The South Asia Politics, News, and Analysis Thread

More significantly, the government has also proposed to buy bulk subscriptions of all the important scientific journals across the world, and provide everyone in India free access to them. The proposals have been made in the draft Science, Technology and Innovation Policy that was released to the public on New Year’s Day for comments and suggestions.

Govt proposes to buy bulk subscriptions of all scientific journals, provide free access to all The 'One Nation, One Subscription' policy for scientific journals is a radical move that could prove to be a game changer for the scientific community and individual researchers.

All data generated from publicly-funded research is proposed to be made freely available to everyone. In an ambitious move to make scientific knowledge and data available to all, the government has proposed an open data policy that will make information generated by all publicly funded research, including its results, freely accessible to everyone.

The ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ policy for scientific journals is a radical move that could prove to be a game changer for the scientific community and individual researchers. There are more than 3,000 to 4,000 high-impact scientific journals, and sources say the government might have to spend a few hundred crore rupees every year to get their bulk subscriptions. But its impact on the scientific research community could be huge, given that access to these journals are highly priced and even big institutions are selective in buying subscriptions.

The Ministry of Science and Technology, which has drafted the new policy, proposes to set up a new Science, Technology and Innovation Observatory which will serve as a central repository for all kinds of data generated from research in India. All data generated from publicly-funded research is proposed to be made freely available to everyone. In cases where, for reasons of privacy, national security or intellectual property rights, the availability of data has to be restricted, “suitably anonymised and/or redacted data” will still be provided. Even in cases where it cannot be released to the general public, genuine researchers would be given access to it, the policy has proposed.

Additionally, libraries of all publicly-funded institutions are proposed to be made accessible to general public “subject only to reasonable security protocols”.

The policy also talks about promoting the goal of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” in the field of science and technology. “A two-way approach of indigenous development of technology as well as technology indigenisation will be adopted,” it says.

“Greater emphasis will be given on promoting traditional knowledge systems, developing indigenous technologies and encouraging grassroots innovations,” it says.

started vaccinating

India’s government has made the calculation that it has enough vaccine doses to share. The result is a form of vaccine diplomacy that appears to be unlike any other in the world.

Since Wednesday, the Indian government has sent free doses to Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives — more than 3.2 million in total. Donations to Mauritius, Myanmar and Seychelles are set to follow. Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are next on the list.

The shipments reflect one of India’s unique strengths: It is home to a robust vaccine industry, including Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers.

Early in the pandemic, Serum Institute formed a partnership to produce the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. By this year, it had already stockpiled 80 million doses. Some of that production will be delivered this month to the ­Covax initiative backed by the World Health Organization to distribute vaccines to poorer countries.

On Thursday, a fire broke out at a building under construction at Serum Institute’s headquarters in which five people died, New Delhi Television reported. Serum Institute said the blaze would not impact its production of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

In the race to combat the pandemic, several countries are using vaccine production as a route to enhance their global influence. But the Indian government seems to be the first to deliver multiple gifts to neighboring countries.

China has made a concerted push to sell its vaccines to countries around the globe for months but only recently announced donations to Myanmar, Cambodia and the Philippines. It is not clear if the free vaccines have been shipped.

On Thursday, Pakistan’s foreign minister had a call with his Chinese counterpart and announced that China would donate 500,000 vaccine doses by Jan. 31.

India’s diplomatic initiative has its own hashtag — #VaccineMaitri, or vaccine friendship — and received a high-profile plug from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India is “deeply honoured to be a long-trusted partner in meeting the healthcare needs of the global community,” he wrote on Twitter.

The push comes at a time when the virus is in retreat in India. The country is a distant second to the United States in terms of coronavirus cases, with about 10.6 million. Daily cases have dropped significantly since last fall.

India launched its nationwide vaccination drive, one of the world’s largest, on Jan. 16. The country is aiming to vaccinate 300 million people by the summer, starting with 10 million health-care personnel. Regulators fast-tracked the approval of two vaccines — the AstraZeneca vaccine and, more controversially, a vaccine called Covaxin developed in India that does not yet have efficacy data.

So far India is providing the AstraZeneca vaccine to its neighbors. Some analysts questioned whether the donations would have a lasting impact on existing sources of tension, such as a boundary dispute with Nepal.

