📰 Government report flags ‘lapses’ in Nagaland bat study
Role of foreign researchers questioned amid row over storage of samples at NCBS, Bengaluru
•More than a year after a probe into a filovirus study of bats in Nagaland by the Bangalore-based National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the government has concluded that there had been “concerning lapses” in the conduct and protocols followed for the study, even as an inter-department row continues over where the bat samples should be stored.
•The Hindu had first reported in February 2020 on the enquiry being initiated into whether adequate permissions had been sought for the study that had listed two scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as “co-authors”, and was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Defence through its Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
•In 2020, a committee convened by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which consisted of officials from the Ministries of External Affairs, Defence, Home Affairs, Health, Environment, Law, Departments of Science & Technology, Development of North Eastern Region, and others met to “to streamline processes and avoid such lapses in the future,” a report prepared by the Ministry of Health said. Both the foreign-funding of the study, that cost an estimated ₹1.9 crore, as well as concerns over the storage of the bat samples collected came up for scrutiny.
No Wuhan link
•The findings of the report became significant given the debate over the origins of the Covid-19 worldwide, and handling of bat samples at the Wuhan Institute laboratory, given that both studies share one common co-author. However, scientific experts and officials that The Hindu spoke to made it clear that the Nagaland bat study on filoviruses (Ebola and Marburg) was in no way related to the coronavirus (SARs) studies at Wuhan.
•When contacted, NCBS Director Satyajit Mayor said he had no knowledge of the Health Ministry’s report’s conclusions.
•“We are not aware of lapses,” said Mr. Mayor, in written replies to The Hindu. “The [bat] samples we have collected are invaluable to research and understanding zoonotic pathogens,” he added, directing all further enquiries on the clearances and bat samples to the Ministry of Health.
•However, both the Ministry of Health report dated February 2021, as well as a series of communications between the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Department of Atomic Energy, which oversaw the NCBS study in October-November 2020, referred to the issues. The Hindu has seen copies of these documents.
•“The research publication raised serious concerns as the samples were collected from humans and bats with intent to test for viral pathogens and resulting antibodies of highly infectious pathogens (risk group 4 viruses). The study didn’t have the requisite approval of ICMR. Moreover, the facility at NCBS was not equipped in terms of biosafety and biosecurity to undertake such testing,” states the Health Ministry report.
•“The inquiry committee (including Health Ministry and ICMR officials) visited NCBS, Bangalore as well as Nagaland to understand the work done, methodology followed, and places visited during the course of the study,” said the report, adding that they found “concerning lapses in the study protocols and procedures”.
•“All the lapses were discussed and appropriate actions were suggested,” it added.
Safe storage issues
•Meanwhile differences over the storage of the Nagaland bat samples between the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and the Ministry of Health continue. The Health Ministry wants the samples of nucleic acid extract stored at the Bio Safety Level -4 (BSL-4) standard facility at the National Institute of Virology laboratory in Pune, rather than NCBS’s Bengaluru facilities, that are rated BSL-3 at present.
•While the DAE contends that the samples were “non-infectious” and had been checked for the presence of filoviruses (Ebola and Marburg), the Health Ministry contends that such samples must be handled in a laboratory equipped for “biosafety and biosecurity conditions” as otherwise they can pose a “significant public health hazard”.
•“The issue of bio-security comes under Department of Biotechnology, and ICMR has no business raising any concerns on a study done by NCBS, which is an institution under the Department of Atomic Energy,” said noted virologist Gagandeep Kang.
•When asked, however, an official said that a 1987 Health Ministry order had designated ICMR Director General and the Health Secretary as the Chairpersons on the committee clearing all research involving foreign funding and foreign collaboration.
•According to the citation in the study, named “Filovirus-reactive antibodies in humans and bats in Northeast India imply zoonotic spillover”, that was published in 2019, the research was funded by U.S. Dept of Defense, U.S. Naval Biological Defense Research Directorate, and Indian Department of Atomic Energy, and credits researchers at Duke-NUS Singapore, U.S. Uniformed Services University as well as Shi Zhengli and Xinglou Yang from the Wuhan Institute for “writing- review and editing” the paper.
