📰 The great Indian abdication
The judiciary alone cannot take forward the mission of deepening democracy and protecting social freedoms
•After the slew of verdicts by the Supreme Court, on triple talaq, Section 377, adultery, and the Sabarimala temple, a prominent cartoonist adapted the famous “Road to Homo Sapiens” picture to depict the Supreme Court Justice as a barber who cleans up the barbarous Neanderthal to make him a modern human.
•India, at present, is going through a deep crisis in which the mission of deepening democracy, and protecting and advancing social freedoms is placed solely upon the judiciary. On the one hand there is a complete abnegation of the role of the legislature, and on the other there is a dichotomy between social morality and judicial morality (itself an interpretation of constitutional morality).
•Both are dangerous tendencies.
A divide
•The Supreme Court verdicts have curiously become a spectator sport on primetime television with a great amount of anticipation about the judgments in pending cases. The same curiosity is missing about parliamentary bills/debates, which are absolutely vital to a parliamentary democracy.
•One example would suffice. Earlier this year, the government amended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to retrospectively legalise political donations from foreign companies and individuals since 1976. This move — with potentially catastrophic ramifications for Indian democracy — was pushed through without discussion in Parliament and hardly any debate in the public sphere.
•If the judiciary has assumed the role of the single most important pillar of India’s parliamentary democracy, built on separation of powers, it is mainly because of the degradation and abuse of the roles of the legislature and the the executive.
Parliament’s erosion
•Parliament, the supreme venue representing the people, has become a shadow of what it should be (even when the representation of marginalised communities has gone up). The words, “A fraud on the Constitution, used by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s words (in a recent judgment), have ironically been used before by the Supreme Court to refer to executive and legislative actions.
•The Prime Minister rarely attends parliamentary debates, affecting the sanctity of the forum. If the Lok Sabha met for an average of 127 days in the 1950s, in 2017 it met for a shocking 57. If 72 Bills were passed in a year in the first Lok Sabha, the number was 40 in the 15th Lok Sabha (2009-14).
•The Budget session for this fiscal year saw a scarcely believable usage of 1% of its allotted time in the Lok Sabha, and the Budget, the most vital cog of a national’s material basis, itself passed without discussion through the guillotine process. The basic minimum that could have been done amidst mounting allegations in the Rafale fighter aircraft deal was to institute a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee, but even that is not forthcoming. And what is the worth of Parliament when its convening could be held to ransom to the campaigning by the ruling party in the 2017 Gujarat elections?
•Parliament, instead of representing the highest democratic ethos, panders to electoral majorities, leaving it incapable of challenging barbaric social/religious practices enforced by dominant interests. That is why it took 70 years for Section 377 to be partially struck down. Is it then surprising that the Supreme Court steps into this dangerous void left by the executive and the legislature?
•But the task of democratising society cannot be left to the judiciary, an unelected body, the higher echelons of which self-appoint their members through the collegium system (itself a result of the executive trying to muzzle the independence of judiciary). Instead, it must be through social and political struggles from the bottom, and not through judicial diktats from above (even if the latter can be useful).
State of the judiciary
•More importantly, the judiciary does not exist in a vacuum. Even when it attempts to correct regressive social practices, it is still a reflection of our society. Nothing could be more illustrative of this than the serious lack of diversity and representation, especially in the higher judiciary.
•In 1993, Justice S.R. Pandian estimated that less than 4% of judges in the higher judiciary were from Dalit and tribal communities, and less than 3% were women. This led former President K.R. Narayanan to recommend that candidates from marginalised communities be considered as Supreme Court judges. Since Independence, only four Dalits have become Supreme Court judges, including one Chief Justice of India.
•Even in the lower judiciary, the story is not starkly different. Data from 11 States show that the representation of Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes judges ranged from 12% to 14%. It took 42 years for a woman judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and there have been only eight women judges in the Supreme Court so far.
•While representation can become tokenistic and essentialist, democracy is absolutely hollow without it.
Case backlog
•The abdication of responsibility by the legislature is even more damaging considering that the judiciary is groaning under the weight of a mammoth 3.3 crore pending cases. The backlog of cases in the High Courts and the Supreme Court is 43 lakh and 57,987, respectively.
