feeds from sacw.net
print versionIndia: Science, Not Fraud Can Counter the Covid-19 Pandemic - Selected Commentary, Reports - A compilation at sacw.net | May 23, 2021
[1] A fraud on the nation | Priyanka Pulla
2 Science vs nonsense Why growing pseudoscience in India and Pakistan is a concern | Kusha Anand and Laraib Niaz
[4] Another First: Health Minister Pushes Unproven Covid Drug| Sukhit K Sen
[5] Indian Medical Association VP complains against Ramdev over Covid claims | TNN
[6] Coronavirus: The misleading claims about an Indian remedy | Shruti Menon
[7] Photo of India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and India’s Roadways Minsiter Nitin Gadkari at a News Conference announcing the release of Coronil - a drug produced by Patanjali the company owned by Baba Ramdev
[8] Oxygen’s in the air: Great expectations of good governance | G. Sampath
[9] The rational course | Editorial - The Times of India
[10] Statements by Indian Medical Association and by Resident Doctors Association - Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi
[11] Harsh Vardhan asks Ramdev to withdraw objectionable comments about allopathy, Corona warriors
[12] Hack jobs: Faith and bigotry trump reason and science for the sangh parivar | Ramachandra Guha
[1] Science
doi:10.1126/science.abf2671
A fraud on the nation: critics blast Indian government’s promotion of traditional medicine for COVID-19
By Priyanka Pulla Oct. 15, 2020 , 6:55 AM
Reporting for this story was supported by a journalism grant from the Thakur Family Foundation, which has not exercised any editorial control over the contents of this report.
The Indian health ministry has begun to recommend traditional remedies to tackle the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, dismaying many Indian doctors and scientists. On 6 October, health minister Harsh Vardhan released recommendations for preventing COVID-19 and treating mild cases based on Ayurveda, India’s millennia old system of herbal medicine, triggering sharp criticism from the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a group of more than one-quarter of a million modern medicine practitioners.
In a press release, IMA demanded Vardhan produce evidence of the treatments’ efficacy; if he’s unable to do so, the association wrote, Vardhan is “inflicting a fraud on the nation and gullible patients by calling placebos as drugs.†Recommending any drug without evidence for a deadly disease that has claimed more than 100,000 Indian lives is “a dangerous trend,†adds C. S. Pramesh, a thoracic surgeon and the director of Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Centre. The government has no shortage of studies to point to, but Pramesh and others dismiss them as unconvincing.
The Indian government’s push for Ayurveda is in line with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s mission to revive traditional medicine. Since 2014, when the Hindu nationalist party was elected to power, it has upgraded a government department for alternative medicine to the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), and more than tripled its annual budget to almost $290 million.
Developed by the AYUSH ministry, the COVID-19 advisory includes treatments such as clarified butter applied inside the nostrils; a hot concoction of pepper, ginger, and other herbs; and a patented formulation called Ayush-64. The latter, a mixture of four herbs, was developed in the 1980s for malaria by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), now a body under the AYUSH ministry.
Although last week’s protocol only recommends the remedies for mild disease, it says moderately and severely ill patients can make an “informed choice†about using Ayurveda as well, and refers readers to another Ayurveda guideline document that prescribes similar herbal interventions for people with severe manifestations of COVID-19 such as respiratory distress and pneumonia. During a recent press conference, the AYUSH ministry’s secretary, Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, claimed the remedies were supported by dozens of in vitro, animal, and human studies, listed in a report on the ministry’s website.
But almost all the human studies are small and uncontrolled, critics say. “These are con trials and faked studies,†says Cyriac Abby Philips, a hepatologist at Kerala’s Ernakulam Medical Centre.
For example, in one of the studies the AYUSH ministry cites as support for Ayush-64, published in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine, the investigators gave the drug to 38 patients with flu symptoms. There was no control arm, and some of the patients on Ayush-64 also received paracetamol and other modern drugs, making it impossible to tease out the effects of each.
In another study, published in 1982, investigators gave 29 malaria patients Ayush-64, while 30 received modern antimalarials, including chloroquine. The investigators noted that whereas all the patients on modern drugs were cured, only 72% on Ayush-64 responded. Nothing about the study supports Ayush-64’s efficacy in malaria, Philips says.
