Just Who are the Real Anti-Science People in India? The Government, or the Media?
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| The Circus Called Indian Media (courtesy: Mint) |
The latest advisory of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on treating COVID-19 gains praise from a wide spectrum of the medical and scientific community for its evidence-based approach towards COVID management. Also, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi went on record to laud India’s scientific community for their invaluable contribution to the nation’s fight against the COVID pandemic. However, given the utterly deplorable and false propaganda of a section of India’s liberal community, it is time to ask a few tough questions of the eminent liberals of our country who think they know more than scientists.
Modi Government’s Multiple Steps in
Sync with Science
That the oh so liberal liberati of
India was bereft of any cranial abilities was well known. What has been on
demonstration for more than a year and a half however account for nothing less
than plagiarism. The word plagiarism is used because the model templates that
their masters in the West use to discredit far right political class, which is
genuinely anti-science in its thought and behaviour, has been copy pasted
blindly to criticize the Narendra Modi government on ‘science’. Of course, as
we say in Hindi – nakal ke liye bhi akkal ki zaroorat hoti hai (it takes
brains to copy) – and that is where the liberati, that also demonstrates signs
of being the real ignorantsia, of India comes a cropper, as it blindly rants on
all the supposed issues of India’s right wing when it comes to science.
The government of India set up a
scientific advisory committee to steer its response to the COVID pandemic way
back in April 2020. Even before the committee, the government, following advise
from august quarters, chose to keep events like the Holi
celebrations of 2020 an absolutely low key affair. Even as the World
Health Organization (WHO) kept insisting that masks were not needed by all, the Modi
government had gone ahead based on scientific advice and strongly recommended
both masks for all and physical distancing. As early as March 2020, proposals
were invited to push for rapid innovations by various bodies such as the
Department of Science and Technology (DST) to develop materials and machinery
that prove useful for tackling COVID-19. A vaccine task force was also set up in
April itself.
Not to be outdone is the upkeep
with latest scientific advise on treating COVID with suitable medicines.
Clinical trials were facilitated both for vaccines as well as potential drugs
by the scientific administration that saw the slashing of significant,
potentially delaying red tape in approvals and clearances without compromising
on scientific rigour. Vaccination process was followed as per protocols that
complies with scientific thinking for health workers, co-morbid patients and
elderly citizens. Even with the internationally manufactured vaccines,
decisions to fast
track emergency use approvals have been taken based on evidence
presented to the scientific administrators as well as following up on the
processes adopted by scientific communities in leading nations.
Liberati or Ignorantsia? Trying to
Clutch at Straws, Falling Between the Stools
In contrast, India’s liberati continued
to search that one straw to beat the Narendra Modi government with, in turn
exposing their double standards. Kumbh Mela was a super spreader based on
sporadic data, but the
confirmed fanning out of thousands of Tablighi Jamaat preachers after a markaz cannot allow
the markaz to be considered a super spreader. A khap
panchayat in Mewat is definitely a super spreader, but not
the thousands of protests asking for the beheading
of Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati for blasphemy . Elections are the cause for COVID to spread, but when it
comes to farmer protests, we lose our voices and comprehension abilities all of
a sudden.
This kind of monkey balancing saw
the liberati fall between the stools on so many occasions. However, the utter
shamelessness of the same set has been seen with the manner in which they
fanned vaccine hesitancy, either by sharing spurious news reports or by giving
voice to the likes of Akhilesh
Yadav, TS Singh
Deo, Prashant
Bhushan and many others. If that was not enough, the inability to
understand statistics or its malevolent use was on display on multiple
occasions. Studies
that projected bloodbath across India came a cropper, but those
medical equipment salesmen still get overtime in
the media space. Death undercounting on a deliberate basis kept
coming up as a charge – of course when it comes to their masters in the West doing
much worse on undercounting of cases and deaths, there is
utter silence. Since the media in the US was willing to discount lab leak
theories despite evidence only because a certain leader said so, efforts were
made to discount all similar research and opinion within India by this very Commissar.
If that was not enough, there was a
deliberate search for any and every to prove that all Hindus are superstitious
bigots who coat themselves in cow dung, while evangelicals
who find the COVID pandemic as an opportunity to convert people to Christianity
are noble saints. This set kept praising states that have performed
miserably on COVID management like Maharashtra and Kerala, while the
senseless strategy of sensationalism has been adopted on states like Uttar
Pradesh, which had far fewer cases despite the much larger population, to
create an impression of an evil fascist regime throwing bodies in the river to
hide deaths. The selective shifting between numbers and percentages to suit the
agenda has already been exposed multiple times, but never let facts get in the
way of good Goebbelesian propaganda if you are part of the liberati.
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