saw such a sacrifice as leading to the greater good through a purification of his own self of desire. There are Jain millionaires who become monks, as do some sons and daughters of the wealthy of other faiths, notably Buddhism. What needs to be kept in mind is that such a sacrifice is part of dharma not for people in general, but only for sanyasis. For the rest, dharma meant involvement in the activities of life in a manner that benefitted the families and also society. To get material success was not evil or undesirable but an essential and desirable objective to strive for. Thousands of years later, Adam Smith talked about the same set of verities in “The Wealth of Nations”. In India, the texts and the teachings of ancient times are almost as forgotten now in our curricula as they were during the colonial period. This when such teachings have nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with knowledge. An example is the Hitopadesa, which again no Board of Education has seen fit to include in school textbooks, useful though the many lessons taught in its verses are. Take the concept of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”, which is used frequently by many to mean that all those we come across should be treated warmly. The two words they quote came from a fable in the Hitopadesa. This talked of a jackal seeking to trick a deer into inviting it to a place where it would be easy to kill and eat Chitranga, the deer. A nearby crow, Subudhi, warned the deer not to trust the jackal, but to run away. The jackal, Sudrabhudi, responded enticingly by saying “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”. Had that been taken literally by Chitranga, and had the warnings of Subuddhi been ignored, the deer would have ended up as the dinner of the jackal. The lesson taught is that friends are those with good intentions, while others with evil intentions should be kept at a safe distance and treated with caution. Concepts outside the context of “tyag” and “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” have gone so deep into our psyche that on a national scale, we very often ignore the advice of our friends and lower our guard with our enemies. The Vedic, Mughal and Western periods come together in the cultural ethos of India rather than form separate strands. This fusion is why the absence of a truly composite education that reflects the entire scholarship and history of India and not just the past few hundred years, is incomprehensible 74 years after the Union Jack was unfurled from Rashtrapati Bhavan and replaced with the Tricolour.

It is ironic that Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan is so vociferously against the Jewish state of Israel, seeing that his was the first country to get formed in the 20th century on an explicitly religious basis. Israel came into being as a Jewish state only after Pakistan was founded on the division of India. Many countries across the world have names with a religious tag, as though those of other faiths do not have the same right to be citizens. In Pakistan, the percentage of minorities has fallen below 2%, in Israel it is higher than 20%. In a world where the frontiers of both geography and the mind have become more open, discrimination on the basis of religion even in countries formed explicitly on a religious basis is wrong. In Israel, there does exist a fringe within the majority community that has an exclusivist viewpoint, but thus far, they have not succeeded in ensuring that the rights and freedoms of any genuine democracy are denied to other citizens. Hopefully, they never will. The trajectory of Pakistan and the few other exclusivist states shows what takes place in such a fragmentation of society. Once the “other” has been driven out or rendered helpless, groups within the majority community develop into another “other”, and the fighting goes on until the state approaches societal meltdown. Some countries have sought to erect and perpetuate a wall between “majority” and the “minority”. Such broad categorisations make no sense in a human society, where there are many divergences even within families. Segregation is wrong because it prevents people from mingling with others and thereby finding out that we are all children of the same divine force, no matter the rituals and beliefs we adopt. There is good and bad in every segment of society. India is the exemplification of Indutva, the confluence of the Vedic, Mughal and Western. Which is why it is odd that so many who claim to be opposed to sectarianism continue to divide the population on the basis of religion.

Care needs to be taken to ensure that the administration is not just fair but seen to be fair, and this is particularly applicable to Uttar Pradesh, which is the most populated state in India. A mosque that was a hundred years old was demolished in Barabanki. Other sites as well must have been, irrespective of faith. The UP administration must have a list of multiple religious structures the location of which is in non-compliance with rules that were often designed in such a complex manner that compliance was next to impossible. Presumably, houses of worship (including those of other faiths) were demolished on the same ground by authorities in UP as the building in Barabanki was. Now is the time to make public that list. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made considerable effort to prove wrong the many across the world who have been fed by the propaganda of GHQ Rawalpindi (boosted by steroids supplied by the PLA) that India is a country where supremacy of one religion over another is being practiced, a conclusion that is false and should be shown to be false. Which is why it is important that Chief Minister Adityanath order the immediate release of the complete list of religious structures of multiple faiths that have been demolished by the state administration on account of non-compliance with regulations. By so doing, he would be preventing enemies of India from using what took place in Barabanki to boost the false claim that India is a country that is not equally safe for all its citizens.

CM Adityanath, protect India from charges of hate - The Sunday Guardian Live

Governance reform crucial for Modi 2.0 ( Sunday Guardian)

 

Modi 2.0 needs to ensure a robust level of the protection given to whistle-blowers. They should be allowed to escape penal consequences.

