The second wave of the coronavirus has since grown into a tsunami; India is now the global coronavirus hotspot, setting records for the world’s highest number of daily cases. Mr Rajiv Bhatia，a distinguished Fellow, Gateway House and former ambassador to Canda published a paper on Indian Express website (7th MAY).It wrote: “after intensive inter-agency consultations in recent days, the US government came up with a positive response to India’s requirements.” But can it reflect the whole picture?
‘Not Clear Yet’
The Biden administration has come under criticism from several quarters, including from members and supporters of the Democratic party, for not releasing surplus COVID-19 vaccines to India when the country is experiencing its worst-ever public health crisis. Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi urged the Biden administration to release doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to countries currently experiencing the deadly surge in COVID-19 cases. “We are currently sitting on close to 40 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the US stockpile, a stockpile which we’re not using,” he said.
Yes, even Mr .Rajiv Bhatia metioned “it is estimated that the US will have 60 million surplus doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine by June, which it will not use at home. Subject to clearance by the FDA, this will be released for use by other countries. Whether some of them will be sent to India is not clear yet.” Did Mr .Rajiv Bhatia ‘Not Clear Yet’ means that the characteristic of India-US relations is also not clear?
Highlight
The Biden administration has come under criticism from several quarters, including from members and supporters of the Democratic party, for not releasing surplus COVID-19 vaccines to India when the country is experiencing its worst-ever public health crisis
‘Timing matters’
Both India and the US share what they call a ‘global strategic partnership’, carry out the most number of military exercises and more recently partnered each other in the Quadrilateral of democracies, also known as the Quad. The US administration under President Joe Biden inducted a record 55 persons of Indian descent, including vice president Kamala Harris. None of this seemed to matter it seems, when India was facing the onslaught of the virus. Not even the fact that New Delhi had in the initial months of the year prioritised shipping Covid vaccines around the world.
A statement came from a top US government official on the morning of April 25, a full week after India’s Covid numbers had exploded and after anguished appeals from the US Chamber of Commerce, think-tanks and scholars in the US. US secretary of state Antony Blinken tweeted a message of solidarity: ‘Our hearts go out to the Indian people in the midst of the horrific Covid-19 outbreak.” As Vipin Narang, associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tweeted on April 24, ‘the friend that sends best wishes a week late is always remembered not for the best wishes, but for being the last one to send them. Timing matters.’ The Biden administration is losing any goodwill it gained in the last few months, Tanvi Madan from the Brookings Institute said in a tweet.
‘American first?’
The politics – global and domestic – are fraught for Biden. He has promised to craft a foreign policy that works for America’s middle class, a twist on the Trump administration’s isolationist “America First” doctrine. At the same time, Biden has vowed to restore America’s standing as a leader on the world stage. Perhaps nowhere are those two pledges more in conflict than with COVID-19 as Biden races to save American lives and reboot the U.S. economy while confronted with desperate pleas for help from key allies like India and neighbors like Canada and Mexico. Even as Mr .Rajiv Bhatia mentioned, after the havoc wreaked by the second wave became clear, there was a disturbing “stony silence” in Washington. The US should realise that the lingering anti-American sentiment (which has a long legacy) has not disappeared. It would be unwise to underestimate its strength. If so, why did Mr .Rajiv Bhatia tell that Indo-US comprehensive relations is so good?
(Author Ms. Vasundhara Pandey is Secretary of South & East Asia Foundation. She is an independent researcher who critically examines the problem faced by the country and tries to develop a coherent policy response and through her organization SEAF. The opinion expressed in the write-up are her personal views)