•What could be more unjust in a democracy than thousands of innocent undertrials languishing in jails for a lifetime awaiting justice? A staggering 67% of India’s prison population awaits trial; 55% of these undertrials are Dalits, tribals, and Muslims.
•In this context, should the valuable time of the judiciary be spent in entertaining and delivering verdicts on Public Interest Litigations (PILs), seeking, to take a couple of instances, a ban on pornography or making the national anthem mandatory in cinema halls? The PIL, a unique and powerful tool to seek justice for the weakest sections, has now degenerated. Witness the recent example of one having been filed seeking segregated seats for vegetarian and non-vegetarian passengers in trains.
•Overworked courts cannot become a one-stop solution for performing legislative/executive tasks such as banning fire crackers/loud speakers, enforcing seat belt/helmet wearing rules, or solving theological/civil society questions such as what the essence of Hinduism is or whether a mosque is integral for namaz (going beyond whether religious practices violate constitutional norms).
•The process of abolishing religious or secular hierarchies/injustices cannot become deep-rooted if it is merely judicial or legal. Take the Supreme Court’s recent directive urging new legislation to curb lynching. Politically-motivated lynchings targeting a community do not happen because of the absence of laws. They happen because of a wilful subversion of laws by the executive backed by mobs riding on electoral majorities. That is why the head of India’s most populous and politically crucial State can declare publicly that he is proud of the demolition of Babri Masjid.
•Yet, the irony of democracy is such that the task of completing the world’s largest democracy’s political and social revolution cannot be laid only at the doorstep of the wise men and women in robes.
📰 #MeToo: Not without her consent
The #MeToo outpouring demands a new, fair system that delivers brisk justice
•At last count, Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar had been accused of sexual harassment by at least 10 women journalists. These accusations fall in a large spectrum — from inappropriate behaviour to acts of physical impropriety — and some date back to more than 15 years. That the clamour for his resignation reached such a crescendo this week is indicative of the fact that the #MeToo movement has truly arrived in India and it will have an impact in not only making powerful men pay for their past mistakes but also etching a new behaviour code for everyone.
•While the latest fire was lit by actor Tanushree Dutta’s accusation against Nana Patekar, the trend of naming perpetrators began last year when a list of men in academia who behaved inappropriately with colleagues and research associates went around. Not much came of that list, barring one whose service was terminated. It is notable that even women who were pushing for a due process of investigation then have now thrown in their lot with the list and are choosing instead to name and shame people through social media.
About due process
•At the heart of this change is the utter failure of due process. Victims who have written formal complaints and tried to get their organisations to act have mostly found themselves facing a system that prefers to be complicit with the perpetrators. In the case of the former TERI chairman, R.K. Pachauri, for instance, despite the victim filing a police complaint and compelling the organisation to initiate an inquiry, he not only continued in TERI for another year but was publicly supported by the board members. The case of rape against the former Editor of Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal, is another example. In spite of being a “fast track” case, five years on, it has only seen a series of adjournments, with no sign of justice on the horizon. These events, added to the daily news cycle of multiple rapes, stalking, and harassment from all across the country has resulted in victims of sexual crimes entirely losing faith in the justice system.
•This failure of due process is the success of #MeToo. After decades of witnessing the impunity of the perpetrators, #MeToo is fuelled by an impunity of sorts of the ‘victims’. Publicly naming and shaming, sometimes through anonymous screen shots, is obviously a flawed process, and nobody is blind to that. Yet, for many people, including the senior journalists who have pointed their fingers at Mr. Akbar, that is the only option available for any hope of justice.
A metamorphosis
•Now that the floodgates have opened, various kinds of stories are getting exposed — ranging from awkward flirting to physical assault. One other factor that is cleaving the discussion into two is the nature of consent. What needs consent is often a function of society — many aspects of intersexual behaviour especially in the workplace that were acceptable 30 years ago, needless to say, are not tolerated any more. However, with the advent of smartphones and instant messaging, interpersonal behaviour and the definition of consent have undergone a particularly momentous metamorphosis in the last decade. It is imperative at this point, therefore, to consider that consent is not static, but needs to be continuous and incremental.
