Greed triggers gross vaccine inequality

Pic courtesy: NDTV 

This is disturbing. With only one among 500 in the low-income countries having received the vaccine shot in poor countries, a rigorous vaccine inequality has been at play. This is against every fourth person in the rich countries having received a shot. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO) poor countries have received only 0.2 per cent of the vaccine doses while the rich countries walk away with a share of 87 per cent.

So far, only 32 per cent in America, 23.1 per cent in UK, 2.1 per cent in India and 0.3 per cent of the population in the Philippine have received both the doses. At this rate, it may take years before the world can emerge out of the pandemic. The rich need to understand they cannot remain safely isolated from the deadly virus till the poor too have got the protective shield.

What is coming in the way is the greed for more profits over public health. Instead of pushing for a speedier vaccination drive globally, a handful of vaccine manufacturers are actually using patent protection granted under the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to hold the world literally to ransom. Not only has the Big Pharma, some of the developed countries have been hoarding the vaccines and oppose any move to temporarily lift the patent protection. The US was hoarding 60 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, which it has now decided to share with other countries. Notably, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not approved AstraZeneca vaccines (called CoviShield in India) for domestic use, and therefore it made little sense to withhold it anymore.

Although India, South Africa and some other developing countries have petitioned WTO to allow a waiver on patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines, the rich trading block – the US, UK, EU, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Brazil and Australia – are averse to any such move thereby denying these countries the access to technology to go in for large-scale production of the vaccines.

The pressure to oppose the IPR waiver comes from the pharmaceutical giants (and lobbyists) who have in a signed letter to the US President appealed to disregard the joint proposal put forward by India and South Africa stating that it was without any evidence. It also urged the US Administration to continue to ‘oppose the TRIPs intellectual property waiver’. Hollywood too is siding with the pharmaceutical industry. The TRIPs Agreement provides for a patent monopoly for 20 years. 

Although there exists a clause in the TRIPs Agreement that allows developing countries the option of using compulsory licensing, enabling the governments at time of national emergencies to permit local manufacturers to use the patented technology without worrying about the patent monopoly, developing countries are reluctant to use the option fearing trade retaliation. No wonder, despite even the Supreme Court mentioning the option of using Section 92 of the Indian Patents Act under which compulsory licenses can be issued to manufacture a patented drug; there has not been any visible movement on that front.

Pfizer’s has now offered its vaccines to India at a ‘not-for-profit’ price, but has spelled out any details about the controversial patent issue. It needs to be known that it was in Feb that the TV channel WION had reported how the pharmaceutical giant was trying to extract a higher price from some Latin American countries as a guarantee in exchange for supplying vaccines. It struck deals with seven countries, and was in negotiation with Argentina and Brazil. To Argentina it asked for putting its bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings as collateral. It asked Brazil for military bases, sovereign assets and an international fund to write-off any expenses arising from probable law suits. The deals fell through. Even at that time, Pfizer’s chairman, Albert Bourla, had in a press release claimed how the company was committed towards equitable and affordable vaccines for people around the globe. Shows the double face of the pharmaceutical industry.

Moreover, it is not that the Covid-19 vaccines were produced with company’s own financial resources and in house research. These vaccines were in fact developed with public money support. For instance, US through its Operation Warp Speed, spent $12 billion to finance research, production and delivery of vaccines produced by a handful of companies. UK Government had provided 84 million pounds for manufacturing support to University of Oxford and Imperial College, London. As we all know, Oxford University later carved out a global licensing agreement with AstraZeneca. German government had given Pfizer’s German partner BioNTech close to $445 million. Further, writing in Project Syndicate,economist Jeffrey D Sachs says: “The Intellectual Property held by Moderna, BioNTech-Pfizer, and others is not mainly the result of those companies’ innovations, but rather of academic research funded by the US Government, especially the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The private companies are claiming the exclusive right to IP that was produced largely with public funding and academic science.”