Open Societies Statement reworked to prioritise national security over freedoms
•Internet freedoms are subject to national security, said government sources, claiming that India’s tough negotiations on the joint communique issued by G7 and Guest Countries at the session on Open Societies, had ensured that the original language criticising “Internet shutdowns” had been amended to include New Delhi’s concerns.
•The explanation came after the ‘G7 and Guest Countries: 2021 Open Societies Statement’ referred to “politically motivated Internet shutdowns” which indirectly addresses Internet blackouts in various parts of the world including India.
•Kashmir has experienced Internet and mobile telephony shutdown since Article 370 was amended on August 5, 2019. Similar communication shutdowns were witnessed in Delhi and Assam during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act during 2019-2020 and the farmer’s protest last January. Communication shutdowns were also witnessed in other parts of the world including Hong Kong where a protest against Chinese security laws intensified during 2019. The G7 statement also took note of developments in military-ruled Myanmar as well as in larger economies.
•“We are at a critical juncture, facing threats to freedom and democracy from rising authoritarianism, electoral interference, corruption, economic coercion, manipulation of information, including disinformation, online harms and cyber attacks, politically motivated Internet shutdowns, human rights violations and abuses, terrorism and violent extremism,” declared the statement referring to the problems facing the democratic world.
•The assertion in the statement appears to touch upon several issues that are sensitive in nature as they are often subjected to public debate in India. Sources indicate that the mention of the topics in the statement took place in the backdrop of sustained exchange of opinion between G7 and Indian teams. Government sources said that “politically motivated Internet shutdowns” clarified that national security and public order concerns are an exception to the need for Internet freedoms
•According to the sources, during his visit to London in early may, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had fielded several questions about the government’s actions against protestors and the clampdown in Jammu and Kashmir after August 5, 2019.
•The sources said Mr. Jaishankar had “made it clear” that law and order concerns were important and public safety had to be prioritised when regulating flow of information. He also had fielded specific questions about the Internet shutdown for months in Jammu Kashmir as well as during the Republic Day protests by farmers in Delhi this year. Mr Jaishankar had attended the meetings virtually as he was under quarantine in London after some officials tested positive for coronavirus.
•The G7 Foreign Ministers-level statement issued earlier in May, however, had also referred to “Internet shutdowns” as a subject that the organisation is aiming to counter.
📰 An elite club: On G-7 summit
The G-7 needs to be more open and less exclusive in an increasingly interlinked world
•The G-7 summit, at Carbis Bay, sent out two very strong messages. The first was driven by the United States’s new President Joseph Biden and his vow that “America is back” to take the lead on global challenges. The G-7 commitment to donate one billion coronavirus vaccines to poorer countries and to invest $12 trillion in their combined pandemic recovery plan depends on U.S. commitments for a large part. The special communiqué on “Open Societies” for the G-7 outreach, and the invitation to “fellow democracies” India, Australia, South Korea and South Africa are also an extension of his stated commitment to convening a Democracy Summit this year. Even the slogan for the G-7, “Build Back Better”, was a White House term to declare America’s economy and jobs recovery plan. The second message was the consensus amongst the seven-member countries on countering China. The final G-7 communiqué holds no less than four direct references to China, each negative, including criticising Beijing for its rights record in Xinjiang and democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, its “non-market policies and practices...”, concerns over its actions in the China Seas, and a demand for a transparent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Though the bonhomie among the G-7 leaders was palpable, the differences and contradictions in the grouping remain a challenge. Even two decades ago, questions were raised about whether the grouping (earlier, the G-8), could claim its mantle as the world’s “richest” countries, when emerging economies, China and India, are not included. On economic issues, the EU is a more representative unit than the individual European G-7 member countries. Finally, the premise of a group like the G-7, that of an exclusive club of the “haves” or “the best vs the rest”, seems anachronistic in a world that is much more interlinked now than in 1975, when the grouping first came about.