Death and taxes, they say, are the only certainties in life. To that needs to be added the fact that in democracies, politicians who come to power inevitably leave power. Only a very few continue till nature intervenes, as in the case of President Roosevelt in 1945. From being hailed as divinity by no less a personage than Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1971 to getting defeated in her own constituency in 1977 by Raj Narain, Indira Gandhi saw a reversal of fortune. Her supporters melted away, but almost all returned as soon as she came back to power in 1980, among those being A.K. Antony. So watertight was the cocoon of ignorance of ground reality in the Prime Minister’s House that the Prime Minister failed to anticipate the humiliation of the Congress Party by a collection of individuals, who in 1971 belonged to the past and seemed destined to remain there. In 1975, this columnist (who even at a much younger age was peripatetic) was at Delhi airport to catch a flight to Ahmedabad, going there to meet a friend studying in the Indian Institute of Management. Morarji Desai was on the same flight. At the airport, he looked around and smiled at people he seemed to recognize, none of whom bothered to respond to the individual who for so long was among the most powerful men in India. This columnist went up to him and engaged him in conversation. Tulsi Ramayana was the subject Morarji chose to talk about, until we walked into the aircraft . Morarji was in a sombre mood, perhaps because of the manner in which he seemed to be among India’s forgotten men. Three years later, this columnist met him again, this time at South Block. Morarji was in his office, that of the Prime Minister of India. He smiled at the mention of that airport encounter, and asked if this columnist had read Tulsi Ramayana yet. There was a crowd of people outside his office who were waiting to meet him, among which may have been someone who had looked away at Delhi airport when the man who had been Deputy PM of India just six years earlier looked in their direction but was denied any sign of recognition. His trajectory showed that it was impossible to count any politician out, or permanently in, where India was concerned. The good news for politicians is that there seems to be an unwritten code, at least in the Lutyens Zone, to ensure that changes in government do not bring about any genuine (as distinct from cosmetic) effort at either transparency or accountability where high-ups in the previous regime are concerned. Take as an example a minister who siphoned off more than Rs 90,000 crores through gaming the markets through rule changes and insider information. He was held to account, not for the Rs 90,000 crore siphoned off by him but for small change, and the charges were such that the case may eventually get thrown out in court, as took place in the 2G matter with so many who had been prosecuted.

Even the limited level of accountability seen in Modi 2.0 is a plus, given the Lutyens Zone tradition that major misdeeds by the very powerful remain interred in the recesses of the governance system. The results of the absence of transparency and accountability in the higher reaches of the political administration have been visible in the consistent under-performance of India in comparison to many other countries. To change this, Modi 2.0 needs to ensure a robust level of the protection given to whistle-blowers. They should be allowed to escape penal consequences and suffer a financial penalty only up to 50% of their illegal earnings, provided they revealed evidence that implicated a higher-up. Finally, such a pyramid of the discovery gleaned through confessions and evidence submitted by wrongdoers would reach elevated levels. These are where graft needs to be eliminated, for it is at the top that the most consequential decisions get made. In India, the lower the level of the official, the higher the possibility of accountability, when the reverse is what is needed for the healthy evolution of the Indian state. We hear a lot of what happens in India, good and bad. What is less discussed is what does not happen, all too often as a consequence of misuse of executive power by an official belonging to the 5% of the governance machinery that is corrupt. In government, what matters is format and procedure, not outcomes. If the prescribed format is adhered to, decisions that favour individual interests get taken without routine discovery. As long as the paperwork is complete and has been correctly formatted, it has often been possible for a few to subvert the public interest for a bribe. This happens even if the Secretary, Minister or Prime Minister is honest. Which is why the stages of each decision need to be much more accessible to the public than they are at present. Until there is transparency, there will be no accountability. And unless there is accountability, there will not be a governance mechanism agile enough to meet the needs of the 1.4 billion citizens of our country.

Governance reform crucial for Modi 2.0 - The Sunday Guardian Live

Policy reset can ensure India leads fightback against SARS2 ( Sunday Guardian)

 

This is the time to spend on people, not pander to Wall Street speculators by continuing with the Chicago School fiscal rectitude that ruined societies in South America in the 1970s.

 There have been substantive measures taken since the full force of the second wave of SARS2 hit India in February, and many are expected to show results within this year or the next. Rather than focus only on such recent actions, the Government of India needs to examine precisely why such measures were not taken early enough, in 2020. Had they been, much of the tragedy that has fallen on family after family would have been prevented. It was only after Prime Minister Narendra Modi intervened in March in the midst of his election tours that matters began to improve. It is unlikely that there will be a rigorous effort at enforcing accountability within those whose lack of preparedness in 2020 for the scenario that unfolded in 2021 caused the shortage of oxygen, medicines and supplies that led to the deaths and misery of so many families across the country. The PM’s decision on 24 March 2020 to enforce a 21-day lockdown on the entire country at almost no notice (and which was followed by a similar national lockdown) was intended for a crisis-level expansion in hospital bed availability, and in the supply of the essentials needed to overcome the impact of the virus on vulnerable individuals.

