India Backlash Against Bill Gates
Last updated
Last updated
Gates has also been criticized by Indian farmer groups, who have been protesting on the border of the national capital New Delhi for six months. The farmers are protesting against controversial laws promoting privatization of agriculture passed by the Hindu nationalist government, and they see Gates as a supporter of such efforts. Dainik Jagran, one of the largest Hindi newspapers in the country, reported on June 8 that farmers burned an effigy of Bill Gates at one of the protest sites due to his support for the privatization of agriculture in India.
India’s civil society organizations revealed last month that Microsoft India will unfairly benefit from Sections 4-2, 5, 7 and 17-2a of the controversial Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act of 2020, one of the laws farmers have been protesting against. Farmer organizations and internet privacy advocacy groups showed that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Microsoft India and India’s Ministry of Agriculture could potentially give Gates’ company access to a database of 50 million Indian farmers and their land records maintained by the government. It is important to flag here that BMGF is also involved in several agricultural programs across the country.
The BMGF had been also put under the scanner by the previous central government led by the INC. In 2013, India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, comprising of members across political lines, held the BMGF-funded Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) guilty of violating regulatory and ethical norms laid down by the Indian and U.S. governments for clinical trials. The committee investigated the role of the BMGF and PATH in the trial of HPV vaccines on children in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh and Vadodra district of Gujarat, during which seven children died. Although the government did not find any connection to the vaccines in the deaths, it did uncover ethical failings in the subsequent investigation. The government of India responded by restricting the BMGF from country’s immunization program. But years later, the BMGF continued to work with India’s Health Ministry through its Immunization Technical Support Unit (ITSU).