AIPSN brief to the political parties for consideration in their election manifesto

AIPSN brief to the political parties for consideration in their election manifesto

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28 Mar 2024

AIPSN brief to the political parties for consideration in their election manifesto

The All India People’s Science Network (AIPSN) – a platform of people’s science movements across the country has the following positions on various critical issues e.g., propagation of scientific temper, S&T policy and process, Environment and Water resources, Health and Agriculture. As the country gears up for the 18th General Election, we would like to present these positions to be considered for inclusion in the electoral manifesto of the secular, democratic political parties of the country.

  1. On Scientific Temper

Article 51A (h) of the Constitution of India speaks of the duty of citizens to promote scientific temper. Recently, new challenges have emerged in the country in the form of strong socio-political narratives, backed by the State power, that seek to oppose any scientific approach, evidence-based reasoning or, indeed, any perspective that acknowledges universal scientific knowledge. We demand:

  • Promote the separation of State apparatus from religion.
  • Promotion and support of campaigns for popularization of science and its methods, and for promotion of scientific temper, evidence-based reasoning and critical thinking.
  • Reversal of the present government’s various methods and measures to undermine scientific temper, critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning in governance, education and among the wider public
  • Reconstitution of text-book committees to reverse the present. government’s anti-science revision of NCERT textbooks so as to promote critical thinking among students; re-write these textbooks to address deletion of Darwin’s theory of evolution and various chapters/ sections on India’s natural resources, forests, environment, mineral resources etc, and rectify the distorted picture of ancient Indian civilization projected in these texts.
  • A thorough revision of the now compulsory UG/PG Courses and reading material on so-called “traditional Indian knowledge systems;” revise teaching material for new optional Courses on Science, Technology and other Knowledge Systems in Ancient and Medieval India based on the vast body of historical evidence-based material already available on the subject.
  • Correction of the unscientific view being projected in educational institutions and among the wider public of imaginary achievements in S&T in ancient India, and the primacy and superiority of only one stream of cultural-religious-linguistic knowledge, as against the diverse sources and streams of knowledge in the Indian civilization including bi-directional exchanges with other civilizations for a true picture of the growth of science.
  • Restoration of autonomy of academic and research Institutions in both natural and social sciences; pay due regard to research/survey-based data as basis for evidence-based policy-making; correct retrospective manipulation of data to suit ideological narratives; defend and restore academic freedom and pluralism of opinion in universities and research institutes; restore the confidence of the people in scientific institutions
  • Strict monitoring and regulation of the dissemination of “magical remedies,” pseudo-science and superstitious beliefs through commercial activities and in the media, including through Anti-Superstition legislation in the Centre and States.
  • Resumption of population census driven public policy framing.
  1. On Science and Technology (S&T)
  • Enhancement of public funding of indigenous research in S&T to at least 2 per cent of GDP, with due importance to basic research.
  • Strengthening of the university system in research and development (R&D).
  • Decentralization of systems and processes for research funding; scrap the highly centralized National Research Foundation (NRF) set up under the NEP, which also burdens State governments without according to them equitable participation in decision-making; enhance research in state-level universities and collaborations with Central universities and national S&T institutions.
  • Allocation of funds for state-level initiatives for S&T interventions to tackle people’s problems e.g. drought, water resource management, rural livelihoods, issues faced by marginalized communities.
  • Provision of requisite mission-mode R&D funding for identified sectors of the “4th Industrial Revolution” such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), bio- and nano-technology etc towards self-reliance in advanced technologies expected to dominate the “knowledge era,” but in which India is in danger of being left behind in pursuit of externally-dependent and false “atma-nirbharta”; also focus on agricultural research to break monopolies of MNCs and enable climate-resilient agriculture/horticulture.
  • Increase in number of research fellowships especially for first generation students; increase number of faculty research positions in institutes; increase quality and quantity of PhDs in which India lags behind.
  • Systematic measures to increase participation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) research and jobs
  • Initiation of measures to reduce bureaucratism in S&T Institutions, and encourage academic freedom and culture of research towards reversing brain drain; reverse current trend of sycophancy, fear and discouragement of pluralism in universities and research institutes.
  • Regulation of AI, genetic engineering, data-mining and IT-based surveillance so as to ensure the public good.
  • Review of decision to close down many government-funded S&T Institutions; resuming government support for a restructured Indian Science Congress.
  • Promote free and open source software (FOSS) and other new technologies, free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or patents; “knowledge commons” to be promoted across disciplines e.g. like biotechnology, AI and drug discovery.
  • Recognition of digital infrastructure as public infrastructure to be used for public good.
  • Investment in public communication networks and free knowledge access to scientific and other academic publications without copyright barriers.
  • Ensuring all public funded research is made accessible to all.
  • Rigorous double-blind clinical trials with publication of data for open review for approval of new medicines, vaccines etc.

 

  1. Environment

Various dilutions of regulatory provisions for environmental protection have taken place in the recent past that would have serious impact on our natural resources and climate and will affect people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. There will have to be reversals of these changes. The specific demands are the following:

 

  • The system and processes of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Clearances at State and Central level be made effective, time-bound, transparent, accountable, and free of conflict of interests. EIA is to be conducted preferably through an independent Environmental Protection Agency; repeal EIA Notification 2020 and issue revised guidelines.
  • Economy-wide measures be planned and initiated to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the UNFCCC framework as applicable to developing countries, through effective policies, regulation, de-carbonization, energy efficiency in all sectors of production and consumption, while providing for a just transition from fossil fuels; promotion of renewable energy such as solar and wind; reducing energy inequality and promoting energy access for economically weaker sections such as in public transport; India’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) required to be submitted to UNFCCC in 2025 to be re-cast through a participatory process involving all stakeholders.
  • A National Adaptation Plan (NAP) should be evolved through a participatory process involving all stakeholders especially States to tackle climate impacts such as on agriculture, extreme rainfall and related landslides and urban flooding, heat waves and urban heat islands, coastal erosion and sea-level rise; streamline systems to tackle natural and climate-related disasters; evolve and implement climate resilient development strategies especially addressing the needs of vulnerable populations; provide adequate funds from the Centre and build capabilities of States and local governance structures for the above.
  • Sustainable and environment/climate-friendly development strategies should be evolved for the fragile Himalayan region and eco-sensitive regions of Western Ghats and the North-East; undertake comprehensive review of infrastructure development and urbanization in hill areas, especially in the Western Himalayan region.
  • Thoroughly revise National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) towards rapid and goal-oriented reduction of air pollution in urban areas especially through promotion of public mass transportation in preference to personal vehicle use, and effective regulation of polluting industries and construction activities; strengthen Central and State regulatory authorities.
  • Urgently initiate measures to prevent degradation and destructive development of riverbeds and flood plains, including in urban areas.
  • Undo different provisions of the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, apart from the modified definition of Forests struck down by the SC, especially 100 km from international boarder and LAC/LOC being exempt from any regulatory measure; ensure protection of rights of tribals and other forest dwellers under Forest Rights Act, 2006.
  • Repeal provisions of biodiversity Amendment Act 2023 which permits transfer of knowledge regarding bio-diversity resources to corporate without permission of National biodiversity Authority, and also denies local communities of due compensation or share of these benefits.
  • Scrap the environmentally disastrous and pro-corporate islands Development Plan for Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep Island chains, without due consultation with local population in Lakshadweep, and endangering the tiny remaining populations of mostly isolated tribes in the Andamans; re-examine feasibility and location of proposed naval base in A&N.
  • Scrap environmentally dangerous National Oil Palm Mission with highly inflated claims of yields and focusing on eco-sensitive North-East and Andaman Islands.
  1. Water Resources
  • Re-formulate National Water Policy treating water as a scarce public good; tackle the growing water crisis; enhance equitable water availability for optimized domestic use, irrigation and industry through effective protection of rivers, expansion of water bodies and increased groundwater recharge; appropriate legislation, effective regulation and demand management of water; water audits and measures to conserve, treat and recycle water especially in urban areas.
  • Ensure equitable provision of WHO-standard piped potable drinking water to all households
  • Halt privatization of water resources and water distribution utilities in urban areas and recognise the right to water as part of the right to life.
  • Check pollution of rivers and other water bodies through effective legislation, regulation and enforcement of sewage and other waste-water treatment and recycling policies; withdraw provisions of Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Amendment, 2024 allowing Centre to override State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs).
  • Undertake comprehensive review of the programme and projects for inter-linking of rivers.
  • Plan and urgently implement measures to protect and improve catchment areas of major rivers especially in the Himalayan region; also take all steps possible to check glacier melting rates such as through regulation of fossil-fuel powered vehicular movement and air pollution in mountain regions.
  1. Health
  • Make right to free health care justiciable through enactment of appropriate legislations at both Central and State levels.
  • Retain health services as a state subject with strong emphasis on federalism.
  • Public expenditure on health to be raised to at least 3.5 per cent in the short term and 5 per cent of the GDP in the long term, with at least 1% and 2% respectively coming from the Centre.
  • Out-of-pocket expenditure on health to be brought to below 25% of health spending expand and strengthen the public healthcare system to ensure free availability of quality health care at all levels, including entire range of medicines, diagnostics and vaccines, and accountability to local communities.
  • Scrap the government-funded PMJAY/Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme and replace it with a Public-centred Universal Health Care system.
  • Reverse the privatisation of health care services and outsourcing of services through PPPs.
  • Reverse the re-branding of Health and Wellness Centres as ‘Arogya mandirs’.
  • Extend and reform the ESI scheme to effectively protect workers’ health in both organized and unorganized sector, and also covering occupational health.
  • Effectively regulate the private health care sector, especially corporate hospitals which should be brought under the Clinical Establishment Act. Modify the National Clinical Establishment Act, 2010 ensuring implementation of the Patients’ Rights Charter and standardization of reasonable rates and quality of various services.
  • Ensure right-based access to comprehensive treatment and care of persons with mental illness through integration of the revised District Mental Health Programme with the National Health Mission.
  • Adopt a people-centred, rational pharmaceutical policy with effective cost-based price controls, elimination of irrational and hazardous formulations, and a comprehensive generic medicines policy covering labelling, prescription and availability at all retail outlets; ensure availability of essential drugs free of cost at all public health care facilities.
  • Initiate programs to break monopolies of pharmaceutical multinational companies in critical areas.
  • Revive public sector pharmaceutical units to harness them for production of essential drugs and vaccines, and reverse privatization trends; reinstate Open-Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) programmes and collaborative R&D for affordable medicines; remove GST for life-saving and crucial medicines.
  • Strictly control and regulate clinical trials and prohibit unethical clinical trials; develop a justiciable charter of rights for clinical trial participants
  • Remove US government’s drug law enforcing agency USFDA’s offices and officials from India.
  • Resist dilution of India’s Patent of Laws and reject provisions in Free Trade Agreements that obstruct domestic production low-cost generic drugs.
  • Ensure effective, appropriate regulatory oversight of AYUSH system of medicine, while supporting evidence-based use of such systems.
  • Give priority to the setting up of new public colleges to train doctors and nurses, especially in underserved areas such as in the North East and in poorer States. Training institutes to be set up for health workers.
  1. Agriculture

            Right to land, water and commons for all

  • Provide equitable access to land and water: legislate for homesteads for the rural poor; grant land rights to landless for cultivation; promote kitchen gardens, backyard poultry, cattle sheds and group farming.
  • Place all above-ceiling land presently held by public or private entities under control of the state and union government for the redistribution to the landless.
  • Create a register of tenants and provide smallholders with secure tenancy. Give tenant farmers statutory support, recognise tenants as beneficiaries of schemes announced for individual benefits, and access to benefits from sector wide schemes financed through public investment.
  • Recognize women as farmers and grant them land rights, secure their tenancy rights over leased lands.
  • Recognize land rights of Adivasi farmers, implement Forest Rights Act (FRA), review all rejections under FRA, and roll back pro-corporate amendments to Indian Forest Act, 1927.

