Red China is in the throes of an impossible Covid situation persisting in 2023, as the Chinese New Year is being celebrated. It is an unstoppable movement of millions to meet with family and go on a holiday, mostly to Thailand, where the Chinese are being let in with minimal restrictions.
Complete lockdown of entire cities — ruinous economically — has not prevented the infection of most of the population. The problem is a flawed and ineffective Chinese-made vaccine and a vaccination policy that concentrated on China’s armed forces and the young. Coverage was low, sporadic, and never in excess of 30 percent of the population. The Chinese vaccine, exported to Seychelles’ island idyll, where the Chinese have garnered influence, resulted in almost the entire population being infected.
India’s example, in contrast, is nothing short of a golden beacon for friend and foe alike. But recent remembrances were catalysed by the ongoing conference at Davos, with the Pfizer CEO refusing to answer questions on its lousy vaccine, as well as a tweet from Indian Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Rajeev Chandrasekhar. The latter pointed at a thick-skinned trio of misinformation peddlers. They are vociferous Congress cheerleaders, including crafty senior lawyer P Chidambaram, still facing various criminal cases, the vacuous Rahul Gandhi, also out on bail on financial irregularity cases, along with his mother Sonia Gandhi, and no-holds-barred amplifier, the impractical and Leftist Jairam Ramesh.
All three had bayed for the importation of unproven Western foreign vaccines at the height of the pandemic and had cast doubts on the effectiveness of Indian vaccines being manufactured and disseminated at the time.
Pfizer — now criticised globally — initially claimed more than 80 percent efficacy for its vaccine, quite fraudulently, just to boost sales. But it knew the truth internally and therefore asked for indemnity against the vaccine’s ineffectiveness from India, which fortunately was not granted. Later, on examination, it was found that the Pfizer vaccine had only 12 percent efficacy and did not prevent transmission. Millions around the world were cheated and harmed. In India, those who think ‘West is Best’ used Pfizer vaccines too, paying through their nose for vaccines that did not work.
The Indian fifth column, true to form, wanted to do everything in their power to derail the Indian response to the pandemic. Their prime agenda was to discredit the Modi government by hook or by crook. India’s home-grown vaccine, Covaxin, had 77 percent efficacy and was provided to most people completely free of charge. In addition, millions of doses were donated to other countries and exported to the West. The AstraZeneca and Covishield vaccines, also provided free of cost to many and made under licence in India, had similar levels of effectiveness. Boris Johnson, the UK’s former prime minister, was administered Covishield from India and had made a complete recovery.
India vaccinated over a billion of its own people using made-in-India Covid vaccines and created herd immunity amongst a massive population of 1.4 billion. This is serving us in good stead today.
For an emerging economy born out of centuries of colonial domination by the British, followed by a spiteful British-instigated partition that killed more than half a million people, getting a raw deal has become routine, almost as if it is fated. Initially, it was expected, because of our hopeless anglophile leadership, but persisted for decades after independence, because of continued Indian post-colonial attitudes of servitude and lack of confidence.
In fairly recent times also, unequal treaties have been the bane of a weak and politically fragmented coalition government in India. The most humiliating in recent memory was the hard-fought but blighted nuclear power deal. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ever the installed puppet, made a success of the nuclear power deal, with the out-of-the-way help provided by the Republican US President George W Bush. But the blockers who hate India making progress found another way. They asked for an indemnity against liability for any nuclear accidents for the reactors the Americans supplied. The French followed suit. This bogged it down and the only nuclear reactors commissioned at Kudankulam I and now II are those supplied by old reliable Russia. They are also India’s biggest reactors. India and Russia are planning to go ahead with Kudankulam III and IV as well.
Of course, the American NGO universe riled up the locals to delay both reactors commissioned in 2013 and 2016 by several years. They did the same to retard the progress of the Narmada Dam which has fed water to large dry areas, also by quite a few years.
The fact that an emerging economy like India is now a middle-income economy at No 5 in GDP in the world amongst major economies is leading to a lot of discomfort, not just amongst enemy countries like China and Pakistan, but the G-7 countries of the West too. Combined with a markedly nationalist tone in the conduct of trade, foreign affairs, and defence today, it is giving the erstwhile colonial powers the jitters.
We have vastly increased our petroleum imports from Russia, fighting its war with the West, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the European Union and Ukraine. This independent line, which has greatly suited Indian interests, is infuriating to the West. It realises that as long as the Hindu nationalist government succeeds in retaining the confidence of the Indian people, they cannot dominate our policies to suit themselves. As a consequence, the latest salvo is aimed directly at Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the UK government-owned BBC. The national broadcaster has used discredited and unproven innuendo to paint Modi as a communalist, responsible for the Godhra riots of 2002. The purpose of dredging up the topic from 20 years ago is to influence the forthcoming Assembly elections of 2023, and the general elections of 2024, against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The reaction on the ground to BBC’s scurrilous propaganda has been sharp and prompt and is likely to consolidate the BJP vote further. Further, efforts of this order from the West bent on maligning and taming the present government in India, cannot be ruled out.
However, at the same time, it is being recognised by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and others, that India will become the No 3 economy by 2028 if the BJP wins another majority in 2024. So, the West, led by America, is keen on ostensibly allying with India, particularly in the QUAD, AUKUS, G-20 and other fora, both to contain China and recognise the inevitable rise of a power whose time has come. Other alliances such as the I2U2 (India, Israel, the UAE, and the US) are also full of promise.
Middling power such as Britain, burning with post-colonial envy, is setting about it all wrong if it wants to sign an FTA with India in the near future. Not only does India have options, but it is also quite willing to exercise them to its benefit.
Making up lies about India may be all that countries like China, Pakistan, Turkey, and indeed their fifth-column supporters are left with. But such shenanigans will neither unseat a highly popular government nor provide any succour in the coming general elections. The visible progress that India is making on multiple fronts is a matter of pride for its citizens, and the Opposition is looking more and more like dangerous anti-national dissidents being aided and abetted by those forces who don’t want to see India grow and prosper. It is a back-handed compliment that we could do without.
The writer is a political commentator. Views expressed are personal.
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