•India, a special guest to the G-7/G-8 since 2003, has also maintained its independent course, especially on political issues. It is significant that the G-7 outreach communiqués that included the guest countries, did not make the same references to China as the main document, and MEA officials clarified that Chinese aggression was not raised at the outreaches, which focused on the pandemic, climate change and democratic freedoms. India voiced concerns about some clauses in the joint communiqué on Open Societies which condemned “rising authoritarianism”, net shutdowns, manipulation of information, and rights violations — areas where the Modi government has often been criticised itself. Addressing the session on Open Societies, Mr. Modi said that India is a “natural ally” to the G-7. In the present, the Government will be expected to walk the talk on its commitments at the G-7 outreach, especially in the areas of information clampdowns, given that India had the largest number of Internet shutdowns in 2020.
📰 Unlocking war histories with a purpose
The declassification of India’s military history should also lead to building on successes and avoiding past follies
•Saturday’s announcement by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on archiving, declassifying and compiling of war histories is a long overdue initiative that signals that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is at last willing to shed its shroud of confidentiality over happenings long gone by. Largely conforming to global practices, the policy has the potential to kick-start multiple initiatives within the MoD and the three services that will offer researchers, analysts and historians an easy lens into studying military operations in the post-Independence period.
Interlinked challenges
•Drawing on my own experiences of nine years as a practitioner-historian who has struggled to put together two definitive historical and joint narratives of war and conflict in contemporary India, conversion of this policy into deliverables will be a tough and unglamorous grind. The four biggest challenges facing this initiative will be the fusion of political directives and strategic decision making with the operational and tactical happenings on ground; compilation and reconciling and analysis of events at multiple levels (headquarters, commands and field formations); putting together a team of dedicated researchers and historians with a mix of academics and practitioners with access to records and files; and lastly, putting together a concurrent oral history and digitisation of all archival compilations associated with this initiative.
•Decisions to go to war and wage conflict in democracies are largely political decisions and it is important that such decisions are fused into compilations of war histories. For example, one of the reasons why the Indian Army is reluctant to declassify the Henderson Brooks Report that considered operational failures during the 1962 war with China is because it is largely a scathing indictment of the Indian Army’s leadership without any accountability assigned to the political establishment led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon. On the other hand, several histories of the Vietnam War can now be considered credible and well-rounded because researchers have had access not only to operational accounts but also to archived discussions between the political architects of the conflict such as Presidents J.F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and Defence Secretary Robert S. McNamara.
•Similarly, General K. Sundarji and Ambassador J.N. Dixit have borne the brunt of much criticism by researchers examining India’s intervention in Sri Lanka from 1987-1990 because they expressed themselves in the open domain without fear. But it is only when researchers get access to records of discussions involving other generals, admirals and air marshals and even Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Minister of State for Defence Arun Singh and even political heavyweights in Tamil Nadu such as M.G. Ramachandran and M. Karunanidhi, that the cobwebs around Operation Pawan will be cleared.
On ‘Brasstacks’
•‘Most military historians of contemporary India agree that Exercise Brasstacks (1986-87) heralded the transformation of Indian war fighting doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures in conventional war fighting, particularly in the plains and the desert. However, all of them, including this writer, have relied on oral recollections to put together a mosaic of what may have transpired in the confines of the Military Operations (MO) Directorate of the Army HQ and thereafter. Writing the official history of Exercise Brasstacks must be high on the list of the initial projects in this initiative as it will highlight the fusion of decisions taken at multiple headquarters right down to the regiment and squadron level.
The right approach needed
•Notwithstanding the effort taken to put together official histories of the 1965 and 1971 wars, these are considered as safe histories that only scratch the surface of strategic decision making, operational analyses, leadership and lessons for the future. The reason for this is the absence of robust multi-disciplinary teams that are required to put together each such history and the desire to bring out non-controversial documents. While highlighting controversies and failures must not be an obsession with such initiatives, it is only a robust academic-cum-practitioner flavour accompanied by good and contemporary writing that will lend weight to such histories.
