 Hello and let's talk about the ongoing farmers protests in the country. Now the protests have been going on since November 26th and despite the government's attempts to somehow either divide the protesters or placate them in some way or the other, the farmers are very determined that they will not retreat until their demands are met and the demands are very simple to withdraw all of the three farm laws. Now the government has had multiple negotiations with the farmers. On the 8th of course we saw Amit Shah himself calling the farmers leaders and a negotiation taking place which ended without any conclusion. The government's final offer it seems is a written assurance that MSP will be given. And now the farmers are not very happy with it because their demands are more all-encompassing, they're more wide-ranging and we have with us Viju Krishnan, the All India Kishans, about to talk about not only some of these demands, but also the kind of spirit of unity that we are seeing on the ground, the kind of mobilizations that are taking place and the important question which is why is the right wing so scared of farmers' protests? I also wanted to ask you about how you, the sense of the mood on the ground, you visited the protests of course and this is actually a very unprecedented protest in the sense of hundreds of thousands of farmers of course gathering. People have compared it to the great protests many decades ago. Of course we also know that over the past few years the anger by farmers has been building up, the AIKS especially has mobilized across the country. So what is your sense of the kind of mood on the ground of the farmers? See I have been involved with student activism and then with the Kishan Sabha now almost for 25 years. I have not seen this kind of a movement and the solidarity that has been generated around that movement. The cross-class alliances, the kind of varied number of different organizations coming together. Firstly, the different farmer organizations under the All India Kishan Sangers Coordination Committee, the Punjab organizations and also the trade unions and different mass organizations, civil society groups coming out in support of the farmers. This is something I have never seen before. And if you see the farmers from Punjab and Haryana who are mainly at the two Tikri and Singhu borders also those at the Ghazipur border, they know it is a long haul. They know that this government is bent on pushing the corporate interests but they are also prepared to take the fight to the finish. We have seen how the people have come well prepared for a longer stay here and in all states, even the government has been trying to portray it as a Punjab specific struggle but you see the Bharat Band, the kind of response it has got across. That is something and consistently from June 1st week onwards we have been consistently on the move, our different organizations and it is not just the All India Kishan Sabha many smaller organizations all coming out. The effigies of Narendra Modi, Adhani and Ambani on 5th were burnt in thousands of places. This is the anger of the masses which we are seeing, witnessing in this movement and in coming days certain other actions have been called for. On 12th there is a massive protest that is called 14th again and for instance at toll gates against reliance, Adhani, different establishments we are going to have this protest. So very clearly against corporate loot and against a government which facilitates corporate loot we are all uniting and it is not just the farmers because the consumers are also going to be affected and in the lockdown period all sections have lost their incomes their big loss of incomes, unemployment and hunger and poverty. So all these sections understand what is going to happen with these acts, it would be price rise there would be a dispossession of farmers agriculture workers would lose their opportunities of employment. So that is why there is a greater coordination greater unity that has emerged and in a synchronized manner a large number of organizations of the working class of the farmers, agriculture, labor Dalit, Adivasi organize women and youth students all coming together in this protest this is like never before we have not seen any such protest before. Absolutely and we do in this context the right wing is really taken aback by this as well and we have of course seen over the past couple of weeks the kind of propaganda models that they use first there was of course Khalistan like you said there is this whole thing about this being only Punjab centric there is this thing about it being only a rich farmer led movement and of course you also experienced this yesterday when you went to address a student body at IIT Madras and there were a lot of trolls who came into this meeting indulged in a lot of disruption were determined to prevent you from speaking so at this point why do you think the right wing is right now so scared across India see very clearly when you look at the earlier struggles which have happened around the CAA different such issues the government tried to divide the people along communal lines it was suppressed in different manner we have seen the campaign around urban councils or Pakistani agents and so on here they made that effort in the name of saying they are Khalistanis some of them also claiming it is the communists are behind this and so on but despite all these campaigns people are not ready to accept that and the unity has remained through the talks that unity has remained with the main organizations which are behind this struggle they have retained that unity the government is repeatedly trying to break the unity in different ways that has not so far succeeded and they have lost the debate very clearly if they are sure that they are on a strong bracket they should have initially consulted with the organizations with the state governments if it is in favor of the farmers they could have convinced there was enough time for consultations and all the meeting yesterday by Ambedkar Periar study circle in IIT Madras it was an open meeting there was enough scope for people to come at the end and ask questions or debate or totally debunk my arguments but what they resorted to is abusing language loud ruckus and then also putting up pornographic material there and this is the level to which they are stooping that only exposes that it is coming from the top the language used by Amit Shah and the prime minister calling someone Khalistanis or anti-nationals Pakistan any agents and a different thing and a section of the Gaudi media the corporate media is also throwing the same line that their bugs are carrying on the same the level of discussion that they are engaging in or the narrative that they are trying to set is so that is the manner in which they are willing to take it but they are really rattled by these struggles these struggles have rattled them and the fact that the working class the large section of the people who would actually experience price rise in coming days they are standing behind the farming community behind agriculture workers and farmers that is also rattling the Sangh Parivar and the BJP RSS so we are seeing a response in this manner they are unable to point by point rebut any of the simple farmer of our country is able to counter them on each and everything they are asking questions if farmer is getting 40 rupees for Aarhar Dal for which the minimum support price is more than 60 rupees and why is Adhani selling Aarhar Dal at 220 that is a with a huge profit