•In the dating mores of millennials, seeking and swapping intimate photographs of each other is par for the course. While the tendency, especially among the older generation, is to sweep subsequent allegations of violation of this trust as something the victim should have accounted for, and maybe even taken responsibility of, the #MeToo movement has revealed that to be outmoded. What is regarded as appropriate behaviour is anchored in many things — the age of the participants, their geographic location (what is acceptable in Denver is questionable in Delhi, and what is true for Delhi need not be conventional in Dindigul), as well as the social and economic demographic they occupy. A one-size-fits-all rule is not applicable. As more people get on board social media,where many of these structures tend to be invisible, a code of conduct that is constantly evolving is an inevitability, as will be the violations of this. As the online space matures, so will user behaviour. Dismissing these incidents as irresponsible acts by the victims is only going to postpone the inevitable meltdown, not prevent it.
The larger message
•Lastly, many people — especially men — have raised concerns regarding false accusations. This is valid, and there have been instances of this even in the last 10 days. No movement is perfect, and all battles have collateral damage. This makes it important that men, instead of beating their chests about potential victimhood, be active allies in making the due process a fair and functional one in which all victims — including those of false allegations — can seek justice.
•There is no doubt that the genie is now out of the bottle. Everything is fair game — misread cues, unsolicited text messages, unnecessary comments can all find their way to a large audience, sometimes stripped of context and continuum. This is no foreseeable way to go back to a time when victims — real and perceived — chose to remain quiet. This makes the building of a new, fair system that delivers brisk justice critical to everyone’s interests.
📰 #UsToo — on India's #MeToo moment
The movement to make workplaces safe for women must involve us all
•In what has been called India’s MeToo moment, the social media is thick with women coming forth with stories of sexual harassment. In the quick aftermath of actor Tanushree Dutta’s allegations, in an interview in end-September, of harassment at the hands of actor Nana Patekar on a film set a decade ago, women have been speaking of their experiences and the trauma, mostly on Twitter and Facebook. The testimonies so far have mostly concerned the film world and the mainstream media, and cover both the workplace and private spaces. They range from stories of assault to propositioning, suggestiveness to stalking. In the vast majority of cases, the naming is a result of the failure to receive a just response from the system, a signal that it is no longer possible for such behaviour to be breezily dismissed or excused because boys, after all, will be boys. The MeToo hashtag gained currency a year ago in the U.S. when women came out one after another to first corroborate allegations of sexual assault against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, with each further account making clear that there was a systemic pattern of abuse and silence. In the outpourings in India too, a year on, a disturbing picture is emerging. It is not only that many of the allegations are extremely grave — for instance, against M.J. Akbar, a star editor who left journalism for government, to become a Minister of State for External Affairs. What is perhaps of even greater disquiet is that for so very long an official silence was kept around what were, in many instances, open secrets.
•Now that women are speaking up — picking up the stories where others have left them, making public suppressed memories, breaking free from the helplessness or a false sense of humiliation that kept them quiet for so long — there can be no looking away. It is important to identify the exact transgression in the various cases that are being outed, and to ensure that action is taken with due process. No one can be deemed guilty only because he had been named and any punishment must be proportionate to the misdemeanour. But the larger issue perhaps is the message sent out by the outpouring — namely, that there has been a systemic disregard for making workplaces and common spaces free of harassment. It must disturb us that a thread that binds so many allegations now coming out is that many women thought that their words and feelings would be dismissed, their careers would suffer, or their families would pull them back into the safety of home. This fear of making a complaint needs to be overcome in all workspaces, not only the media and the film industry. All of society needs to internalise a new normal that protects a woman’s autonomy and her freedom from discrimination at the workplace.
📰 Silent and suffering
Manual scavenging remains a social reality despite a 2013 act calling for its abolition
•One manual scavenger dies every five days, according to official data. Recently, the Delhi High Court gave the authorities two months to identify manual scavengers in the national capital.
