The Indo-US relationship is probably an unmatched example of what people-to-people ties can do. It is really an example of how exchanges at the citizen level can motivate governments to sit together and draft a bilateral partnership. But for US President Joe Biden, propaganda is more important than bilateral ties.
Of late, India has been facing a major COVID-19 surge. Till now, India managed to keep the Wuhan virus in control, even more effectively than Western Europe and the US. But now, the public health system in the country has come under a lot of strain. For Biden, this was the opportunity to take the Indo-US relationship forward. But he has instead used it as an opportunity to score political brownie points.
Biden is bound to go down in history as a myopic tyrant who ruined the Indo-US relationship. At a time, when India is fighting a new COVID-19 wave, Biden has shown his true colours by invoking a war-time law to stop the supply of raw materials required by Indian vaccine manufacturers to ramp up their production capacity.
India’s vaccine programme is suffering tremendously due to Biden’s enforcement of the Defense Priorities and Allocations System Programme (DPAS) under the Defense Production Act (DPA) on vaccine raw materials.
Worse still, Biden’s detestable administration is using India’s Coronavirus crisis to score political brownie points. A number of American officials have made extremely patronising remarks, which shows the Biden administration’s guilty intention of using Indian deaths to mount a high moral ground.
During a Coronavirus briefing on Friday, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said, “This is a global pandemic. And India demonstrates the risk of what can happen if we don’t get the pandemic under control everywhere.” He also said that India served as a prime example of “why we made the biggest investment in COVAX.”
The COVID-19 Response Coordinator added, “We are committed to sharing vaccine supply as our confidence around our supply increases. We will explore those options.”
Who else spoke about India’s COVID-19 surge? Yes, you got that right. Leaping upon the opportunity to cash in on a public health crisis is Dr Anthony Fauci, the same medical expert who failed to give prudent advice to the Trump administration and later started defending China’s opaque COVID-19 response.
Fauci termed India’s Coronavirus situation “terrible” and “dire.” He said, “They have a situation there where there are variants that have arisen. We have not yet fully characterized the variants and the relationship between the ability of the vaccines to protect. But we’re assuming clearly that they need vaccines. The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is helping out by consulting with them, as they have in other countries in which there are situations and giving technical assistance.”
Fauci added, “It is a dire situation that we’re trying to help in any way we can. We just have to see how things go. And obviously, they need to get their people vaccinated because that’s the only way we’re going to turn that around.”
The condescending remarks from American officials show no sense of sympathy, rather they reek of sheer arrogance. The US had no business commenting about India’s Coronavirus response after the old hag in White House, unworthy of being called the US President, failed to help. The US is not really acting as India’s ally, rather it is manifesting the Western syndrome of tarnishing India’s image for personal gains.
Biden administration has therefore not only failed to help and take the Indo-US relationship, but it has also damaged bilateral ties profoundly. Undoing the damage that Biden has caused to Indo-US ties will take ample time and efforts.
