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Modi's Vaccine Nationalism: India's Hasty Approval of Homegrown COVID19 Vaccine

And you as a Capitalist are arranging that how in general ?



The Aryan culture in India is around 3200 years or so old. Not more. Maybe even less.



Clicked on some of those pictures. Come on, they make ridiculous claims. India now is the most disharmonious, disbalanced, unjust and unscientific society in history where many of the leaders and sadly many of the commoners are not thinking of revolution but of continuance of socio-economically regressive, myth-filled and "dog eat dog" extremely competitive lives. A contrast to the "Oh, wonderful India " picture you paint with those pics.

Jamahir,
The capatalist pays.

And clearly, if you try to downplay the recorded and acknowledgement of India and Indians, your true characters gets displayed for all to see , the way we watch Big Boss series.

Are you also Hinduphobic?

And yes, Indians are correcting themselves and putting things in proper order now. Its all for good
 
Jamahir,
The capatalist pays.

So who paid / pays in Cuba, Libya, USSR, North Korea and Venezuela ?

And clearly, if you try to downplay the recorded and acknowledgement of India and Indians, your true characters gets displayed for all to see , the way we watch Big Boss series.

I agree that post-IVC pre-Islamic Indian culture contributed to fields such as mathematics and medicine ( I use Boroplus cream which is an ayurvedic composition ) but talking about fantastic ancient achievements like vedic-era internet, in vitro fertilization and spacetravel is just fantasy. Please read what sillyness was foisted upon India through the 2014 victory of BJP :
Hindu nationalists claim that ancient Indians had airplanes, stem cell technology, and the internet

By Sanjay Kumar Feb. 13, 2019 , 10:55 AM

New Delhi—The most widely discussed talk at the Indian Science Congress, a government-funded annual jamboree held in Jalandhar in January, wasn't about space exploration or information technology, areas in which India has made rapid progress. Instead, the talk celebrated a story in the Hindu epic Mahabharata about a woman who gave birth to 100 children, citing it as evidence that India's ancient Hindu civilization had developed advanced reproductive technologies. Just as surprising as the claim was the distinguished pedigree of the scientist who made it: chemist G. Nageshwar Rao, vice-chancellor of Andhra University in Visakhapatnam. "Stem cell research was done in this country thousands of years ago," Rao said.

His talk was widely met with ridicule. But Rao is hardly the only Indian scientist to make such claims. In recent years, "experts" have said ancient Indians had spacecraft, the internet, and nuclear weapons—long before Western science came on the scene.

Such claims and other forms of pseudoscience rooted in Hindu nationalism have been on the rise since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. They're not just an embarrassment, some researchers say, but a threat to science and education that stifles critical thinking and could hamper India's development. "Modi has initiated what may be called ‘Project Assault on Scientific Rationality,’" says Gauhar Raza, former chief scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) here, a conglomerate of almost 40 national labs. "A religio-mythical culture is being propagated in the country's scientific institutions aggressively."

Some blame the rapid rise at least in part on Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA), the science wing of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), a massive conservative movement that aims to turn India into a Hindu nation and is the ideological parent of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. VIBHA aims to educate the masses about science and technology and harness research to stimulate India's development, but it also promotes "Swadeshi" (indigenous) science and tries to connect modern science to traditional knowledge and Hindu spirituality.

VIBHA receives generous government funding and is active in 23 of India's 29 states, organizing huge science fairs and other events; it has 20,000 so-called "team members" to spread its ideas and 100,000 volunteers—including many in the highest echelons of Indian science.

VIBHA's advisory board includes Vijay Kumar Saraswat, former head of Indian defense research and now chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University here. The former chairs of India's Space Commission and its Atomic Energy Commission are VIBHA "patrons." Structural biologist Shekhar Mande, director-general of CSIR, is VIBHA's vice president.

Saraswat—who says he firmly believes in the power of gemstones to influence wellbeing and destiny—is proud of the achievements of ancient Hindu science: "We should rediscover Indian systems which existed thousands of years back," he says. Mande shares that pride. "We are a race which is not inferior to any other race in the world," he says. "Great things have happened in this part of the world." Mande insists that VIBHA is not antiscientific, however: "We want to tell people you have to be rational in your life and not believe in irrational myths." He does not see a rise of pseudoscience in the past 4 years—"We have always had that"—and says part of the problem is that the press is now paying more attention to the occasional bizarre claim. "If journalists don't report it, actually that would be perfect," he says.

