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      Big Pharma’s Big Free Lunch

      by

      A vast majority of the planet’s population had every reason to welcome the Biden administration’s belated backing of a proposed patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines. To anyone not invested in the pharmaceutical industry or not named Bill Gates, it was a no-brainer. Economist David Adler and Dr. Mamka Anyona, writing for The Guardian, convincingly argue that “the system of pharmaceutical patents is a killing machine.”

      The good news coming from the White House predictably triggered bad news on Wall Street. CNBC reported that within hours, share prices of major vaccine producing pharmaceutical companies “including Moderna, BioNTech and Pfizer, dropped sharply.” The alarm may have been exaggerated. “Johnson & Johnson shed a modest 0.4%,” and closed higher at the end of the week. Pfizer and the others had also gained ground by Friday.

      It’s Time to Invest in Curiosity

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      The brief Wall Street plummet was enough to provoke the ire of Stephen J. Ubi, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, ready to demonstrate the bad faith everyone might expect from a powerful industrial lobbyist. “In the midst of a deadly pandemic,” he explained indignantly, “the Biden Administration has taken an unprecedented step that will undermine our global response to the pandemic and compromise safety. This decision will sow confusion between public and private partners, further weaken already strained supply chains and foster the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Public and private partners:

      A euphemism invented to hide the practice of getting taxpayers (the public) to pay for research that will guarantee future profits for commercial firms (private partners) by gifting them a monopoly permitting exorbitant margins on sales to the public, whose tax dollars funded the research

      Contextual Note

      The pharmaceutical industry will tend to judge any political decision made in the name of human health and the prosperity of all as an act of “sowing confusion.” In our ultra-rationalist economy, profit has become the sole measure of value. Compromising profit is evil, and, as Milton Friedman endlessly repeated, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Calling into question the pricing strategies of private companies in the supposed free market is considered a dangerous heresy.

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      When a government puts up money and resources to stimulate research, guarantees massive purchase orders and transfers the intellectual property to private companies, the companies that benefit don’t consider it “a free lunch.” There’s a reason for this: A lunch at an expensive restaurant in New York may set you back $100 or more. A Coney Island hot dog costs less than $5. But the kind of transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector is routinely measured in billions, if not tens of billions.

      The current system of research funding and pharmaceutical production has admittedly produced a certain form of consumer abundance. But the driver of the system even in ordinary times is the management of scarcity and human misery. There seems to be an iron-clad rule that many take to be a law of nature: The misery of the many serves the prosperity of the few. The enduring good fortune of the wealthy enterprises ensures their capacity to partially respond to the needs of the many — but only partially, thanks to the sacrosanct scarcity principle.

      Ubi begins his complaint by reminding us that we are “In the midst of a deadly pandemic.” He doesn’t bother to mention that the pandemic might have been controlled months ago if, from the start, we had followed the advice of those who preached in favor of coordinated research and “patent pools.” As Alexander Zaitchik explained in his New Republic article on the crucial role Bill Gates played in defending patents, there was a brief moment when the World Health Organization and health professionals were ready to coordinate global research by suspending considerations of private interest and monopolistic profit in response to an impending global threat. That, alas, was seen as stealing Big Pharma’s lunch and violating the consecrated principle of public-private partnerships.

      When the pandemic began to spin out of anyone’s control, US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron proudly declared war against the virus. In a veritable world war against a truly evil enemy, with the well-being of every nation’s citizens at stake, reasonable people might expect private interests to give way to the public good. Not in today’s economy. The public sector has accepted its structural dependence on the private sector’s greed to accomplish even its most modest goals. Instead of pooling their efforts, the world’s nations acted as if every other nation was a rival, if not an enemy. Call it the triumph of the spirit of competition.

      Historical Note

      Ubi complains that the Biden administration took “an unprecedented step.” That is simply untrue. The Defense Production Act (DPA), passed in 1950 during the Korean War, authorized “the federal government to shape the domestic industrial base so that, when called upon, it is capable of providing essential materials and goods needed for the national defense.” According to The New York Times, the DPA “has been invoked hundreds of thousands of times” in recent years to ensure the procurement needs of the military. Is global health a less deserving cause than equipping an aircraft carrier?

      Waiving the patents, according to Ubi “will undermine our global response to the pandemic and compromise safety.” Some might see this as a threat. That actually makes sense, since threats are an item in every effective manager’s toolbox. But it becomes the equivalent of blackmail. In all likelihood, the Big Pharma behemoths would refuse to cooperate with the transfer of technology and know-how at a time when all processes need to be accelerated to achieve a lasting effect. They are the ones who possess the clout required to “undermine our global response” and “compromise safety.”

      Most astonishing is Ubi’s claim that the “decision will sow confusion between public and private partners.” Although President Biden’s initiative is only a modest step forward, the waiver would be a welcome occasion to begin to clarify what a presumed “partnership” means. For the public, it could signal the breakthrough some believe they see in Biden’s stance. For the first time in at least two decades, the idea of putting a valuation on the public contribution and translating it into intellectual property rights becomes conceivable.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the recent past, public investment in all kinds of innovation has been quietly transferred at a fixed price to private interests. In most cases, the price takes little account of actual cost and even less of commercial value. This is as true of Silicon Valley as it is of Big Pharma. The richest billionaires have benefitted from more than a few free lunches.

      Ubi fears that the waiver will “further weaken already strained supply chains.” A year ago, the question of supply chains emerged as a major issue as the wealthy nations discovered they no longer had easy access to the masks, PPE and medical supplies needed to respond to the pandemic. In a competitive globalized world, nearly every nation suddenly found itself at a disadvantage. Ubi is right to signal “strained supply chains.” But the whole point of the waiver is to reduce supply chain bottlenecks at a moment of crisis.

      Ubi’s final point concerns his fear of “counterfeit vaccines.” But liberating intellectual property reduces the attraction of counterfeits, an effect associated with the protected monopoly of exclusive brands. Illicit imitations of every type of commodity will continue to be an issue for local or national law enforcement. The medical profession is far more capable than retail stores to combat counterfeiting.