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates too has received brickbats for his recent statement opposing any move to transfer the vaccine technology to developing countries. To say that developing countries do not have the capability to effectively use the technology transfer is not true. There are a number of companies in India, Canada, South Africa and Brazil among others which have the potential to ramp up production. The IPR waiver can easily expedite the mass production of generics, making it cheaply available. That’s what the world needs at this critical juncture.

Well, Pfizer alone is expected to swell its vaccine profits this year by $ 15 billion. This comes at a time when a horrible surge in virus infections is likely to push hundreds of millions of people in Global South at risk for want of vaccines and that too cheap. Let’s not forget, 3.22 million people have already perished worldwide from Covid-19. While the patent debate rages on, the big question is how the world can allow a handful of vaccine companies to profit over human lives. #

Source: Greed triggers gross vaccine inequality. The Tribune. May 6, 2021. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/greed-triggers-gross-vaccine-inequality-248780

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From Growth Economics to Economics of Well-Being

These are cars lined up before a food bank in America 

Pic courtesy -- MotherJones

At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, the World Economic Forum shared on Twitter a study 

conducted by Statista, a German online portal for statistics. It listed the top ten countries where people are 

losing faith in capitalism, where people agree “capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world.” Interestingly, India tops the chart with 74 per cent respondents agreeing, followed by France (69 per cent), China (63 per cent), and Brazil (57 per cent). Germany trails with 55 per cent, UK (53 per cent) and with Canada and United States at 47 per cent each.

The declining faith in capitalism comes at a time when Oxfam International in its annual presentation, timed a few days before the World Economic Forum meeting in January at Davos in Switzerland, presents the shocking report on income inequality. Accordingly, India’s richest 1 per cent carries four times more wealth than the combined wealth of bottom 70 per cent. Internationally, the report says 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 60 per cent of the global population. Ironically, the same wealthy corporations are once again on the forefront seeking massive Covid-19 bailouts. Such economic bailouts over the period have helped shape the popular thinking that global economic system in reality supports ‘socialism for corporate, and capitalism for the poor’. The worsening income inequality, which is increasingly coming under the scanner, is enough to fuel growing dissatisfaction with capitalism. As if this was not enough, the pandemic has further widened the social and economic gulf with the poor certainly faced with a much greater risk. With massive job losses, the challenge to stay safe and at the same time the struggle to provide food for the family has further deepened the gap between haves and have-nots.

Despite market reforms being pursued aggressively over the past four decades, one better way to understand how the social and economic disparities have only widened, comes from an insightful analysis of growing food insecurity and that too at a time of plenty. Writing in the New York Times, Patricia Cohen compares the long queues for food in America at the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s with the still longer queues of cars, stretching to several miles, before food banks during the 2020 pandemic. Separated by a time gap of almost 80 to 90 years, a memorable picture taken by photographer Margaret Bourke-White (of Time Life Pictures) shows a long line of poor citizens waiting for relief below a signboard showing a happy family in a car, with the banner claiming: ‘World’s highest standard of living’.

Nothing much seems to have changed. The economic model of growth has only made the rich richer, and the poor have been driven against the wall. In a country, which is known to be the world’s richest economy, pictures of cars lined up for an average of 2 miles or so before a food bank, is only a stark reflection of ‘profound, longstanding vulnerabilities in the economic system’. Not only in America, the distressing visuals of a traumatised migrant workers in India, with children in laps and carrying family belongings on head, trudging on foot to reach their homes several hundred kilometres away, will continue to haunt the nation for quite some time. Whether it is the long queues of cars in America or the long march in India, the pandemic has laid bare the inequalities perpetuated over the decades. A serious rethink is now required to radically overhaul the economic system bringing in equity and justice at the centre of human development.