And in any case, clinical studies for malaria and other diseases cannot be extrapolated to COVID-19, says Gagandeep Kang, a microbiologist at Christian Medical College, Vellore, who helped develop and test India’s first rotavirus vaccine. “All diseases are not the same,†she says.
N. Srikanth, an Ayurvedic practitioner and a deputy director general at CCRAS, tells ScienceInsider that trials of Ayurvedic therapies for COVID-19 are underway. And on 9 October, an association of government Ayurvedic scientists said IMA’s claim that Ayurvedic drugs were no better than placebos was “rigorously condemnable.†They pointed out that some modern medical practitioners continue to use drugs such as hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19, even though there is little evidence for their efficacy. (India’s health ministry recommended hydroxychloroquine both as treatment and prevention for the pandemic coronavirus in March, based on a few small and inconclusive clinical trials, a decision it didn’t roll back after subsequent larger studies failed to bear out their advice.)
Pramesh dismisses that argument as “whataboutery.†Any system of medicine, whether modern or alternative, must back up claims of efficacy with well-conducted trials, he says. “And I have seen very little actual data that shows the medicines being recommended by the AYUSH ministry to be useful.â€
[2] The Hindu
Editorial
Science vs nonsense: On Patanjali’s COVID-19 claim
June 27, 2020
ICMR, CSIR must call out any breach of due process in the appraisal of any drug
The unrelenting spread of COVID-19 has set off both mass anxiety and a clamour for a panacea. Fear paves the way for profiteers. Patanjali Ayurved’s recent claim of having discovered a “cure†and the publicity that this garnered, bypassing every regulatory requirement without any serious consequence so far, shows that India’s regulatory checks and balances are wanting. The company said in Haridwar that its product, ‘Coronil’, had cured everyone in a clinical trial. While quackery and the potency of ‘magic drugs’ are a part of life in India, its declarations could not be ignored because of the tremendous influence its products wield and its claim to have proved the product through a clinical trial, which makes it open to evaluation by the standards of modern medicine.
As it now emerges, the company has probably misrepresented the drug’s efficacy. The clinical trial tested the drug on 45 and another 50 were administered a placebo. All of the participants had tested positive for the virus. On the third day, 31 who were given the drug recovered and 25 of those on the placebo recovered. That is not a measurable improvement considering the small number enrolled in the trial. Moreover, they were mildly symptomatic. Ramdev claimed that by the seventh day, all had recovered. If this also included all those on the placebo, then it further weakens the claim that it was the drug alone that worked. The doctors in the trial have spelt out on the clinical trials registry the process they would employ to test the drug but said they had neither published their results nor submitted it for peer-review. Therefore, the company’s claim of a cure by all accounts was a clear subversion of the scientific process. When hydroxychloroquine was being touted as a potential wonder drug for COVID-19, some of India’s scientists were quick to join a global opprobrium that raised methodological issues with a study in The Lancet, that claimed no effect — and even harm — from HCQ. The study was retracted as it relied on a spurious database. But its overall finding that HCQ does not work has been borne out by other validated studies. Thus, more than the outcome, it is the method deployed that ought to be scrutinised by scientists to reinforce public trust in scientific assessment. There has always been a tension between traditional Indian systems of medicine and pharmaceutical drugs but there is now consensus in India’s regulatory system that claims by both systems of developing safe efficacious drugs must pass clinical trials. It is well within the domain of institutions of the ICMR or the CSIR or national science academies to call out a breach of due process in the appraisal of any drug, whether allopathic, ayurvedic or homeopathic. To not do so would amount to criminal negligence.
[3] The Quint
Why growing pseudoscience in India and Pakistan is a concern By intermingling unreality, mythology, and science, India and Pakistan are paving the way for fascism in intellectual freedom and thought. by Kusha Anand and Laraib Niaz (01-12-2020) https://www.dailyo.in/variety/pseudoscience-mythology-science-covid-19-india-pakistan/story/1/33925.html
[4] NewsClick
Another First: Health Minister Pushes Unproven Covid Drug by Suhit K Sen (25 Feb 2021) https://www.newsclick.in/Another-First-Health-Minister-Pushes-Unproven-Covid-Drug
[5]
Indian Medical Association VP complains against Ramdev over Covid claims
TNN / May 10, 2021
JALANDHAR: Indian Medical Association (IMA) vice-president Dr Navjot Singh Dahiya has submitted an application against Baba Ramdev and his associate Acharya Balkrishna to the Jalandhar commissionerate police for allegedly creating a wrong perception regarding treatment of Covid-19 patients and creating panic.
