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Postmaster: Send address change to News India Times, 35 Journal Square, Suite 204, Jersey City, NJ 07306 Annual Subscription: United States: $28 Disclaimer: Parikh Worldwide Media assumes no liability for claims/ assumptions made in advertisements and advertorials. www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know Opinion News India Times May 7, 2021 3 Biden’s Foreign Policy Aims To ‘Win The 21st Century’ M ore than 3 million people have died of covid-19. Countless others have become ill, and the numbers continue to rise. any public health experts predict that it will take anywhere between a year and three years to ensure truly global vaccine access. Tragically, those last in line over- whelmingly live in the most impoverished communities and countries. A major reason for the delay in rolling out vaccinations is that rules protecting intellectual property are slowing pro- duction. Vaccines such as those for the coronavirus typically require around 200 individual components, most of which are patented by various corporations. Glob- ally, these patents and other intellectual property concerns fall under the protec- tion of “TRIPS” - the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - which is overseen by theWorld Trade Organization (WTO). The need to make more vaccines faster is clear. That is why a wide coalition - from the South African and Indian govern- ments to nonprofits such as Oxfam, Public Citizen and ActionAid to 170 Nobel laureates and former heads of state - are rug prices, especially in the global South. These specific critiques mixed with wider scrutiny of multinational corporations arising in the 1970s - from environmental- ist and consumer activist campaigns to demands from some global South coun- tries for a new international economic order. As part of this wave of organizing aimed at reining in multinationals, in 1981, a global band of public health pro- fessionals, policy thinkers and anti-corpo- rate campaigners created a new research and policy advocacy organization, Health Action International (HAI). Highlight- ing issues of inequality and corporate power, HAI espoused a transformative vision, including calling for the elimina- tion of patent protections for “essential medicines” and backing massive efforts to promote the development and distribu- tion of generic drugs. While groups like HAI can apply politi- cal pressure, they do not have the power of national states. Thus, alliances between activists and governments can be crucial. Regarding pharmaceuticals, an early ex- ample of such an alliance arrived in 1982. Swamped by high drug costs amid grave poverty, the Bangladeshi government issued a new law banning some “nones- sential” medicines, tightening regulations, lowering prices and promoting domestic medicine manufacturing. While Bangladesh represented a mi- nuscule percentage of the global phar- maceuticals market, multinational drug By Ishaan Tharoor Harris And Pelosi Headline ANight ForWomen. Almost P resident Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress was always going to be primarily about optics: The emp- tied chamber and masked audience hopefully tempered by the image of an energetic president with big ideas. And Biden delivered at least one optical triumph: For the first time the two people seated directly behind the president were women - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on his left, Vice President Kamala Harris on his right. Biden pointed out that fact in the first line in his speech, raising it as cause for celebration. “Madame Speaker. Madame Vice President. No president has ever said these words from the podium - no president. And it’s about time!” Of course, he’s right: This is positive change. Repre- sentation matters, and the more women we see in the upper echelons of politics, the better. But it’s also a sign of how far we have to go. After Hillary Clinton’s bruising loss to Donald Trump in 2016, and Trump’s wildly misogynistic term as president, to see women in power feels like a balm. Kamala Harris: only the second Black woman elected to the Senate, and the first female, Black and Asian American vice president, a daughter of immigrants whom her transition chief has called the “voice of gravitas” in the president’s inner circle. Nancy Pelosi: a formidable leader and prodigious political talent known for her discipline and her flair, who before Har- ris’s ascendance had risen to become the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history - and who has stuck it out at the top despite numerous challenges to her control. Steve Bannon called her a “total assassin.” She refers to herself as a “troublemaker with a gavel.” “Nobody ever gives away power,” she once said. “When you get it, you must use it.” Together the two represent nearly back- to-back generations of women fighting to win power and succeeding, against the odds and despite an establishment that would rather they have stayed in the shadows. So, their presence on the dais was inspiring. Yet it also feels darkly symbolic that the story of female political progress has culminated (so far) in the image of two accomplished, top-of-their-game women standing behind a collegial White man, your archetypal average Joe. That’s not a knock on Biden - it’s just a fact. We all know Biden became the 2020 Democratic nominee, outlasting more than two dozen other major candidates (including his vice president), in large part because hisWhiteness and maleness made him a plausible contender against Trump. Among other perceived virtues, he was the sort of candidate to whom the sexist and racist attacks leveraged against other Democratic candidates wouldn’t stick. This is also a good part of the reason his first 100 days have been comparatively successful, and why his joint address is unlikely to raise real ire from conserva- tives, despite his laying out remarkably progressive policy plans. From the 2020 primary up until today, polling has borne out the truth of how Biden’s benignWhite-maleness helps but- tress his appeal. On Tuesday, an NBC poll found that Americans see Biden as more moderate than they saw Barack Obama at the 100-day mark, despite Biden’s passing a stimulus bill approximately 2.5 times bigger than Obama’s. (Voters similarly saw Biden as more moderate than Clinton.) Biden’s approval ratings hover comfort- ably in the mid-50s, while Pelosi’s unfa- vorability numbers surpass her positives by double digits. Republicans’ attacks on Biden were often really directed at the women and people of color nearby - the fear that he would turn over governance to the “har- pies” Kamala and Nancy, that he would be unmanned, an empty husk controlled by wicked witches. So this week we can rejoice that Pelosi and Harris were on the dais, while realizing that Biden got to be the address-giver because he was not them: not “nasty,” not “crazy,” not “an- gry,” not seen as radical or controversial because of his gender or race. Women held up Biden from the begin- ning of his campaign through his 100th day as president, and they will most likely do so beyond. His wife, Jill, literally tackled interlopers who rushed him onstage dur- ing the electoral season. Harris went from being a primary-season antagonist to his friendly second-in-command, lending him feminist credibility and boatloads of fundraising dollars. And Pelosi deftly held the fractious Democratic caucus together, deflecting fire from Biden to allow him to present himself as the candidate of peace - and, once his term began, to pass a historic stimulus on a party-line vote. And yet, for their troubles, there the women stood in their nonthreatening pastels: cheering Joe on from the back, masked and silent while he spoke. It’s easier for America to support women who are supporting a man, it seems, than it is for America to support women, period. What the joint address underscored is that women are inching closer to the seat of ultimate power - but they still don’t get to sit in it. Christine Emba is an opinion columnist and editor for The Post. Before com- ing to The Post in 2015, Christine was the Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism at the New Criterion and a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. -TheWashington Post By Christine Emba TheWashington Post - Continued On Page 4

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