It doesn’t end here. Four decades of neoliberal economics has also unleashed an environmental havoc. With temperatures soaring, ice caps melting and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) rising, climate change in no longer a distant reality. Many believe that the destruction of prime natural resources, forests and biodiversity hotspots has lead to the emergence of deadly diseases. A complex web of relationship exists between industrial farming, factory farms and bushmeat markets calling for an immediate fixing of the broken food systems so as to avoid the next pandemic. Whether it is the resulting environment destruction or the rampaging economic inequalities, the Covid crisis should act as an urgent wake-up call for governments to seriously move towards an economic system where the majority population is not deprived of basic necessities, where the emphasis shifts from economic growth to economics of well-being, where Gandhi’s talisman becomes the new development mantra. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently said the biggest take away from the global crisis “is to become self-reliant.” Although several newspapers editorials as well as lead articles have warned against returning to self-reliance and that too at a time when the world needs to quickly move into a trajectory of high growth, I think what the Prime Minister said is exactly what the country needs. Not only making villages self-reliant, where agriculture becomes the pivot for rebooting the Indian economy, the policy imperative has to swing to creating adequate farm, public health and education infrastructure thereby revitalising the rural economy. This has to be accompanied by a renewed emphasis on ‘Make in India’ programme – especially by revitalising the MSME sector -- given that too much dependence on global value chains is now coming under the radar.

The principle of self-reliance is based on according dignity to labour and living in harmony with nature. These two underlying principles for economic well-being come in direct conflict with traditional economics which continues to harp on productivity and growth, in short pushing for more aggressive market reforms. The bumpy road ahead however will need a clear cut change in policy direction where first providing a generous social security net for the unskilled as well as skilled industrial workers becomes an immediate necessity. Secondly, and more importantly, the focus has to shift from destroying nature in the quest for economic growth.

Staying indoors for several weeks has made people realise the importance of conserving and protecting environment. They now need appropriate policies that make it possible. Economic well-being is an idea whose time has come.#

Losing faith in capitalism. The Tribune. May 16, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/losing-faith-in-capitalism-83920?fbclid=IwAR1Zbq6RJImJNDIMvp6CK8g8M_PC5QVrqEJpi_7-ouZSY8pp2wejbVD3-P0

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Covid-19 provides an opportunity to re-imagine a New Normal

Pic courtesy: ICRISAT

This was unexpected. The world’s leading global business publication, the Financial Times, wrote in an editorial: “Radical reforms – reversing the policy direction of the last four decades – will need to be put on the table.” After four decades of following a policy direction that relies extensively on free markets, it took a brutal assault by the Corona virus pandemic for the world to realise that it wasn’t working well. The fault lines are clearly visible.    

Historically, the aftermath of pandemics have led to a changed eco-system. Once the Corona virus pandemic reduces in intensity, and the world returns back to its daily routine, it is expected that the government will be back on the table with renewed emphasis on human welfare. With markets tottering in the wake of the pandemic, decades of underfunding of public health and education for instance will now receive priority. It may also radically overhaul the urban landscape with working from home becoming an increasing norm, more because it reduces the overhead costs for the companies. 

But whether the post Covid-19 will see a perceptible change in the neoliberal economic policies that the world has continuously followed for four decades, which has acerbated income inequality and led to a massive destruction of natural resources, is something that we will have to wait and watch. More importantly, whether the reduction in air pollution levels leading to clear blue skies, the cleaning of river Ganges and Yamuna which seemed almost impossible, the return of the birds in our balcony we had almost forgotten about, and numerous other subtle but substantial changes that people had begun to cherish during the lockdown will disappear once it is back to business as usual is again a question that only time can answer.  

Corona virus outbreak has brought economies to a virtual standstill, with only agriculture serving as the lifeline. At a time when aggressive consumerism the world has witnessed over the past few decades was down to a trickle, it is the abundance of global food reserves – and more importantly in India – that kept the war against the pandemic focused. With overflowing food stocks, totalling 77 million tonnes, three times the public distribution system requirement, India is in a much comfortable position. Despite the efforts, as part of the market driven economic reforms, to dismantle public procurement limiting it to the food needs of only 20 per cent of the population (from 67 per cent served under the National Food Security Act), the redeeming feature is that India’s food supplies can last for over a year.