In his complaint, Dr Dahiya alleged that they indulged in propaganda suggesting that people should not seek treatment from doctors, using insulting language towards doctors and intentionally and deliberately violating directions for the treatment of Covid-19 affected patients. He urged the police commissioner to conduct a high-level inquiry into the issue and said a criminal case should be registered against the accused.
Dahiya was the first senior IMA functionary who directly attacked Prime Minster Narendra Modi and called him a “failed PM†in a hard-hitting statement issued over a fortnight. He accused the PM of emerging as a ‘super spreader’ by holding big political rallies in poll-bound states and even allowing Kumbh Mela during such a serious situation.
Submitting video clips of Baba Ramdev with his complaint, Dahiya alleged that he advised Covid patients to not go to hospitals for treatment but cure their symptoms themselves by following his advice. “He gave advice to Covid-19 patients against the directions issued by the Government of India for treatment of Covid patients and in that way pushed patients towards their deathbeds without any treatment from hospitals. By doing so, he has clearly violated the directions issued by the government regarding the code of conduct and other orders passed by authorities and in that way is liable to be punished under the provision of Disaster Management Act of 2005 and Epidemic Disease Act of 1897,†IMA national VP has said.
In his complaint, Dr Dahiya alleged, “He and Balkrishna claimed to treat Covid patients without any authority, even without having any licence or professional degree and in that way, violated the law of the land and sold their illegal product of medicine by stating that it is useful for treatment of Covid-19 and in that way committed cheating with public and extortion (of) the money from the public.â€
[6] BBC
Coronavirus: The misleading claims about an Indian remedy
by Shruti Menon
A controversial herbal concoction has been in the news again in India, with renewed claims that it is effective against coronavirus.
The substance, called Coronil, was launched recently at an event attended by some Indian government ministers.
But there is no evidence that it works, and misleading claims have been made about approval for its use.
What do we know about the substance?
It’s a combination of herbs used in traditional Indian medicine and sold by Patanjali, a big consumer goods company in India, under the name of Coronil.
It first appeared in June last year, promoted by popular yoga guru Baba Ramdev, and described - without any basis - as a "cure" for Covid-19.
But marketing had to stop after an intervention by the Indian government, which said there was no data to show it worked as a treatment.
However, the government said it could continue to be sold as "an immunity booster".
News conference with Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Baba Ramdev of Patanjali Ayurvedimage copyright Getty Images
image caution health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan with Baba Ramdev
On 19 February this year, the company held another event - with Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan present - at which claims were repeated that it could prevent and treat Covid-19.
Dr Vardhan’s presence attracted criticism from India’s largest doctors’ body, the Indian Medical Association.
They described the promotion of an "unscientific medicine" in the presence of the health minister as an "insult to the people of India", and asked the minister to clarify whether he supported it as a cure.
We contacted the health ministry to ask about Dr Vardhan’s presence at the event, but had not received a response by the time of publication.
The Patanjali company defended the minister’s attendance, saying "he neither endorsed ayurveda [India’s traditional medicine], nor undermined modern medicine".
What are the claims made about Coronil?
The company continues to insist its product works against Covid-19.
"It has treated and cured people," Acharya Balkrishna, managing director of Patanjali told the BBC.
It referred us to scientific trials, the results of which it says have been published in several peer-reviewed journals.
It pointed specifically to a study from November 2020 in a journal published by the Swiss-based MDPI, which was based on a laboratory trial.
However, this study was conducted on fish, and it does not state there was evidence Coronil could cure coronavirus in humans.
It said only that the "results obtained from the present pre-clinical study warrant detailed clinical trials in humans".
Dr Michael Head, an expert on global health at the University of Southampton in the UK, told the BBC there was a huge difference between doing pre-clinical trials in the lab, and getting regulatory approval for something that works in humans.
"Many medicines show some potential promise in the laboratory, but when trialled in humans, they simply don’t work for a variety of reasons," he says.