            Right to Food, Employment, Education, Health and Social Protection

  • Ensure job security and minimum wage by extending the number of workdays from 100 to 200 workdays in rural areas @ Rs. 800 wages per day, implement existing provision of 100 days of MGNREGA without creating digital hurdles.
  • Introduce a provision of 100 days of labour support for the SC, ST, and other small and marginal farmers for land development and for the adoption of integrated farming systems (IFS) including natural farming, thus 200 days of rural employment @ Rs. 800 wages per day.
  • Enact old age pensions.
  • Provide childcare and crèche facilities in agricultural workspaces.
  • Provide for separate courts for protection against caste, ethnic, religious, gender-based oppression.
  • Introduce Urban Employment Guarantee Act, guarantee employment for graduates from rural households in nearby towns.

            Right to public and bank finance, production inputs, knowledge and market

  • Guarantee extra budgetary resources to states from the 15th finance commission for raising the level of gross capital formation in agriculture as a percentage ford from the current level of 15.7% to 30%.
  • Guarantee primary producers’ freedom from debt by implementing complete(formal and informal) loan waiver, restore the right of primary producers to priority lending, stop co-lending to delink farmers from the high-cost economy in agriculture; reduce the risks faced from climate change in respect of pursuing agriculture & allied sector occupations.
  • Create a single-window loan facility for small holders to promote integrated farming, strengthen SHGs and Kudambashree-type of institutions to enable women farmers to access agriculture credit from public banking.
  • Guarantee remunerative prices for agricultural commodities establish an effective system of public procurement of all farm produce declared as essential produce/value added products by rural households through cooperatives for the promotion of sustainable rural livelihoods and for the creation of a universal public distribution system.
  • Guarantee access to publicly regulated markets purchasing the primary produce at the minimum support price (MSP) not lower than C2 costs plus 50 % for the products declared as essential commodities for production by state legislatures.
  • Take agriculture out of WTO, no more free trade agreements (FTAs), and no more patent like intellectual property rights (IPRs) on seeds.
  • Withdraw from the agreements signed by ICAR with Bayer, Amazon and otherness, guarantee research, advice, testing and extension through public sector undertakings, and pave the way for national ownership and control of infrastructure required for agri-digitalization and agri-tech delivery.
  • Reintroduce sectoral reservation through legislation for the products attracting AGMARK label to encourage value addition through cooperatives, micro and small businesses & PSUs in order to keep big business out of local markets.
  • Ensure agro-ecologically coupled integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and restore state/district level planning by establishing statutory boards for scientific and equitable land use, area planning, market development, and promotion of value addition to co-products and by-products through group enterprises.
  • Separate Fisheries Ministry in Central and State Governments with the mandate to protect and promote sustainable fisheries and the livelihood of small-scale fish workers including fishers, fish farmers, fish vendors and other ancillary fish workers.
  • Establish a National Commission for Fisheries to look after policy implementation, inter-state disputes, protection and promotion of the rights and entitlements of small-scale fishing communities.
  • Create in every state “State Commissions for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare”.
  • Stop entry of private Dairy Corporate Companies and import of foreign dairy products that threaten existence of India’s Dairy Cooperatives.
  • Abandon plan to open the Indian market by permitting Free Trade on milk and milk-based products.
  • Ensure remunerative prices for milk and milk products.

 

For clarifications contact:

Asha Mishra, General Secretary, AIPSN  gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9425302012, Twitter: @gsaipsn

Corbevax for 12-14 year-olds: arbitrary decision-making on Vaccines continues in India

All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) Statement

 click here to get the pdf of the statement 

 

 

click here to get the pdf of the press release

 

 

Corbevax for 12-14 year-olds: arbitrary decision-making on Vaccines continues in India

 

22 Mar 2022

             The Union Health Ministry announced through a press release on March 14, 2022 that vaccinations against Covid-19 for children in the age group of 12 to 14 years would start from March 16, 2022 using the Corbevax vaccine manufactured in India by Biological E. Limited, Hyderabad, with license from BCM Ventures, USA, set up by the vaccine developer Texas Children’s Hospital. Corbevax is a protein subunit vaccine where the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is directly injected with stabilising chemicals and adjuvants in order to raise antibody levels in the recipient. This is different from Covaxin which uses full inactivated virus or Covishield which uses an adenoviral viral vector to introduce the DNA coding for the spike protein into cells. The vaccine is open-source and offered to manufacturers without patent but with a small fee for BCM. Government is being charged Rs.145 per dose whereas Rs.990 would be charged by private hospitals. While Corbevax undoubtedly expands the basket of vaccines available in India to combat the pandemic, the modalities of its approval, deployment and related decision-making processes raise many disturbing and recurring questions which have plagued India’s vaccine policies and the integrity of its regulatory institutions and mechanisms.

The Government statement said the decision to initiate vaccinations for the 12-14 years cohort was taken “after due deliberations with scientific bodies.” However, it is known that the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) was not consulted, nor was any recommendation obtained from the National Expert Group on Vaccination Administration for Covid-19 (NEGVAC) either regarding vaccination for this age-group nor for deployment of Corbevax as the sole vaccine for this cohort.  It appears that the Government itself does not have confidence in its own expert bodies, which calls into question the very credibility of the decisions being made. Unfortunately, it is precisely such non-transparent decision-making which contributes to vaccine hesitancy, as had happened earlier with Covaxin for similar reasons.  It may be noted that, once again, approvals in India for Corbevax for this age group have been granted without peer reviewed or even pre-published data and clinical trial data pertaining to this age group is not available in the public domain, whereas approval for adults were granted based on interim trial results. The difficulties and delays faced by Covaxin in obtaining WHO approval due to inadequate data are well-known, as are the world body’s statement that it could not be expected to “cut corners” in well-established approval procedures. The Government risks repetition of this international embarrassment by once again resorting to short-cuts in India’s domestic scientific approvals and regulatory systems.

India’s vaccine policy has been characterized by poor planning, arbitrary and non-transparent decision-making based on extraneous considerations rather than scientific evidence. The Government is arbitrarily dividing up the market amongst different vaccine manufacturers by approving only specific vaccines for different age-groups, rather than adopting a more equitable public vaccination programme. As a consequence, vaccine production and exports have not kept pace with requirement and demand despite tall claims of being the “vaccine capital of the world,” and this has in turn impacted on vaccine deployment strategies and choices.

AIPSN calls upon the government to strictly follow laid-down regulatory procedures and scrutiny by scientific and expert bodies, then formulate and implement evidence-based policies with transparent decision-making rationale. Only this will restore public confidence in India’s vaccination policy and obviate vaccine hesitancy.

 

For clarifications contact:

V.R. Raman 9717107878 D. Raghunandan 9810098621; T. Sundararaman 9987438253

P.Rajamanickam, General Secretary, AIPSN gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9442915101 @gsaipsn

 

75 Years of Independence: Self Reliance, Idea of India and Road to the Future

Background Paper

AIPSN Campaign on 75 Years of Independence

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Click here to get the long version of the brochure 

Click here to get the reduced version of brochure

 

75 Years of Independence: Self Reliance, Idea of India and Road to the Future

             Independent India was born on 15th August 1947 with the end of British colonial rule and unfurling of the tri-colour on the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi by the new nation’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. India’s journey over the next 75 years has been remarkable by any standards, but with many ups and downs along the way. While there is much to celebrate, there is also much to be disappointed about. Also, unfortunately, perspectives and actions under the current political dispensation are posing serious challenges to the very foundations of our nation laid during the freedom struggle, threatening the edifice of the Constitution and the very Idea of India forged collectively by the people’s movement for Independence and the efforts towards building of independent India. In this the 75th year of Independence, the Peoples Science Movement looks at how our independent nation started, what was achieved, what went wrong and what prospects and challenges lie ahead in the future.

Early years

Born out of the values and ideas forged during the freedom movement, and the wholehearted participation of all sections of the people, India as a poor, developing and highly diverse country with a massive poverty and deprivation burden, low literacy rates, poor health and other human development indicators, embarked on a path rarely seen among newly-independent nations of the time. The path India adopted comprised several core ideas of nationhood such as universal voting rights; equality of all citizens before the law; a secular state without discrimination between religions, castes, languages, ethnicities or gender; the idea of unity in this diverse country of multiple cultures and traditions; freedom of expression and plurality of opinion; and a commitment to build a modern welfare state with a citizenry imbued with scientific temper and critical thinking.

India’s Constitution adopted in 1950 including many subsequent amendments by the legislature, further advanced these Ideas of India in both concept and practice by the political executive i.e. the government, the legislature and the judiciary, and provided an institutional framework for democratic governance and safeguarding citizens’ rights. The Constitution provided for a popularly accountable and federated system of governance involving the Union of India and its States. It also provided for checks and balances, separation of powers between an independent legislature, executive and judiciary, as well as strong institutions of governance with autonomy from the political executive. The world watched in wonder and praised India as it progressed along this path, managing arguably one of the most socio-culturally diverse and complex countries, undoubtedly with many hiccups along the way.

Independent India adopted a policy framework of building a strong industrial base based on scientific and technological (S&T) self-reliance and public sector enterprises in core sectors of the economy, helping the country build an independent industrial base, and also build its own capabilities across sectors. Western countries with their neo-colonial mindsets by and large did not help India in this process of industrialization, whereas the then Soviet Union extended considerable assistance in basic and heavy industries especially through public sector units (PSU) in steel, petroleum, electricity and power generation equipment, coal, mining and related machinery, heavy machines, pharmaceuticals etc  including through technology transfer and R&D efforts to support India’s efforts to achieve self-reliance.

With a special determination, India also built capabilities, knowledge and technologies in frontier areas of space and atomic energy, as well as to a lesser extent in defence in collaboration with many countries and overseas companies. This enabled India to maintain strategic autonomy from major foreign powers and to play a leading role in building the Non-Aligned Movement along with most newly-independent and developing countries and other nations. The adoption by Parliament of the Industrial Policy Resolution in 1956 and the milestone Scientific Policy Resolution of 1958, a first such document among nations which heralded S&T-based enterprises and the obligation of the State to build a scientific temper among its citizens, underscored this trajectory of S&T self-reliance, economic progress and human resource development structured around modern industries in core sectors. Premier public institutions of research and higher education were established in the early post-Independence years, such as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and several IITs in collaboration with different countries as a crucial part of this endeavour.

The 1948 Bombay Plan prepared by private sector leaders had agreed that the state should take the lead in the core sector especially heavy industries, since the private sector did not have either the capital or the capability required. Private companies would then concentrate on consumer goods and light industries. Contrary to some propaganda and public perceptions, this perspective was not simply the result of a Nehruvian “socialist” vision, but the result of considered thinking by the captains of Indian industry and commerce.

This industrial foundation, along with central planning, propelled the country forward to a leading position among developing countries in the first few decades after independence.

Together, these bestowed India with an enviable position in the international community, substantial soft power and respect in the comity of nations.

Despite these strengths, several lacunae in both conception and implementation may be noted in this early period, many of which persisted in successive decades.

In the agreed division of industrial responsibilities, the private sector did not develop substantial autonomous capabilities and were content with protectionist policies against imports and entry of foreign firms, and profited from a captive domestic market for low-quality, low volume, uncompetitive goods. Thus the private sector did not make much contribution to self-reliance or national industrial advancement with only a few exceptions. Unfortunately, this tendency persists even to this day. While private sector companies have pushed their way into sectors formerly earmarked for the state sector, they have still not built autonomous domestic capabilities or invested in R&D and self-reliance, preferring foreign collaborations and lower-end technologies.