At a time of burgeoning food stocks, the tragic images of lakhs of migrant workers, carrying their children in laps and their meagre possession on their head, trudging back to their villages had filled media spaces. Walking hundreds of kilometres at a stretch and that too without any assurance of food these migrant works are in reality agricultural refugees, who were driven out of their villages when agriculture failed to provide them enough to survive. Migrating to the cities with the hope of making a decent living, these workers were in reality living only by their daily wages; whatever they earned, they spent. And when the cities disowned them after the lockdown was imposed, they were desperate to return home because that is where they belonged to.

Again, a fallout of faulty economic policies. Agriculture has been deliberately kept impoverished to enable farmers to abandon farming and move to the cities. Over the years agriculture is being sacrificed to keep the economic reforms viable. This is what the World Bank had prescribed. At a conference I attended in 1996 at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, the then Vice President of the World Bank, Dr Ismail Serageldin had said that the bank estimates the number of people migrating from the rural to urban areas in India in the next 20 years, which meant by 2015, to be equal to twice the combined population of UK, France and Germany.

Given that the combined population of the three countries at 200 million, 400 million people were expected to move out of rural areas in India. This is the price the poor were made to pay to keep the economic reforms viable. And when even that didn’t work for them, they preferred to return home.  

Now that the avalanche of migrant workers returning home has struck a strong visual in our minds of the large number of agricultural refugees walking home, Covid-19 provides an opportunity to re-imagine a New Normal -- where agriculture becomes economically viable and sustainable, where farming is not stifled to prepare a workforce for the industry, where agriculture becomes the pivot of the economy providing the rightful income into the hands of farmers. This will only be possible if along with public health and education, revival of agriculture too receives a priority in policy planning. A regenerating agriculture alone has the ability to reboot the economy, protect nature, bring back birds and butterflies, and save the planet from the catastrophic effects of climate change that awaits us.   

Reversing the policy direction of the past four decades, as the Financial Times had said, is an urgent necessity. It requires bold decision making along with the courage to redraw a new development pathway. It also requires immense political backing to thwart the lobbying pressure from the market players, both in the media as well as academia. It requires an exceptional ability to challenge the dominant economic thinking, to disband the model of economic growth which has relied solely on wealth creation. It has sucked income from the bottom to the top, enabling the rich to amass wealth. But to expect the present dispensation of mainline economists to make an attempt towards an everlasting change – so as to prepare for a new normal -- is perhaps asking for the impossible.

There is no dearth of saner voices. It is time to find them, and acknowledge their role. After all, as someone rightly said, it is the normal that we don’t want to return to. #

Agriculture offers lifeline amid pandemic. The Tribune. April 24, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/agriculture-offers-lifeline-amid-pandemic-74360  

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Lockdown: Agriculture serves as the lifeline

When people across the country are confined to their homes the only pressing requirement they have is for food – and that too three times a day. Whether you are rich, sitting comfortably in your homes and trying out new recipes to prepare a fresh dish every other day or you are a poor migrant struggling to find a banana that you can still eat from the rotten heap lying on the banks of Yamuna river, food is after all a basic human necessity.

It is at this difficult time of a lockdown that the often repeated phrase -- agriculture is the mainstay of the Indian economy – not only becomes obvious, but is firmly established.

But imagine the chaos if the country didn't have enough food at these testing times? Imagine if we had followed the prescription of our mainline economists who had wanted food stocks limit to be reduced to feed only 20 per cent of our population? Imagine if we had dismantled the APMC mandis and done away with crop procurement as the industry had always wanted us to do? Even despite having a record foodgrain surplus – 77 million tonnes, at least three times more than the requirement -- still 96 per cent of the lakhs of migrants did not get their share of dry rations, says a study.