A human trial was conducted between May and June last year, on 95 patients who had tested positive for coronavirus.
Of these, 45 received the treatment and 50 were part of a placebo group (who didn’t receive anything).
The Patanjali company pointed out the results have appeared in a peer-reviewed journal called Science Direct.
It said there were faster recovery rates among those who were given Coronil than those who were not.
However, this was a pilot study with a small sample size.
This can make it difficult to draw firm conclusions, as the difference in recovery rates could have been down to other factors.
Has Coronil received official approval?
In December 2020, the Patanjali company, which is based in Uttarakhand state, asked the state authorities to change Coronil’s existing licence from an "immunity booster" to one for "medicine for Covid-19".
In January this year, the Patanjali company said the product had got approval - as a "supporting measure" against Covid.
The Indian ministry for traditional medicine (known as AYUSH) and the Uttarakhand state authorities both confirmed to the BBC that a new licence had been issued, but both made clear that it was "not as a cure" for Covid.
"The upgraded licence means it can be sold like zinc, vitamin C, multi-vitamins or any other supplemental medicines," said Dr YS Rawat, director of the Uttarakhand traditional medicine department and the state licensing authority.
"It [Coronil] is not a cure," he added.
The company also points to the fact that it’s got a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certificate, which it says is "in line with World Health Organization (WHO) certification schemes".
Rakesh Mittal, a senior executive, even claimed in a tweet that Coronil had been "recognised by the WHO", a statement he then deleted.
The GMP certification is from India’s top drug regulator - under a World Health Organization (WHO)-recognised scheme - and is to ensure production standards for export purposes.
"A GMP certificate has nothing to do with the efficacy of a medicine, it is to maintain standards of quality when manufacturing," Dr Rawat from the Uttarakhand state government explained.
The WHO confirmed to the BBC that they have "not... certified the effectiveness of any traditional medicine for the treatment of Covid-19".
Dr Head, of Southampton University, says: "There is no clear evidence right now that this product is beneficial for treating or preventing Covid-19."
[7] Photo of India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and India’s Roadways Minsiter Nitin Gadkari at a News Conference announcing the release of Coronil - a drug produced by Patanjali the company owned by Baba Ramdev
[8] The Hindu
Oxygen’s in the air: Great expectations of good governance by G. Sampath (May 08, 2021) https://www.thehindu.com/society/satire-oxygens-in-the-air-great-expectations-of-good-governance/article34504694.ece
Editorial, May 11, 2021
The rational course: To recover from the Covid pandemic, to thrive again, India must embrace science fully
In countless ways the world has never seen a year like the last, when it comes to science taking centrestage. It has defined all the key turning points, from helping us understand how Covid-19 spreads to finding vaccines against it at unprecedented pace. The Galileo dictum, measure what is measurable and make measurable what is not so, has been at the heart of this process. Even before today, India’s progress on many fronts had been shaped by scientific temper – take the heavy investments across governments in areas like space exploration, child vaccination and renewable energy. Only, it is clearer than ever now that this is our only path to a healthy future.
India’s tragic descent into the second Covid surge was preceded by sheer disregard of pandemic science. From distaste for public masking to declaring premature victory against the virus and neglect of key protocols that allowed the virus to storm our shaky public health defences, irrational institutional responses have taken an obvious toll. And individual lapses continue: An Indian football team has negligently breached another country’s bio-bubble, nine lives were lost ingesting an alcohol-based homeopathic concoction in Chhattisgarh, fake and dangerous cures for Covid pneumonia continue to be peddled on social media etc.
A decrepit education system that is based on rote learning isn’t helping. In the coming years it must be reformed to promote scientific habits and critical inquiry. Citizens bereft of modern governance or structures like functional schools and hospitals often can’t gauge the value of science in their lives. This may even explain some families being improperly masked at hospitals despite the virus having invaded the respiratory tract of their relative. A long civilisational quest has bequeathed India traditional systems of medicine and thought. But a virulent pandemic demands dispassionate interrogation of the evidence and this is where high-profile quacks deserve no quarter from the state.