      The CNBC article concludes with warnings about “China’s ability to piggyback on U.S. innovation to further its vaccine diplomacy aims.” It mentions Russia as well. The idea of cooperation appears nowhere in its reasoning. That is what’s expected from a media whose sole focus is on what affects the stock market. It cites The Washington Post editorial board’s echo of Bill Gates’s self-interested reasoning. With such well-funded resistance in the financial and political world, the likelihood of a serious change of outlook seems limited. DC lobbyists, generously funded politicians and conformist media clearly have more power than the American people and far more than the seven billion people that populate nations not called the United States.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Immigration Is the Solution for the Falling US Birth Rate

      by

      Germany faces a major crisis. The German birth rate is considerably below what’s needed to replace the population. German seniors, meanwhile, are living longer and drawing more on state resources for their pensions and health care. There are basically two ways out of this demographic crisis.

      First of all, Germany could boost its birth rate. The German state provides generous family leave and child-care policies — not to mention the famous Kindergelt, the direct monthly payments of child benefits — and the fertility rate has indeed edged up over the years from 1.24 children per woman in 1994 to 1.57 today. But the trend in industrialized countries suggests that it will be difficult to push the rate much higher. The closest to the replacement rate of 2.1 children that any European Union country gets is France at 1.88.

      The second way out of Germany’s crisis would be through immigration. The country could throw open its doors to people from all over the world to take unwanted and unfilled jobs, pay taxes and support the increasingly aging population.

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      That is exactly what Germany did. The government of Angela Merkel, in 2015 and 2016, accepted over a million refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Germany now has the fifth largest population of refugees in the world (after Turkey, Colombia, Pakistan and Uganda).

      This headline-grabbing decision, five years later, has been a remarkable success. The million refugees have prospered, reports the Center for Global Development:

      “Today, about half have found a job, paid training, or internship. On arrival, only about one percent declared having good or very good German language skills. By 2018, that figure had increased to 44 percent. … Such successful integration also has impacted the local German population. For example, between 2008 and 2015, the number of employees in companies founded by migrants grew by 50 percent (to 1.5 million). It has also mobilized civil society. A survey by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research suggests that 55 percent of Germans have contributed to the integration of refugees since 2015.”

      In 2015, nearly everyone in the media — German, European, international — referred to the millions of desperate people trying to get into Europe as an “immigration crisis.” They should have given it a different label: the immigration solution to Europe’s demographic crisis. Germany wisely chose to take advantage of this opportunity, while the countries of Eastern Europe, by and large, have embraced demographic suicide.

      The naysayers had a field day back in 2015 with their predictions of political failure for Merkel and social chaos for Germany. Today, Germany continues to be the strongest European economy. It has struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic but is now rapidly scaling up its vaccinations. And the anti-immigrant backlash, represented by the far-right Alternative for Germany, has ebbed, with the popularity of the party falling to 11% in recent polls. Meanwhile, with its liberal platform on immigration, the Green Party has surged to 25% and may well win the elections in September.

      It’s useful to bear the German experience in mind as the United States once again tackles its own “immigration crisis.”

      Immigrants Are a Gift

      The United States has been the exception to the demographic rule for industrialized countries. The US fertility rate, at 1.73, is also well below replacement. But because of a constant stream of immigrants, America has managed to grow at a healthy clip.

      Embed from Getty Images

      That began to change in the 2010s. According to the latest census numbers, the US grew at the second-slowest rate over the last decade since the founding of the country. The culprits were a declining fertility rate — the birthrate has declined 19% since peaking in 2007 — and a reduction in the number of immigrants. The impact of the pandemic — in terms of mortality, long-term disability and anxiety over economic insecurity — will only make matters worse.

      America has always depended on immigrants and undocumented workers. That dependency has only grown more acute over the years. Let’s take a look at four critical sectors.

      Between half and three-quarters of the farmworkers who ensure a supply of food to the American population are undocumented workers, and many of the rest are recent immigrants. The pandemic hit farmworkers and food manufacturing workers hard, and even the Trump administration had to acknowledge them as essential workers in reducing their risk of deportation (though not providing them additional protection against infection).

      Even before the pandemic hit, the food sector faced a shortage of workers. “In a 2017 survey of farmers by the California Farm Bureau, 55 percent reported labor shortages, and the figure was nearly 70 percent for those who depend on seasonal workers,” according to The New York Times. Meanwhile, Congress (read: Republicans in the Senate) has failed to provide a legal framework for what remains an essential workforce, pandemic or no pandemic, though the recent Farm Workforce Modernization Act has a shot of passing with bipartisan support to provide a million undocumented farmworkers with legal status.

      The health-care sector similarly depends on immigrants. Of the nearly 15 million people working in the health sector, about 18% are immigrants. COVID-19 is going to exact a heavy toll on this sector, though. According to a recent Washington Post poll, one in three health-care workers are thinking about exiting the profession: “Many talked about the betrayal and hypocrisy they feel from the public they have sacrificed so much to save—their clapping and hero-worship one day, then refusal to wear masks and take basic precautions the next, even if it would spare health workers the trauma of losing yet another patient.”

      Even without pandemic-related job changes, the United States has been looking at a major upcoming nursing shortage: over a million new registered nurses are needed by 2022. Nursing schools are just not keeping up with the demand created by retirement.

      Manufacturing, challenged by foreign competition and outsourcing, has infamously declined in the United States. Despite the spread of automation, this sector too needs more workers. There are currently 500,000 job openings, and one recent report estimates 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030.

      Then there’s domestic work, one of the fastest-growing sectors of the US economy. Home health aides, child-care providers, housecleaners: the vast majority are women and more than one-third are foreign-born. “By 2026, care jobs will constitute one of the fastest growing professions in the country, and we will need more caregivers and nannies than we have ever needed before,” writes the National Domestic Workers Alliance. “Home-based elder care is already the single fastest growing occupation in our entire economy due to the rapidly growing aging population.”

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      Home health aides directly take care of aging Americans. But the United States needs younger workers across all professions to keep alive federal programs like Social Security that support aging Americans. The cohort of people aged 55 to 64 grew by 70% between 2000 and 2016 while the working-age population expanded by only 15%. That’s bad news for people looking to retire in the future on their Social Security benefits.