SPECIALISTS NEEDED

The second wave has been far more deadly than the first, and its ferocity could have been anticipated, had specialist facilities such as the National Institute of Virology in Pune been placed at the heart of the central effort taken to meet the crisis caused by the present SARS2 spike. Specialisation in paediatric care or heart issues is essential for health, but in an epidemic so similar to SARS1, what was needed was full mobilisation of the best epidemiologists in India. Together with those from other specialisations, they needed to be present in each group tasked with framing policy to combat the pandemic. Not that such avoidance of specialisations is an aberration. Officers who have spent decades in unrelated fields have been regarded from 1951 onwards as sufficient to take up leadership roles in specialist departments such as Defence or Home. In the complex world of the 21st century, administrative expertise by itself may not be sufficient for success in outcomes, nor can the domain knowledge needed for such success be picked up from a few briefings. More departments, including Health and Education, need to follow the example of the Department of Science & Technology and that of Atomic Energy by ensuring the embedding of domain specialists, especially at middle and higher levels. It would appear that a “doctor is a doctor, no matter what he is a specialist in”, seems to have been the belief while choosing the personnel who were chosen to manage the SARS2 task forces, empowered groups and regulatory authorities. These were brought into operation during the start of the pandemic in 2020. What is needed is substantial expertise in the prevention and handling of epidemics, especially those of viral origin. There are several world class experts in this field in India. Judging by the reports featuring those prominent in government-appointed bodies, relatively few epidemiologists and specialists in viruses appear to have been tapped for manning SARS2 policy and monitoring groups.

What had been needed from early 2020 itself was to have ensured that longstanding regulatory and other obstacles got cleared. There needed to be decentralisation of oxygen production and supply in place of the cumbersome system involving a few big producers that has long been in operation in the country. The removal of regulatory blockages to expansion and decentralisation of oxygen supply took place only after the direct intervention of the Prime Minister six weeks ago. Similarly, there needed to be a trawl of companies operating in India that have the potential to make vaccines and therapeutics found to be helpful in battling SARS-2. This seems to be taking place, but again, only after Prime Minister Modi’s March 2021 intervention, by which time the country was in crisis. Had those in the substantial machinery set up by the PMO in 2020 to manage the crisis anticipated problems and worked on improving the availability of the requisites for mitigation, such measures could have begun to be implemented in 2020 itself. There are complaints that medicines produced by domestic companies that showed promise in trials were ignored in favour of more expensive substitutes from abroad. Such reports need to be investigated. Unfortunately for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 100% of the blame for the lack of preparedness is being placed at his door, not just in India but globally.

OBJECTIVE AND RESULT

Not for the first time, there has been a gap between what Prime Minister Modi wanted and what was in practice accomplished. There was sound logic behind the forced exchanging in 2016 of previous Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes with others. For too long, there had been recourse to currency paper and other requirements from foreign companies that were selling the same product to any country that paid the high price demanded, including Pakistan and entities linked to the PRC. Only recently, after the intervention of the PMO, have features been added to currency notes that make it more difficult to replicate. When demonetisation was announced by the Prime Minister in 2016, the country had been awash in counterfeit notes, which presumably was a factor behind this decision. India is not Germany or Israel, and a substantial segment of the economy is tethered to cash. This segment suffered substantially because of the sudden drop in liquidity to near zero. The RBI should have made arrangements to ensure that liquidity was sufficient to prevent a liquidity cataclysm within the small and informal sector. Both sectors that are linked to enterprises much larger, and whose travails affected supply chains across a range of enterprises. It is not the Prime Minister’s job to ensure that banks get prepared on time to handle the flood of currency that would inevitably come to them once DeMo was announced. It was not the PM’s job to make sure that segments of the economy did not suffer on account of a sharp dip in liquidity consequent to the changeover to new notes. It was not his job to ensure that new notes were sent on time to banks and to ATMs across the country. These were the tasks of those lower down the chain of command. The Reserve Bank of India failed these essentials in such a manner that it became an object of ridicule across the world. Soon afterwards came the rollout of GST. This was an essential reform, but needed to have been designed so as to ensure a quantum increase in overall growth. The initial GST structure was complex rather than simple, and those designing it added penal provisions that made compliance even more of a nightmare. Carrots were few, the stick substantial. Tax rates were complex and much too high, while exemptions given were much too low. North Block often forgets that the purchasing power of the rupee is not what it was in the 1970s. This needs to be kept in mind while designing exemption limits and cutoffs in its tax policies. The focus of the original design was on immediate revenue rather than on ensuring that the flow multiplies over a period of 3-5 years through growth-inducing features. That was the time needed for production and innovation to rise to the levels needed to meet the Prime Minister’s objective of a $5 trillion economy. Such an expansion will come about not because of government increasing its revenue (which objective has long been an obsession to many in the Finance Ministry) but because tax rates and regulation get pruned to levels that are less reflective of the permit-licence period. At the same time, there has too often been a genuflection of North Block and Mint Road to Wall Street .This has resulted in being tight-fisted while dealing with individuals and sectors where generosity was called for. In 2012, it was forecast in The Sunday Guardian that Narendra Modi would (on becoming Prime Minister) become the Deng Xiaoping of India, transforming the country. The sooner this becomes a reality, the better.