Agriculture was seriously addressed only in the 1960s in the 4th five-year Plan through the Green Revolution. The programme was a huge success as regards raising food grain production substantially, and almost eliminating major cereals imports. However, the high inputs strategy brought with it with many negative aspects as discussed in the next section, leaving major issues yet to be addressed in agriculture.

Low investment in school education and primary health held back the already impoverished masses, slowed the pace of development, and prevented the people especially the poor from achieving their true potential. Despite many efforts at different points of time, substantial weaknesses persist in social infrastructure.

In the period under discussion, industrial development was stagnating as noted earlier, unable to generate higher productivity and employment despite the protected economy.

The Middle Decades: hits and misses

Governments in the later 1960s to the 1980s undertook several initiatives to address the deficits mentioned above. It is useful to examine the successes and failures of this period in some detail, since it was followed by a prolonged period of neo-liberal policies till the present and enables an informed comparison.

Public sector industries continued their dominant position in the economy, but did not sufficiently modernize to the next generation of technologies that were already establishing a strong presence in the global economy but were constrained within a limited framework of import substitution. The private sector continued to flourish but in a heavily protected domestic market and, while complaining of a “license-permit raj” imposed by government, made little effort to overcome these constraints, as shown by the under-development of light engineering and consumer goods industries during these decades. In the context of economic and technological developments, especially in comparable economies in East and South-East Asia which were broadly on par with India in terms of development in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it is no surprise that the period is described as the “lost decade.” Combined with developments after liberalization of the Indian economy, the missed opportunities of this period, raises serious issues about what India needs to do in the contemporary context to at least catch up with other countries as regards self-reliance S&T in the knowledge era.

Several progressive economic measures were initiated during this period. While Insurance had been nationalized much earlier in 1956, 14 major Banks were nationalized in 1969, providing stable financial underpinnings to development, and extended banking services as well as credit availability to hitherto unserved sections, especially in rural areas. Many experts and commentators doubt if opening up of banking to the private sector since liberalization of the economy has been beneficial to the people especially in rural areas or to the economy as a whole.

Rural poverty was explicitly addressed only in the 5th five-year plan, notably through the then government’s “garibi hatao” programme and several poverty alleviation schemes such as IRDP, TRYSEM, SGSY and related self-employment Schemes over the next few Plans. Unfortunately even these could not achieve their objective, with some official evaluations showing that only 14% of beneficiaries were enabled to go above the poverty line, however without any assessment of how many later dropped below it later. It was only much later, under the UPA Government in 2006-10, that the effective demand-driven MNREGA wage-employment Scheme, which was introduced through enormous push by progressive forces and civil society organizations, provided much relief for the rural un-/ under-employed and which proved its usefulness during the pandemic. Yet rural-urban disparities and large-scale unemployment or under-employment persist to this day as structural problems.

The Asian Experience

During the 1970s and early 1980s, other South East Asian countries, who were at a par with India a decade earlier, galloped ahead economically and in human development indicators through rapid development of indigenous S&T capabilities in mass manufacturing, white goods, electronic goods, micro-chips and computers.

In Japan or South Korea this was not just a giant leap forward in manufacturing, but was built by domestic companies and product brands, mostly without foreign collaboration, supported by both applied and basic research such as in particle physics, materials, electronics, optics etc and was backed by substantial policy planning and financial support by their respective governments.

These experiences showed that the concept of self-reliance was not some antiquated “socialist” idea, but a practical policy for nations wishing to establish their strong and independent presence in the world economy, and developing the capability to deal with the next technological shift. These experiences have all shown the value of self-reliance and indigenous capability, which are not merely means to developing the domestic economy, but a means towards playing a leading role in the global economy instead of remaining dependent on others or playing a junior role lower down in the value chain.

It should also be noted that these SE Asian countries consistently invested around 4-5% or more of GDP on R&D, education and health.  In comparison, India’s investments in these three areas continue to languish at around 1-2%.  Things got no better in the 1990s or the decades thereafter, including after 2014 when grandiose promises were made to take India into the 21st century or become a developed country by 2025 or become a $5 trillion economy soon.

Agriculture

Agriculture was another sector relatively neglected in the early post-Independence decades, but continuing low food grain production, several near-famine years, and a devastating and frankly humiliating dependence on food aid notably from the US, prompted a major push to augment food grain production in the late 1960s onwards in the form of the so-called Green Revolution (GR). The new policy, supported by substantial financial and technological assistance from international organizations and developed countries especially the US, was focused on wheat and rice in the fertile and irrigated areas of Punjab, Haryana and West UP, and was based on high inputs of specially-developed high-yielding varieties, irrigation water, inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, and mechanization of operations. The policy brought dramatic improvements in wheat and rice production, and saw India become a major agricultural producer in the world and move towards minimal imports in only a few agricultural produce. Total production of food grains increased from 51 million tonnes in 1950-51 to close to 300 million tonnes at present with huge increases in yield per hectare, multiple crops each year and expansion of acreage under cultivation. GR therefore undoubtedly transformed food grain production and agriculture in general in India, but brought along with it many negative consequences now being felt in the country and which will haunt the country for decades to come unless several corrective measures are urgently taken.

Overuse of chemical fertilizers and new farming practices have resulted in serious depletion of soil health with related productivity losses. Over irrigation especially through excessive use of groundwater has resulted in severe depletion of water resources and water-logging. High input costs including mechanization have skewed agriculture in favour of larger farmers and have also led to high indebtedness. The emphasis on HYV of wheat and rice has led to loss of biodiversity especially indigenous varieties, besides sharp decrease in cultivation of millets and other ‘coarse’ grains to the detriment of nutritional status, crop diversification and over-reliance on just two crops with impact on returns. The recent farmers’ agitation over the government’s so-called agricultural “reforms” has been prompted in large part by the skewed socio-economic impacts of the Green Revolution.

GR has had several other undesirable impacts too. The policy was implemented vigorously through the active involvement of agricultural universities who contributed greatly in terms of S&T but also became deeply inter-twined with issues of rich farmers, mechanized and industrial farming and linkages with Western institutions. The famously successful system of extension workers that spread the message and practices of the GR collapsed when the main task was over and was never replaced, leaving farmers dependent on mostly MNC agri-businesses for extension services.

Other regions were neglected due to the overwhelming emphasis on the north-western states although a few sub-regions in the eastern Gangetic basin did benefit. However, crops other than wheat and rice, and agriculture in rainfed areas accounting to around 65% of farmers were not given due attention, even though the “brown revolution” or the ‘second green revolution” are bandied about. This has seen the continued neglect and impoverishment of eastern India, as well as to the narrowing of the food basket especially of poorer people.

It should be underlined that despite the much heralded success of the GR, and the “self-sufficiency” that India has supposedly attained, a large proportion of the Indian people still go to sleep hungry and do not get two square meals a day. According to a 2021 FAO Report, about 15% of India’s population or about 195 million people, are undernourished and ranks 101 out of 160 countries according to the World hunger Index 2021, ranking lower than Bangladesh (76) and Pakistan (92). All these reports indicate that India may not meet the millennium Development Goal of “zero hunger” by 2030. Clearly, the problems are not restricted to food production alone, but are related to socio-political policies governing inequalities and access.

These deficiencies and the negative consequences on Indian agriculture subsequent to the GR need to be addressed urgently, particularly R&D in raising productivity in rainfed areas, building climate resilience, and redressing the inequalities in food consumption and nutrition.

Environment

One sector where considerable effort and new initiatives were taken, which were not envisaged during the independence movement or during the first two post-Independence decades, was in environmental protection, conservation and regulation. This is hardly surprising since sensitivity to environmental issues had barely entered public consciousness, leave alone governance, in any part of the world, except for the forest conservation movement in Britain and colonial India in the 18th and 19th centuries and later in the US in order to ensure continued supplies of timber, and the setting up of nature and wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the US in the early 20th century. The Club of Rome in the 1960s warned about the potential exhausting of the mineral resources that were the foundation of capitalism, but the panic was short-lived as capitalism itself evolved. However, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, for the first time brought the environment and its linkage with human development into governance concerns, and institutionalized international discussions and diplomacy on environmental regulation.

Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the only head of government to attend the historic summit, was said to have been deeply influenced by it, and initiated several policy measures in India broadly in tune with the Stockholm recommendations and those of other related global conferences. However, there is strong evidence supported by scholars that environmental regulations in India have evolved in response to both international diplomacy and, even more so, to pressure from civil society and social movements within the country. After Stockholm, the then government enacted a series of laws including major amendments to the Constitution as part of the series under the 42nd Amendment. Article 48A under Part IV obliges the state to protect and preserve the environment, while Article 51A (g) assigns citizens to do the same. The Air Act 1981, the Environment Protection Act 1986 and the Water Act 1976 also followed.

At the same time, the Chipko movement, the Silent Valley movement, and the movement to protect and advance forest rights of tribals and forest dwellers, all catalyzed major legislation, while the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, in which the Peoples Science Movement played a major role, catalyzed a raft of legislations and regulations governing industrial pollution, hazardous materials etc. All these movements broadened the scope of peoples participation in decision-making on developmental projects through mechanisms such as mandatory public hearings.

However, from the outset, environmental policies and their implementation in India have had a mixed record, as a result of pressure from corporate interests and supporting political and bureaucratic forces, and inadequate push from mainstream political formations for environmentally sustainable development policies. Despite victories in many battles for popular movements, the longer war continues and environmental regulations remain a theatre of daily confrontation calling for constant vigil by civil society and peoples movements such as the PSM. Forest rights continue to be threatened to this day, industrial accidents including those involving hazardous materials continue to occur due to lax if not collusive regulatory bodies. At present, environmental regulations are under severe attack, threatening the hard-won rights, laws and regulatory systems put in place over the decades. The intention, and the impact, is that the natural environment is being severely damaged, along with the lives and livelihoods of millions of people dependent upon it such as tribal people, other forest dwellers, fishers and many others.

Education

Investments in education, primary health and R&D continued to stagnate or even decline in real terms. Both in school and higher education the private sector expanded rapidly at the expense of the public system, including in rural areas. Private universities especially in engineering and medicine also proliferated with poor planning or regulation, leading to malpractices such as capitation fees, deficiencies in reservation, poor infrastructure and quality of education resulting in high unemployment or under-employment of graduates and, later, to closures leaving students in the lurch.

Ill-effects of the major failures during the early post-Independence decades in social infrastructure investments notably in health and education as noted earlier have become entrenched over the decades and have been worsened by the neo-liberal tendencies of withdrawal of the state from social services, and their privatization and commercialization.

The public education system certainly expanded in early decades after independence till India established the world’s second largest school system after China. However, despite all the attempts over the decades, and several new initiatives or special thrust programmes taken up from time to time, progress towards universal, free and compulsory education has been unsatisfactory in overall terms in both quantitative and qualitative terms. While enrolment rates in elementary stages have climbed steadily, crossing 90% about a decade ago, enrolment at higher stages of the education system have continued to drop off substantially to around 50% at the secondary stage, skewed even worse for female students. Teacher-student ratios are low and many surveys have shown quality of school education to be poor. Due to these weaknesses, and preferences and trend-setting by the middle-classes, private education has made major inroads over the years especially in secondary education, with enrolments in often English-medium private schools or even unrecognized private schools increasingly sharply in recent years at the cost of the public school system, including in rural areas, despite the regulations of the RTE Act of 2009 which, for the first time, made free education a constitutional right for children from 6 to 14 years of age. Inequalities between urban and rural areas, between better off and poor students, and between upper and lower castes have become deeply ingrained in the education system in India including at school level. These trends have only worsened in most States with the onset of neo-liberal economic policies and the withdrawal of the state from both social and physical infrastructure.  The new National Education Policy (NEP 2020), with its added and strong emphasis on privatization and virtual on-line education will mostly amplify these deficiencies in education and in higher education as well, making these the Achilles heel for India’s future.