      Fortunately, immigrants have come to the rescue. They are overwhelmingly working age and have a higher participation rate in the labor force than the native-born. Their contributions to Social Security help keep the system afloat. The undocumented have been even more generous, providing an estimated $12 billion to the Social Security system through payroll taxes in 2010 alone (without much hope of ever drawing from the system themselves).

      Even with these contributions, however, Social Security is still expected to face a major funding shortfall by 2035 under current projections. One answer: more immigrants. If this story were a fairy tale, the immigrant would be the goose that lays the golden egg. Immigrants didn’t just build America. They are essential to the health and prosperity of the country today. Immigrants are the gift that keeps on giving.

      Whenever a goose starts laying golden eggs, however, someone invariably starts talking about wringing the poor animal’s neck and impoverishing everyone involved.

      The Politics of Immigration

      The Republican Party remade itself into an anti-immigrant force before Donald Trump entered the political scene. Tea Party insurgents called for closing the border with Mexico. David Brat, an unknown economist, ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Virginia race by hammering at the immigration issue. Trump, however, took immigration and ran with it, promising to build a new wall along the southern border, shut down travel from predominantly Muslim countries and make it nearly impossible for refugees and asylum-seekers to find haven in the United States.

      Because of Trump’s success in turning his extreme positions into federal policy, immigration largely disappeared as an electoral issue in 2020. The Republican Party focused instead on economic attacks (Joe Biden as a “socialist”) and cultural broadsides (the perennial racist and misogynist dog whistles).

      But with the Democrats back in the White House and in control of Congress, immigration will likely become again a major campaign issue in the midterm elections. The economy is on an upswing, the pandemic is waning and the Biden administration has been competent and relatively scandal-free. Without an actual platform of their own since they decided to turn their party into a personality cult, the Republicans will inevitably characterize the influx of people over the border as a “crisis” and the president’s “biggest failure.”

      The numbers at the border have indeed increased, with the influx for April near a 20-year high. Despite the Republican Party criticisms, these numbers are not the result of Biden administration policies. The number of people apprehended at the border, for instance, spiked in 2018, under Trump, at more than 850,000, which obviously had nothing to do with President Biden.

      The surge so far this year is largely seasonal, a result of pent-up demand from the COVID-19 border closures and a function of all the applicants stranded south of the border by Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. The numbers already appear to be plateauing. And the number of unaccompanied minors being held in Border Patrol facilities dropped dramatically in the last week.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Biden administration has reversed many of Trump’s policies, canceling funding for the border wall, reversing the “Muslim travel ban” and dismantling the “Remain in Mexico” program. Without any fanfare, the president also allowed the ban on guest-worker visas to expire at the end of March. Pictures of joyful family reunifications at the border are now replacing Trump-era images of children separated from the parents.

      The administration has also pledged to address the root causes of migration by funding initiatives in Central America that will reduce violence and corruption, stabilize economies and address humanitarian crises. That, of course, is easier said than done given the authoritarian leadership in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Tasked with tackling this issue, Vice-President Kamala Harris is well aware of the folly of funneling aid into corrupt governments, and she is reportedly lining up civil society representatives to meet on upcoming visits to the region. A long-term strategy of fostering political and economic transformation in the region, however, won’t win any points with Republicans or most voters in the United States in the short term.

      The recent kerfuffle around refugee policy illustrates the political stakes. As a candidate, Biden promised to bring US policies on refugees and asylum in line with international standards and raise the annual ceiling to more or less the level of the Obama years. Because of a failure to file the necessary paperwork, however, the number of refugees admitted into the United States in the first months of the Biden administration remained extremely low. Because refugees are often conflated in the public mind with immigrants — and the administration’s immigration policy was getting poor marks in the polls — the president tried to get away with suppressing the number of incoming refugees. Challenged by members of his own party, Biden again reversed himself, returning to the previous promise of a cap for the remainder of this year of 62,500 and an annual ceiling of 125,000 for 2022.

      The back-and-forth on refugee policy is an unusual deviation from an otherwise consistent set of policies coming from the administration. It’s a sign that immigration will continue to be subject to finger-in-the-wind calculations rather than rational debate. It’s a shame that it will require enormous political courage to embrace policies that are in the best interest of the United States, whether from the point of view of the labor force, the sustainability of the social welfare system or the livelihoods of the newest residents of the country.

      Republicans, with their steadfast commitment to political divisiveness and firearms, love to shoot themselves in the foot. There’s no reason for the rest of the country to follow suit. Maybe a delegation of Syrian-Germans can come to America on a speaking tour to explain how a “crisis” is really an opportunity.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      After Long Wavering, a Waiver

      by

      During last year’s presidential election campaign, candidate Joe Biden promised “absolutely” and “positively” to support the waiver of US patents to permit the unencumbered manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines in the rest of the world. Once Biden was elected, the words “absolutely” and “positively” apparently lost some of their absoluteness and positivity, becoming synonyms of “possibly” and “hopefully.” The hesitation ended on Wednesday when the US committed to back the idea of a temporary patent waiver.

      The New York Times legitimately called Biden’s unexpected agreement with a principle promoted by more than 100 countries “a breakthrough,” after noting that until Wednesday the US had been “a major holdout at the World Trade Organization over a proposal to suspend intellectual property protections in an effort to ramp up vaccine production.” Biden’s representative to the WTO, Katherine Tai, nevertheless emphasized that this dramatic reversal should be thought of as exceptional: “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines.”

      For a Few Billion Dollars More

      READ MORE

      Digging a little deeper into the perspective for change, Michael Safi at The Guardian offered the Biden administration “two cheers” rather than the three The Times appears to believe it deserves. This follows from Tai’s realistic assessment of how things are likely to play out: “Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Consensus-based:

      Designed to protect vested interests, even in the face of a majority and the logic of history and health itself

      Contextual Note

      Times reporters Thomas Kaplan and Sheryl Gay Stolberg remain faithful to the patented meliorist approach the paper applies to nearly all policies conducted by a Democratic president. They emphasize the constructive process now underway at the WTO in a piece that echoes The Beatles song, “Getting Better All the Time.” The Biden administration seems to be telling the world: I’m changing my scene and doing the best that I can.