•Unlike the Ministry of External Affairs which has stolen a march over other ministries in declassifying files, the three service headquarters and MoD have been rather slow in initiating this. Not only is it difficult to trace files from eras gone, it is highly possible that in the absence of digital conversion, several priceless discussions have been destroyed in the periodic discarding of files. But even if such files are available, who will spend long hours trying to identify elements that remain historically relevant?
•Digitisation and creation of oral histories will form a critical component of this transformation. Both are either unfolding at a snail’s pace or are absent in our existing official repositories of history at the service headquarters or war colleges. A software major must be roped- in for this and an outreach must be made to individual historians, think tanks and global repositories to share their oral history collections on contemporary Indian military history.
The first chapter
•Considering the timeline of 25 years, a suggested list of declassifications to trigger this transformative initiative are the Nathu La skirmish of 1967, ‘The Lightning Campaign’ in the Eastern Theatre during the 1971 War, Operation Meghdoot (Siachen), Exercise Brasstacks and its subsidiary operations, and Operation Falcon (Sumdorong Chu). Lest the initiative be accused of only showcasing successes, Operation Pawan (Indian Peace Keeping Force; picture) too needs to be officially written about, albeit with due sensitivity. One of the hallmarks of a leading power/emerging power/power of consequence and a leading military is the ability to take criticism, tackle institutional reluctance to expose faultlines and push forward with reform with the big picture in mind. History does not offer a blueprint for the future, but it is certainly instructive in building on successes and not repeating the follies of the past. That proposition must be the bedrock on which this initiative takes off.
📰 A policy difficult to defend
Allowing money spent out-of-pocket to feed vaccine production in India is regressive and inequitable
•The Union government recently reversed the liberalised vaccination strategy. States no longer have to bear the responsibility of procuring vaccines; the Centre will procure them on behalf of the States as the single purchaser. While this move has been applauded, some doubt that a few things will change under the new regime. One area of objection has been that the private sector’s share of total vaccines remains unchanged at 25%.
Problematic decision
•As some experts have rightly pointed out, the private sector’s share of total manufactured vaccines is out of sync with its share of total vaccination centres, which are far fewer than the government’s, thus entailing a demand-supply mismatch between government and private centres and concomitant inequities. Although capacity to vaccinate is a more important metric to consider than just the relative share of vaccination centres, it is unlikely to be a redeeming factor. However, the policy looks problematic even if the number and the share of private vaccination centres increases substantially to accommodate their share of total vaccines.
•Writ large, a 25% share for private vaccination entails an implicit assumption that 25% of the population is willing and able to pay for a commodity for which social benefits exceed private benefit. This is indicative of our mistaken assumption of an inflated ‘middle class’. The fact is that the affluent form only a small fraction of the uppermost 25% of our population based on income.
•Markets tend to under-produce commodities having significant positive externalities. Preventive services like vaccines generate a lower private demand than curative services. Subsidising or incentivising users and penalising non-users of preventive services are two ways of promoting consumption of such services. Even assuming reasonably higher levels of wealth, education, and COVID-19 awareness in the uppermost 25% of the population, significant demand generation concerns would remain, which may lag behind desirable levels. Not to mention that this section is also likely to have better access to free vaccines provided by the government, creating a ‘crowding out’ effect for the poorer sections. Of course, we assume here that India doesn’t have a large surplus of vaccines. We also need to consider the age structure and its possible implications. A large chunk of self-payers are likely to be younger, productive individuals, who are at lesser risk of severe disease and mortality than the elderly.
•It’s intriguing as to what motivates this 25% share for private players. Is the government driven by herd immunity considerations, which project that between 60% and 80% of the population needs to be imperatively immunised? It is crucial to realise that vaccinating the poorer and marginalised sections, even if it is free of charge, is much more challenging than vaccinating the easily accessible better-off sections. The resultant disparities along geographic and socioeconomic lines would not be consistent with the notion of herd immunity.