Health

A public health system to deliver primary health care was, and remains, another major developmental and welfare measure which was neither taken up strongly in the early post-independence period nor strengthened later to make up for earlier failures. Till today, this remains one of the largest and most glaring failures of the 75 years of Indian independence, as starkly evidenced by India lagging behind even several of our neighbours in South Asia and other low-income countries as regards basic health indicators. In 2016, India ranked 145 out of 195 countries in a Health Care Quality Index reported in The Lancet in 2019, with a score of 41.2 improving considerably from 1990 but still well below the global average of 54.4, and still ranking below Bangladesh and Bhutan, sub-Saharan Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

Health was unfortunately not accorded adequate priority in the early post-Independence decades and was not recognized as a constitutional even later as was done for RtE, despite the strong and detailed recommendations of the Bhore Committee 1943-46. Several subsequent high-powered committees followed, resulting in the National Health Policy of 1983 which was largely shaped by the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration of “Health for All by 2020.” While the new policy at least introduced some institutional structure for health care delivery and public health systems at different decentralized levels of society, subsequent early neo-liberal “reforms” introduced more disease-specific centralized vertical programmes and concepts like user fees, and diluted the earlier primary health care system. The ideas of Universal Health Care advocated internationally was also sought to be implemented in India, but remained on the shelf. Similarly the National Health Policy introduced by both the UPA and later the present BJP-NDA dispensation contain many ideas but few commitments and institutional arrangements.

Authoritarianism

Public resentment of the continuing failures of the government to address basic issues and growing authoritarian tendencies in the Union government, boiled over in 1974-75, when the country witnessed widespread popular unrest and the famous nationwide Railway strike, leading to the government headed by Mrs.Indira Gandhi declaring Emergency on 26 June 1975. Political and civil society opponents were arrested, all civil liberties and press freedom were suspended, freedom of expression and assembly by citizens and workers were curbed, States’ rights were trampled upon, and even independence of the judiciary in practice if not in law was constrained through the idea of a “committed judiciary.” At one stroke, the people found all their hard won rights for which they had struggled during the freedom movement were snatched away by an authoritarian government that dissolved the distinction between Executive Government and State. However, the people’s anger expressed itself forcefully in the general elections of 1977 when the incumbent government was defeated and democracy restored under the new and first-ever non-Congress government.

Constitutional experts and commentators, especially those who were witness to or had experienced the Emergency excesses and participated in resistance to them, term the current atmosphere of executive non-accountability, dominance over all institutions, flouting of Constitutional norms and intolerance of dissent in both the polity and civil society, to be like an “undeclared Emergency.” It is therefore important to recall the 1975 emergency and parallels between the present situation and that period.

.           Several changes from what may broadly be termed the “Nehruvian path of development” were initiated or experimented with by the non-Congress governments after Emergency and later when several non-Congress formations came to power during the later part of the 1980s, some with positive outcomes, others with mixed or questionable outcomes. In the developmental arena, greater emphasis was seen on the role of the private sector, enhanced civil society participation in policy-making and governance, and decentralization of governance favouring States and local self-government. However, the short life-spans of these governments did not allow for either a detailed appraisal of these policy shifts or indeed for any of these policies taking root. Some trends, however, do seem to have established themselves in the body politic, such as coalitions of like-minded forces around a common programme, assertion of a strong civil society role in governance and, till the current dispensation came to power, decentralization of governance institutions and mechanisms.

Neo-liberal phase

By the 1980s and 90s, commitment of the state to the initial direction and impetus of self-reliant development led by the public sector weakened gradually,  and  dominant forces in the economy and in the political class started moving towards courting foreign investment, downplaying or divestment of public sector units (PSUs), opening up different sectors to the private sector, and a gradual withdrawal of the State from public services, the social sector and many industrial sectors under the influence of the by now internationally dominant neo-liberal economic framework championed by the IMF, World Bank and other international agencies. The collapse of the Soviet Union also saw substantial changes in India’s non-aligned foreign policy and the pro-Western trend further intensified these economic policy changes. These trends climaxed with a full-fledged embrace of neo-liberal policies in the 1990s with the stated aim of unleashing the “animal instincts” of the domestic private sector, foreign investors and multi-national corporations (MNCs), who were provided numerous incentives of de-regulation and opening up almost all sectors of the economy.

Crisis-level economic problems in the early 1990s triggered a full-scale embrace of neo-liberal policies in the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh decade and later in the “dream team” UPA decade, as well as the intervening Vajpayee-Arun Shourie-Jaswant Singh era. India no doubt experienced high GDP growth rates in this period, with some poverty reduction but with deepening inequality too. In pursuit of privatization, natural resources were handed over to private corporate houses in mining, minerals, petroleum and the airwaves, ports and other infrastructure, all at a pittance allowing for super-profits, and numerous key economic sectors were opened up to Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) and the domestic private sector, while simultaneously rival PSUs were systematically weakened or undermined, for example in telecom at the cost of BSNL and in aviation at the expense of Air India/Indian Airlines. A process of privatization of public utilities such electricity and water distribution was also set in motion following the World Bank-IMF prescription. While corporate classes and a small section of the middle-classes benefited from these economic changes, business magnates were the biggest gainers, with greater concentration of wealth at the top of the pyramid.  There was a boom in consumer durables, boosted by salary rises for government and public sector employees through successive pay commissions and prods to banks to hugely expand loan schemes on liberal terms. Foreign companies entered the Indian market in a big way, both directly and through portfolio investments, aided by generous taxation and other incentives.

Large Indian private manufacturing companies entered into collaborations with MNCs and other foreign companies taking advantage of these changes. But contrary to the promise that liberalization, privatization, globalization and FDI would bring in new technologies to the country, almost none of the private players absorbed these modern technologies and improved products, and launched their own globally competitive products and brands, or emerged as global players in their own right. For the most part, they remained junior partners of MNCs and other foreign companies. A few sectors displayed some dynamism, for instance in software and business processes, but it should be noted that most Indian companies were providing services for foreign clients rather than developing or promoting their own software products, in which India still has no major global presence or players.

The public sector, which had the capability and scale to absorb new or updated technologies, was hamstrung and deliberately held back. And no major gain was made during this entire period in enhancing self-reliance and autonomous capability by Indian private sector industries.

During the UPA dispensation, efforts were also made to adopt counter-balancing welfare-oriented positions closer to the older Congress orientation.

The Right to Information (RTI) Act, amendments to the Forest Rights Act, advances to the public distribution system in the form of the Food Security Act, and the impactful National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, and efforts to protect the environment and people’s rights from corporate inroads were some of the major rights-based welfare measures put in place during this period. Many of these legislative, executive or regulatory measures were taken in response to demands and push from progressive forces and civil society organizations. Other positive experiments included the campaign-based and mass mobilization volunteer-based Total Literacy Programme catalyzed and led by AIPSN/BGVS in the earlier period, and the later Right to Education (RtE) Act during the UPA dispensation. However, all these measures and other rights-based approaches saw headwinds and even reversals due to pressure from neo-liberal forces both within the government and outside, including during the successor BJP-NDA governments.

Pressure from the strong Left presence in Parliament supporting the UPA also provided some protection to the people from some potentially harmful neo-liberal policies, such as opening up insurance to the private sector and major modifications to the Indian Patents Act as demanded by global capitalism, measures that were resisted and rejected in Parliament. Provisions still retained in the Patents Act continue to enable effective self-reliance especially to the domestic pharma industry.

Present phase

As if with a vengeance, the BJP-led Governments of 2014 and 2019 have aggressively pushed neo-liberal economic policies since coming to power, along with retrograde social policies and serious undermining of “the idea of India” as embodied in the independence struggle and the Constitution, aided and abetted by non-State Hindutva forces.

Increasing inequality

It is no surprise that income inequalities have widened even further than before, and multi-billionaires and crony capitalists believed to be close to the ruling establishment have amassed huge additional wealth during recent years, even during the lockdown and nationwide economic slowdown. 50 new billionaires were added in India during 2020, and wealth of Indian billionaires increased by 35% or almost Rs.13 lakh crores during 2020 at a time when millions of Indians were without source of income or were walking thousands of kilometers to their original villages from cities where there was no work available. The World Inequality Report 2021 states that the top 10% of Indians hold 57% of the national income, and the bottom 50% hold just 13%. It also finds that the top 1% of the population own 33% of national wealth. Such is modern neo-liberal capitalism, avidly promoted by the present government and their supporters, along with promises of further concessions to MNCs and domestic corporates especially crony capitalists, de-regulation across all sectors, further dismantling and privatization of PSUs, virtual sale of national assets, de-unionization and casualization of labour and other “reforms.”

Demographic dividend or growing handicap?

India currently has a substantial youth population, what demographers call a “youth bulge,” with over 600 million persons under the age of 25. Development experts believe this ‘demographic dividend” can be a tremendous asset for the future, provided these youth receive proper basic and higher education and appropriate skills, especially since comparable countries including China have a rapidly ageing population. On the other hand, if India fails to build the capabilities of its young population, un-skilled and under-educated youth could also form the basis for deep social unrest and undesirable socio-political tendencies.

As things stand today, India’s higher education system, despite its considerable expansion in recent times albeit largely with private colleges and universities of uncertain quality, India’s higher education enrolment rates are 20% less than i.e. far below comparable middle-income countries like Brazil or China. Various studies have shown that over 60% of engineering graduates remain unemployed, and close to 50% of all graduates have been found to be unemployable in any skilled occupation! Other available statistics show that around 27% of India’s youth are thus excluded from education, employment or skills.

Unfortunately, neither the NEP 2020 nor the Science, Technology & Innovation Policy (STIP) address these inter-related issues of low access to quality education, deep inequities in education and employment, poor linkages between the education system and employment opportunities, and the urgent need to rapidly upgrade skills and education at all levels if India is to advance in the global economy in the knowledge era.

NEP 2020 contains no reference to the industrial and economic context, simply assuming that higher education in any form will somehow meet present and future demands. On the contrary, NEP’s proposal to terminate the system of affiliating universities with widely dispersed colleges will inevitably lead to closure of numerous colleges especially in smaller towns and rural or semi-urban areas, further exacerbating social inequities and reducing access to higher education for rural and other disadvantaged populations.

 

Privatization of Education & Health

During the neo-liberal phase including under the present dispensation, the health delivery and health education system has been increasingly tilting towards private players and tertiary curative services to the extent that around 75% of hospitals and tertiary health facilities in India are in the private sector, and thus oriented towards better-off sections who can afford these services. In this context, it is not surprising that insurance-based services have gained ground rapidly, and even government departments and PSUs are now reimbursing employees’ expenses at private hospitals etc, thus further strengthening the private health care sector rather than a more affordable and accessible public health system. The dominance of the private sector, and the weakness of the public health care system, is such that the common people of India have to incur over 60% of out-of-pocket expenditures on health.

All these structural weaknesses in public health have been cruelly in evidence during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the exception of Kerala which showed how a more effective public health system could be built and run even in India through long-term consistent public investments and decentralized administration.

The overall situation is made worse by serious deficits in doctors, nurses and other paramedical personnel. Whereas medical education has expanded considerably in recent decades, costs of such education have also increased substantially while, at the same time, quality of education has suffered. These trends have also led to brain drain of qualified personnel, and high costs in India have also driven students to seek medical education abroad and falling into a debt trap as a result.