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      In contrast, the coverage by The Washington Post (owned by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos) spends most of its ink suggesting the proposed waiver probably is fundamentally a flawed idea, leaving the impression that not much if anything will come of it. According to its pessimistic take, “Tai cautioned that the discussions to proceed with negotiations over the waiver’s text would ‘take time.’ Current and former officials said that a final agreement could differ significantly from the proposed waiver, which India and South Africa first introduced in October, and that deliberations could fall apart entirely.”

      CNN more prudently highlights the fact that the US proposal “is preliminary and will not guarantee the global patent rules are lifted right away. But the Biden administration’s signal of support amounts to a major step that aid groups and Democrats had been pressing for.” It nevertheless appears to offer Biden his third cheer when it explains that the president “ultimately decided to support the waiver in line with his campaign pledge.” It quotes US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s claim that Biden “put people over patents.” 

      But CNN points clearly to the true obstacle: “Members of the WTO must unanimously decide whether to loosen the restrictions. And while the US had been a hold out, other countries — including the European Union and Switzerland — have also resisted the step.” In other words, Biden may have killed two birds with one stone. By letting Europeans do the dirty work, he could save his standing with Big Pharma — surely the main reason for his hesitation — while appearing to stay true to the progressive principle of putting people over patents. Interestingly, France’s President Emmanuel Macron may be playing the same game.

      Historical Note

      The Guardian reminds its readers that the proposal is limited to “waiving patents on Covid vaccines — but not on treatments or other technology used to fight the disease.” Whereas the US media presented the question as one of moral duty versus economic interest, both The Guardian and Al Jazeera point to the practical question implied by the waiver: “If approved, the waiver would theoretically allow drugmakers around the world to produce coronavirus jabs without the risk of being sued for breaking IP rules.” For the developing world, feeling free from an imminent attack by corporate lawyers is indeed a kind of liberation.

      In other words, the proposed waiver would leave the world a long way from the optimistic scenario originally evoked by health experts and scientists in early 2020 that Alexander Zaitchik described in his exposé of Bill Gates’ influence on the WTO: “Battle-scarred veterans of the medicines-access and open-science movements hoped the immensity of the pandemic would override a global drug system based on proprietary science and market monopolies.” The idea at the time was to mobilize everyone and maximize resources. This implied patent pooling.

      The health professionals facing the outbreak of COVID-19 understood both the scope of its threat and the dangers of an insufficiently coordinated organization to counter it. They also knew what the consequences of patent protection might turn out to be. The adoption of the agreement Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1995 and TRIPS-plus in 1999 marked a landmark moment in the trend economists and politicians have celebrated with the term “globalization.” The specific rules applying to pharmaceuticals have been in place since 2005. In 2015, the website Infojustice highlighted the fact that the TRIPS agreement had established a regime in which “patents grant the patent holder a monopoly on the market that allows the blocking of price-lowering generic competition and the raising of prices which restricts affordable access to medicines.”

      The history of the past two decades has demonstrated to the global south the risk existing patent laws represent for their health and welfare. In 2015, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights drew “attention to the potential detrimental impact these treaties and agreements … may have on the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in legally binding instruments, whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social. Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labour standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      COVID-19 changed everyone’s perception. So long as the world was not faced by a politically toxic pandemic, the developed world was free to use its superior wealth and force to impose its rules on the rest of humanity. Any serious campaign to understand the fundamental asymmetry that was continually and silently aggravating the gap between the rich and poor nations was easily stifled. Thomas Piketty could write erudite books about the gap and what was driving it. But most people in the West had bought into the belief system promoted by New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman, conveying the message that thanks to globalization and American technology, the world was now flat.

      In an ideal scenario, the Biden administration will now begin to put pressure on Europe and Switzerland to emulate America’s courage in backing the proposed waiver. It will also pressure US vaccine providers to share their technology and know-how with the rest of humanity by convincing them to show not just their leadership but also their commitment to human health above profit. With or without patent protection, there is no danger of their becoming unprofitable, not with the power they have and an ever-expanding marketplace for health. But what we are witnessing, as they resist even temporary waivers, is the rentier’s obsession with automatically induced maximum profit making the question of health benefits a secondary consideration.

      In the months to come, the world will be attentively observing the political and economic games now being played out. At some point, COVID-19 will begin to fade away. The world will then face the fear of the next contagion and perhaps begin seriously to struggle with a strategy to counter the effects of climate change. Awareness of the stakes is already much higher than in the past. It is time for the political class to begin assessing the risk that represents for their own future.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Israel Must Accept ICC Jurisdiction Over Palestine

      by

      On February 5, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Seven years after the 2014 Gaza conflict, in which war crimes were committed by both Israel and armed Palestinian groups according to the United Nations, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda confirmed a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine, which Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been calling for since 2016. On April 27, HRW released a 213-page report detailing Israel’s “crimes of apartheid and persecution.” An ICC investigation is a crucial step toward regional peace, which cannot be achieved without accountability and transitional justice.

      However, amidst the process of diplomatic normalization with Arab states, Israel is compromising the prospects of peace by refusing to take responsibility for the injustices committed against Palestinian civilians, including children. To achieve peace in the Middle East, and particularly with the Palestinians, Israel must recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and be held accountable for any war crimes committed.

      The ICC Has Stepped on a Political Minefield in Palestine

      READ MORE

      Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labeled the ICC ruling as “pure anti-Semitism” and claimed that the court is a “political” body rather than a judicial one. He said that the ICC should be investigating Syria and Iran instead. This is but one example of the pattern of deflection displayed by the Israeli state when confronted with the reality of the war crimes committed during its occupation of Palestinian territories.

      Netanyahu’s claims that the ICC decision is politicized or anti-Semitic are an unfounded effort at deflection and denial. First, though Syria and Iran have not been prosecuted by the ICC, these regimes are subject to a wide range of US and UN-sponsored sanctions, as well as political isolation, to which Israel is unlikely to be subjected. In a sense, these countries are already being “punished.” Second, holding Syria and Iran accountable for their own crimes and investigating possible Israeli war crimes are not mutually exclusive processes. Finally, the ICC ruling did not exclusively target Israel or its defense force, the IDF; Palestinian Hamas was also named as a potential perpetrator of war crimes and will be investigated as such.