SPEND ON PEOPLE

In 2018, it was not a done deal that the BJP would come close to a Lok Sabha majority in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. Rahul Gandhi emerging as the Opposition alternative to PM Modi and the Balakot strike changed that. Sentiment prevailed in the form of anger at Pakistan and hope in a future led by PM Modi. These trumped the efforts of an opposition itself scarred by corruption charges to paint Modi in the same colours. It was true that the economy was slowing down, but it was expected that this would son be set right by PM Modi. During the current SARS2 second wave, fear has overshadowed hope for the future and anger at Pakistan. Fear caused by the economic havoc caused to individual families by job losses and the impact on business of the pandemic. Fear that savings will be wiped out should the disease hit a family, at a time when it is affecting millions and draining away the savings of even the middle class. Fear of the future is everywhere, which is why calls for positivity (itself a sinister word in the lexicon of SARS2) are not falling on receptive ground. 2021 need not have begun on an unhappy note. It was suggested in *The Sunday Guardian* in 2020 that 5% of GDP get spent as additional expenditure on boosting jobs and incomes during the pandemic. The boost is not just for the year just past. The same increase in spending needs to take place in 2021 and 2022. This is needed to ensure that the economy roars with double digit growth by 2023. The extra spending needed to be diverted to individuals and entities in such a manner that jobs were rescued and families were saved. As an example, had migrant workers been given a dole for at least six months through their bank accounts that compensated them for the loss in income because of lockdowns, that may have prevented millions from returning to their villages during that period. This is the time to spend on people, not pander to Wall Street speculators by continuing with the Chicago School fiscal rectitude that ruined societies in South America in the 1970s.

DIVERSIFY MEDICAL SUPPLIES

A back of the envelope calculation shows that India has several companies that have the potential to develop vaccines that will be as effective as any competitor. These include Cipla, Shanta Biotech, Biological E, Panacea Biotech, Hester Biosciences, and Zydus Cadilla, besides the three already in the ring (Bharat Biotech, Dr Reddy’s and SII). What were the bottlenecks that stopped the entry of more companies developing vaccines when the pandemic became visible in India in January 2020? It would appear from the records available that public funding for vaccine development in India has been low. And that bottlenecks to vaccine development by multiple companies that are a leftover of past practices were allowed to continue. This is being changed since March 2021, but could have been done in 2020 by the numerous task forces and empowered groups set up to handle the consequences of the pandemic. India being a country where doing nothing brings little censure, those involved in such lack of action during 2020 are likely to continue in their posts. Changes need to come if the confidence of the public is to be won back. Listening to a trove of statistics recited by an official when citizens are desperately searching for oxygen or medication may not result in a “positivity” boost in public sentiment. Especially when infections have reached levels not seen in the country till now. Regulatory changes would have ensured the dissemination of oxygen supply though smaller production units a year ago, and why this was not attempted at that point in time remains unclear. The situation is the same with therapeutics. Action needed to have been taken by the administrative machinery as soon as the Prime Minister alerted the nation in early 2020 that it was at war with a deadly pathogen . This would have mitigated the effects of the onset of a second wave.

DON’T WASTE TIME

Diplomats and other officials are preparing to conduct negotiations with the WTO on ensuring greater access to vaccines and medication helpful in the protection of citizens during a pandemic that has devastated societies across the world. Such negotiations may be a waste of time, as India already has the laws needed to ensure access to vaccines and medication, should it use those. There are TRIPS and WTO stipulations that an epidemic or a pandemic frees a country from the obligations it has entered into previous to such a disaster. The Quad needs to ensure that a collective effort be made to escape dependence on the PRC for intermediate materials used in the production of drugs. It is self-destructive on the part of the PRC to continue to restrict access to these, as doing so would only speed up the shift of supply chains from that country. The Consul-General of India in Hong Kong has correctly flagged the extortionate prices being charged by Chinese producers of oxygen concentrators and other equipment. This has been going on for months at the very time when media outlets in China were talking of that country’s “generous assistance” to India. It has been pointed out that the core of each “Chinese” oxygen concentrator is made in Europe. Why no action was taken during the start of 2020 itself to ensure that these were directly imported from Europe and manufactured in India  remains unclear. The Prime Minister’s repeated calls to action need to be actioned on. The blame for such lack of preparedness and effort will fall on Narendra Modi and not on any other person, and this is already happening across the country. For everything going wrong, the blame is being placed on the Prime Minister, to the delight of his adversaries. They expect to coast to victory in subsequent elections because of such a situation, and their confidence is growing with every passing month. They expect that Bengal will not be a full stop but just a comma before other victories get chalked up.