Very similar processes are underway in engineering and technical education as well. The proliferation of poorly regulated private engineering colleges with poor facilities and equipment has resulted in producing under-qualified engineers who find it difficult to get suitable jobs, particularly when industries in India are so largely based on imported technologies requiring less engineering talent compared to indigenous industries based on innovative technologies.

The proposals in NEP 2020 will further aggravate these tendencies due to NEP’s emphasis on private universities and commercialization and “vocationalization” of educational services, without any correlation to demand for human resources, or industrial and developmental policies that would shape this demand, with a tacit assumption that the educational courses offered by universities would somehow correspond to evolving market demand. High fees of around Rs.2.5 lakhs for 4-year “vocational” undergraduate courses have already started in many Colleges/ Universities under NEP but with students not having any information about the acceptance of these qualifications by employers and the future potential of these qualifications.

Privatization of PSUs and State Assets

The Government is currently on a massive spree of privatization, handing over PSUs to the private sector for a song, selling or leasing infrastructure like ports, airports, roads, railways, railway stations and all kinds of assets which had been acquired through public resources over the decades. With a non-existent or toothless competition commission, not just huge corporations but also monopolies or duopolies are being created in sector after sector such as telecom, retail etc with MNCs or overseas companies or investors having a huge share. Private monopolies are far worse than state monopolies which are at least accountable to parliament, whereas the former leave consumers with no protection given poor regulation.

All these measures are being taken with little or no regulation, following the classical neo-liberal paradigm, not being followed any more in that undiluted form even by most advanced capitalist countries. In fact, in Europe, the UK and even the US, a process of re-nationalization or re-municipalization is underway in public utilities, railways etc. Regulatory capture is being practiced by the State itself, wherein the regulator does not act as a check on corporates, rather the regulator itself supports corporates in their ventures and in getting around government checks. In fact in most cases, the regulator’s mandate is itself is defined as including support to the growth of the private sector!

Dismantling Environmental Regulations

Even during the election campaign preceding the 2014 general elections, the party which was later to form the government made it clear that it believed that environmental regulations were an obstacle to economic growth through mining, other industries, infrastructure and commercial projects. This was translated into action soon after the new Government was installed by converting the different regulatory systems under the Ministry of Environment as bodies to facilitate corporate interests and projects in ecologically sensitive areas rather than protecting the latter. This was made a major element of the government’s efforts to improve its ranking in the global “ease of doing business” index.

Environmental de-regulation is now being pursued aggressively by the present Government through various means such as executive notifications modifying existing rules and procedures, packing decision-making expert committees, proposing major changes in rules and procedures. All these are being done without any legislative backing and, in those cases where the proposals are opened up for public response, the time given is extremely limited, often two weeks or so, even if the proposals involve major changes to existing regulations or potentially greater threats to the environment.

Major dilutions have been made to the Coastal Zone Regulations and so-called “linear projects” such as power-lines, pipelines, highways and railway lines have been given exception for passing through forests and even sanctuaries. Environmental Impact Assessments have been reduced to mere formalities, with project holders allowed to prepare their own EIA through consultants. Packed approval committees have made approvals the norm and rejections rare.

Attempt was made in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic to ram through sweeping changes in EIA requirements, approval conditions and procedures through a Draft EIA Notification Amendment 2020 which, initially, gave only 30 days notice for public comments. The Draft removed the very requirement for EIA and public hearings for a wide range of project types, did not permit public objections to EIA violations which were also sought to be condoned after minor fines, and placed a whole range of projects outside EIA purview on non-transparent grounds of “national security.” After huge protests, several extensions and large-scale negative comments including charges of the Notification being in explicit violations of apex Court orders, the Notification has been kept in abeyance.

However, its various provisions are now sought to be implemented in practice through executive actions and clear trickery to circumvent provisions, such as granting EIA to 100km stretches of the Char Dham Highway in the fragile Himalayan region rather than the whole highway project of close to 900km. Similar efforts were made recently through Amendments to the Forest Rights Act, seeking to circumvent rights of tribals and other forest dwellers by redefining different categories of Forests and procedures to allow easy approvals for violations and removing large areas from the definition of forests thus enabling conversion of large areas of forests into lands for commercial or industrial projects.

Wrong idea of Self-Reliance

The big belief, and break from the early post-Independence past, especially from the 1990s onwards has been that self-reliance is an outmoded concept, technologically an unnecessary effort to “reinvent the wheel” when any country can simply buy the latest technology from somewhere. This Government even believed it could build a modern defence industry in India through FDI! This policy has predictably fallen flat on its face for obvious reasons — no country will part with its advanced technology for love or for money. In India, the myth spread by the present dispensation is that domestic manufacturing of MNC or other foreign corporation’s products is self-reliance or “atma nirbharta!” It is not! Even when products are made in India, the MNC never parts with critical know-how, so that major technology always remains with the MNC. If true self-reliance were to be achieved, the know-how and technology is absorbed, and the Indian entity develops the next generation of the technology on its own. Contrary to the situation and endeavours during early decades of Indian independence and strenuous efforts, India is now well on its way towards technological dependence which will ultimately threaten the long cherished strategic autonomy.

India is today mostly a good market for foreign or MNC goods, even if they are sometimes made or assembled in India, such as automobiles or white goods or cell phones. Even the largest Indian private corporations, except a few in the single digits, are junior partners of MNCs or other foreign entities, have developed no autonomous S&T capabilities despite having been around for many decades, and make few products of global standard or own a global brand.

While the world is now on the verge of the “fourth industrial revolution” comprising 5G, AI, robotics and further automation, autonomous vehicles, electric or hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, renewable energy storage and so on, India has been left staring at a future where we are no higher up the technological or value ladder than we used to be. With the Indian private sector not interested in R&D or developing indigenous capability, and the government hell-bent on destroying the public sector who could have undertaken the tasks, as the few remaining PSUs in atomic energy, space, defence are showing even today, the future is not looking bright for the country. Other countries eyeing the future are investing huge amounts of public funds in R&D in strategically identified sectors, without which this task is next to impossible since even large global corporations find it difficult to carry the load by themselves.

The S&T and Innovation Policy (STIP) shows no acknowledgement of this, and continues to shy away from large public investment in R&D, and imagines that private and foreign investment would somehow appear. NEP too shows no real awareness of the research, human resources and institutional structures of the future economy and related technologies, both in white and blue collar education and skill development. In the present governance structure and in the neo-liberal paradigm, there is also no room for planning as such, with Niti Aayog as well as private and MNC consultancies engaging essentially in guess-work or following ideological prescriptions. The education system has deteriorated to the extent that industrialists repeatedly lament a lack of suitably skilled and educated manpower as the second of industry’s major problems in India along with poor infrastructure.

Changing the Idea of India

Apart from the economic, technological and social aspects, the present Government is also dragging the country far away from the Constitutional values and the Idea of India, marked by unity in diversity, plurality of cultures, language and lifestyles, freedom and pluralism of opinion, and promotion of scientific temper.

The imposition of the ruling dispensation’s  own ideology and core political beliefs on the whole nation, and the complete intolerance towards dissent and plurality of opinion, including evidence-based disputation, has been another characteristic of the present phase, marking a sharp departure from Constitutional values and the Idea of India.

This Government, aided by Hindutva forces, has put majoritarian Hindutva and “cultural nationalism” at the forefront, undermining the secular state, pluralism and unity in diversity which holds this country together and which is admired the world over. Over the past seven-odd years, the nation has been torn apart by majoritarian, discriminatory and often violently pushed policies like the CAA-NPR-NRC, brutal lynchings and harassment of minority community citizens on the pretext of cow-slaughter, “love jihad,” or any other pretext. Traditional food habits of many communities in different parts of the country, from the North-East to Kerala, are under attack. Attempts are being made to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking States in myriad ways, insisting that constructed Vedic-Sanskritic past is the repository of all knowledge, the only true “history” and the only worthwhile tradition worthy of respect and being called Indian. All these ideas are given pride of place in the NEP.

Leading lights of the government and the ruling dispensation have repeatedly sought to impose their unsubstantiated views on ancient Vedic-Sanskritic science on a par with modern science, such as availability of the internet during the Mahabharata, advanced cosmetic surgery as evidenced by Lord Ganesha’s elephant head fitting seamlessly on a human body etc. All critics of such views, and those who defend evidence-based reasoning and scientific temper, are attacked as westernized and anti-national. The Constitutional ideals of unity of diversity and respect for all religions and cultures in this vast country are sought to be drowned under a single monolithic majoritarian “Hindu-Hindi” culture. In parallel, the federated system of governance by States and the Union is being trampled under a new unitary structure, contrary to the Constitutional system and subsumed under numerous centralizing schemes such as “One Nation, one everything.”

Pluralism of opinion has been repeatedly attacked by the present dispensation in different ways and context. Universities such as in Hyderabad, JNU, IITs in Chennai and Mumbai have been under constant attack, including through organized physical assaults, including for hosting lectures on topics disliked by the ruling dispensation or encouraging critical thinking. Books, plays, poems and films have been attacked. Champions of scientific temper and critical thought such as Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M.Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh were murdered allegedly by Hindutvavadi forces. All these are attacks not just on specific issues, but on pluralism of opinion and critical thinking itself. This is crucial, not just for the Peoples Science Movement but for scientific temper itself. Science and creative thinking cannot flourish without pluralism of opinion and freedom of expression, or in an atmosphere of blind subservience to authority.

The present dispensation consciously and deliberately refuses to follow evidence-based reasoning and governance. Instead, evidence is manipulated or manufactured to suit its own pre-conceived decisions, as revealed by withdrawal of governmental reports showing contrary data and hence conclusions, pressures on premiere autonomous research institutions to tailor data to suit government narratives.

This was clearly in evidence during the Covid-19 pandemic when even the opinions of leading scientists in government-appointment committees were repeatedly ignored. Numerous international scholars, human rights organizations and activists, have faced censorship, refusal of permission to enter or do research in India, with government attempting to require academic institutions to seek permission before organizing even virtual webinars! The present dispensation’s policy of communal and other polarizations raises paramount questions about the nation’s future. If a country is divided within itself, how can it work with a common zeal for the common good? If a country has no friends and a poor reputation internationally, with no soft power, how can it play a major leave alone leading role in the comity of nations and advance the interests of its citizens? If a country does everything it can to stifle critical thinking, how can its youth lead the country in the knowledge era?

India desperately needs to restore its post-independence identity as a forward looking country, building its autonomous self-reliant knowledge especially in science and technology for the global economy of tomorrow, promote its major public sector industries to achieve these goals along with those private entities with a commitment and dedication to achieve self-reliance in India. India desperately needs to re-establish Constitutional values of unity of diversity so that all States, cultures and people of all religions can move forward determinedly each in their own unique way. India needs to take forward its values of plurality, freedom of expression, autonomy of governance institutions, strong anti-discrimination laws, and a planned and well-regulated economy keeping in mind socio-economic equity, environmental sustainability, protection of historically underprivileged populations and demands of the future global economy and technological ecosystem. None of this can happen without a robust public education system and effective primary health care system. Employment and livelihoods need to be ensured for the masses along with appropriate safety nets. Together these call for systematic planning and a welfare state.

For the present dispensation, it seems GDP growth and the “ease of doing business” are far more important that raising the living standards and promoting livelihoods of the mass of people. The present Government’s fascination with high-cost, grandiose infrastructure and constructions projects while ignoring the travails of the poor is accelerating. Cases in point are the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train, the Sardar Patel statue, the Central Vista and related projects in the national capital, Varanasi “beautification” projects even as the Ganga continues being filthy, the Sabarmati waterfront and, recently, the gaudy and incongruous Jalianwalabagh Memorial. An even more jazzed-up and unseemly Rs.1250 crores Memorial complex at Gandhi’s simple cottage structures in the Sabarmati Ashram. The long-standing goal of the Republic to establish a welfare state has been thrown to the winds in the most openly elitist and pro-business government since Independence.

