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ShareIt's the flu season. You are surrounded by sniffling, aching, tearful, fevered souls, coughing and sneezing all over you. Just the common cold, you mumble, failing to get out of their way. Till every bone in your body rebels and you are suddenly a hot but not happening item. Ask me about it.
Normally, you would reach for vitamin C, the poor man's miracle pill. It fights infections, builds immunity, helps the critically ill and the allergy-prone. And it is the only protection we have against the common cold.
(The wise West believes that washing your hands like your finicky old aunt keeps you safe, but of course messing about with water every few minutes would only guarantee a cold to even those untouched by buses, trains, crowds, canned air and other bug factories.)
But vitamin C has been out of stock for months in India. Now it is trickling back in -- in curious flavours and combinations, not the plain old Celin that you could swiftly swallow a couple or more times a day if needed.
So why did the gutsy vitC disappear right before winter? The Chinese did it. Seriously. Of course, our babus helped. Apparently, we get most of our vitamin C raw material from China, which stopped supplies before the Beijing Olympics as chemical units closed to limit local pollution.
Then the rupee crashed, further escalating costs. And when bright-eyed babus suddenly decided to slash the sale price, vitC vanished.
What I don't understand is why our country -- which makes quick, cheap, local versions of anything at all -- is so dependent on raw materials from China for vitamin C. What I do understand is our sarkar's obstructive babugiri.
Like its attempt to handle bird flu, which has made a comeback in the Northeast and West Bengal. And our government has brilliantly blocked access to anti-viral drugs that fight it. Today, Nepal has pleaded with India to prevent its poultry from crossing the border as the disease spreads to eastern Nepal, bordering Bengal.
We have the drug to fight bird flu, both the original, high-priced, foreign Tamiflu, as well as our own, generic, affordable Antiflu, produced challenging patent laws in the face of a potential bird flu pandemic in India in 2006. So we have the right weapon, but we aren't allowed to use it. Because the government, having nodded its approval to Antiflu, decided against retail sales. So both the imported Tamiflu and its Indian twin Antiflu can only be sold to government hospitals.
Apart from fighting both bird flu and influenza, the drug also acts as a preventive, which makes it crucial for poultry handlers and culling officials. But government hospitals don't seem to have the drug, so culling officials and those handling poultry are not getting it. Nor can they go out and buy it, because the government won't allow it in the market.
This murderous callousness is what makes our sarkar so special. Why, if you have the drug -- both foreign and local -- to fight the killer bird flu, would you want to keep it hidden?
Besides, thousands die of the ordinary flu in India every year -- the deaths are quietly categorised as lung failure, heart failure or whatever. In other countries, the elderly and the vulnerable are given anti-viral drugs to prevent the flu. Last week, doctors in the UK were instructed to start Tamiflu treatment as a preventive for this flu season. But in our country, only the rich have a choice -- they have the expensive flu shot. The affordable option of preventing and fighting both influenza and bird flu is closed to us. Welcome to the cuckoo's nest.
The writer is Editor, The Little Magazine.