DEVOLVE POWERS

Devolving more powers to state governments is a must. And corporates need to be given the freedom to procure vaccines from wherever they can find it, and ensure their staff are protected free of cost? Several private companies have a logistics chain for their items that is reliable, and these can be tapped to carry items essential in winning the battle against SARS2. Not only All of Government but All of India needs to be involved in the biological warfare that has been unleashed on the world’s most populous democracy. What needs to be done by the government is to mandate online transparency in (a) the receipt of funds, (b) the supply of vaccines and oxygen, and (c) availability of medication. Almost every day, complex graphs and charts are being rolled out by officials to the media. These are too general and too opaque to have the effect of generating sufficient confidence within the public that the system is delivering results. There also needs to be transparency in goods that are being donated across the world. Rather than make efforts at centralisation that slow down the last mile delivery crucial to the saving of lives, what is needed is to reveal (i) which hospital, (ii) what equipment and (iii) from where it is coming from. Transparency will ensure efficiency rather than efforts to manage more than what the system can handle effectively.

NGOs CAN HELP, NOT HURT

The digital revolution promoted by Modi since he took charge of the country in 2014 needs to be used to ensure that information reaches the public, not everything going to some designated agency, and from then on, radio silence. Donors will multiply once they are certain that what they are giving is actually going to those in need. Curing a headache by cutting off the head has been Standard Operating Procedure in several departments since colonial times. Just as the entire bureaucracy cannot be put into the freezer because 5% of bureaucrats are corrupt, that 5% of NGOs are dodgy and have agendas that go against the national interest should not be a reason for slowing down certification and permissions for all of them. It is not the job of government agencies to block, it is their responsibility to act as facilitators. The agencies would also ensure monitoring which separates the bad apples that get discovered in the course of their operations. Individuals and NGOs have done service during the pandemic in a manner that the world has seen and appreciated. Only a few NGOs need to be the targets of investigation and action. The rest should be allowed the freedom to operate. Restraint and restriction should be the exception and not the rule. In efforts to catch a crook, 99 individuals doing useful and honest work should not be prevented from doing so.

RAMP UP THERAPEUTICS

Therapeutics need to be ramped up in India, and it is expected that changes in administrative practice can ensure this. Many drugs found useful in dealing with the pandemic have expired patents, while others that are essential can be produced either through collaboration or on occasion, compulsory licensing. When a German pharma company sought to stop this from happening to a product in India, the courts stood by patients and not the patent. This avenue needs to be explored rather than avoided out of worry of the US Trade Representative. The USTR under Biden is not what the USTR was under Trump, and it is unlikely that lifesaving measures will be blocked by the White House in the manner that was threatened during the period when Trump was in office. Should India produce drugs not only for itself but for the world (as policy resets can ensure), it would be difficult for even Switzerland or Germany to block such a situation, despite the influence of Big Pharma in those countries. Unlike what its detractors say, the Vaccine Maitri policy of the Modi government made sense, but needs to be combined with moves to ensure that bottlenecks to production of PPEs and other requisites get removed. ICMR and the Health Ministry need to be pro-active on this. Given the dismal record of the WHO during the pandemic, relying on that organisation for guidance on what to do is an invitation to disaster.

DUAL SYSTEM FOR VACCINATION

COWIN is a good system, except for the many millions too poor to access the internet. A dual system has been suggested by a health specialist based in Japan, Dr Sunil Chacko. This is that those too poor to have access to the internet should be given the right to walk in to vaccination centres kept for them. Others could schedule appointments through their smartphones. Once more companies in India are enabled through policy resets to increase the production of vaccines, India can produce around 4 billion SARS2 vaccines annually within the next two years, and be able to vaccinate the world. India can equally well produce low-cost therapeutics effective against the disease and send them across the world, as is happening in the case of HIV-AIDS. 2020 was a year of missed opportunities. 2121 needs to be the year of the Great Reset.

Policy reset can ensure India leads fightback against SARS2 - The Sunday Guardian Live

 

Policy reset can ensure India needs fightback against SARS2 ( Sunday Guardian)

 This is the time to spend on people, not pander to Wall Street speculators by continuing with the Chicago School fiscal rectitude that ruined societies in South America in the 1970s.