Above all, no country can progress if its people are divided against each other. The British colonialists perpetuated their rule over the Indian sub-continent through their conscious policy of divide and rule, ultimately leading to partition of the country along religious lines. It was the strength of the independence movement that it brought together all religious, cultural, ethnic, linguistic and caste groupings together under a common umbrella to achieve the common goals of independence, progress and welfare of all, unity in diversity, equality before the law, freedom of expression and acceptance of pluralism and critical thinking. No country can progress if its people are divided against each other. 75 years after Independence, can we allow ourselves to be divided again?

The future beckons India, especially its youth. To achieve its due, India needs to re-generate, re-imagine and take forward the values and aspirations of its freedom movement in the contemporary context and learning from all the missteps, failures and missed opportunities over the years.

The Peoples Science Movement will take this message to the people during the year through grassroots dialogues and other mass contact programmes.

 

Take immediate steps to expedite P. G Medical allotment process

click here OR here for pdf of  the press release 

Press Release 9 Dec 2021

 

AIPSN Statement

 

Take immediate steps to expedite P. G Medical allotment process

                                                                                                                     .

The Postgraduate admission to various medical colleges all over India is being delayed due to dispute over the Economically Weaker Section reservation policy in NEET PG counselling. It is already late by one whole year. Currently the case is in Supreme Court. During last session, considering Union Government’s request, court had postponed the case to January 2022. Due to these issues newly graduating doctors are unable to join hospitals where as PG students they would be serving as resident doctors and involved in service provision. As a result existing doctors in medical colleges and other hospitals are forced to work for 24 hours a day. Hospitals and medical colleges in our country are facing severe staff shortages and this delay in admission process keeps worsening the situation further. Physically and mentally exhausted resident doctors all over the India are now boycotting all non emergency services as part of a strike against the Union Government’s delay in admission procedures.

In India due to a lack of comprehensive primary and secondary health care, the majority of our population relies on medical colleges for a wide variety of public health services. It is the common people of the country who are largely affected by the current situation. Inpatient and outpatient treatments, Covid and non-Covid treatment all are now in a crisis due to the staff shortage. This situation will become catastrophic if newly reported corona strains start to spread.

The current crisis in NEET illustrates how excessive centralization can lead to a nation-wide crisis in many critical areas. Having created this problem the centre has to be more pro-active in solving it. Though for this year it needs to go ahead with an interim arrangement by which admissions would continue, this whole crisis is also a call for re-examining NEET and all such forms of excessive centralization.

Without going into the merits or otherwise of NEET itself, All India Peoples Science Network demands the Government of India to speed up the NEET Medical PG Counselling for those who have taken the exams in good faith; and considering the great threat this delay poses to public health; and for strengthening the public health services to be able to fight another possible  wave of the Covid pandemic.

 

For clarifications contact:

 P.Rajamanickam, General Secretary, AIPSN

gsaipsn@gmail.com, +91 9442915101 @gsaipsn

V.R. Raman, Convenor, Health Desk, AIPSN

weareraman@phrnindia.org, +91 97171 07878

 

 

Lesson for Right To Health agenda : Learning From TamilNadu’s response to Covid19 pandemic

Click here if you want to browse the book  online like a flipbook

 

Click here to get the EPW article based on this work

 

Read the Tamil version of the EPW article

 

Click here to download the pdf in English of Learning-from-TamilNadu 

 

Read the Executive Summary in Tamil

 

Cover of book

Details of authors, publishers

WHO refusal of Emergency Use Approval for Covaxin

click here to read pdf of AIPSN Statement of 29 Sept 2021

click here to read the Press Release of the AIPSN Statement

WHO refusal of Emergency Use Approval for Covaxin

          All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) notes with sorrow and grave concern that the World Health Organization (WHO) has not granted Emergency Use Listing (EUL) for ICMR-Bharat Biotech’s (BB) Covaxin vaccine, but has asked BB for more technical details. This is a serious setback for Covaxin and for India’s vaccination programme in the country, and a blow to India’s plans to distribute vaccines to other countries. Many Indians traveling abroad, especially students, who took Covaxin, are already finding it difficult to obtain visas or entry into other countries which generally recognize only WHO-approved vaccines. This sorry state of affairs will continue as long as there is no public accountability, transparency along with scientific rigour.

Covaxin will also once again face vaccine hesitancy in India as it did during the earlier controversial approvals process. AIPSN had earlier urged the public disclosure of trial data and now mourns the serious damage done to the reputation of India by this flawed application to WHO regulators, which has also besmirched the standing of Indian science and regulatory systems, which will now come under heightened international scrutiny and suspicion.

Unfortunately, this was entirely foreseeable. BB has played ducks-and-drakes with regard to transparency of clinical trials data and respect for regulatory processes and institutions. In December 2020/January 2021, BB applied to the Indian regulator, DCGI for EUA with grossly inadequate data from clinical trials inviting rejection, followed by behind-the-scenes arm-twisting by the Union Government resulting in grant of EUA. More detailed results of Phase-3 clinical trials were then released by BB in installments, interim results two months later and complete trial data in June 2021. Despite much criticism from scientists and others in India, including by AIPSN, BB has regrettably not published these results in a peer-reviewed journal even to date, but has only posted a pre-publication paper. BB could get away with all this because of the open backing of the Union Government which echoed all excuses and justifications put forward by BB, such as saying in June 2021 that BB would publish results in a few weeks, and even recently announced that it was expecting WHO approval soon.  Criticism of this chain of events, and calls for greater transparency on clinical trial data by BB and also by its governmental partner ICMR, in the interests of Indian science and its international reputation, were attacked by the Government as anti-national and undermining the prestige of India and its scientists. The chickens have come home to roost with WHO’s refusal of EUL for Covaxin.

Compounding these errors of judgment by the Government and by DCGI bending to its will, India looks set to repeat these blunders in the approvals process for Zydus Cadilla’s ZyCov-D 3-dose Covid vaccine for those 12 years or older. Zydus had applied for EUA on 1st July 2021 based on interim data and obtained it on 20th August. However, this interim data has not been made public or published anywhere, even in pre-print form, raising the same concerns and criticisms as with Covaxin. Covaxin was one of the first Covid vaccines developed by a middle-income, and would have indeed boosted India’s prestige if it had obtained approvals in India and abroad with transparent and published peer-reviewed data. ZyCov-D too would similarly have enhanced India’s image as the only one of just 11 DNA-based vaccine candidates worldwide. Regrettably, the powers that be seem to have decided to follow a non-transparent government-ordered vaccine approval process that achieves precisely the opposite. As is said history repeats itself “First as tragedy and second time as farce”.

All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) urges the Government of India, its concerned ministries, departments, institutions and authorities of the need to adhere to scientific standards for conduct and analysis of clinical trial results, publication of results as peer-reviewed articles and complete transparency. Regulatory agencies should also assert their independence from both government and corporate interests, and make judgments based on scientific analysis. Vaccine producers must build transparency in this regard, while fulfilling their responsibilities and accountability. We need to ensure that urgent approval of vaccines, publication of clinical trial data and the safety and efficacy of the vaccine all receive equal and due importance.

 

For clarifications contact:

P.Rajamanickam, General Secretary, AIPSN

gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9442915101 @gsaipsn

Urgently Expand Public and Private Sector Production along with related R&D to meet India’s Vaccine Requirements: AIPSN Statement endorsed by Scientists, Academics, Doctors

All India Peoples’ Science network (AIPSN)

27 May 2021

 click here to see the pdf with endorsements received till 31May 

click here to see the letters in EPW Vol. 56, Issue No. 23, 05 Jun, 2021 carrying the endorsement

Urgently Expand Public and Private Sector Production along with related R&D

to meet India’s Vaccine Requirements

 Need for New Strategies

With the present Indian population of over 130 crores, the number of vaccines required to immunise the entire population would be about 310 crore doses (3.1 billion doses)  or 218.5 crore doses for the 18+ adult population, allowing about 15% process losses. This is not an easy task.  However,  the Indian people need to know why India, a pioneer in large-scale vaccine production even before the current pandemic and a major exporter of vaccines, has to rely on just two private domestic manufacturers, Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech, to produce Covid-19 vaccines, a constraint that is painfully obvious today.

India, now, has a number of public and private sector units that can make a contribution to the expansion of local production of vaccines. Presently two vaccines namely COVISHIELD of Serum Research Institute (SII), Pune and COVAXIN of Bharat Biotech (BB), Hyderabad are available for supply in India. Technology for COVAXIN is fully home grown, through collaboration between BB and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), a public sector R&D institute under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), itself an agency of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The central government is therefore entitled to make use of march-in-rights available to supporting government entities, as tacitly accepted by BB in extending technology transfer to 3 public-sector vaccine Units.

Up to the 2000s, 80% of India’s vaccines for the Universal Immunization Programme were sourced from the public sector. Today, 90% are sourced from the private sector, that too at a higher cost. Brazil, Cuba and China are using public sector companies and institutes to undertake integrated R&D and production operations to vaccinate their populations and export to developing countries to meet their requirements. In contrast, India has neglected its public sector units. India has a large number of a few decades old facilities as well as new facilities equipped with appropriate modern infrastructure. The central and state governments should be making full use of all these facilities to expand local production of COVID vaccines.  Presently India has eleven public sector units. Some are almost ready to go into production. The government has taken some initial steps in the direction of using a few selected units. Integrated Vaccine Complex at Chengalpattu, whose construction was completed as recently as 2016, needs just one hundred crores and some handholding to start the domestic production of COVID vaccines.

There are a number of private sector units which can also contribute to the domestic production of COVID vaccines, , such as Biological E.,  Hyderabad, Panacea Biotech,  Solan etc. In addition to vaccine manufacturing companies, there are also companies that manufacture biologics that have the capacity to be repurposed for manufacture of vaccines. Already, Dr. Reddy’s Lab and at least five biologics have teamed up with Russia to procure the Sputnik-V Vaccines in the country. In all, there are close to thirty units which can be involved in the production of COVID vaccines. Such expanded manufacture in India would enable meeting domestic requirements as well as international obligations to which India, in particular SII, is committed having also accepted advance payments. Procurement of already approved vaccines from abroad by private sector units is also an option.

While the private sector is itself getting ample albeit highly belated funding from the government, the public sector is still not getting requisite support. Only recently some relatively small government grants have been given for manufacture of Covaxin under license to state owned companies such as Indian Immunologicals Ltd. Hyderabad, Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation Ltd, Bulandhshahar, to and Haffkine Institute, a Maharashtra state PSU as called for by its Chief Minister. SII cannot by itself transfer technologies since it is itself making Covishield under license from AstraZeneca, it can certainly be nudged to sub-contract work to other Units. Both SII and Bharat Biotech could be appropriately persuaded to handhold these other units as one way of paying back their own long-standing obligations to the public sector and the Indian state.

Specific suggestions for the government to announce a policy to urgently ramp up domestic production of vaccines and improve related R&D are as follows:

  1. The existing public sector undertakings and state owned enterprises be revived and assisted to ramp up vaccine production.
  2. The use of the Integrated Vaccine Complex at Chengalpattu be handed over to TamilNadu Government with clear provisions allowing the state governments, public sector undertakings and state owned enterprises for contractual manufacturing of Covid vaccines using the facility.
  3. Compulsory licenses or appropriate legislation be issued where required to enable interested parties for production of COVID 19 vaccines.
  4. The conventionally used march-in-rights available to the Govt of India/ICMR be used to ensure technology transfer and handholding by Bharat Biotech to PSUs, SOEs and other Units to enable them produce vaccines for domestic use.
  5. Indian companies that are planning to manufacture Sputnik V be assisted, as required, for scaling up.
  6. SII, AstraZeneca and Novavax be persuaded to expand manufacturing in India through joint ventures or other collaborations with suitable public and private sector entities both for domestic use and export especially for the Covax facility.
  7. Research on new vaccine development strategies and development of multiple vaccines be enabled and encouraged across research laboratories, public sector and private sector institutions. Genomic surveillance be increased appreciably and linked to viral efficacy and epidemiological studies, so that vaccines are constantly checked for efficacy against variants of concern enabling collaborative modification across manufacturers, as required, especially in view of emerging variants and for different demographics such as children.