•All this points to the need to increase the government’s share of total vaccines. It is unfair to demonise private hospitals in this situation, especially since service charges have now been capped. The benefits, if any, of differential pricing are likely to accrue mainly to vaccine manufacturers. But vaccine production is also a costly process, and the government’s track record of investing in domestic COVID-19 vaccine production has been anything but phenomenal. The result of this is that money spent out-of-pocket is feeding vaccine production in India, which is an inequitable and regressive way of doing things.
Better engagement with private sector
•Traditionally, India’s approach to dealing with the private sector has been ‘all or none’ of sorts. On accusations of extortionate pricing by private players, the government hasn’t hesitated to impose often unreasonable and unfavourable pricing restrictions. On the contrary, successive governments have frequently been criticised for adopting an unduly favourable attitude towards the private sector in healthcare. It’s time we moved beyond this. Greater reach, innovative processes, and efficiency are some of the strengths of the private sector. Any engagement with this sector needs to sufficiently exploit such strengths as part of a strategic purchasing framework. But this will require the government to engage with smaller players too, not just big private hospitals. This will be replete with challenges, including the need for strong regulatory and information systems. More decentralised but accountable regulation might be called for. However, it is possible to envision a favourable risk-benefit trade-off with such engagement. The pandemic is the right time to attain the appropriate public-private policy mix.
📰 The road from Galwan, a year later
China is now in a different league, competing with the U.S., and New Delhi faces the task of living with an uneasy calm
•On June 15 last year, the Line of Actual Control (LAC) witnessed its first deaths after 1975 when 20 Indian soldiers and at least four soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) died in a violent clash in Galwan in Ladakh. An Indian news report mentioned that around 50 Indian soldiers had been taken captive by the PLA during the clash and released in batches over three days. Although both countries have given gallantry awards to the fallen soldiers, details about the violent incident have not been officially made public so far.
Political accountability
•This is in keeping with the broader approach of the Government where no official briefing or press conference about the situation in Ladakh has taken place in the last 13 months. The ministerial statements in Parliament were monologues with no questions allowed from other representatives of the people. The official excuse was operational security, but the actual reason was to avoid political embarrassment for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Four days after the Galwan clash, Mr. Modi addressed an all-party meet where he unequivocally stated, “Na koi wahan hamari seema mein ghus aaya hai aur nahi koi ghusa hua hai, na hi hamari koi post kisi dusre ke kabze mein hain” (No one has intruded and nor is anyone intruding, nor has any post been captured by someone).” A huge public outcry led to an official clarification by the Prime Minister’s Office which contained rhetoric that dodged the offending remarks.
•The Government’s political strategy for dealing with the Ladakh border crisis has been based on dodging, denial and digression. An honest appraisal of the situation in Ladakh would be politically costly for a government led by a “strong” Prime Minister, as PLA soldiers remain in control of what was hitherto in Indian control. Despite the largely supportive news channels, the Government has not been able to convince the public about its version of events. In the recent ‘State of Nation’ poll conducted by C-Voter, 44.8% respondents said the Chinese encroachment in Ladakh was a failure of the Modi government, while only 37.3% said it was not.
•The crisis in Ladakh erupted months after Mr. Modi had held his second informal summit with the Chinese President Xi Jinping (at Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu) and weeks after he hosted the then United States President Donald Trump for a political event in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. For someone attributing his foreign policy prowess to the power of his persona and his personal chemistry with other world leaders, there could be no worse rebuttal of his claims than the timing of the Chinese incursions. In a government identified solely with the Prime Minister and dominated by his office — there is no record of the Cabinet Committee on Security being convened to discuss the Ladakh border situation — Mr. Modi is being held responsible in the public imagination for the setback.
Military situation
•The current situation is not militarily precarious in Ladakh. With a continued deployment of 50,000-60,000 soldiers, the Indian Army has been able to hold the line to prevent any further ingress by the PLA. The Chinese presence on the Indian side of the LAC in Gogra, Hot Springs and Demchok gives the PLA some tactical advantage but the area which majorly jolts Indian military plans is the Chinese control of Depsang Plains. With “official sources” trying to palm it off as a legacy issue, despite evidence to the contrary from many retired military officers, the Indian Army has only weakened its negotiating position during the talks with the PLA. In any case, there has been no progress in talks after the disengagement at Pangong lake and Kailash range in February.
