 Hello and welcome to Dispatches from India, a show brought to you by People's Dispatch. In this episode, we will be taking a look at the implications of the recent elections in various states in India, the situation of the LGBTQ and trans community in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and some reflections on Bill Gates' comments on vaccines and intellectual property rights. Now we start with the elections. The results for the elections in four state and one union territory were announced on May 2. This was considered a particularly crucial round, as in three of these states, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the Bharati Janata Party which is in power in the center was hoping to expand its presence. In the fourth state, Assam, it was already in power. The results however were disappointing for the ruling party. In the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the BJP and its allies were defeated. In West Bengal, while the BJP considerably improved its performance, it nonetheless emerged in a distant second. The BJP also retained its power-retain power in Assam. Kerala's results were particularly interesting as the Communist Party of India, Marxist-led left democratic front returned to power. This is the first time a ruling combined has come back to power in Kerala in over four decades. The left government's return to power was based on an excellent performance of the administrative front. The government's work was especially celebrated when it dealt with multiple crises. These include two successive rounds of flooding in 2018 and 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic. The state, in fact, is one of the lowest case-fatality ratios in the country. Subindennis, a researcher with triconsent, examined some of the key reasons for the left's victory in Kerala. Putting it in simple terms, we could talk about six reasons for the victory of the left democratic front in Kerala. One, its policies have been popular. The LDF government expanded public education and public health care in a big way. It increased pensions and greatly improved their coverage to benefit a total of almost 6 million people. It built 250,000 houses for the poor. Apart from these, it made major investments in economic infrastructures such as new roads and bridges. Finance Minister Thomas Isaac led the effort to raise resources necessary for these. The right wing in Kerala has traditionally claimed that the left is not good enough when it comes to building economic infrastructure. But this time, they lost that blank. Two, leadership. Chief Minister Pinarai Vijayan emerged as an extremely popular leader with the leadership he showed in steering the state during several periods of crisis. Kerala was hit by severe floods in 2018 and 19 and then by the COVID pandemic. The LDF government handled these crisis efficiently and ensured relief to the people. The important role that Health Minister KK Shailaja played in the battle against the COVID pandemic made her immensely popular too. Importantly, it became clear to the people that it was the LDF which was the best suited to handle the challenges that lie ahead. Three, commitment to secularism. When the BJP government at the center brought in the Citizenship Amendment Act and the national register of citizens that threatened to turn Muslims into second-class citizens, the LDF government stood firmly against the CAA and NRC and declared that they will not be implemented in Kerala. Kerala was the first state in which the state assembly passed a resolution against the CAA. This gave religious minorities and other democratic-minded people even more confidence in the left. Four, communication. Pinovay Vijayan's daily press conferences during the floods and the pandemic, which people watched live, became a very effective method of communicating directly to the people. Apart from that, the left built a large social media presence by mobilizing its activists and sympathizers. This meant that the falsehoods that tried to media propagate and which used to have a shelf-life of months or even years were being demolished in the matter of days or even hours. Five, reaching out to more sections of people. The LDF is a coalition of parties led by the Communist Party of India Marxist. In recent times, the LDF has expanded to include a few more parties which have their own mass base. This has allowed the LDF to reach out to more sections of people, which turned out to be very important in the elections. Six, organization. Over the years, the left has worked to expand the reach of its class organizations and mass organizations. The work of organizations such as the Democratic Youth Federation of India or DYFI and that of the trade unions has been crucial in making the community-centered response of the LDF government to the COVID pandemic possible. Organizations like DYFI and the Students' Federation of India, SFI, have helped in taking the message of the left to more and more sections of the youth. This organizational deepening can combine with the LDF government's development and welfare programs, defense of secularism and its handling of crisis has made such an impact that even among sections of people who have been opposed to the left for generations, the younger generation is closer to the left. Staying with the elections, we head to the state of West Bengal. The BJP had heavily invested in these elections in the state, spending a huge amount of money and conducting a very religiously polarized campaign. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah spent a lot of time campaigning in the state and were even criticized for focusing on the elections rather than dealing with the COVID-19 crisis in the country. But finally, the incumbent Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee was able to defeat the BJP conclusively. In the aftermath of a victory, there was widespread political violence as members of a party, the Trinamool Congress, unleashed attacks on their opponents. There have been calls on her to control this violence. The election nonetheless has been seen as a key moment for anti-BJP forces across the country. Journalist Anandya Chakravarty discusses the importance of the Bengal elections. We are living in extremely grim times and I don't mean just the COVID surge, which is taking so many lives across India right now. I also mean what is happening to democracy. Mamta Banerjee has won in West Bengal and then a campaign of violence has been unleashed once again. We've seen that repeatedly in West Bengal. Violence against opponents by the government. And we're hearing that attacks, I mean, undertaken not only on BJP supporters, not only on the left with Congress and even those who had actually campaigned against the BJP are at facing the violence of the Trinamool machinery. Now that Mamta Banerjee is back in the saddle with very high numbers, more than 200 seats, which no one predicted. But at the same time, there's a glimmer of hope which has appeared because of the West Bengal win. And I don't mean this for the people of West Bengal. I mean it for the people of India as a whole. You do understand that the entire government machinery had been pushed behind the BJP's attempt to win West Bengal. We saw an absent government because the prime minister, the home minister, chief ministers from different states, those star campaigners who at the end of the day didn't manage to do anything. They went and camped in West Bengal. They campaigned. They tried to polarize the state. And at the end of the day, they couldn't win it. And why is that important? Because we know that the mishandling of COVID around us, you see that. There's no oxygen in the capital of the country. Private hospitals are not able to treat even the richest and the most affluent. Even they are dying right now. So given that, we've seen complete collapse of governance in India. But at the same time, institutions are now speaking up. Institutions are upholding the rights of individuals. Whether it is the media, whether it is courts, that was very crucial. Because every institution ultimately bows down to political opinion, to public opinion. The fact that West Bengal has sent a message to the Modi government that you have tried your best here, but you could not win. You're not invincible. You can lose elections despite putting in all the money power, all your Chanakya Niti, yet the BJP loss. And that is a national signal. It's a signal sent to every institution, every state institution that is out there, whether it is the CBI, whether it is the CAG, whether it is the courts, everyone, district, ministry, everyone can now say, we can do our jobs without having to be scared that there is one powerful person or this government is so powerful that we cannot speak out because something will happen to us. Try and recall what happened in the UPA period. It's the courts who spoke up. When there were allegations of various scams, some of them dissipated later on. We know that some of them turned out to be not scams at all, or the legal process didn't lead to anyone being punished. But the court spoke up. The institutions like CAG spoke up. They spoke up and said, this is wrong. What is happening is wrong. They were part of the state, but not government. That is crucial in any democracy. A government can be in power, but it is only supposed to be in that space, executive, doing things, administering things. It cannot control the legislature, which frames laws. It's not supposed to be in the judiciary and actually even the bureaucratic framework and independent institutions. As I said, there are many independent institutions supposedly, whether it is the election commission, the so-called independent CBI, so-called independent controller and auditor general. All of these are supposed to be autonomous and independent. But yes, they work in concert with the ruling government of the day. But when the government of the day becomes autocratic, doesn't listen to anyone, these institutions are supposed to speak up. They don't speak up when it looks like there is a complete hegemony of one party across India. Only one party can speak and no one else can speak, right? Only one party is winning, no one else can win. That has been put into the background, into the back burner by the West Bengal election results. We now move on to our ongoing coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. India has continued to register a massive number of new cases and fresh deaths as the disease rages rampant. At this point, socially vulnerable groups are especially at danger. We go to Kashmir where the queer and trans communities are struggling to survive due to a fresh lockdown. It must be remembered that Kashmir has been in continuous lockdown since 2019 or has had various forms of lockdowns where the constitutionally mandated autonomy was removed and a harsh civil and communications lockdown was imposed. Let's take a look at the situation there. What started as the 84 long-hour lockdown in Jammu and Kashmir on April 29th has now been extended up to May 10th in five major districts. This keeping in view a sharp rise in the COVID-19 cases in the second wave of the pandemic. Now the vaccination drive has started across the country. But for extremely marginalized communities like the transgender community, access to health interventions in the pandemic times comes with many barriers. The government should take care of us as well because we don't have a song to sing or do you know that we have to get a relationship in Kashmir? Our culture is the same. Because three years ago, you already knew that the lockdown was closed due to COVID-19. This year, the lockdown was closed due to COVID-19. Now the pandemic is closed due to COVID-19. Now the pandemic is closed due to COVID-19. The pandemic is closed due to COVID-19. The pandemic is closed due to COVID-19. The pandemic is closed due to COVID-19. The transgender community is already a marginalized and