A “Made-in-India” Covid-19 vaccine and a “Made-in-India” report on democracies around the world are among the options Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is mulling over to counter criticism it received from international organisations as well as foreign governments and non-government entities over the past few years.
New Delhi is planning to highlight its initiative to deliver Covid-19 vaccine doses to over 70 countries around the world to counter the criticism the Modi government received from foreign entities for allegedly pursuing a “Hindu Nationalist” agenda. The government is also considering a proposal to engage a research institute based in the country to come out with an annual report after evaluating the quality of democracy around the world and assessing human rights, civil liberties and freedom of press in other nations – ostensibly to turn the table on its foreign critics.
“We have never seen a contradiction between the internationalism and the nationalism that was the driver of our independence movement and the subsequent efforts at our nation building,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. “Indeed, this experience has even further reinforced our internationalism, by creating a strong solidarity with other nations who have similarly struggled for their freedom,” he added, making a statement on the Modi government’s endeavour to deliver the Covid-19 vaccines around the world.
He highlighted how the Government of India supported other nations in its neighbourhood and beyond to deal with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, be it by supplying Hydroxychloroquine or HCQ tablets, Personal Protective Equipment and masks or by conducting online courses for healthcare professionals of foreign countries on management of the pandemic.
“To date, we have supplied ‘Made in India’ vaccines to 72 nations across geographies,” said the External Affairs Minister.
A source in New Delhi said that the government had planned to highlight its “Vaccine Maitri” (Vaccine Friendship) initiative and drive home the point that while the other nations resorted to “vaccine nationalism”, it was the Indian government which took an internationalist approach and supplied vaccines around the world. It would be one of the main themes of the campaign New Delhi was planning to run to counter the criticism from foreign entities.
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The government is also studying a proposal mooted by A Surya Prakash, a former chairman of Prasar Bharti, to engage a think-tank to publish an annual report to hold the mirror to whom the External Affairs Minister recently described as “a set of self-appointed custodians of the world”.
The V-Dem (or Varieties of Democracy) Institute, an independent research organization based at University of Gothenburg in Sweden of late branded India as an “electoral autocracy” in its latest Democracy Report 2021. The “Freedom House” of the United States downgraded it from a “Free Country” to a “Partly Free Country”.
The Modi government over the past couple of years also drew flak from United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as well as other international human rights organisations over the detention of political leaders and others, restrictions and shutdowns imposed in Jammu and Kashmir after its August 5, 2019 move to strip the state of its special status and to reorganise it into two Union Territories. It also drew flak from United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) – an “independent, bipartisan federal government entity” established by the American Congress – as well as the US State Department and several US lawmakers over the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. The Modi Government was also criticised recently for the way it responded to the agitation by the farmers against the new agricultural laws.