      This deflection strategy is not an unusual response to ICC investigations. It parallels the US attempt to thwart ICC investigations of American military misconduct in Afghanistan, which is similarly delaying the Afghan peace process.

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      Accountability matters, not only for Palestinians who have been denied their human rights during the conflict but also for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and for cooperation in the region more broadly. The climate of impunity enjoyed by Israel only fuels the frustration of Palestinians and, worse, makes the rhetoric of groups such as Hamas more compelling. Peacebuilding experts have also long argued that accountability is central to a successful peace process. For example, the indictments of Charles Taylor of Liberia and Radovan Karadzic of Bosnia strongly contributed to peaceful outcomes in both countries.

      Before Israel can be held accountable, it must first recognize ICC jurisdiction. However, given the Israeli government’s continued push for annexation and the US sanctions against the ICC, this scenario is unlikely. Nonetheless, any form of accountability would be a positive start and an important step toward peace. Accountability can take many forms, ranging from state recognition of injustice to judicial punishment of individual perpetrators.

      Any accountability process should also include Palestinians at the table. It is time for the Israeli leadership to spearhead the peace process — not through other Arab states, but through an honest accountability process with Palestinians. The best starting point would be for Israel to recognize ICC jurisdiction.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Who’s Afraid of Directed Energy Attacks?

      by

      As if the Biden administration was lacking in pretexts to start a new war with Russia, Donald Trump’s former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller has stepped up to lead a campaign more reminiscent of a tale from the “Twilight Zone” than the USA’s strategic rivalry with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In the space of a week, CNN has published two lengthy articles on the topic. Politico picked it up with this provocative headline: “‘It’s an act of war’: Trump’s acting Pentagon chief urges Biden to tackle directed-energy attacks.” Miller’s new casus belli has a name: a “directed-energy attack,” sometimes referred to as “the Havana syndrome.”

      Reading through the variety of testimony from all sides concerning this act of war, the one thing that appears to be missing in the various accounts is an inkling of the substance known as “facts.” There appear to be crimes, though even that isn’t clear, and there are suspects, which is even less clear. Suspicion reigns while facts remain hidden. Politico invokes “suspected directed-energy attacks on U.S. government personnel worldwide.” CNN begins one article with this sentence: “A briefing on suspected energy attacks on US intelligence officers turned contentious last week.”

      For the moment, there are no energy attacks, merely “suspected” attacks. This is a news story hoping that facts will emerge to substantiate it. In such cases, it may be wise for the reader to begin by suspecting those who are telling the story. Who doesn’t remember the Bush administration’s suspicion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction? The government, dutifully seconded by The New York Times and other respectable outlets, dared to present that suspicion as a fact. The Bush administration even put Colin Powell to stage at the United Nations General Assembly with a tawdry dog-and-pony show. Alas, the world soon learned there were no facts.

      For a Few Billion Dollars More

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      This time around, to its credit, The Times has ignored CNN’s scoop. That alone makes the story not only sound suspicious but suspect. The Times has, after all, been known to deliberately ignore real news items it doesn’t want the public to know or simply think about. Politico seems to believe that former Trump appointee Christopher Miller knows what he’s talking about. Their reporters, Lara Seligman and Andrew Desiderio, appear impressed by the fact that Miller only had to listen to one witness to penetrate the mystery: “As soon as the official described his symptoms, Miller knew right away that they had been caused by a directed-energy weapon.”

      Before his appointment in the waning months of the Trump administration, Miller had occupied the post of director of the National Counterterrorism Center and was a longtime stalwart of the Defense Department as well as a defense contractor. He’s no softy. He began his career as a Green Beret. As a soldier, government official and private contractor, he understands the interest of playing the bureaucracy for strategic advantage. That knowledge helps to explain his goal with the media, which Politico describes as the wish “to create a bureaucratic momentum to get the interagency to take this more seriously.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Bureaucratic momentum:

      The conserved force or energy of an otherwise inert body that, if it manages to move, its impetus will in most cases propel it in anything but the right direction

      Contextual Note

      It should be noted that in the lead-up to the notorious January 6 storming of the Capitol, Miller has been blamed for “placing some extremely unusual limits on National Guard forces for that event.” Why would CNN, after spending the last four years vehemently denouncing everything to do with Donald Trump, suddenly take such an interest in a Trump loyalist who shows obvious signs of being a self-interested member of the military-industrial complex? Could it be simply the fact that he “suspects” Russia? Or could it be CNN’s own loyalty to the military-industrial complex?

      The “Havana syndrome” has been making headlines since 2016, even though it was scientifically debunked once in early 2019. Whether that debunking truly accounts for the various reported cases remains an open question. There is enough ambiguity stemming from the various reports to incite a discerning reporter to remain attentive to developments. But developments generally require facts.

      Embed from Getty Images

      A closer look at the language they use reveals just how vapid and baseless CNN’s and Politico’s narrative appear to be. CNN begins its April 29 article by evoking “mysterious, invisible attacks that have led to debilitating symptoms.” Fear is clearly in the air, but not much else. Beyond the fact that suspicions abound, we learn from CNN’s May 4 article that “senators demanded more information about the mysterious incidents from the CIA and accountability for how the agency has handled them.” 

      In other words, nobody knows much, and whatever knowledge exists has probably been mishandled or manipulated. This might appear to be the perfect occasion for the journalists to dig deeper into the bureaucratic processes. It could helpfully reveal how dysfunctional the system is. Instead, they have chosen to skim the surface and paint the story as an intriguing mystery. 

      What Shakespeare’s Prospero once called “the baseless fabric of this vision” continues as we learn that “the Pentagon and other agencies probing the matter have reached no clear conclusions.” We are immediately invited to believe that an attack that “might have taken place so close to the White House is particularly alarming.” What “might have taken place” is far more interesting than facts, as borne out in the following sentence: “Rumors have long swirled around Washington about similar incidents within the United States.” What would CNN do without rumors? CNN then reminds us that we know nothing since “investigators have not determined whether the puzzling incidents at home are connected to those that have occurred abroad or who may be behind them.”