vulnerable section of the population. In the current COVID crisis, it stands completely neglected and alone without any support extended by the state administration. If we are talking about the transgender community, it has not yet been ignored. It has been ignored for a long time. Even during the pandemic, it has been ignored. The reason for this is that we do not accept them socially. We do not recognize them in the society. That is why every crisis or a normal life is a sideline. When we talk about well-being in society, it is important to have collective well-being. So it is not like we should vaccinate a gender category and ignore it. Dr. Ajaz Ahmad Band is a social worker who runs an NGO, Sonzal Welfare Trust, that works for the welfare and rights of the queer community in Kashmir. And continuing with the coverage of COVID-19, we examined the recent comments by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates that intellectual property rights were not a barrier to the manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines and that moving a vaccine to a country like India is possible to quote him only because of our grants and expertise. This comment has been criticized as racist by observers across the world. Bill Gates and his powerful Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have long opposed patent waivers which would help increase vaccine production. Recently, the Foundation has changed its stand. How are these opposition over all these months has already had a cost? Newspilx Pravir Purkayashta and journalist Alexander Zhechik discuss the implications of these issues. How do you see Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates role, particularly in WHO because WHO had an alternate model, the CTAC model, which asked for patents to be put, intellectual property to be put. It's not about patents alone. Patents are a small part of the much larger intellectual property that we are talking about, which is really know-how sharing knowledge. That's the fundamental issue. But that was completely sabotaged by what Bill Gates, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did and what we have today, in fact, is that that patent pool idea is just dead. Yeah, unfortunately Gates played quite a significant role in undermining the momentum that was building towards a CTAP type IP pool that was going to be matched with tech transfer mechanism. As you mentioned, it's obviously a bigger issue than just patents. We were going to require a truly global solidarity effort that was going to either force the companies to share their know-how or create a pool where they were doing so on their own, which was the less likely scenario. But Gates basically showed up with the ACT accelerator and said, no, that's not necessary. Just trust us, trust the companies, just let the market forces plus a little sprinkling of philanthropy solve the problem. And a lot of people anticipated that that was not going to be enough and they were saying so quite loudly very early on in the pandemic. And there's really no excuse for not listening to those voices because they turned out to be right. And their arguments were based on history and a very sophisticated analysis of how the world works and how this industry functions. And history is not going to look kindly on them or those who enabled them. And unfortunately, Bill Gates counts in that column. In fact, Oxford vaccine was originally planned to be made to be shared to all. And in fact, it's being transferred to AstraZeneca. It appears that Mr. Gates and his foundation played a big role in that as well. Yeah, that was a shame. And especially when you think back to the history of Oxford that they were trying to live up to. Look at penicillin during World War II, which was a comparable global crisis. They were developing penicillin and they brought it to America and they had a chance to patent the product or the process at that point and they chose not to. They kept it in the public domain and the US government at the time did as well. And they basically contracted with some companies, but the governments were in the dominant partner. They were the senior partner and the companies just made the stuff. And they made as much as possible. And it was a success. It was an example of the public sector developing a breakthrough medicine and not letting intellectual property slow down maximum production for a global crisis. And that model should have been adopted in the context of COVID. And it was not. And there's no good reason that it wasn't other than you know, fealty to what is fundamentally unjust and indivisible system of private profit over the public. It's interesting, Alex, when you talk about antibiotics, penicillin in particular, that this was also the battle in India in the 50s. And in fact, the American multinationals, British multinationals fought a bitter battle to see the public sector in India does not develop antibiotics because at that time, antibiotics was much costlier in India than even in the United States. So that was the battle we had to fight. And at that time, the pharmaceutical companies, I don't remember which one at this moment. In fact, one of the persons in the Senate hearing said, we are a part of the strategic battle against the Soviet Union. And in India, we have recently won a battle like this, where we have stopped a pharmaceutical public sector company from making antibiotics. So this is really a rehash of a much older battle that seems to be going on. And unfortunately, for us, Mr. Bill Gates brings the hat of a philanthropist today and not the hat of a pharmaceutical spokesperson. That is also the problem that we seem to have. And therefore, his legitimacy, particularly the role he plays in WHO is, I think, something that we have to now contend with. That's all the time for today. We'll be back next week with more news from India. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch. For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.