“You have neighbors who resent India’s overweening ways as it is,” said Manoj Joshi, a ­foreign policy analyst and senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “I don’t think they’re going to be so terribly grateful that they forget all that.”

Conspicuously absent from the list of countries receiving free vaccine doses is Pakistan, India’s rival and neighbor to the west. The relationship between the two countries hit a nadir in 2019 when they engaged in their first aerial dogfight in nearly 50 years following a terrorist attack in Kashmir.

Pakistan recently approved the AstraZeneca vaccine. It has not approached India about a potential shipment, said two Indian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” one of the officials said.

A spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry referred queries to the Health Ministry, which did not respond.

India is monitoring its vaccine supply on a weekly basis to make sure it can meet both domestic needs and demands from other countries, one of the Indian officials said. Commercial exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine — including to Brazil and Morocco — will begin within days.

Countries that received the free vaccine doses this week expressed their thanks. On Wednesday, an Indian military transport plane landed at the only international airport in Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan nation wedged between India and China. It carried 150,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, enough to vaccinate more than one-tenth of the total population targeted for immunization.

Lotay Tshering, Bhutan’s prime minister, said in a statement that the Bhutanese people were “immensely grateful” for the doses. “It is of unimaginable value when precious commodities are shared even before meeting your own needs.”

Many protesters diverted from agreed routes and clashes broke out with police.

One protester died and more than 80 police officers were injured.

Mobile internet services were suspended in parts of Delhi and some metro stations closed as security forces scrambled to restore order.

The government is yet to comment on the violence, but reports say Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with Delhi police to discuss the situation.

The government says the reforms that spurred the protests will liberalise the agriculture sector, but farmers say they will lose income.

Tens of thousands of them have been striking on the outskirts of Delhi since November, demanding the laws be repealed. Last week they rejected a government offer to put the laws on hold.

It is one of the longest farmers-led protests India has ever seen, pitting the community against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP) government.

How did the protests turn violent?

Police allowed Tuesday's rally on the condition that it would not interrupt the annual Republic Day parade in central Delhi.

Republic Day is a national holiday that marks the anniversary of India officially adopting its constitution on 26 January 1950.

Farmers were given specific routes for the rally, which would largely be confined to the outskirts. But a group of them converged on the historic Red Fort. They breached security and clambered onto the walls and domes of the fortress, even hoisting flags alongside the national flag.

By Tuesday afternoon, police said they had removed protesters from the complex, but the situation remained tense.

"We came here to deliver a message to the Modi government, our job is done. We will go back now," one protesting farmer told NDTV.

Other protesters broke through police barricades and marched towards central Delhi, where India's parliament is located.

Images from the ITO metro station junction - on the route to central Delhi - showed police clashing with farmers and using tear gas and batons. Protesters driving tractors appeared to be deliberately trying to run over police personnel. Local media reported injuries on both sides.

At least one protester died at the junction when his tractor overturned as police fired tear gas.

BBC correspondents said protesters outnumbered the police at the ITO junction, leaving them struggling to control the crowd.

"We have been appealing to farmers to go by the pre-approved route but some of them broke police barricades, attacked police personnel," a senior police officer told ANI news agency. "We are appealing to farmers' unions to help maintain peace."

Union leaders issued similar appeals, condemning and distancing themselves from the violence.

What is the Red Fort?

The Red Fort was built in the early 17th Century by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and was the seat of Mughal rule until 1857, when India began to be governed by the British The huge citadel, with its distinctive red sandstone walls, took nearly a decade to complete India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the national flag from the fort on 16 August 1947 - a day after independence from Britain was declared Indian troops left the fort in December 2003, after which it was handed over to the tourism ministry The fort was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2007 Grey line What do the new farming laws propose? The laws loosen rules around the sale, pricing and storage of farm produce which have protected India's farmers from the free market for decades.

Farmers fear that the new laws will threaten decades-old concessions - such as assured prices - and weaken their bargaining power, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by private companies.

While Mr Modi has defended them, the laws have been likened to a "death warrant" by farmer groups.

Most economists and experts agree that Indian agriculture desperately needs reform. But critics of the government say it failed to consult farmers before passing the laws.

Experts also point out that the reforms fail to take into account that agriculture still remains a mainstay in the Indian economy.