But others say there is little doubt that pseudoscience is on the rise—even at the highest levels of government. Modi, who was an RSS pracharak, or propagandist, for 12 years, claimed in 2014 that the transplantation of the elephant head of the god Ganesha to a human—a tale told in ancient epics—was a great achievement of Indian surgery millennia ago, and has made claims about stem cells similar to Rao's. At last year's Indian Science Congress, science minister Harsh Vardhan, a medical doctor and RSS member, said, incorrectly, that physicist Stephen Hawking had stated that the Vedas include theories superior to Albert Einstein's equation E=mc2. "It's one thing for a crackpot to say something like that, but it's a very bad example for people in authority to do so. It is deplorable," Venki Ramakrishnan, the Indian-born president of the Royal Society in London and a 2009 Nobel laureate in chemistry, tells Science. (Vardhan has declined to explain his statement so far and did not respond to an interview request from Science.)

Critics say pseudoscience is creeping into science funding and education. In 2017, Vardhan decided to fund research at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology here to validate claims that panchagavya, a concoction that includes cow urine and dung, is a remedy for a wide array of ailments—a notion many scientists dismiss. And in January 2018, higher education minister Satya Pal Singh dismissed Charles Darwin's evolution theory and threatened to remove it from school and college curricula. "Nobody, including our ancestors, in written or oral [texts], has said that they ever saw an ape turning into a human being," Singh said.

Those remarks triggered a storm of protest; in a rare display of unity, India's three premier science academies said removing evolution from school curricula, or diluting it with "non-scientific explanations or myths," would be "a retrograde step." In other instances, too, scientists are pushing back against the growing tide of pseudoscience. But doing so can be dangerous. In the past 5 years, four prominent fighters against superstition and pseudoscientific ideas and practices have been murdered, including Narendra Dabholkar, a physician, and M. M. Kalburgi, former vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi. Ongoing police investigations have linked their killers to Hindu fundamentalist organizations.

Some Indian scientists may be susceptible to nonscientific beliefs because they view science as a 9-to-5 job, says Ashok Sahni, a renowned paleontologist and emeritus professor at Panjab University in Chandigarh. "Their religious beliefs don't dovetail with science," he says, and outside working hours those beliefs may hold sway. A tradition of deference to teachers and older persons may also play a role, he adds. "Freedom to question authority, to question writings, that's [an] intrinsic part of science," Ramakrishnan adds. Rather than focusing on the past, India should focus on its scientific future, he says—and drastically hike its research funding.

The grip of Hindu nationalism on Indian society is about to be tested. Two dozen opposition parties have joined forces against Modi for elections that will be held before the end of May. A loss by Modi would bring "some change," says Prabir Purkayastha, vice president of the All India People's Science Network in Madurai, a liberal science advocacy movement with some 400,000 members across the country that opposes VIBHA's ideology. But the tide of pseudoscience may not retreat quickly, he says. "I don't think this battle is going to die down soon, because institutions have been weakened and infected."


Are you also Hinduphobic?

No, I am Hindutva-phobic. Against Manuvad and all that is descended from it.

And yes, Indians are correcting themselves and putting things in proper order now. Its all for good

How ?

"Better" Indian engineering colleges still only accept students who have good "marks". Big companies like Infosys and TCS will not accept employees who are 10th fail. Do these aspirants for studentship and employeeship not ( needlessly ) compete with each other ? And to what end ?
 
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She is expressing her doubts, as done in any democracy. To prove the immunogenicity of vaccines, CEPI will be evaluating them anyways.
Expressing doubts sounds eerily similar to mudslinging.

I'm sure if given the choice, you will be taking the Bharat vaccine in lieu of the Oxford vaccine, just to demonstrate your high degree of confidence in this untested vaccine. I hope Modi and Shah also receive the Bharat vaccine to demonstrate their confidence in its efficacy.
 
India’s Vaccine Nationalism Is a Global Risk
By Andy Mukherjee | Bloomberg
Jan. 4, 2021 at 5:58 p.m. PST





The hasty nod for Bharat Biotech International Ltd.’s Covaxin, developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research and National Institute of Virology, has raised eyebrows in the scientific and healthcare communities about a “public rollout of an untested product,” according to a national network of nongovernment organizations.