We the following scientists, academicians, doctors endorse the above statement:

(endorsements received till 31 May 2021)

1         Gagandeep Kang Professor
2         Shahid Jameel Director, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University
3         T. Sundararaman Global Coordinator, Peoples Health Movement
4         Satyajit Rath Visiting Faculty, IISER Pune
5         Vineeta Bal Staff Scientist (Retired), National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi
6         T R Govindarajan Professor (Retd) IMSc
7         Tejinder Pal Singh Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
8         LS Shashidhara Professor
9         Gautam Menon Professor,  Ashoka University
10     Madan Rao Professor, NCBS, Bangalore
11     Partha Majumder National Science Chair, Natl Inst of Biomedical Genomics
12     Sorab Dalal Academic
13     John Kurien Azim Premji University
14     Sheena Jain Former Pofessor Jamia Millia University
15     R Ramanujam Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
16     Ram Ramaswamy Visiting Professor, IIT Delhi
17     Imrana Qadeer retired Professor (Public Health)
18     G Rajasekaran Professor Emeritus
19     N. Mani Professor and Head Department of Economics Erode Arts and Science College Erode Tamil Nadu
20     D.Raghunandan Delhi Science Forum
21     Ponniah Rajamanickam Rtd. Associate Professor & AIPSN
22     B.Parthasarathy General Secretary– All India Federation of Retired University and College Teachers’ Organisations
23     Y. Srinivas Rao Associate professor
24     A.P.Balachandran Syracuse University
25     H. Shakila Professor and Head
26     TS Ganesan Professor Medical Oncology
27     Mundur V N Murthy Professor (Retd), The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
28     R Shankar Honorary Professor, IMSc
29     Usha Ramakrishnan Retired professor, ex MKU
30     Reeteka Sud NIMHANS
31     Ramesh Singh Sheoran Convenor, Gurgaon water forum
32     Surinder Kumar Professor
33     Dhruv Raina JNU
34     Kesab Bhattacharya Professor
35     Rakesh Prasad Founder BallotboxIndia.com, Director Gnovations Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
36     Thirunavukkarasu Asst.professor of microbiology
37     Surendra Ghaskadbi Biologist
38     G Velmurugan Scientist, KMCH Research Foundation, Coimbatore
39     Saumyen Guha Professor, IIT Kanpur
40     RAMAN KUMAR RANA Biochemist
41     Ramasundaram.S Associate Prof, Unit Secretary, Tamil Nadu Science Forum, Madurai
42     Chitra.N Associate Professor of Microbiology
43     V. Makeshkumar Technical Lead – Regulatory Affairs, Engineering Research and Development (R & D) Services
44     Prabir Purkayastha President, Free Software Movement
45     K K Natarajan Retired Professor
46     S. Krishnaswamy Retd Senior Professor, ex Madurai Kamaraj University
47     K V Subrahmanyam Professor, Chennai Mathematical Institute
48     R Geeta Retired from University of Delhi
49     GK Marita Professor in Physiology ,GSL Medical College Rajahmundry Andhra
50     Sadasivam, K Associate Professor
51     Sitabhra Sinha Professor, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
52     Venkatesh Raman Professor, IMSc Chennai
53     Dev Desai ANHAD
54     Soma Marla Principal scientist, Genomics division ICAR NBPGR New Delhi
55     V.RAVI Associate professor, government arts college for men, krishnagiri
56     K.Durga Principal Scientist,  Genetics, ICAR IARI, New Delhi
57     S.R. Venkateswaran Orthopedic surgeon
58     Ranbir singh dahiya President haryana gyan vigyan samiti haryana
59     Sellan M Associate professor
60     Senthamil selvan state Ec member, Tamil nadu Science Forum
61     Kanagarajan Vice-president
62     R. Vivekaanandhan Professor (rtd.)
63     D. Narasimhan Associate Professor (Retd.)
64     R. Kavitha Assistant professor & Head
65     SHANMUGAM N Assistant Professor
66     R chandran Principal
67     G.Suresh kumar Associate Professor and MUTA
68     Shanmugam Veeramani  Assistant professor
69     Ravisankar Retired professor of Buisiness Administration
70     J.Kalyana sundari Retired deputy director of agriculture
71     Rajendra Prasad Former Advisor & Head, International Scientific Affairs, CSIR, New Delhi
72     S.Saraniya Medical doctor
73     Sunita Sheel Bandewar Exe Director, Health, Ethics and Law Institute of FMES
74     Ashok Pandey Public Health Research Society Nepal
75     S.Chatterjee Scientist (Retd) , Formerly, Indian Institute of Astrophysics
76     Aurnab Ghose Academic
77     SUJOY CHAKRABORTY Senior Science Journalist. ABP Digital Media
78     Ravinder Banyal Scientist
79     Amit Kumar Mandal Assistant Professor, Raiganj University
80     Chandan K Sen Distinguished Professor & Director
81     Prabir KC Independent Health Consultant
82     R.Chandramohan RETD Principal
83     Sudha N Independent Researcher & Activist
84     Arup Kumar Chattopadhyay Professor of Economics, University of Burdwan
85     Mahalaya Chatterjee Professor, Calcutta University
86     Aniruddha Pramanik Professor, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya
87     Sedhu Bharath. S Dentist
88     Birat Raja padhan Pruthibi science club
89     Amit Misra Chief Scientist, CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute
90     S Janakarajan Professor
91     Samuel Asir Raj Professor, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli
92     Hasham Shafi Senior Research Fellow, CSIR-central drug research institute
93     Rajiv Gupta Former professor of Sociology University of Rajasthan Jaipur
94     Jayashree Ramadas Professor (retired)
95     Reena Bharti CSIR-SRF
96     G C Manoharan Retired Professor
97     Venkat Nadella PostDoc Policy Research Fellow, Indian Institute of Science
98     Moumita Koley Policy post doctoral fellow
99     Ashok Jain Former CSIR NISTADS
100 Debjani Sengupta Retd. Professor
101 Ahmar Raza Retired Scientist
102 Ramesh Chander Retired Principal / District Secretary , Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Hisar , Haryana
103 S.Ramaswamy Retired Professor
104 Suresh Teaching  Assistant
105 Kamala menon Delhi science forum   Secretary
106 Archana Prasad Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
107 Asha Saxena Ahmad Eye Specialist
108 C P Geevan Independent Researcher
109 Dr K J Joseph Director GIFT
110 Rony Thomas Rajan Assistant professor
111 Mohanakumar Professor
112 S. Akshay Faculty, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
113 Sedhu bharath. S Dentist
114 Jins Varkey Assistant Professor
115 Visweswaran Retd.Banker
116 Indranil OP Jindal Global University
117 Sundarbabu Retired Professor
118 K J Joy Senior Fellow, SOPPECOM
119 PrasadA Rao Chairman SARASIJAM Technologies
120 Drraj Singhal Chief Technical officer
121 Rao Gummadi IT Security Audit
122 Biju IK Member, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishath
123 Sanat Phatak KEM hospital research centre
124 Harsha Merchant Member ISSA
125 Sulakshana Nandi Public Health Resource Network Chhattisgarh
126 Tapan Saha Retired Senior Scientist, IESEM and Treasurer, Bangiya Bijnan Parishad
127 Prabhakar Jayaprakash Doctoral Scholar
128 M. Siddhartha Muthu Vijayan Scientist
129 Navjyoti Chakraborty Research Scientist, GGS Indrprastha University
130 Amitabh Joshi Professor, JNCASR, Bengaluru
131 D.Narasimha Reddy Professor of Economics(rtd),University of Hyderabad
132 Saroj Ghaskadbi Emeritus Professor, SPPU, Pune
133 Om Damani Professor, IIT Bombay
134 Bijoya Roy Public Health Researcher
135 R Suresh Babu General Manager, QC Zydus Cadila
136 B. Sathesh Senior Manager -Viral Vaccine HLL BIOTECH LTD
137 Srikanth Sastry JNCASR
138 Bala Sathiapalan IMSc
139 Kunhi Kannan Kssp
140 jyotsna jha director, centre for budget and policy studies
141 Brahmavidhya Medical Doctor DM
142 Sharath Ananthamurthy Professor, School of Physics, University of Hyderabad
143 Aparna Basu Independent Researcher
144 Pradip Kumar Mahapatra Associate Professor, Jadavpur University & General Secretary, Paschimbanga Vigyan Mancha
145 Pramode Ranjan Nandi Professor of Veterinary Gynaecology & Obstetrics
146 Sridhar Gutam Senior Scientist, ICAR-IIHR
147 Vivek Monteiro Secretary, CITU Maharashtra
148 Sudha Rao Genotypic Technology
149 Prajval Shastri astrophysicist and AIPSN
150 Ajit M. Srivastava Professor, Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar
151 Subimal Sen Ex Professor, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata
152 R.Priyanka Researcher
153 Kunta Biswas Doctor
154 Bhabani Sankar Joardar Professor
155 Debesh Kumar Das Professor
156 Indira C Public Health Researcher
157 Tarun Kumar Mandal Ex Principal
158 Prasanna Chebbi ISRC
159 Anna George Scientist (retired)
160 Malini Aisola Public health professional
161 Parthib Basu Professor, University of Calcutta
162 Rajinder Chaudhary Former Professor, MDU, Rohtak
163 Bittu K R Associate Professor of Biology and Psychology, Ashoka University
164 Maitri Bose (Biswas) Paschimbanga Vigyan Manchà
165 Rati Rao E. Scientist Rtd
166 Soham Jagtap Researcher, NIMHANS
167 Sweta Dash Researcher
168 Pradeep Shinde  Assistant Professor, CIS&LS, JNU
169 Chandan Dasgupta Honorary Professor, Indian Institute of Science
170 Annapoorna Sharma Consultant paediatrician. FRCPCH
171 Gayatri Saberwal Professor and Dean (Academic Affairs)
172 Richa Chintan Jan Swasthya Abhiyan
173 Dinesh Abrol Professor TRCSS, JNU
174 Ashok Rao  Delhi Science Forum
175 Prabir Ghosh Academic, JNU,Delhi
176 Gauhar Mehmood Professor JMI
177 P S Rajasekharan KSSP
178 dr.geyanand ex.M.L.C, JVV
179 Anshuman Das Independent Researcher Kolkatta
180 Vandana Prasad Independent Researcher Delhi
181 Biswajit Dhar Professor CESP, JNU Delhi
182 Sambit Mallik Academic IIT, Guwahati
183 Surinder Kumar Reired Professor,Rohtak
184 Rahul Independent Researcher Bhopal
185 Pritpal Randhawa Academic JNU, Delhi
186 Ravindran KSSP
187 Dharmendra Mishra  Industrial Researcher, Gurgaon
188 Savyasachi Academic, JMI Delhi
189 Biswajit Dhar Professor CESP, JNU Delhi
190 Satish Kalra Retired Professor, Hisar
191 K. N. Chatterjee General Secretary, BGVS, Dhanbad
192 O. P. Bhuratia JS AIPSN, Shimla
193 Parminder Independent Researcher, Delhi
194 Kunal Sinha Academic, CU Gandhinagar
195 C.Vishnumohan Academic, Delhi
196 Mira Shiva Public health Researcher
197 Pravin Jha  Professor CESP, JNU
198 Avinash Associate Professor, CIS&LS, JNU
199 N Raghuram  Professor
200 N.D. Jaiprakash Delhi Science Forum
201 Gauhar Raza Retired Chief Scientist, CSIR-NISCAIR
202 Madhu Prasad Retired Professor, Delhi University
203 P V S Kumar Retired Chief Scientist, CSIR-NISCAIR
204 Tejal Kanitkar NIAS, Bengaluru
205 A N Basu Ex Vice-Chancellor, Jadavpur University
206 Siddhartha Datta Ex Pro-Vice Chancellor, Jadavpur University
207 V. Parameswaran Nair Distinguished Professor, City University of New York
208 G V Raju Principal
209 Parameswaran Ajith ICTS-TIFR
210 Naresh Dadhich Former Director and Professor Emeritus, IUCAA
211 Biswajit Chakraborty Senior Professor, S.N.Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata
212 Joseph Samuel ICTS, Blore
213 Sarin S M Associate Professor, Dept of Medicine, GMC Kannur
214 Sanjiva Prasad Professor, IIT Delhi