•The order proved two things — one, manual scavenging is a social reality despite its abolition by Parliament through the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013; and two, the government itself, directly or indirectly, employs manual scavengers.
•The act had endeavoured to eliminate not only dry latrines but also “insanitary latrines”; prohibit the employment of manual scavengers for the hazardous manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks; conduct a time-bound survey; and take measures for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers. The definition of ‘manual scavengers’ was widened to cover those involved in cleaning not only dry latrines but other insanitary latrines. The statute made offences under the act cognisable and non-bailable. They now attract stringent penalties.
•The act called for the setting up of vigilance/monitoring committee at sub-division, district, State and Central levels. The National Commission for Safai Karamcharis was given the responsibility of implementation.
Poor implementation
•To eliminate open defecation, the act also called for the construction of an adequate number of sanitary community latrines in urban areas within three years from the date of commencement of the statute.
•The poor implementation of the act may have been because States and Union Territories have been slow in identifying insanitary latrines and manual scavengers. In 2014, many States denied even the existence of insanitary latrines in the Supreme Court.
•The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said that rehabilitation of manual scavengers has been slow because they are mostly illiterate and have no exposure to any work other than sanitation-related activities.
•Many of them are old. They also do not have opportunities to avail of any skill development training.
•A lack of opportunities has also resulted in hesitation on the part of manual scavengers to come out into the open and demand jobs, making them a silent, suffering population in the country.
📰 U.S. sanctions Act no hurdle: Russian envoy
Kudashev hints at more defence deals with India after the conclusion of the S-400 Triumf missile purchase
•India and Russia’s defence deals won’t be affected by the United States’ threat of sanctions, and several more defence deals are expected to be completed after the S-400 Triumf missile deal concluded on Friday, Russian Ambassador Nikolai Kudashev said.
•Mr. Kudashev also advocated that India sign a military logistics agreement with Russia.
Trump threat
•The Ambassador’s remarks come just hours after U.S. President Trump’s words, seen as a sign of possible punitive action, that “India is going to find out…Sooner than you think,” about U.S. sanctions as a result of the $5.43 billion missile deal signed during the Putin-Modi summit in Delhi.
•“I can only invoke the statements of the Indian leaders [where they said UN sanctions, not U.S. sanctions matter],” Mr. Kudashev told a select group of journalists, referring to Washington’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) that was signed last year to pass strictures on countries doing energy and defence trade deals with Russia, Iran and North Korea.
•Asked by The Hindu whether the announcement of the S-400 agreement had been deliberately muted, and the other defence deals put off due to the CAATSA sanctions, Mr. Kudashev said on the contrary, the deal had been fast tracked in the last few months.
•“The [S-400] is the largest deal in the history of our bilateral military and technical cooperation of 60 years….It was negotiated very fast, so don’t believe those who speak of protracted negotiations. In fact it was the speediest negotiation we have had so far,” he explained, calling Mr. Putin’s visit to Delhi as “result oriented and strategic”.
•“India is too big, too large to depend on somebody or to be afraid of anybody,” Mr. Kudashev added, detailing more defence deals to be announced by the two countries in the next “two-three months”. These include a production licence for Kalashnikov AK-103 Assault Rifles, and four stealth frigates.
•The deals could also attract sanctions from the U.S., as the only exceptions the White House has announced it will make so far are for “things such as spare parts for previously purchased equipment”, not new purchases.
•Mr. Modi and Mr. Putin are expected to meet next at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires on November 30, after which the pending defence agreements may be announced during an expected visit to Delhi by the Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, it is learnt.
•By then, government officials hope the U.S. will have clarified its intentions of sanctions on India for the Russian purchases.
•While the Modi government has repeated its stand on disregarding unilateral sanctions, officials including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale have met with their American counterparts in the past few months to request a waiver to the CAATSA sanctions on the plea that India and Russia share an old and deep defence relationship that cannot be reduced easily.
📰 1 in 5 Indian children ‘wasted’, says GHI
Country’s ranking drops 3 places inthe index for 2018
•At least one in five Indian children under the age of five are ‘wasted,’ which means they have extremely low weight for their height, reflecting acute under-nutrition, according to the Global Hunger Index 2018. The only country with a higher prevalence of child wasting is the war-torn nation of South Sudan, says the report, which was released on Thursday.