The vaccines that have passed the test of multiple trials before authorisation for commercial use best exemplify the spirit of scientific objectivity. Where the vaccine remains slow in coming, governments must not neglect tools like testing and genome sequencing. When detected cases shot up in Maharashtra from February, ramping up testing in neighbouring states – a virus is no respecter of porous borders – could have mitigated the second wave. To recover, to thrive again, India must commit fully to science. And make sure that our children get a solid grounding in it.
[10] Statements by Indian Medical Association and by Resident Doctors Association - Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi
- IMA Demands That Health Minister Accept or Take Action Against Accusations on Modern Medecine by Yoga Guru Under Epidemic Act (May 22, 2021) press release
[11] Harsh Vardhan asks Ramdev to withdraw objectionable comments about allopathy, Corona warriors http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/82881451.cms
[12] The Telegraph
Hack jobs: Faith and bigotry trump reason and science for the sangh parivar
Ramachandra Guha
May 22, 2021
Earlier this month, the Ayush ministry offered detailed advice on how to build one’s immunity during the “Covid-19 Crisis†. To help ward off the dreaded disease, the ministry listed a series of specific recommendations, including, “Apply Sesame oil/Coconut oil/Cow Ghee... in both the nostrils in morning and evening.†However, if one didn’t like putting stuff in one’s nose, the ministry offered an alternative: “Take 1 table spoon sesame oil or coconut oil in the mouth. Do not drink, swish in the mouth for 2 to 3 minutes and spit it off followed by warm water rinse [sic]†. Other measures recommended by the ministry to stop oneself from getting Covid-19 include eating chyavanprash, drinking herbal tea, doing steam inhalation and so on.
The publicity material put out by the Ayush ministry stopped just short of explicitly saying that a deshbhakt would not get Covid-19 if he or she followed the procedures recommended by it. But the implication pretty much was – if you follow these traditional practices, you are much less likely to catch the virus. Leaders and propagandists of the ruling party have been far less coy in recommending altogether unproven cures for this most deadly of 21st-century diseases. In my own state, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former MP, Vijay Sankeshwar, recommended lime juice inhalation as an alternative to oxygen (which was scarce in North Karnataka). The Hindu reported that “Mr. Sankeshwar had in a recent press meet said that administering lime juice through nostrils increased oxygen levels by 80%. He had said that he had seen this home remedy work in 200 persons, including his relatives and colleagues†. Several followers of the politician, the report continued, had died as a result of following their leader’s advice.
An even more influential BJP leader from Karnataka, the party general secretary, BL Santhosh, enthusiastically recommended steam inhalation to fight the coronavirus, posting pictures of policemen, huddled dangerously close together without masks, adopting this procedure following the advice of their political bosses.
Meanwhile, in another BJP-ruled state, Madhya Pradesh, the culture minister, Usha Thakur, said the ancient fire ritual known as “havan†was an effective way to combat the ongoing pandemic. The Telegraph reported the minister as saying, “We appeal to all to perform yagna and offer aahuti (oblation) and purify the environment because performing this sacred ritual to eliminate pandemics has been a tradition since ages.â€
The minister’s advice appears to have been taken seriously by the members of her parivar. A widely circulated video shows volunteers with black caps and khaki shorts explaining how to conduct these havans in each house, using neem leaves and firewood for the purpose.
In another fantastical claim, the controversial MP from Bhopal, she who thinks Mahatma Gandhi’s murderer a true patriot, insisted that she has not contracted Covid-19 so far only because she drinks cow urine every day. And in Gujarat, the state that has been ruled by the BJP for the longest time, it was reported that a group of sadhus are regularly lathering themselves with cow dung, convinced that this will prevent them from being infected with the virus.
Among the slew of dodgy cures recommended by leaders of the ruling party is the drug, Coronil, launched last year by the Sarkari Sant, Ramdev, in the presence of two senior Union ministers, one of whom was concurrently serving as the minister of health and the minister of science and technology. When Coronil was first promoted by Ramdev, “it was with the false claim that this would be a Ccovid cure, with ‘100 per cent recovery guaranteed’ within seven days, local media reported†. The head of the “Patanjali Research Institute†, one Anurag Varshney, claimed that the miracle drug “had received the scientific validation it needed†. He further claimed that “[t]hose who got the medicine turned Covid positive to negative in seven days but among patients who received the placebo, only 60 per cent... turned Covid negative. So it [has] well-defined in-built efficacy†.