 

Government unmasked: Abdicates vaccination responsibility

 click here for Statement On Government’s Phase-3 Vaccine Strategy 

                                                                     21 Apr 2021           

 Government unmasked: Abdicates vaccination responsibility

click here to see the press Statement

After a Meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, the Central Government announced on 19 April 2021 a “liberalized and accelerated” strategy for Phase-3 of India’s vaccination drive against the Covid-19 disease to take effect from 1 May 2021. On the face of it, the new strategy appears to meet demands of several stakeholders viz, for opening up the vaccination drive to all above the age of 18, to permit private institutions and State governments to directly acquire 50% of total vaccine production from manufacturers at unregulated prices set by the latter, grant State governments the liberty to tailor vaccination roll-out as per local needs, and provide additional finances to the two Indian Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers for scaling up production. Government has claimed that the new strategy aims to ensure that “maximum numbers of Indians are able to get the vaccine in the shortest possible of time: PM (sic).”

AIPSN welcomes the financial assistance, even though belated, extended to Serum Institute of India (SII) (Rs.3, 000 Crores) and Bharat Biotech (BB) (Rs.1500 Crores) against future supplies, to enable them to scale-up production. This measure should have been taken at the very start of the vaccination drive instead of the meager advance then given against limited orders, which would have significantly reduced the time that will now be required to make available greater volumes of vaccine. Regrettably, adequate financial support for the several PSU vaccine manufacturers presently lying idle due to ideological bias of the Government was not announced simultaneously.  This blinkered view had also led to the PSUs not even being called for discussions or consultations or being involved in non-vaccine related activities that are needed for the Covid-19 pandemic management. Now after the second wave disaster the Government wakes up to call up upon PSUs to make oxygen cylinders, bed manufacturing etc. What prevented the Government from involving the PSUs last year itself to ensure sufficient vaccine and non-vaccine materials are available when needed?

All other aspects of the new strategy, however, are highly counter-productive. By surrendering 50% of vaccine availability to the open market including for procurement by States and private hospitals, the Central government has at one stroke abdicated its responsibility for the vaccination drive and will henceforth freely blame States for any inadequacies. The strategy will pit States against each other in dog-eat-dog competition. A similar policy at early stages of the pandemic in early 2020 regarding procurement of test kits and PPEs failed miserably, forcing the Centre to centralize procurement. Only Central procurement and distribution can ensure reasonably equitable access by all States.

Opening up vaccine procurement and administration to private health facilities, corporates and other institutions at market prices will encourage price gouging and a black market in vaccine doses. It will also adversely impact the on-going vaccination programme which will henceforth have only 50% of the earlier vaccine supply, and with only government hospitals continuing free vaccinations with the empanelled private hospitals compelled to buy vaccines at market prices which will result in higher vaccination charges impacting the middle classes. This dual system can be expected to open the doors to all kinds of manipulation, favoritism and malpractices.

Privatizing 50% of vaccinations will also undoubtedly exacerbate inequities in vaccinations, in favor of urban, rich and well-connected sections of society.

No other major country, including the most market friendly nations, has adopted a vaccination strategy of this kind, precisely for the reasons enumerated here.

Even the seemingly welcome strategy of expanding the eligibility criteria to everyone above 18 years of age, without first increasing vaccine supply, may prove to be problematic in practice, at a time when there is acute vaccine shortage even for the currently eligible and more vulnerable 45+ population. Increased demand without matching supply will only increase problems in the inoculation drive which may in turn fuel vaccine hesitancy. The assertion in the new policy that enlarging the eligible population because “a good amount of coverage of vulnerable groups is expected by 30th April,” is belied by the facts.

The new strategy is not a win-win solution as propagated. Corporates, private health care institutions and the well-off will win, while the poor and the middle class will lose big time. 

AIPSN calls for rolling back of this new strategy and for a recalibrated fully public funded and universal vaccination programme, backed by adequate government support for vaccine manufacturers including PSUs.

 

 

For clarifications contact:

D.Raghunandan 9810098621; T. Sundararaman 9987438253; S.Krishnaswamy 9442158638

P.Rajamanickam, General Secretary, AIPSN gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9442915101 @gsaipsn

 

 

Statement On Second Wave of Covid-19 Pandemic in India

click here for All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) Statement (English)

click here to read the AIPSN Statement in Hindi

Click here for the statement in Odia

On Second Wave of Covid-19 Pandemic in India

14 Apr 2021

click here to read the Position paper (English) on which this statement is based. 

click here for the Position paper (Hindi) 

click here for the signed AIPSN Statement

This AIPSN Statement is based on the position paper on the Second Wave of Covid-19 Pandemic in India. India is well and truly into a brutal second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

            Accept responsibility; don’t blame the people and States  : A belated high-level meeting at the PMO blamed the people and the States for this crisis. This serves only to enable the Centre to evade responsibility for the present situation and give itself an excuse for future inaction or failure. Learning from the first wave, it is important that measures are taken through a partnership between the Centre and States, with the Centre providing evidence-based guidelines and financial as well as other assistance, with the Centre not making efforts to shift blame to States while withholding essential supplies and co-operation on many fronts. Additional epidemiological data and further analysis is required to arrive at any firm conclusions as to reasons behind this second wave, and precautions required to be taken in the future.

            Understand role of variants, expand gene sequencing: There is considerable discussion, albeit so far without adequate evidence or data, that Sars Cov2 virus variants which may be more infectious, or deadlier, or even provide a “vaccine escape,” are responsible for the second wave. Limited gene sequencing so far has thrown up concerning data regarding possible extensive presence of the UK variant (B.1.117) and the Indian double-variant lineage (B.1.617). However, insufficient information is available to draw any firm conclusions about the impact of these variants. Significantly expanded gene sequencing across the country, and correlating findings with epidemiological data, is necessary to obtain a better understanding of the dangers posed and to work out containment and mitigation strategies addressing these variants.

            Increase testing, tracing and surveillance:  India needs to vigorously test, trace, isolate and treat infected persons, besides putting in place decentralized, locally relevant and evidence-based surveillance and containment strategies. Testing needs to be ramped up significantly with emphasis on RT-PCR tests so as to uncover infections more quickly. Contact tracing was the weakest aspect of the response by governments at the Centre and most States during the first wave, with the Aarogya Setu App proving to be ineffective, and badly needs to be strengthened now. Decentralized evidence-based approaches with community participation would be most effective.

            Address Vaccine shortage & Equity: There is a seriously mistaken tendency among authorities, and also some commentators, to look to vaccines as a silver bullet to tackle the pandemic and bring this second wave to an end. India’s vaccinations per capita rank well below the global average. Many States are also complaining of shortages in vaccine supply from the Centre. There is much information available, albeit scattered and mostly anecdotal at present that a class divide is emerging in India’s vaccination drive, in cities as well as in many rural areas in the country. These deficiencies need to be urgently rectified by taking the vaccines to eligible populations at community level and conducting widespread communication campaigns on the vaccination drive. Continuing vaccine hesitancy also needs to be overcome.

            Scale-up Vaccine production and availability:  Total production by Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech, while high by the former is below even current vaccination rates, leave alone an expanded vaccination drive. Therefore the Government needs to urgently take steps to boost manufacturing capacity. At the same time, the Government should also take several other steps to ramp up availability of other vaccines. The Russian Sputnik-V vaccine has finally been given emergency use approval by DCGI. Sputnik-V is not prohibitively expensive, can be stored in ordinary refrigerators in powder form, and can therefore form an important part of India’s vaccination programme. The Government has now decided to also invite other vaccines approved by WHO and by regulators in the US, Europe and Japan to apply for approval in India. Care should be taken to ensure that modalities of import, pricing and distribution are designed in such a manner as to not accentuate the present class divide in vaccine access, and that a dual-access scenario does not emerge where the well-off have ready access to a wide variety of vaccines through private facilities by virtue of their ability to pay higher prices, while the poor struggle to access vaccines due to lack of paying ability and poor access to information. Both SII and Bharat Biotech have requested financial support from the Government to enable additional manufacturing capacities. These funds should be urgently provided so as to augment indigenous production, which may take another few months to fructify.

            Address Licensing/ IP issues: Covaxin vaccine was developed by the National Institute of Virology in Pune, a laboratory under the Indian Council of Medical Research, and the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech put it into production.  The Government must take the initiative to work out arrangements for licensing other Indian manufacturers to produce Covaxin so as to augment total supply of this vaccine. Established public sector enterprises such as the Haffkine Bio-Pharmaceutical Corporation Limited, Maharashtra should also be included in this endeavor, putting aside the blind ideological opposition of the ruling dispensation to PSUs. There is no compulsion to allow Bharat Biotech to retain a monopoly over the know-how for this vaccine, especially during this dangerous second wave of the pandemic, just as India had joined South Africa to demand that vaccine developers and manufacturers in the developed countries give up their monopoly rights.

            Oppose misguided vaccine nationalism: There is a wholly misconceived campaign being mounted, including by some political parties and sections of the media, that India should stop commercial and aid-based exports of vaccines so as to prioritize domestic needs. Even before this, the Government had imposed some restrictions on exports potentially undoing the goodwill earned earlier by free supply of vaccine to friendly developing countries and by its substantial contribution to the international Covax facility to supply vaccines to lower income countries. It should also be noted that India has received back around one-third of its supplies to Covax, since India too is a beneficiary country, and largest recipient, under Covax!

China and India are amongst the few countries that are working to assist the global vaccination effort especially in developing and low-income countries, and it would be cruel and immoral to weaken or close down this endeavor in an extremely selfish display of vaccine nationalism, and that too for very little benefit. This is a record to be proud of, not condemned.

It should also be noted that it is precisely this kind of vaccine nationalism and related crass commercialism practiced by the US which is one of the major factors preventing SII, Biological-E (licensed to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in India) and other vaccine manufacturers in India to scale up production. These manufacturers depend on various raw materials and intermediates such as specialized bags, filters, cell culture media, single-use tubing and special chemicals from the US, which has imposed an export ban on all vaccine-related materials under its Defence Production Act. If India were to similarly restrict exports, it would have no moral authority to demand opening up of exports by the US or others. It is unfortunate that despite this good track record of assisting the global vaccination effort, India has not pushed back on high-income countries such as in the US and in EU countries who have hoarded vaccines at the cost of other especially poorer countries.

 

For clarifications contact:

D.Raghunandan 9810098621; T. Sundararaman 9987438253; S.Krishnaswamy 9442158638

P.Rajamanickam, General Secretary, AIPSN gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9442915101 @gsaipsn