This is unfortunate. With more than 10 million coronavirus infections, India is the world’s second-worst-affected nation after the U.S. New Delhi’s strategy for vaccinating 1.3 billion people will matter greatly for bringing the global pandemic to a decisive end. The country’s virus-battered economy and its overstretched health systems are also yearning for a reprieve. It will be dangerous to allow political calculations to enter the equation and shake people’s confidence in what’s being offered to them — and on what basis.


That’s just what seems to be happening with the unusual approval for Covaxin, which comes with the odd caveat that its use will be restricted to “public interest as an abundant precaution, in clinical trial mode, especially in the context of mutant strains.” Nobody seems to know what this will mean on the ground. Who’ll get Covishield, and who’ll be given Covaxin? More importantly, who’ll decide? In a country beset by massive inequalities in income, wealth and social status, these aren’t trivial questions.

When opposition leaders raised doubts about the vaccine selection process, a minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet likened their objections to questioning “the valor of our soldiers.”

To be sure, India is not even in the front row of vaccine nationalism. China and Russia are more desperate to beat the West in saving the world. But as my colleague Clara Ferreira Marques has noted, both countries’ vaccine candidates face a transparency deficit, which could limit their global acceptance.


That’s a risk that India, which manufactures more than 60% of the world’s vaccines, should avoid at all cost. According to media reports, Hyderabad, India-based Bharat Biotech has enlisted 23,000 volunteers for phase three clinical trials. That’s encouraging because another report, published last month, had cited a major New Delhi-based research hospital as saying that it couldn’t find enough subjects for the study. If the drug proves to be effective, introducing it even at a later date should pose no problems. Naming Covaxin as an alternative even in the absence of phase three data could be a commercial tactic to squeeze “better discounts” on bulky Covishield purchase contracts, brokerage Jefferies says. Still, cutting corners with science isn’t exactly the best strategy to negotiate drug prices.

The Kremlin-backed Sputnik V is also undergoing trials in India, in partnership with local manufacturer Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. The Ahmedabad-based Cadila Healthcare Ltd. is also in the race to develop an indigenous Covid-19 vaccine. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether India’s homegrown shots make the final cut. Serum Institute, the world’s largest producer, has already stockpiled 70 million doses of Covishield. Big parts of the developing world will rely on Indian manufacturers to supply easy-to-administer, affordably priced vaccines in large quantities.
 
Modi's vaccine nationalism is risking Indians' lives.

He approved a homegrown #COVID vaccine without phase 3 trials.

He has not taken this vaccine himself. Other world leaders have built confidence in their vaccines by getting vaccine shots on camera.
 
Modi's vaccine nationalism is risking Indians' lives.

He approved a homegrown #COVID vaccine without phase 3 trials.

He has not taken this vaccine himself. Other world leaders have built confidence in their vaccines by getting vaccine shots on camera.
Except most Indians will now be given Covishield, not Covaxin. Only after more data comes in will Covaxin be given more regularly.
 
Serum Institute of India’s (SII) CEO, Adar Poonawalla, told NDTV that only three vaccines had passed all the scientific evaluations -- Pfizer-BioNTech, Modera and Oxford-AstraZeneca -- and that while the others were safe, “safe like water”, their effectiveness had not yet been evaluated.


Sparks fly over ‘water’: Covaxin hits out at critics, says trials 200% honest
Experts pointed out that the government may have acted in haste, and the sentiment was echoed by some Opposition politicians who suggested that the Union government ignored scientific protocols to give the nod to a fully indigenous vaccine because it tied in with the Atmanirbhar Bharat slogan.

Bharat Biotech chairman and managing director, Krishna Ella, on Monday hit out at comments suggesting that its anti-coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine, Covaxin, was “safe like water”, and said that their Phase 3 efficacy data, likely to be out by February or March, will silence all critics.

Though he did not take any names, Ella’s remarks appear to have sparked a rare war of words between vaccine-makers a day after Serum Institute of India’s (SII) CEO, Adar Poonawalla, told NDTV that only three vaccines had passed all the scientific evaluations -- Pfizer-BioNTech, Modera and Oxford-AstraZeneca -- and that while the others were safe, “safe like water”, their effectiveness had not yet been evaluated.

“It is easy to target Indian scientists. I had to tell this because some other company has branded my product as ‘safe like water’. Some local company in press yesterday said that safety is like water of other companies. Only three companies have done efficacy, and other vaccine is like water. I want to deny that. It hurts us as scientists; we work 24 hours and don’t deserve this type of bashing from people,” Ella told a media briefing.
 

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