 There have been substantive measures taken since the full force of the second wave of SARS2 hit India in February, and many are expected to show results within this year or the next. Rather than focus only on such recent actions, the Government of India needs to examine precisely why such measures were not taken early enough, in 2020. Had they been, much of the tragedy that has fallen on family after family would have been prevented. It was only after Prime Minister Narendra Modi intervened in March in the midst of his election tours that matters began to improve. It is unlikely that there will be a rigorous effort at enforcing accountability within those whose lack of preparedness in 2020 for the scenario that unfolded in 2021 caused the shortage of oxygen, medicines and supplies that led to the deaths and misery of so many families across the country. The PM’s decision on 24 March 2020 to enforce a 21-day lockdown on the entire country at almost no notice (and which was followed by a similar national lockdown) was intended for a crisis-level expansion in hospital bed availability, and in the supply of the essentials needed to overcome the impact of the virus on vulnerable individuals.

SPECIALISTS NEEDED

The second wave has been far more deadly than the first, and its ferocity could have been anticipated, had specialist facilities such as the National Institute of Virology in Pune been placed at the heart of the central effort taken to meet the crisis caused by the present SARS2 spike. Specialisation in paediatric care or heart issues is essential for health, but in an epidemic so similar to SARS1, what was needed was full mobilisation of the best epidemiologists in India. Together with those from other specialisations, they needed to be present in each group tasked with framing policy to combat the pandemic. Not that such avoidance of specialisations is an aberration. Officers who have spent decades in unrelated fields have been regarded from 1951 onwards as sufficient to take up leadership roles in specialist departments such as Defence or Home. In the complex world of the 21st century, administrative expertise by itself may not be sufficient for success in outcomes, nor can the domain knowledge needed for such success be picked up from a few briefings. More departments, including Health and Education, need to follow the example of the Department of Science & Technology and that of Atomic Energy by ensuring the embedding of domain specialists, especially at middle and higher levels. It would appear that a “doctor is a doctor, no matter what he is a specialist in”, seems to have been the belief while choosing the personnel who were chosen to manage the SARS2 task forces, empowered groups and regulatory authorities. These were brought into operation during the start of the pandemic in 2020. What is needed is substantial expertise in the prevention and handling of epidemics, especially those of viral origin. There are several world class experts in this field in India. Judging by the reports featuring those prominent in government-appointed bodies, relatively few epidemiologists and specialists in viruses appear to have been tapped for manning SARS2 policy and monitoring groups.

What had been needed from early 2020 itself was to have ensured that longstanding regulatory and other obstacles got cleared. There needed to be decentralisation of oxygen production and supply in place of the cumbersome system involving a few big producers that has long been in operation in the country. The removal of regulatory blockages to expansion and decentralisation of oxygen supply took place only after the direct intervention of the Prime Minister six weeks ago. Similarly, there needed to be a trawl of companies operating in India that have the potential to make vaccines and therapeutics found to be helpful in battling SARS-2. This seems to be taking place, but again, only after Prime Minister Modi’s March 2021 intervention, by which time the country was in crisis. Had those in the substantial machinery set up by the PMO in 2020 to manage the crisis anticipated problems and worked on improving the availability of the requisites for mitigation, such measures could have begun to be implemented in 2020 itself. There are complaints that medicines produced by domestic companies that showed promise in trials were ignored in favour of more expensive substitutes from abroad. Such reports need to be investigated. Unfortunately for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 100% of the blame for the lack of preparedness is being placed at his door, not just in India but globally.

OBJECTIVE AND RESULT

Not for the first time, there has been a gap between what Prime Minister Modi wanted and what was in practice accomplished. There was sound logic behind the forced exchanging in 2016 of previous Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes with others. For too long, there had been recourse to currency paper and other requirements from foreign companies that were selling the same product to any country that paid the high price demanded, including Pakistan and entities linked to the PRC. Only recently, after the intervention of the PMO, have features been added to currency notes that make it more difficult to replicate. When demonetisation was announced by the Prime Minister in 2016, the country had been awash in counterfeit notes, which presumably was a factor behind this decision. India is not Germany or Israel, and a substantial segment of the economy is tethered to cash. This segment suffered substantially because of the sudden drop in liquidity to near zero. The RBI should have made arrangements to ensure that liquidity was sufficient to prevent a liquidity cataclysm within the small and informal sector. Both sectors that are linked to enterprises much larger, and whose travails affected supply chains across a range of enterprises. It is not the Prime Minister’s job to ensure that banks get prepared on time to handle the flood of currency that would inevitably come to them once DeMo was announced. It was not the PM’s job to make sure that segments of the economy did not suffer on account of a sharp dip in liquidity consequent to the changeover to new notes. It was not his job to ensure that new notes were sent on time to banks and to ATMs across the country. These were the tasks of those lower down the chain of command. The Reserve Bank of India failed these essentials in such a manner that it became an object of ridicule across the world. Soon afterwards came the rollout of GST. This was an essential reform, but needed to have been designed so as to ensure a quantum increase in overall growth. The initial GST structure was complex rather than simple, and those designing it added penal provisions that made compliance even more of a nightmare. Carrots were few, the stick substantial. Tax rates were complex and much too high, while exemptions given were much too low. North Block often forgets that the purchasing power of the rupee is not what it was in the 1970s. This needs to be kept in mind while designing exemption limits and cutoffs in its tax policies. The focus of the original design was on immediate revenue rather than on ensuring that the flow multiplies over a period of 3-5 years through growth-inducing features. That was the time needed for production and innovation to rise to the levels needed to meet the Prime Minister’s objective of a $5 trillion economy. Such an expansion will come about not because of government increasing its revenue (which objective has long been an obsession to many in the Finance Ministry) but because tax rates and regulation get pruned to levels that are less reflective of the permit-licence period. At the same time, there has too often been a genuflection of North Block and Mint Road to Wall Street .This has resulted in being tight-fisted while dealing with individuals and sectors where generosity was called for. In 2012, it was forecast in The Sunday Guardian that Narendra Modi would (on becoming Prime Minister) become the Deng Xiaoping of India, transforming the country. The sooner this becomes a reality, the better.