•Overall, India has been ranked at 103 out of 119 countries in the Index, with hunger levels in the country categorised as “serious”. India’s ranking has dropped three places from last year, although the Index says its results are not accurately comparable from year to year and instead provides a few reference years for comparable data. The 2018 scores reflect data from 2013-2017.
Main indicators
•Four main indicators are used to calculate hunger levels in the report, which is a peer-reviewed publication released annually by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. (The International Food Policy Research Institute was also involved with the publication until this year.) The first indicator is undernourishment, which is the share of the population which is undernourished and reflects insufficient caloric intake. The next three indicators use data for children under five: child wasting (low weight for height), reflecting acute under-nutrition; child stunting (low height for age), reflecting chronic under-nutrition; and child mortality.
•India has shown improvement in three of the indicators over the comparable reference years. The percentage of undernourished people in the population has dropped from 18.2% in 2000 to 14.8% in 2018. The child mortality rate has halved from 9.2% to 4.3%, while child stunting has dropped from 54.2% to 38.4% over the same period.
•However, the prevalence of child wasting has actually worsened in comparison to previous reference years. It stood at 17.1% in 2000, and increased to 20% in 2005. In 2018, it stands at 21%. South Sudan’s child wasting prevalence is at 28%. Child wasting is high across South Asia, constituting a “critical public health emergency”, according to UN organisations. The report notes that wasting rates are highest for infants aged 0 to 5 months, suggesting that attention to birth outcomes and breastfeeding is important.
•Also, child wasting in the region is associated with a low maternal body mass index, suggesting the need for a focus on the nutritional status of the mother during pregnancy.
📰 An economics fix
The Nobel to work on growth and long-run sustainability frames a crucial priority
•American economists William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer were jointly awarded the 50th economics Nobel prize this week in recognition of their work on economic growth and its long-run sustainability. The Nobel committee noted that the duo’s work “brought us considerably closer to answering the important question of how we can achieve sustained and sustainable economic growth”. The committee’s praise is fitting as both economists devoted their careers to the study of the various “externalities” or “spillovers” that affect economic growth in a market economy. Mr. Nordhaus, for one, has been a pioneer in the movement towards quantifying the impact of economic growth on the climate and, in turn, the impact of climate change on economic growth. To correct this problem, he recommended imposing appropriate carbon taxes to curb pollution that was detrimental to growth in the long run. Mr. Romer, on the other hand, studied the importance of technology in achieving economic growth. He proposed the endogenous growth model where technological progress is seen as the outgrowth of businesses and other entities investing in research and development. At the same time, he recognised ways in which the market economy may undersupply technological innovations. Consequently, he recommended the use of subsidies, patents and other forms of government intervention to encourage economic growth through increased investment in technology. In essence, the Nobel committee’s decision is a recognition of economic research concerning market failure.
•Of course, critics have highlighted flaws in the works of these two noted economists. For one, it may often be impossible to arrive at an objective measure of the carbon tax rate or the ideal amount of pollution to allow in a developing economy. It is equally troublesome when one needs to determine how much subsidy, or other forms of government support, should be allotted towards research and development. Even though mathematical models have been devised to address these problems, they are only as good as the data fed into them. Further, such decisions regarding the perfect carbon tax rate or the ideal subsidy allocation are likely to be determined by political considerations rather than simply pure economics. So the threat of government failure may have to be taken as seriously as the effects of market failure. These concerns lead to questions about the real-world impact of the policies supported by the pair. Nonetheless, many would argue that Mr. Nordhaus and Mr. Romer’s works are an improvement from the past in that they try to use the market mechanism itself to address its failures. The Nobel committee has done well to recognise important work on issues that are particularly relevant to the developing world.
📰 Antibiotics to grow farm animals raise superbug risk
An investigation by The Hindu and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds a veterinary drug producer encouraging their misuse to fatten poultry
•The world’s biggest animal drugs company has been accused of double standards and of exposing consumers in India to “higher levels of risk” by selling antibiotics for purposes now banned in Europe and the U.S.