      The logic continues with the enlightening piece of information that “it was possible Russia was behind the attacks, but they did not have enough information to say for sure.” As Sherlock Holmes once said, “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Russia’s agency is not impossible, so it must be the truth.

      The article continues with more non-knowledge, such as this: “Intelligence and defense officials have been reluctant to speak publicly about the strange incidents.” In the May 4 article, this vital uncertainty is revealed: “The briefers — who were members of the CIA task force looking into the attacks — did not provide a clear timeline of when certain information had been discovered and why it was only being shared with the senators then.”

      At least Politico believes that certainty will inevitably emerge. It notes Miller’s concern for the fate of American personnel overseas: “If this plays out and somebody is attacking Americans [even] with a nonlethal weapon … we owe it to our folks that are out there. We owe it to them to get to the bottom of this.” As far as journalism goes, we have hit rock bottom.

      Historical Note

      This reporting tells us much more about the recent evolution of the news media in the US than it does about the events it purports to describe. Why in the space of a week did CNN’s Kylie Atwood and Jeremy Herb dedicate two extensive stories to a tale of paranoia that even The New York Times — certainly as committed to Russiagate as CNN — chose to ignore?

      Many commentators have held forth recently on the slow but apparently accelerating degradation of the news business in the US in recent decades. Matt Taibbi, who worked for over a decade as an investigative journalist has been among the most outspoken on the still-unfolding disaster at the core of US journalism. He points to the obvious root of the evil, stating that “the financial incentives encourage it.”

      CNN’s and Politico’s coverage of this pseudo-event demonstrates one of the corollaries of Taibbi’s axiom concerning financial incentive. Fear and mystery — whether focused on direct-energy weapons or UFOs — are far more compelling for readers and viewers than facts and lucid analysis. Such stories also encourage serial reporting, recycling the same content over and over again. At least there’s less and less mystery concerning that basic truth about how the media operates.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Corruption, an Unnecessary Evil

      by

      Since the United Nations Convention Against Corruption was adopted in October 2003, International Anti-Corruption Day is observed annually on December 9. In the context of the ongoing pandemic, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, had a clear message: “Corruption is criminal, immoral and the ultimate betrayal of public trust. It is even more damaging in times of crisis — as the world is experiencing now with the COVID-19 pandemic. The response to the virus is creating new opportunities to exploit weak oversight and inadequate transparency, diverting funds away from people in their hour of greatest need.”

      Corruption impacts every aspect of society and involves all kinds of companies, large and small, in an array of industries. Certain sectors are seen as carrying a higher risk of corruption — oil and gas, armament, construction, among others — but no industry is spared. The World Bank estimates that more than $1 trillion in bribes is paid each year. In the health sector alone, an estimated $450 billion, or around 6% of total expenditure, is lost to fraud annually. Some argue that bribery is part of doing business, but such practices increase costs and put companies at risk of severe financial, legal and reputational damage.

      Tackling Corruption: The Solution Is?

      READ MORE

      For society at large, the effects of corruption are far-reaching and have severe economic repercussions, create unfair competitive advantages and result in the loss or decreased quality of public services. The consequences of this can be devasting. Martin Manuhwa, head of the Federation of African Engineering Organisations, notes that when public contracts are not awarded based on honest and fair bidding, “Infrastructure collapses. Roads develop potholes, and people die. Basically, corruption kills.”

      Looking for Accountability

      Historically, citizens have expected governments to hold companies accountable for corrupt behavior, but their track record of doing so is spotty. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the United States began enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act more vigorously. Since then, the US has been a world leader in prosecutions and investigations of foreign bribery, but countries such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Israel, France and Spain have recently increased efforts as well.

      However, a recent report from the European Commission found that only 30% of Europeans believe their governments’ anti-fraud efforts are effective. Indeed, Transparency International’s Exporting Corruption 2020 project finds that although high-profile settlements make headlines, the enforcement of foreign bribery laws is very low amongst most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries; in 2020, only four out of the 47 OECD members actively pursued prosecutions.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Over the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of company-wide anti-corruption compliance systems and industry-level regulations designed to discourage bribery. Governments are often “quite happy” to pass the cost and responsibility of enforcement off to someone else, but self-regulations are often inadequately administered and lack audits performed by independent, disinterested parties. Tools such as the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises provide companies with recommendations for implementing compliance programs. It is then up to the companies to conduct internal audits and ensure employees and contractors are following their anti-corruption policies. Companies are motivated by a variety of factors: legal requirements, the risk of fines and prosecution, reputational damage and, for some, a genuine desire to act more ethically. But while there are self-reported cases of foreign bribery, the temptation to cover up infractions is compelling. 

      Various efforts by industries to self-regulate have also emerged. Non-binding, industry-led initiatives or “soft laws” attempt to set anti-corruption norms by asking companies to adhere to a set of principles. For example, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative “invites” multinational companies to disclose money they pay states to extract natural resources.

      In industry-level self-regulating organizations (SROs), member companies develop policies for a particular industry and they, as opposed to an independent agency or government regulator, monitor and enforce member compliance. One example is the Banknote Ethics Initiative (BnEI). The organization was created by some banknote producers to “provide ethical business practice.” Members agree to abide by BnEI’s Code of Ethical Business Practice and to undergo an audit “carried out by a third-party auditor” in order to become accredited. According to their website, audits are conducted by two entities: GoodCorporation and KPMG. But if there are only two options for auditing members of an SRO, are auditors actually independent?

      While SROs can help set standards for industries in the absence of effective government regulation, there is also an inherent conflict of interest. As the NGO Truth in Advertising argues, “Self-regulators are, by definition, funded by the companies they claim to regulate. Don’t for a second believe that any self-regulator wants — or even would be permitted by its constituent members — to do all that it can to prevent harmful or deceptive business practices that are proving lucrative for the industry.” The OECD and the UN Environment Programme add that self-regulatory processes are often burdened by a lack of enforcement and inadequate sanctions of member companies, lower incentives to voluntarily report bad practices and are dominated by a small number of companies that prioritize what is in their best interests.