•Outside of Ladakh, the Indian Army remains in an alert mode all along the LAC to prevent any Chinese misadventure but the bigger change has been its reorientation of certain forces from Pakistan border towards the China border. The basis of this shift was articulated by the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat when he recently said that China is a bigger security threat for India than Pakistan. The Ladakh crisis has also exposed India’s military weakness to tackle a collusive threat from China and Pakistan: to avoid such an eventuality, the Government opened backchannel talks with Pakistan which led to the reiteration of the ceasefire on the Line of Control.
External rebalancing
•The Ladakh crisis has also led the Government to relook external partnerships, particularly with the United States. After his meeting with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar late last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that they discussed the “India-China border situation”. The Indian side was silent about it but senior U.S. military officials have earlier spoken of the intelligence and logistics support provided to the Indian forces in Ladakh, while the Indian military has sought to learn from the American experience of implementing the Multi Domain Operations (MDO) doctrine to wage a war of the future against a technologically superior PLA.
•That China is “a larger neighbour, which has got a better force, better technology”, was acknowledged by General Rawat recently, to argue that India will “obviously prepare for a larger neighbour”. The military importance of the Quad remains moot, with India reportedly refusing to do joint naval patrolling with the U.S. in the South China Sea; the two treaty allies of the U.S., Japan and Australia, also refused. Moreover, India’s focus on its land borders and its limited resources for military modernisation in a period of economic decline impinge on its maritime ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
Balancing act
•Even as India has tried to talk tough with Beijing and shown greater interest in the Quad, its attempts to counter the burgeoning Chinese influence in the neighbourhood have faltered, exacerbated by the mishandling of the second wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic. With the widening power gap between New Delhi and Beijing, the challenge is as much economic as it is geopolitical. Despite the border crisis and the Indian restrictions on Chinese technology companies, China displaced the U.S. to be India’s biggest trade partner in 2020-21, up to nearly 13% of India’s total trade compared to 10.4% a year ago.
•For the Modi government, it has been a difficult balancing act between its domestic rhetoric and external reality. Even though India has been dependent on China for medical equipment to fight the pandemic and asked for assured supplies, the Government has been reluctant to publicly acknowledge this dependence: it underplayed Mr. Xi’s message to Mr. Modi offering support and assistance. It has asked Beijing to grant visas to Indian students and businesspersons but has refused medical aid or Chinese vaccines. Simultaneously, New Delhi has placed the border issue at the centre of the relationship with China, arguing that there can be no normalcy without restoration of status quo ante at the borders.
Unappetising choices
•For the past few decades, Indian planners operated on the premise that their diplomats will be able to manage the Chinese problem without it developing into a full-blown military crisis. That belief has been laid to rest. Militarily, Chinese incursions in Ladakh have shown that the idea of deterrence has failed. A return to the status quo ante of April 2020 remains a mirage with the Chinese side refusing to engage meaningfully after February. New Delhi has learnt that it can no longer have simultaneous competition and cooperation with Beijing; the dramatic engagement that started with Rajiv Gandhi’s historic visit to China in 1988 is over.
•The bouquet of choices before the Modi government is not appetising. A new reset in bilateral ties, àla the early 1990s, is difficult because China is now in a different league, competing with the U.S. India will never be comfortable taking sides in a new Cold War between the U.S. and China, as it has always valued its strategic sovereignty. Beijing seems as keen as New Delhi to avoid a military conflict, though accidents such as Galwan can never be ruled out. That leaves India with the daunting task of living with this tense and uneasy calm with China for some time, a challenge brought to the fore by the Ladakh crisis.
•The events of the past one year have significantly altered India’s thinking towards China. The relationship is at the crossroads now. The choices made in New Delhi will have a significant impact on the future of global geopolitics.