The Afghan officials said they busted an alleged Chinese espionage ring operating in Kabul to hunt down Uighur Muslims with the help of the Haqqani network, a terrorist outfit linked to the Taliban. A senior security official said the ring had been operating for six or seven years. Afghan authorities have cooperated with China in the past on the detention and deportation of Uighurs suspected of terrorist activity, but officials said they were shocked at China’s duplicity.

“Is this the behavior of a friend?” said one. Another source said the presence of the Chinese cell—widely reported by Indian news outlets, though notably not by Afghan or international media—was revealed to Afghan authorities by Indian intelligence.

The arrest has prompted Kabul, which is seeking to put its economy in order as it faces an uncertain future with the unfolding peace process, to use the incident as “leverage” against Beijing, one official said, especially in terms of renegotiating multimillion-dollar mining concessions.

“We have put them on notice—make progress on the contract or we will reissue the tender. This sector is very important to the Afghan economy and it’s time to get moving,” one of the officials said. “We want to make progress on major national projects. It has been many, many years, we have given (China) security, and we need to see returns and economic benefits.”

No deadline has been set for the renegotiation of the contract, though the official said that China had submitted a “five-page overview of where they’ve made progress.”

Neither China’s foreign ministry nor the embassy in London responded to requests for comment. The mining company, China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC), could not be reached.

The hardball tactics with China are a reflection both of the Afghan government’s frustration with the slow pace of mineral development in the country, and its desperate need for fresh sources of income as the United States, international forces, and many international donors are pulling up stakes. Afghanistan is dependent on international aid for 40 percent of its gross domestic product, the World Bank said in 2018. Aid levels are expected to halve by 2030, making it imperative that the government find alternative sources of funding.

Afghanistan has vast mineral deposits, including coal, copper and iron ore, talc, lithium and uranium, as well as gold, precious stones, oil and gas. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the sector has been seen as the potential backbone of a post-war economy—and still is. But few major miners will risk venturing into the war-ravaged country—and China’s decision to discontinue work at Mes Aynak is indicative of even Beijing’s disinclination to operate in the face of insurgent threats at the site.

The Afghan government had high hopes for the huge copper deposits at Mes Aynak, about 40 km southeast of the capital. China’s state-owned MCC struck a $2.83 billion deal for a 30-year lease on the site in 2007—but has done little to develop it in the meantime. MCC has spent $371 million at the site, according to figures supplied by the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.

Afghan media reported last year that the inactivity at the site had cost the government $2 billion in lost revenues. Meanwhile, the Taliban is striking it rich by tapping into Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. The insurgents earn hundreds of millions of dollars annually from mining alone, according to some sources.

Haroon Chakhansuri, the minister of mines and petroleum, told Foreign Policy that if the copper project at Mes Aynak was not reframed in “mutually agreed terms” the contract would be retendered. Afghanistan is opening its extractive sector to other countries, he said, citing a memorandum of understanding written on Sept. 10, 2020, with Australia’s Fortescue Future Industries.

But some observers say that targeting China will yield little for Kabul: Its neighbor is just too close and too big. Javed Noorani, an expert on Afghanistan’s extractives sector, said years of disingenuous rhetoric around renegotiations had already cost Afghanistan dearly.

Afghanistan has little choice but to try and open up one of the areas of its economy that has the potential to bring in billions of dollars to cash-strapped federal coffers. Afghanistan’s government, which is heavily dependent on dwindling amounts of foreign aid, is facing the possibility of being forced by the United States and its allies into a power-sharing deal with the Taliban. America has pulled out all but the last 2,500 troops in the country, as part of a peace deal then-President Donald Trump brokered with the terrorist group in 2020, but they must all leave the country by May. That withdrawal has undermined the Kabul government and led to a big spike in Taliban violence.

Mes Aynak, one of the world’s biggest untapped copper sources with an estimated 5.5 million metric tons of high-grade metal, has been plagued by allegations of corruption and collusion between Beijing and the Taliban to secure the site so work could commence.

The former minister of mines, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, was fired in 2009 following accusations, which he denied, that he had accepted a $30 million bribe from MCC. And the then–general manager of MCC, Shen Heting, was kicked out of the Communist Party—a career-ending blow—for corruption in 2017.

