Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader Subodh Kant Sahai while referring to the Covid casualties alleged that senior authorities in India pressured scientists at prominent institutions to downplay the threat in order to focus on Modis political ambitions, and launching his partys state election campaign.
He said that Anup Agarwal, a physician working for India’s top science agency, ICMR said: “Science is being used as a political weapon to forward the government narrative rather than help people”.
Referring to some researchers, he alleged that senior officials at the Indian Council of Medical Research, withheld data and documentation demonstrating the risks, creating a false sense of security and contributing to complacency in the country. In January, just months before the disastrous second wave, Prime Minister Narendra Modi boasted that India had "saved humanity from a big disaster."
The Congress leader said that the ICMR, which conducts and reviews government research, played the undesirable role of moulding public perceptions of an ebbing Covid threat. According to scientists acquainted with the agency politics began to affect the agencys approach early last year, he added.The lockdown did severe economic damage.
He said that once it ebbed, Mr Modi moved to rekindle the economy and started election campaigning and government scientists, researchers within the agency helped pave the way. In June 2020, a study commissioned by the agency concluded that Modi’s lockdown had slowed but would not stop the virus’s spread, maintained the leader.According to him Dr Bhargava, the ICMR director, issued two ductats to agency scientists in July 2020, which were perceived as politically motivated.
The first enlisted the cooperation of scientists from a variety of universities to help approve a coronavirus vaccine made by Indian scientists in just six weeks. His second directive, forced scientists to withhold data that suggested the virus was still spreading in 10 cities, quipped Mr Sahay.
An agency-approved study wrongly suggested that the worst was over. The study projected that the pandemic would ebb in India by mid-February. It said that the country may have reached herd immunity. None of the study’s authors were epidemiologists, he astonished.
The second wave hit in April, when Indian health officials advised treatments that were deemed to be useless by the governments own scientists. Blood plasma was one of them. Blood plasma did not benefit Covid-19 patients, Agarwal and his colleagues had concluded months before.
Despite strong scientific evidence that hydroxychloroquine, an Indian-made malaria medicine, was ineffective, the government continued to endorse it, alleged the Congress leader.
He said that BJP , interestingly had organized plasma donation camps last year to mark the 70th birthday of Modi. The Indian government also used hydroxychloroquine as a diplomatic tool, winning points with Donald Trump, then the American president, and Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian leader.
Mr Sahai said that the present government has a clear philosophy and history of attempting to exert authority by grabbing every institution and turning it into a political battleground. Data withholding endorsed by and coerced by the government is harmful to science and democracy and should be condemned forthright, he maintained.
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