SPEND ON PEOPLE

In 2018, it was not a done deal that the BJP would come close to a Lok Sabha majority in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. Rahul Gandhi emerging as the Opposition alternative to PM Modi and the Balakot strike changed that. Sentiment prevailed in the form of anger at Pakistan and hope in a future led by PM Modi. These trumped the efforts of an opposition itself scarred by corruption charges to paint Modi in the same colours. It was true that the economy was slowing down, but it was expected that this would son be set right by PM Modi. During the current SARS2 second wave, fear has overshadowed hope for the future and anger at Pakistan. Fear caused by the economic havoc caused to individual families by job losses and the impact on business of the pandemic. Fear that savings will be wiped out should the disease hit a family, at a time when it is affecting millions and draining away the savings of even the middle class. Fear of the future is everywhere, which is why calls for positivity (itself a sinister word in the lexicon of SARS2) are not falling on receptive ground. 2021 need not have begun on an unhappy note. It was suggested in *The Sunday Guardian* in 2020 that 5% of GDP get spent as additional expenditure on boosting jobs and incomes during the pandemic. The boost is not just for the year just past. The same increase in spending needs to take place in 2021 and 2022. This is needed to ensure that the economy roars with double digit growth by 2023. The extra spending needed to be diverted to individuals and entities in such a manner that jobs were rescued and families were saved. As an example, had migrant workers been given a dole for at least six months through their bank accounts that compensated them for the loss in income because of lockdowns, that may have prevented millions from returning to their villages during that period. This is the time to spend on people, not pander to Wall Street speculators by continuing with the Chicago School fiscal rectitude that ruined societies in South America in the 1970s.

DIVERSIFY MEDICAL SUPPLIES

A back of the envelope calculation shows that India has several companies that have the potential to develop vaccines that will be as effective as any competitor. These include Cipla, Shanta Biotech, Biological E, Panacea Biotech, Hester Biosciences, and Zydus Cadilla, besides the three already in the ring (Bharat Biotech, Dr Reddy’s and SII). What were the bottlenecks that stopped the entry of more companies developing vaccines when the pandemic became visible in India in January 2020? It would appear from the records available that public funding for vaccine development in India has been low. And that bottlenecks to vaccine development by multiple companies that are a leftover of past practices were allowed to continue. This is being changed since March 2021, but could have been done in 2020 by the numerous task forces and empowered groups set up to handle the consequences of the pandemic. India being a country where doing nothing brings little censure, those involved in such lack of action during 2020 are likely to continue in their posts. Changes need to come if the confidence of the public is to be won back. Listening to a trove of statistics recited by an official when citizens are desperately searching for oxygen or medication may not result in a “positivity” boost in public sentiment. Especially when infections have reached levels not seen in the country till now. Regulatory changes would have ensured the dissemination of oxygen supply though smaller production units a year ago, and why this was not attempted at that point in time remains unclear. The situation is the same with therapeutics. Action needed to have been taken by the administrative machinery as soon as the Prime Minister alerted the nation in early 2020 that it was at war with a deadly pathogen . This would have mitigated the effects of the onset of a second wave.