“Both parties to the Aynak copper contract are anything but honest,” Noorani said, adding that some Afghan officials had benefited financially from “not implementing the terms of the MCC contract.”

Early plans for Mes Aynak included a smelter, coal-fired power plant, and rail link. MCC had “completed the exploration of the central deposit and submitted the final draft feasibility study of the mine in 2015,” the minister said—but no progress had been made since. One of the senior officials said the Afghan government has reminded China of that country’s “surprisingly strong back-channel contacts with the Taliban. They could have smoothed the way for the development of the [Mes Aynak] mine, but they’ve chosen not to do that”.

Noorani said that as the biggest consumer of copper—51 percent of global production and growing—and owner of copper mines across the world, China’s interest lay in controlling prices on the London Metal Exchange. “So they are not going to let Aynak be retendered and will continue to hold the contract,” he predicted.

The beefed-up security - called "war-like" by some farmers - comes amid a tense standoff with the government over new agricultural laws.

The protest, now in its third month, presents the biggest challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced.

His government offered to suspend the laws but farmers want them repealed.

Things turned violent last week when protesters and police clashed after thousands of farmers entered Delhi as part of a massive tractor rally. Dozens of officers were injured and one protester died. Farmers' groups and union leaders condemned the violence but said they would not call off the protest.

Instead, they they plan to block highways leading into the national capital on 6 February. Meanwhile, the situation at the protest sites - Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri - has steadily worsened.

Delhi and the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh have deployed officers and drones at the sites, and have begun blocking the area around the protests, effectively cutting the farmers off from roads into the city.

Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava defended the barricading. "I am surprised that when tractors were used, police were attacked, barricades were broken on January 26, no questions were raised," he told ANI news agency.

"What did we do now? We have just strengthened barricading so that it's not broken again".

At the Delhi-Haryana border, police officials have blocked roads with large concrete slabs and embedded huge iron nails across the breadth of the road leading up to the Tikri protest site.

Anoop Chanaut, a member of the Kisan (Farmer) Social Army, told BBC Hindi that the government says we are just a phone call away. "But then they install barricading as if this is an international border.

"We are sitting peacefully on our front and we will remain seated. But if we want to move forward to surround the parliament, these barricades will not stop us," farmers told BBC Hindi.

Many on social media likened the warlike fortification at the protest sites to fencing at international borders. #FencinglikeChinaPak rose to the top of India twitter trends as many commented on the excessive use of security paraphernalia by police officials.

The protest site at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh (UP) border has been heavily fortified since Sunday evening. All roads going from UP to Delhi have been closed. Even the walkways and footpaths have been blocked.

Spools of razor wire, heavy metal barricading, layers of stone boulders and rows of concrete barricades line the main roads at Ghazipur and Singhu.

Barbed wire coils and concrete slabs block the roads here. Like Tikri, nails were installed at the Ghazipur border too.

Police officials at the protest site told the BBC that they received orders to ramp up security there. Farmers say that the police have taken these measures so that the number of tents at the site does not increase.

BBC Hindi's Samiratmaj Mishra reported that an ambulance had to turn back due to the heavy barricading of barbed wire and concrete blocks.

On Monday evening, concrete was poured between stone barriers to keep them in place. Alternating rows of metal and stone barriers criss-cross the main highway.

Video and pictures from the protest sites were shared by many on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram amid outrage against what many see as heavy-handed security.

Barricading at the Singhu border stretches to 2km on the Delhi side. The road has been dug up.

Selected vehicles are being allowed to go beyond the barricading, but media vehicles are not allowed in. All routes have been blocked.

A farmer leader present at the Singhu site told BBC Hindi that "the Modi government is building a wall on the border of Delhi and Haryana, as was announced by Trump on the US and Mexico border".

Farmer leaders here told BBC Hindi that if the government wants to negotiate, it must first create an atmosphere of dialogue.

"The government is taking all inhuman steps. This includes cutting electricity, shutting off water and shutting down the internet. Now the government is barricading. This should stop immediately."

Farmer collective leader Satnam Singh Pannu told the BBC that barricading at Tikri, Singhu and Ghazipur is an attempt by the government to reduce the morale of the farmers.

"The farmers are still enthusiastic, and we will go back only when the laws are repealed."