•Zoetis, the largest producer of veterinary medicines, is supplying Indian farmers with antibiotics to help their animals grow faster. The practice should be banned worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), because it increases the prevalence of resistant bacteria that can infect humans and cause deadly and untreatable infections.
•The company stopped advertising antibiotics as growth promoters to American farmers almost two years ago. Zoetis publicly supported new laws in the U.S. banning this abuse of antibiotics as part of its “continued commitment to antibiotic stewardship”. However, Zoetis continues to sell antibiotics directly to Indian farmers with claims on the company’s Indian website that they will make animals grow bigger and faster.
•This is not currently against Indian law although the government has called for it to end and Maharastra banned the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in agriculture after a Hindu/Bureau of Investigative Journalism report earlier this year.
•Abdul Ghafur, a professor in infectious diseases who brought together medical societies and the Indian government in 2012 to create a plan to tackle antibiotic resistance, known as the Chennai Declaration, said Zoetis is adopting “double standards”. “If an American company follows one policy in America, they should follow the same policy in India,” he added.
Double standards
•Thomas Van Boeckel, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) who has mapped antibiotic use in agriculture, said: “It is blatantly clear that Zoetis is using a double standard in the way it is willing to expose consumers in India to higher levels of risk than in the United States.” Zoetis says it complies with the law in each location where it operates.
•The unnecessary use of antibiotics in human medicine and agriculture, such as their use to make animals grow faster rather than treat disease, are major contributors to growing levels of resistant bacteria. It is estimated 1,00,000 babies a year in the country die from infections from resistant bugs. Worldwide they’re believed to kill 7,00,000 people, according to a British government-commissioned review in 2016. WHO has called antibiotic resistance one of the greatest threats to public health.
•Zoetis, a former subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, has previously said it is “a leader in providing ongoing education to veterinarians and livestock producers on the proper use of antimicrobial drugs”. But the multibillion dollar U.S. company still sells its antibiotics to farmers in India, where regulation and enforcement is more lax.
•WHO, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have called for a worldwide ban on the use of antibiotics to fatten farm animals — a practice already banned in the EU and U.S. — in an attempt to stem the rising threat of resistance.
Illegal sale
•Zoetis said that when used “properly and responsibly according to their approved indications” and “under the supervision of a veterinary professional” its products do not contribute to drug resistance and do not pose a threat to public health.
•But unnecessarily giving healthy animals antibiotics — such as their use to help fatten livestock — is fuelling the rise of superbugs, according to WHO. And, despite Zoetis’ stance they should be used under the supervision of a vet, they can be bought without a prescription in India.
•In veterinary drug stores in Hyderabad, the Bureau found a number of antibiotics manufactured by Zoetis, which are used to fatten animals, being sold over the counter without a prescription. A Bureau reporter, posing as a veterinary drug store owner, also spoke to a member of Zoetis’ Indian sales team who said it typically sold these antibiotics directly to farmers.
•Ahead of new laws introduced last year in the U.S. banning the use of antibiotics as growth promoters, Zoetis voluntarily began to remove such claims from its products there. In 2013, Zoetis said it “supports the FDA’s efforts to voluntarily phase out growth promotion indications for medically important antibiotics”. Meanwhile, in India Zoetis is selling Neftin-T, which contains the antibiotic tylosin. Zoetis recommends feeding Neftin-T to chickens to “improve weight gain and FCR [feed conversion rate]”.
•Tylosin is not only critically important to animal health, it has been banned for use as a growth promoter in the EU since 1998 because of fears it fuels resistance to erythromycin, which is used to treat chest infections and other human diseases. WHO classes erythromycin as critically important to human health.
•The practice of using antibiotics to make animals grow faster was banned completely in the EU in 2006.
•Pharmaceutical companies earn about $5 billion a year from worldwide sales of antibiotics for livestock, according to Animal Pharm. As one of the world’s leading producers of medicated feed additives — many of which contain antibiotics — Zoetis takes a significant slice of this.