      An International Anti-Bribery Standard

      A new development offers hope for addressing the global corruption problem. In 2016, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) introduced the ISO 37001 Anti-Bribery Management Systems. Created using input from existing recommendations and from countries, non-profits and esteemed multilateral institutions, the standard provides an auditable, independent benchmark of international compliance principles and enables organizations of all sizes, public or private, to prevent, detect and address bribery.

      To become certified, an anti-bribery management system meeting the standard’s requirements must be implemented, an individual overseeing compliance needs to be appointed, and financial controls, monitoring and reporting processes need to be in place. Audits are done over a three-year period (to ensure policies are not simply on paper) and are performed by independent certifying bodies.

      Numerous companies and governments have since pursued certification as ISO 37001 has increasingly become recognized as the reference for anti-bribery. Anti-corruption lawyer Jean-Pierre Mean says the advantage of certification is benchmarking and reassuring organizations that they have implemented effective measures. Moreover, “It also demonstrates that you have a system that works to stakeholders, personnel, shareholders, and the community at large.”

      As a sign of confidence in the standard, prosecutors in Brazil, the US, Denmark, Switzerland and Singapore have required companies to pursue ISO 37001 certification as conditions of settlements in many lawsuits. While certification cannot guarantee bribery will not take place, it is universally recognized proof of a company’s willingness to prevent it. Companies and governments should require ISO 37001 certification from potential partners as a prerequisite to doing business, discarding superfluous and therefore suspicious self-regulation.

      Increased efforts to curb bribery have had varying levels of success. Government enforcement of existing laws needs to be strengthened as evidence has shown that self-regulation is flawed. The introduction of ISO 37001 as an independent standard for anti-bribery holds the most promise, but more companies and governments need to pursue certification for change to happen. Corruption may be as old as it widespread, but it can also be avoided.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      G7 foreign ministers call on China to ‘respect human rights’ in muted censure

      by

      The G7 group of democratic states ended its foreign ministers summit in London calling on China to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms”, but drawing back from any decisive action if that fails to take place. Economic considerations, as well as apprehension that even strong language could trigger retaliation by Beijing, led to some member states of the Group successfully limiting the scope of censure. One of the key points of the summit had been a projected alliance of democracies to counter autocratic regimes with China and Russia seen as the main adversaries. But a number of European states are said to have refused calls for a more robust stance by the US, Support for Taiwan, a country facing aggressive Chinese military exercises and threats of invasion, was also muted. The G7said it supported Taiwan’s participation in World Health Organisation (WHO) forums and the World Health Assembly, but there was no criticism of Beijing’s actions. The Group did, however, condemn the Chinese government for “human rights violations” in Xinjiang and Tibet as well as China’s pursuit of an expansionist strategy through “arbitrary, coercive economic policies”. The Chinese government has been accused of promoting debt dependency in the developing world through its ‘belt and road’ construction scheme, taking over territories at times when the borrowing countries fail to pay back loans. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “I think China is more likely to need to, rather than react in anger, it is more likely going to need to take a look in the mirror and understand that it needs to take into account this growing body of opinion, that thinks these basic international rules have got to be adhered to.” The UK, as the host, had invited Japan, India, Australia and South Korea, all countries involved in varying degrees of confrontation with China, to take part in the summit. In the event the Indian foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar had to participated virtually after coming into contact with the suspected cases of covid in his country’s delegation, although he has not tested positive himself. A number of those taking part spoke of how refreshing this summit had been after the acrimony and unpleasantness introduced in previous years by Donald Trump. There was also widespread approval of Britain’s decision to hold an ‘in person’ conference rather than a virtual one.  More

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      Where India Went Wrong

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      In just over a month, India has gone from boasting about its vaccine diplomacy to becoming the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. As this author explained in a previous article, many have questioned whether India’s vaccine diplomacy was a bold masterstroke or an unwise distraction.

      Before the start of the second wave of COVID-19 infections in March, the pandemic seemed to be under control in India. In September 2020, the country recorded an average of 95,000 daily cases of COVID-19 during the peak of the first wave. By January 2021, that figure had dropped to under 20,000.

      At the same time, the United States went from around 35,000 confirmed cases per day in September to a peak of over 300,000 in January. At the start of the year, the United Kingdom was in the midst of a deadly second wave of infections, which reached over 60,000 cases a day. At that time, Britain was battling a more contagious strain of COVID-19 known as the “Kent variant,” which is named after the region where it was first discovered in England. Countries in Europe and around the world raced to halt flights to and from the UK in a bid to control the spread of the new strain, which they feared would soon go beyond the British isles.

      India’s Health-Care System Is in Shambles

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      To put these figures in perspective, the UK population is 66.6 million, the US is 328 million and India is around 1.36 billion. That means at the start of 2021, the infection ratio per 100,000 people in India was far lower than in the UK and the US.

      Lax Safety Measures

      As a result, Indians thought the country was beyond the worst of the pandemic. In March, Harsh Vardhan, the Indian health minister, said the country had entered the “endgame” of the health crisis. This led to a false sense of hope, which made the public and the central and state governments complacent. Restrictions that were brought in to curb the spread of the coronavirus were quickly eased. Life had almost returned to normal in January with the opening up of nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, tourist locations and public transport.

      At the same time, elections were announced in five states, including West Bengal, which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had set its sights on winning. All political parties and their supporters held rallies with tens of thousands of people in attendance. The Hindu festival of Kumbh Mela attracted millions of people who took a dip in the Ganges, a river considered sacred in Hinduism. Nearly 60,000 spectators were also allowed to enter stadiums to watch cricket matches. All of these events took place with lax safety measures in place, with no social distancing or wearing of masks.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In hindsight, India did not anticipate a second wave of COVID-19. It lifted the lid on public restrictions at a time when countries such as the UK were battling a winter wave of infections. As mainland Europe realized, it was inevitable that the more contagious strain of COVID-19 discovered in the UK would spread. India failed to realize this despite repeated warnings.

      Now, India is battling its own second wave. The country has repeatedly broken the record for the daily number of confirmed cases of COVID-19. On May 2, India recorded more than 400,000 new daily infections. The actual number of cases is believed to be far higher due to a shortage of testing kits and people getting tested. Many Indians are not getting checked because they have no symptoms but are contagious or they are worried about testing positive for the virus. States like Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra have been accused of manipulating and underreporting the number of positive cases and deaths from COVID-19 to avoid criticism over inefficient governance. Worryingly, epidemiologists believe that India has not yet hit the peak of the second wave and that the worst is yet to come.