Before I go any further, let me make it clear that I believe in medical pluralism myself. I do not believe that modern Western medicine has all the cures for all the ailments and diseases known to humankind. I know from intimate personal experience that non-modern systems such as ayurveda, yoga and homoeopathy can play a role in mitigating such ailments as chronic asthma, chronic backache and seasonal allergies, from which I have suffered at various points in my life.
However, Covid-19 is a distinctively 21st-century virus, unknown to those who invented and developed the systems of ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha and homoeopathy. Besides, it is just a year and a bit old. There is absolutely no evidence that the burning of neem leaves, or the drinking of cow urine, or the swallowing of a pill made of plants, or the plastering on one’s body of cow dung, or the ingesting of coconut oil or ghee into one’s nostrils can have any effect at all in warding off the disease or in effecting a quicker recovery if one contracts Covid-19.
On the other hand, we do have enough evidence to show that two preventive measures do help enormously in warding off Covid-19. These are maintaining social distancing and having oneself vaccinated. And it is in these two respects that our proudly Hindu government has so dismally failed us, by allowing, indeed encouraging, larger and ever larger political and religious gatherings, and in not being proactive in boosting domestic vaccine production or in licensing new vaccines for use in India, despite having many months’ notice in which to do so.
I come from a family of scientists. Almost the only words of abuse that I ever heard my scientist father and scientist grandfather utter were ‘mumbo-jumbo’ and ‘superstition’. My father and grandfather are now dead; but I wonder what the distinguished Indian scientists I know think of all the fakery and quackery promoted by ruling party politicians in the name of combating Covid-19. Truth be told, this fakery and quackery, this superstition and mumbo-jumbo, are not just the preserve of the odd Union minister or the odd state-level politician. It is shared widely by members of the sangh parivar, among them the prime minister himself. Consider what he did last March, when the pandemic first made itself visible; he asked us to bang pots and pans for exactly five minutes, beginning exactly at 5 pm. Or what he did the next month, when the gravity of the situation was becoming clearer; he asked us to light candles or shine torches for exactly nine minutes, beginning exactly at 9 pm. How this would help us ward off the virus then spreading across North America and Europe perhaps only the prime minister’s astrologer and/or numerologist knew.
For the sangh parivar, faith and bigotry take precedence over reason and science. In acting as he does, Narendra Modi only reflects the narrow-mindedness of his own ideological upbringing. During his first prime ministerial campaign, he lavishly praised Ramdev for “the fire inside him and his determination†. He added, “I feel a closeness to his agenda†. That Ramdev has since emerged as the State’s most favoured sant is no accident. It is also entirely in character that the prime minister would consort actively with other shady, so-called godmen, or that he would appoint Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh hacks to important ministries such as education, health, and science and technology.
The most spectacular demonstration of Hindutva irrationality was, of course, the holding of the Kumbh Mela, brought forward a year because the astrologers demanded it, held in full force in the middle of the pandemic because the RSS and the BJP wanted to make social and political capital out of it. As the virus spreads deep into the North Indian countryside, one can — indeed must — trace a direct connection between the massive support given to the mela by the Central government and by BJP state governments on the one hand, and the countless bodies being cremated or floating in the rivers or buried in the sand, on the other. From the prime minister downwards (and not excluding the sarsanghchalak of the RSS), there were many powerful and influential men who could have prevented this tragedy from taking place. They did not, because, for them, faith and bigotry take precedence over reason and science.
In April 2019 — a little over two years ago — I wrote in these columns of the Modi government’s disdain for science, of how it had sought to politicize our best institutions of scientific research. “By so systematically undermining our finest institutions that produce knowledge and breed innovation,†I wrote then, “the Modi government has gravely undermined the nation’s social and economic future. Indians now living as well as Indians yet unborn will bear the costs of this savage, unrelenting, war on the intellect†.
At that time, Covid-19 was many months away from manifesting itself in the world. Now that it is here, and the Modi government continues its savage, unrelenting, war on the intellect, the gloomy future I outlined has become far gloomier still. In confronting this pandemic, India and Indians would have had a difficult time anyway. It has been made far more difficult and deadly by the disregard for reason and science exhibited by the Union government and the ruling party.