The avalanche of migrants heading back home after the lockdown was imposed, travelling on foot for hundreds of kilometres, without an assured supply of food, has provided a visual image to a monumental crisis that was building up for decades. The massive reverse migration, and subsequent efforts being made by the state governments to provide temporary shelter and food to those struck on the way, has brought forth another hidden dimension of the ongoing agrarian crisis. Urban centres had failed to ‘absorb’ the migrant workforce, maintaining a clear cut social distance from the migrants, and when the daily wage link was suddenly snapped the teeming work force felt abandoned.  

A majority of these migrant workers are unlikely to return soon. The fact that they took the hard decision to tread back home to be with their families, where they wouldn’t be at least facing hunger, speaks volumes of the flawed economic thinking which actually pushed people out of the rural areas to migrate into the cities because the cities needed cheap labour. With farm prices kept low to keep food inflation under control, and at the same time provide cheaper raw material to the industry, agriculture was deliberately kept impoverished. Despite being denied their rightful income, farmers continued to produce a surplus for the country year after year.

The lockdown coincided with the rabi harvest season. This year, despite unseasonal rains, production was expected to be bountiful. But with people asked to stay indoors, and with restaurants, hotels and dhabaspulling down the shutter, the demand for perishable vegetables and fruits collapsed. Reports of farmers re-ploughing fields of cabbage, cauliflower, raddish, peas and other vegetables poured in. Tomato farmers dumped the harvest in the crop fields. Premier products like strawberry had to be fed to cows. Button mushroom rotted. The demand for premier Alphonso mangoes, grapes, banana and even plantation crops like coffee, tea, cashew nuts and spices faced price crash. Poultry suffered the worst. Milk, fisheries and flowers were similarly badly hit.

Shortage of farm labour compounded the existing crisis. Even in case of wheat, where a record 106 million tonnes of grain is to be harvested, paucity of farm workers has hit harvesting operations. Although the government has for all practical purposes kept agriculture, horticulture, plantation crops, fisheries and animal husbandry out of the lockdown provisions from April 20, procurement of wheat is slowly picking up. But interestingly, while it is agriculture that suffered a severe blow during lockdown 1.0, the impression being generated is that the rural areas are relatively better off.

This crisis apart, the bigger question is whether the pandemic will change the way we look at agriculture? Whether agriculture will receive priority in public policy? Or once the fire-fighting operations are over, it will be back to square one. While the State’s role in health and education is expected to expand, will agriculture also emerge on the top of dominant economic thinking? Will a relook at agriculture bring back the focus on making agriculture economically viable? These are questions that need to be seriously deliberated because the policy changes after Covid-19 will determine the future of agriculture.

Corona virus pandemic therefore has come as a loud knock at a time when the dominant economic policies were aimed at propping up the industrial sector. Over the past few decades, agriculture had been systematically ignored in policy planning. The best reflection for this perhaps comes from the declining public sector investments in agriculture. Between 2011-12 and 2017-18, public sector investments in agriculture hovered between 0.3 to 0.4 per cent of the GDP for a sector which employs 50 per cent of the total workforce. It is futile to expect a miracle in agriculture without providing adequate investments commiserating with the population involved.

With agriculture emerging as the strong pillar of the economy at these difficult times, it should be abundantly clear that any further effort to marginalise farming will be politically suicidal. While agriculture will need a total revamp, and with huge investments the challenge will be to provide farmers with a remunerative price and being assured a monthly income. At the cost of repeating again, an OECD study had shown Indian farmers lost Rs 45-lakh crore between 2000 and 2016-17 by being denied their rightful income. Imagine if Rs 45-lakh crore (or Rs 2.6 lakh crore every year) was paid to farmers, there would have been hardly any possibility of farmers abandoning agriculture and migrating to the cities. Post Covid-19, let’s aim at Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas.

This is not a wishful thinking. It is an idea whose time has come. #

Saved by Plough. Orissa Post. April 18, 2020
https://www.orissapost.com/saved-by-the-plough/ 

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