      No Improvement to Health Care

      It has been argued by many that the pandemic will not come to an end until it is under control everywhere. This is because “viruses naturally mutate over time.” There are currently thousands of mutations of the coronavirus around the world, but only a few of them are variants of concern for scientists. As more people contract the virus and spread it to others, it is inevitable that different strains will emerge. This is why despite the successful vaccination rollout in countries like Israel, the UK and the US, authorities have been cautious as they reopen economies and reduce restrictions for the public. The fear is that some variants, such as the one discovered in South Africa, will evade the existing vaccines and render them less effective.

      India has discovered a worrying COVID-19 variant of its own that is officially called B.1.617. This new strain — which is also known as the “double mutant” due to two mutations coming together in the same variant — accounts for 61% of infections in Maharashtra, a major epicenter for infections. It is unclear whether the Indian variant is driving the second wave, but it is believed to be more transmissible than previous strains of the virus. This is in addition to fear over the UK strain, which has spread to more than 50 countries.

      Complacency by the central and state governments has made the health care system crumble as Indians desperately seek medical assistance. When the pandemic first hit India in March 2020, authorities failed to strengthen the infrastructure at hospitals. As of 2018, the Indian government spent only 3.54% of GDP on health care. Other emerging economies such as Brazil and South Africa spent 9.51% and 8.25%, respectively. In India, there is only one doctor per 1,445 people, which is far lower than the figure the World Health Organization recommends. At public hospitals, there were only 0.7 beds available per 1,000 people.

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      In July 2020, state governments opted to build temporary centers for COVID-19 patients instead of buying additional beds for existing hospitals and allocating more resources. These centers were barely used. Due to their high maintenance costs, they were dismantled a couple of months before the second wave hit. Now, as hospitals face a short supply of beds and a high demand for them, some state governments are considering whether to rebuild the makeshift centers.

      In March 2020, Modi allocated 150 billion rupees ($2.03 billion) to strengthen the infrastructure of health care in India. The government purchased personal protective equipment (PPE) and an additional 60,000 ventilators. Yet as of last fall, just under 24,000 of the ventilators had been installed in hospitals across the country. Both public and private hospitals are currently short of beds, ventilators and oxygen in many major cities.

      As COVID-19 infections sweep the country, social media networks have been flooded with posts calling for help. Friends and families of those suffering from the virus have desperately sought to find available beds in hospitals, oxygen supplies or medication to combat COVID-19. Disturbing reports of people dying after being unable to access treatment have been heard all over the country. Ambulances and other vehicles with COVID-19 victims inside them have lined up outside hospitals that no longer have space available. Many hospitals have reported that patients they were treating died as the oxygen supply ran out. Outside crematoriums, the number of dead bodies is mounting.

      The Government’s “Vaccine Diplomacy”

      With the situation worsening, the BJP-led government has been criticized by Indian courts for focusing on state election campaigns instead of taking preemptive action to combat the second wave. Aside from easing restrictions too quickly and not reinforcing the health care system in time, many states face shortages of COVID-19 vaccines. In January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed to have rolled out the “world’s largest vaccination drive,” aiming to get jabs in the arms of 300 million people by July. At the time of writing, only 2% of the Indian population — 29 million — has been fully vaccinated with two doses. This is compared to 23% in the UK and 30% in the US, both of which focused on vaccinating their most vulnerable citizens first to drive down new infections and deaths.

      India had other things in mind. It sought to distribute doses worldwide as part of its vaccine diplomacy. With the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, India has so far exported 66 million doses to 95 countries. Yet, earlier this year, the Modi government implemented an initiative to donate free batches in an attempt to boost the country’s soft power when the pandemic was seemingly under control. Many observers questioned whether the move was necessary instead of focusing on vaccinating Indians themselves. Toward the end of March, as infections increased and vaccines decreased, the Modi government realized that its decision to export millions of doses was premature. It decided to halt the export of doses and instead vaccinate Indians over the age of 45. Yet the damage had already been done due to poor planning by the BJP-led government.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Meanwhile, state administrations in Maharashtra, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh that are not ruled by the BJP have claimed they are running short of vaccines. Critics have accused Modi of playing politics with vaccine distribution as states with BJP governments, such as Gujarat, were given almost the same number of vaccine doses as Maharashtra, which has a population double that of Gujarat. The health minister has denied that regions were short of supplies and instead blamed state governments for the poor rollout of vaccines.

      In order to counter criticism over its inefficient planning, the central government announced on April 19 that all citizens above 18 would be able to get vaccinated from May 1; it had previously focused on health and frontline workers and those over 45. By opening the door for all adults, an additional 600 million citizens are now eligible. Yet with vaccines in short supply, some states have postponed the rollout. The website through which citizens can book a jab crashed minutes after it went live for the new age group.

      The government has approved additional funds for vaccine manufacturers to ramp up production. However, the increased production is unlikely to be available for a few months as vaccines go through a lengthy process of packaging and safety checks. To make up for this shortage, the government has fast-tracked the approval process for foreign-produced vaccines. These include Johnson and Johnson from Belgium and Sputnik V from Russia, which cost more than domestically-produced ones.

      Public Image

      In an attempt to maintain his public image, Modi addressed the nation on April 20. Indians needed assurances and demanded answers, but the prime minister offered none. He neither informed the public about plans to tackle the crisis, nor did he give any reasons about why the country is facing a horrific second wave. This is despite him previously boasting that India’s handling of the pandemic had been exemplary and should a model for the world. It seems the central government is content with placing the blame on state administrations and the public instead of admitting that it made mistakes.

      Earlier this week, the BJP failed to win in the state of West Bengal despite heavy election campaigning. It seems that Indians are beginning to realize that Modi’s preoccupation with his public image, and his need to win votes, is costing the country dearly. In fact, the obsession with elections on the part of Indian politicians has contributed to the second wave of COVID-19 infections. India can only hope that Modi and other politicians shift their focus from politics to health care before it is too late.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More