DON’T WASTE TIME

Diplomats and other officials are preparing to conduct negotiations with the WTO on ensuring greater access to vaccines and medication helpful in the protection of citizens during a pandemic that has devastated societies across the world. Such negotiations may be a waste of time, as India already has the laws needed to ensure access to vaccines and medication, should it use those. There are TRIPS and WTO stipulations that an epidemic or a pandemic frees a country from the obligations it has entered into previous to such a disaster. The Quad needs to ensure that a collective effort be made to escape dependence on the PRC for intermediate materials used in the production of drugs. It is self-destructive on the part of the PRC to continue to restrict access to these, as doing so would only speed up the shift of supply chains from that country. The Consul-General of India in Hong Kong has correctly flagged the extortionate prices being charged by Chinese producers of oxygen concentrators and other equipment. This has been going on for months at the very time when media outlets in China were talking of that country’s “generous assistance” to India. It has been pointed out that the core of each “Chinese” oxygen concentrator is made in Europe. Why no action was taken during the start of 2020 itself to ensure that these were directly imported from Europe and manufactured in India  remains unclear. The Prime Minister’s repeated calls to action need to be actioned on. The blame for such lack of preparedness and effort will fall on Narendra Modi and not on any other person, and this is already happening across the country. For everything going wrong, the blame is being placed on the Prime Minister, to the delight of his adversaries. They expect to coast to victory in subsequent elections because of such a situation, and their confidence is growing with every passing month. They expect that Bengal will not be a full stop but just a comma before other victories get chalked up.

DEVOLVE POWERS

Devolving more powers to state governments is a must. And corporates need to be given the freedom to procure vaccines from wherever they can find it, and ensure their staff are protected free of cost? Several private companies have a logistics chain for their items that is reliable, and these can be tapped to carry items essential in winning the battle against SARS2. Not only All of Government but All of India needs to be involved in the biological warfare that has been unleashed on the world’s most populous democracy. What needs to be done by the government is to mandate online transparency in (a) the receipt of funds, (b) the supply of vaccines and oxygen, and (c) availability of medication. Almost every day, complex graphs and charts are being rolled out by officials to the media. These are too general and too opaque to have the effect of generating sufficient confidence within the public that the system is delivering results. There also needs to be transparency in goods that are being donated across the world. Rather than make efforts at centralisation that slow down the last mile delivery crucial to the saving of lives, what is needed is to reveal (i) which hospital, (ii) what equipment and (iii) from where it is coming from. Transparency will ensure efficiency rather than efforts to manage more than what the system can handle effectively.

NGOs CAN HELP, NOT HURT

The digital revolution promoted by Modi since he took charge of the country in 2014 needs to be used to ensure that information reaches the public, not everything going to some designated agency, and from then on, radio silence. Donors will multiply once they are certain that what they are giving is actually going to those in need. Curing a headache by cutting off the head has been Standard Operating Procedure in several departments since colonial times. Just as the entire bureaucracy cannot be put into the freezer because 5% of bureaucrats are corrupt, that 5% of NGOs are dodgy and have agendas that go against the national interest should not be a reason for slowing down certification and permissions for all of them. It is not the job of government agencies to block, it is their responsibility to act as facilitators. The agencies would also ensure monitoring which separates the bad apples that get discovered in the course of their operations. Individuals and NGOs have done service during the pandemic in a manner that the world has seen and appreciated. Only a few NGOs need to be the targets of investigation and action. The rest should be allowed the freedom to operate. Restraint and restriction should be the exception and not the rule. In efforts to catch a crook, 99 individuals doing useful and honest work should not be prevented from doing so.

RAMP UP THERAPEUTICS

Therapeutics need to be ramped up in India, and it is expected that changes in administrative practice can ensure this. Many drugs found useful in dealing with the pandemic have expired patents, while others that are essential can be produced either through collaboration or on occasion, compulsory licensing. When a German pharma company sought to stop this from happening to a product in India, the courts stood by patients and not the patent. This avenue needs to be explored rather than avoided out of worry of the US Trade Representative. The USTR under Biden is not what the USTR was under Trump, and it is unlikely that lifesaving measures will be blocked by the White House in the manner that was threatened during the period when Trump was in office. Should India produce drugs not only for itself but for the world (as policy resets can ensure), it would be difficult for even Switzerland or Germany to block such a situation, despite the influence of Big Pharma in those countries. Unlike what its detractors say, the Vaccine Maitri policy of the Modi government made sense, but needs to be combined with moves to ensure that bottlenecks to production of PPEs and other requisites get removed. ICMR and the Health Ministry need to be pro-active on this. Given the dismal record of the WHO during the pandemic, relying on that organisation for guidance on what to do is an invitation to disaster.

DUAL SYSTEM FOR VACCINATION

COWIN is a good system, except for the many millions too poor to access the internet. A dual system has been suggested by a health specialist based in Japan, Dr Sunil Chacko. This is that those too poor to have access to the internet should be given the right to walk in to vaccination centres kept for them. Others could schedule appointments through their smartphones. Once more companies in India are enabled through policy resets to increase the production of vaccines, India can produce around 4 billion SARS2 vaccines annually within the next two years, and be able to vaccinate the world. India can equally well produce low-cost therapeutics effective against the disease and send them across the world, as is happening in the case of HIV-AIDS. 2020 was a year of missed opportunities. 2121 needs to be the year of the Great Reset.

Policy reset can ensure India leads fightback against SARS2 - The Sunday Guardian Live