COVID, India and multilateralism!

India is struggling with a huge spike in COVID cases in the last few weeks plus dealing with variant versions of the virus. This is not a unique problem to the country, but something all nations are facing. However, the huge population and less than ideal healthcare scenario in some states and pockets have led to current problems. Many of the variants of the virus were not originally from India, but from UK and South Africa. As viruses do, there is however continuous mutations and we no longer know which version we are dealing with or how many versions are going around.

I had feared such eventual results from the start of this pandemic for my country, just due to its sheer population and my fears have now come true. India had handled the pandemic with panache so far and supplied vaccines and other medicines to the rest of the world including HCQ to the US. Many of these were to developing countries at no or very little cost. Some countries of EU had contractual agreements for supply of vaccines as well and these are the countries who started having panic attacks seeing the crisis now in India. Understandable, but their reaction at a time of global emergency is not forgivable. Chancellor Merkel completely forgot to diplomatically sympathize with the people of India, while enquiring about the promised vaccines. Her poor choice of words shocked me and apparently a good many people and governments around the world. 

In case you missed it, here is what she said: “The truth is, we haven’t treated our pharmaceutical industry so well for many years…I am glad that we still have pharmaceutical production in Belgium, Holland, Germany.” Highlighting the issue of vaccine shortage, she said, “We now have a situation with India where, in connection with the emergency situation of the pandemic, we are worried whether the pharmaceutical products will still come to us.”

Merkel also cautioned, “Of course, we have only allowed India to become such a large pharmaceutical producer in the first place, also from the European side, in the expectation that this should then also be complied with. If that is not the case now, we will have to rethink.”

I would very much like to know how Germany and EU have "allowed" India to become a pharmaceutical producer? Did they come up with extraordinary contracts, privileges, tax exemptions on imports and exports or special sanctions? And such criticism after India along with other countries have repeatedly requested and proposed to WTO to suspend the IP rights over COVID medical supplies. This was blocked by the USA and EU among other developed countries. maybe if they did not care so much about profits, India can manufacture and supply more vaccines? USA has blocked a lot of the necessary ingredients being exported to India which affects the vaccine production. So, who is to blame really?

Clearly the Indian government, its people and many around the world did not see Merkel's comments as appropriate or the threat acceptable. Many geopolitics experts around the world have found her comments extremely patronizing and very backwards in thought. The Minister of External Affairs of the Government of India sent out a subtle tweet regarding multilateralism. The Embassy of Germany too sprang into action with a series of tweets expressing concern for the situation and promising full cooperation to fight the pandemic. Of course, they also claimed responsibility and bragging rights for two private companies Linde and TATA coming together to secure and airlift 24 oxygen transport tanks! Few hours ago, the Chancellor herself announced that Germany was in solidarity with India and is urgently preparing a mission of support. What kind of support is not clear yet, but the pressure to support is exposed?

On the other hand, the Biden/Harris government has been under heavy scrutiny for their silence to acknowledge the crisis in India or offer any kind of support. Over the weekend, after being trolled mercilessly on social media for their tepid response to India's situation, the US government has finally released a statement of support and is working to send PPE kits, rapid diagnostic kits and ventilators. I still do not hear about suspending the IP rights to help in producing more vaccines or unblocking export of important ingredients for vaccine production, but hoping good sense and common sense will ultimately prevail! Even American citizens are tweeting their support and asking their government to release unused vaccines in storage and release patents, enabling easier manufacture of vaccines elsewhere. At least at the time of a global pandemic, one would think this should be fast tracked, approved and implemented without much discussion. 

Good luck India in combating this pandemic. This too shall pass and you will once again come out with flying colours. Stay strong!

#India #COVID #Germany #EU #Merkel #Biden #KamalaHarris #USA #Vaccine #vaccinemaitri #pharmaceuticals #SJaishankar #GoI #Externalaffairs #multilateralism #news #politics

Women leadership, biases and biology

Came across this interesting research which shows that women are better than men in a vast majority of leadership competencies measured - Research: Women Score Higher Than Men in Most Leadership Skills (hbr.org)

The summary of the study is in fact misleading, stating that women are every bit as effective as men. Wrong. By this data, statistically, women are clearly better and more effective than men in every competency measured except two where very marginally men are better. 

The study points out another interesting aspect where women rate themselves much lower. This is no surprise to me, as I know people of my gender are masters at doing this. We constantly tell ourselves to be humble and firmly believe that there are many ways of doing the right thing or getting a job done. This somehow gives the idea to the other gender that we are indecisive or lack the capability to take immediate and rash decisions as they mostly do. We do lack the arrogance that our male counterparts seem to be born with and that society loves to encourage in men starting right after their birth!

A woman achieving success in a corporate environment is a mix of sheer hard work (many times more than men), talent (needs to be proved constantly to compete with men and there is no scope for errors at all), and multitasking like a super human being (you have no idea!). All this while fighting biases continuously, tackling them from subordinates and superiors. 

As the research tries to explore, why do most women step out of the race? Many times they are forced to! Senior leaders, men mostly and some women, are very united in their thoughts to not allow a woman to be elected into senior positions. Or at a certain point the women give up the fight. In spite of all the hard work, who would want to deal with constant pressures and biases and bad mouthing by colleagues for no reason except that she is a threat? 

After all this throw in biology. If the woman wants a family, she is doomed. Please don't try to give me the far and few examples of some women who have made it while also raising a family. They are a rare exception and the other 99.9% of women are proof of this. Women work with guilt all the time if they have kids. They plan their work while at home and plan other home errands while at work too. This is a superhuman requirement that only seems to affect women. Men are never expected to do this and they would never be bothered even if someone expects them to. 

This post - Why Women Do the Household Worrying - The New York Times (nytimes.com) - regarding the mental load for women to bear is very interesting and bang on. Cognitive labor divided into four parts - anticipate, identify, decide and monitor is solely left to women in most cases. 

Women also deal with fluctuating hormones everyday (menstrual cycle), pregnancies, menopause and many other hormonal problems at different stages of life. These are amazing statistics that in spite of all this, women shine in leadership skills. Kudos to all the exceptional women in any level of professional career and relationship status. What you all do is completely exceptional and magical!

#women #leadership #cognitivelabor #equalparenting #mothers #men