why is consumer having to pay these questions are being asked by every person in India now so that is something their trawl armies or their team is unable to answer they have failed miserably even the Godi media has not been able to because the solidarity with the farmers is something which people realize that even in a lockdown the farmers have under a threat of pandemic have produced it is their toil and investment that leads to a situation where people of our country need not go hungry to beg absolutely thank you so much for talking to us in our next segment we go to covid 19 once again where there are more possibilities of vaccine coming out soon and the big question now is how will the vaccine be distributed who in which country is going to get it first how long will people have to wait before they get the vaccines what are the advantages the rich are going to have is the poor we will discuss some of these issues how do we read marath biotech application serum institute application at least is backed by some preliminary figures how do you take marath biotech application for emergency usage so this is beginning to be interesting and it is beginning to be interesting as an emerging scenario that complicates the landscape between public health considerations on the one hand and capitalist money making on the other let's all keep in mind that what licensing we are currently discussing is not regular ordinary straightforward licensing it's emergency use authorization and we've pointed this out repeatedly now as soon as one emergency use authorization was provided by the UK regulatory authority to the biotech Pfizer let us call it vaccine what companies have begun to do is push the envelope so currently in India we have three different categories as far as I can see of companies applying for emergency use authorization one is the straightforward mimic of the biotech Pfizer in UK which means that you have preliminary evidence of efficacy from a phase 3 clinical trial and in the country in which you've done this you're applying for an emergency use authorization and here is the point the serum institute Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine application in India comes closest to this at the moment there are no phase 3 trial based efficacy data in India that I'm aware of but at least the serum institute of India Oxford AstraZeneca candidate an application is based on efficacy data outside and phase 1 phase 2 ethnicity and safety data inside India so that's one push of the envelope and they have the phase 3 trials going on phase 3 trials but they do not have those are not even the preliminary data that appear to be included in the application and if that's correct then this is as I'm pointing out one way of pushing the envelope further a second push of the envelope comes from the BioNTech Pfizer vaccine which Pfizer has applied to the Indian regulatory authority for permission to import and distribute as emergency use authorization now remember this is not simply there are no preliminary phase 3 trial data in India there no phase 1 phase 2 data in India either so that's a yet different push of the envelope and a third kind of push of the envelope is the Bharat BioNTech reported plan or application I'm not quite sure which that has that's a vaccine candidate that has gone through phase 1 and phase 2 trials in India but that has not gone through even preliminary phase 3 efficacy data in India or anywhere else so you see what I'm saying that in 3 very different ways 3 different private sector companies are pushing the regulatory envelope of emergency use authorization for vaccination and you will recollect that a couple of months ago these are the kinds of scenarios that we had begun to think about when we pointed out that multiple vaccine candidates are likely to start coming at at the same time all from private sector sources beginning to show respectable efficacy and therefore every day of profit making will begin to matter the Bharat BioNTech is basically the Pune Institute of Birology that's the ICMR lab that has developed the vaccine but you know in this case it would be rather strange that without any efficacy to be shown in the phase 3 trials that you ask for emergency usage we don't know whether it's useful or not and the problem with vaccines has always been if for instance it doesn't work you also destroy the credibility of vaccines itself yes of course you do but here's the argument being made remember that this is why I keep bringing up the politics of the situation rather than simply the so called value neutral science there is no such thing because here's the argument being implicitly made if I can get emergency use authorization for widespread huge distribution which means huge sales with an emergency use authorization that means that a full phase 3 clinical trial is really not needed number 2 if a full phase 3 clinical trial is not needed in even the first country where efficacy is demonstrated then efficacy trials elsewhere can't be needed because all I have to do is show that the amount of antibody made is comparable between 2 countries then if in my country the same amount of antibody is made then I can as in another country where efficacy is demonstrated then I can say because the antibody levels are similar efficacy is bound to be similar that's one more step if that's said then I can turn around and say hey this is a platform that's immunogenic so we really don't you know this is a slow slope of digging away and trying to get your product into the market while the market is hot you know Sathya why I understand the capitalist ethics or lack of it here what I am unable to understand is the regulatory system because India's emergency usage itself is a very weak regulatory structure it's not really very clearly defined and it also is true that this is relatively new in the world that this kind of emergency usage really is 2010 onwards this has been on the anvil countries have done it and so on but the risk in vaccines because vaccines is not what you give to people who are sick you know who already therefore you are going to medicate may need something which is not working nothing else is working but you are giving it to people who are actually healthy therefore the bar of safety should be much higher for the vaccine than for any other medicine and this is not something which seems to be appearing on the radar of either the regulatory system right now in India or in the media because media is completely oblivious treating all these as very civil cases so let me let me make two points in response one of agreement and one of disagreement the agreement is of course what you are saying is correct we haven't as yet seen in the media an extensive and nuanced discussion of these issues at all and that's a great disservice but let me record a point of disagreement and that is or rather than disagreement a caveat and that is that there has been no short cut so far of safety evaluations for any of these vaccine candidates the only current short cut for safety evaluations that we've seen even attempted is the Pfizer application to the Indian regulatory authority to license the BioNTech Pfizer vaccine for India without a safety and immunogenicity trial in India and there's currently no indication about whether the Indian regulator is going to approve this or not because that would mean a major step of relaxation even for the Indian regulator that's all we have time for today we'll be back tomorrow with more news from India until then keep watching news click