Banned abroad
•Zoetis faces a dwindling market in U.S. since the ban last year for these products but expects that increased sales elsewhere will more than compensate in the future. Speaking to investment analysts in February, Zoetis CFO Glenn David said, despite the downturn in the U.S., he still expects to see sales of medicated feed additives rise “as the emerging markets become more industrialised”.
•Animals reared for meat in the major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are expected to consume double the amount of antibiotics in 2030 than they did in 2010.
•Responding to the Bureau’s findings, Zoetis said: “Each country enacts regulations appropriate for their market needs and standards, and we work with the national regulatory authorities in various countries, including India, to understand, respect and comply with local regulatory interpretation and oversight.”
•Experts are particularly concerned about the widespread use of a ‘last hope’ antibiotic on Indian poultry farms. Colistin is often used to treat seriously ill people with infections that have become resistant to almost all other drugs and is deemed one of the “highest priority, critically important” antibiotics by WHO as it is so crucial to human medicine.
•Although none of Zoetis’ growth promoters contain colistin, a number of major Indian poultry companies have been found to use the drug, spreading fears about how much longer one of our last lines of defence against highly resistant infections will be effective.
•A Bureau investigation earlier this year found Venky’s, one of the country’s biggest chicken producers which supplies Indian branches of fast food chains KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Dominos, to have been providing colistin to farmers to help their birds grow bigger. Venky’s has since removed these growth promotion claims from the packaging, which also now says a veterinary prescription is needed. But the Bureau was still able to purchase it recently in an Indian drug store without a prescription.
•Venky’s said it is “manufacturing Colis-V (colistin sulphate) with due approval from the Food & Drug Administration, Government of Maharashtra, India. The usage of Colis-V (colistin sulphate) in poultry farming is based on advice from Registered Veterinary Practitioners only.”
•Similarly, another leading Indian poultry producer, Simran Group Farms, sells a colistin growth promoter under the brand name Vetline India. Simran Group Farms did not respond to multiple requests to comment.
•Fears about growing resistance to a drug crucially important to human health has led some to call for an outright ban of colistin use on farms. The discovery of a colistin-resistant gene that can pass between bacteria, conferring resistance to bugs never exposed to the drug, sent shockwaves through the medical community in 2015. This transfer will likely accelerate the spread of resistance to colistin, further boosted by the rampant use of the antibiotic on farms in many countries. Scientists believe the gene originated in bacteria in Chinese livestock, but it has since been found across five continents.
•Timothy Walsh, a professor at Cardiff University who made the discovery in 2015, called for a worldwide ban on colistin use in agriculture.
•“I’ll be OK, but my children and my children’s children are seriously going to grow up in a world where we have no viable antibiotics because of unrivalled stupidity” he said.
•In 2016, the British government published a major review of the global threat of superbugs, which called for vast reductions in the use of antibiotics in agriculture worldwide. While colistin can still be prescribed on British farms, its use has dramatically reduced in recent years.
•But growth promoting antibiotics remain widely available to Indian farmers through a number of international and domestic pharmaceutical companies. The Bureau found multiple of examples of Indian drug manufacturers selling colistin as a growth promoter for chickens, including Neospark, Kaizen Bio Sciences and Vet-Needs Labs. While relatively unknown abroad, their products are widely available online in India, where farmers are given unrestricted access to some of the most important antibiotics to human health.
•Neospark said, “Officially there is no ban in India for the specified usage of colistin in farm animals. As law abiding company, Neospark never deviates the law of the land.”
•Kaizen Bio Sciences and Vet-Needs Labs didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
•Since the Bureau’s earlier investigation into the use of colistin in Indian poultry farms, the Maharastra state has ruled all animal drug stores should stop selling antibiotics to farmers without a prescription, after a court order. But in other states, no such regulations are in place.
•Talking of the continued use of the last hope antibiotic on farms worldwide, Mr. Walsh said: “I predict that colistin as a drug will be dead in 10 years time. And given what is in the pipeline - which is next to nothing - and given the plasticity of bacteria and their ability to evolve and adapt and survive and prosper, I see no good end to this story at all.”
