Sudden spike in news about ‘bad’ Indian medicine – from US, Gambia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka – and emergence of Indian origin American ‘hero’ Dinesh Thakur.
Story of biggest assault on #IndianPharma, aided and abetted by Indian media, particularly, The Wire.
In Dec 2023 Livemint claimed that the US recalled ‘bad’ Indian meds. It was a headline spin – Indian med was a fraction of US meds. But why the negative spin on Indian pharma?
We were interested and did what we do. Dig. What we found was beyond shocking!
In July’22 news came that several children died in Gambia bcoz of India-made cough syrup. WHO issued warning & news media screamed– Indian med killed Gambian children. The news was first broken by #Retures & Al Jazeera, repeated by Indian media.
But it was pure propaganda.
Fact:Gambian authorities disclosed many children alleged to be killed by Indian med hadn’t even taken it. There have been multiple deaths in same hospital & region bcoz of sanitization & water issue, not uncommon there. Since some children took Indian med, narrative was set.
But propaganda continued. In Dec 2022, a Casualty Assessment Committee (comprising US and Gambian experts) found no traces of the harmful material in the majority of Children. Their conclusion: Indian med COULD have caused all this.
There is more: in March’23, CDC Africa issued a report accusing Indian med, correlating it with the old WHO advisory. CDC Africa received USD 500K from Soros in 2020 for 2 yrs. But this isn’t about him.
And after all this, as late as June’ 2023, WHO could not confirm if Gambian deaths were associated with Indian medicine. But the purpose was solved, a seed was sowed, media frenzy was created. And there was a reason. We explain later.
An even bigger ‘scandal’ of children deaths was reported in Indonesia, with similar cough syrup. Except, there was NO Indian medicine involved at all. But you won’t believe if you read the headlines– both Indian & intl. media. All insinuating the same thing.
This cannot be explained merely by clickbait headlines. So many media using identical misleading headlines for a narrative to tarnish India’s image cannot be a mere coincidence. And this was not isolated. Reports started coming from different parts of the world.
It was a remarkable coincidence that the ‘bad’ Indian medicine was found in one country in each region – from Africa to West Asia, to Central Asia, to South Asia, and so forth! The perfect backdrop for a global narrative – Indian medicine is bad.
July’23, Bloomberg found similar ‘bad Indian medicine’ in Iraq. It conducted tests of samples in 6 countries but found bad samples in Iraq Now you know about Americans finding things in Iraq. So we dug more & found Bloomberg had sent samples to US firm Valisure for the tests.
Turned out, Valisure had similarly fabricated reports in 2019 with another med Zantac; and was admonished by US Court for “utilizing unreliable methods”. That wasn’t all. US authorities had issued them warning in 2022 for invalid methods & subpar equipments.
Enters the protagonist. Valisure had an interesting patron – Dinesh Thakur, a pharma expert & activist whose claim to fame was ‘exposing’ Ranbaxy in 2003. His foundation ‘awarded’ Valisure around same time Bloomberg found new WMD in Iraq.
Who is Dinesh Thakur?
He is a man with a mission. A crusader against ‘bad medicine’; an India-loving American; and father of the Thakur Family Foundation (TFF). To understand Thakur, we need to go back in time a bit. To year 2002-03.
Thakur was working for 10 years in US pharma Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in a senior position. But in 2002-03 he got an urge to ‘serve’ India. He quit BMS and came to India to join. And while he was itching to ‘serve India’, he took US citizenship.
His love for India was contagious. His colleagues – Dinesh Kasthuril & Venkat Swaminathan also quit well-placed BMS jobs, joined Ranbaxy around same time in diff branches. All they served for 2-3 yrs, left Ranbaxy and returned to US. Then ‘exposed’ Ranbaxy to US FDA.
Coincidentally, around 2002 Ranbaxy got into dispute with Pfizer for a generic version of Pfizer product (Lipitor), threatening a billion $ market. Pfizer fought back against the generic version of Lipitor in US.
But lucky for Pfizer, Ranbaxy got exposed by Thakur around same time, denting its reputation. It was also fined USD 500 million by the FDA, and Thakur got a reward of USD 48.6 million from FDA. Ranbaxy was at fault & paid the price.
BUT the narrative wasn’t Ranbaxy – it was ‘Indian pharma’ & ‘generic medicine’. A series of articles/books followed. For the record same time multiple US pharma paid higher penalties for range of violations but the narrative was never ‘bad US pharma’.
Subsequently, with whistleblowing money Thakur tried hands with multiple companies, but didn’t succeed. It isn’t clear whether inspired by his success against Ranbaxy or of his ‘serial entrefailureship’, Thakur decided to stick with pharma activism, setting up TFF in 2018.
The Story just begins.
TFF has 2 more directors– Swaminathan & Dinesh Kasthuril – all ex-BMS, joined Ranbaxy. Quit. Back together. DK also joined Thakur’s venture Sciformix; later moved to LabCorp’s Fortrea.
And what does the Thakur Family Foundation do? They have been funding multiple individuals and institutions in India – from media, and civil groups to legal institutions.
Among the earliest beneficiaries of Thakur was Sucheta Dalal co-setup MoneyLife Foundation (MLF) whose RTI center was seed-funded by Thakur in ’17, and got ‘generous funding’, ~USD 100K Coincidentally MLF ‘exposed’ Sun Pharma that had taken over Ranbaxy in ’15 causing its stock to crash
Thakur also funded Association for Rural & Urban Needy Safai Karmachari Andolan & its National Convenor Bezwada Wilson ($45628). Wilson is also an ‘Internal Committee Member’ of DIGIPUB. Incidentally, many news portals and journalists from DIGIPUB got funds from TFF.
With grants, Thakur’s popularity & credibility started mushrooming in India Incidentally, Thakur’s magnum opus ‘Truth Pill’, co-authored with Prashant Reddy, was published the time Gambia case broke. It was quite a backdrop for the book launch.
Thakur’s grants to multiple news portals over 3 years amounted to INR 16 CR. However, the TFF grants ipso-facto don’t establish media collusion. Many portals indeed used grants to do useful reporting & clarify rumours during COVID-19; & provided adequate disclaimers.
But everyone. A classic example was Newsclick. In 2013, it exposed “Thakur’s motivated narratives against Indian generic med”. But cut to 2021, two of its journos got funding from TFF; and Thakur was messiah of Indian pharma!
But the portal that went overboard in colluding with Thakur against Indian Pharma was The Wire (TW), run by another India-loving US citizen. Not only TW received grants from TFF, but its 4 journalists received approximately $ 75k for coverage of COVID-19.
And what about the coverage? The Thakur-funded journalists wrote overwhelming negative stories on COVID-19 in India, repeatedly quoting a set of ‘experts’ – who were also associated with Thakur/ TFF!
ठाकुर के आगे दो ठाकुर, ठाकुर के पीछे दो ठाकुर
In fact, Priyanka Pulla of TW was so aggressive, she became Thakur favorite- that’s what Thakur’s Twitter shows. A word cloud of Thakur’s tweets screams her name!
Coincidentally, Priyanka Pulla seems to have gotten ‘promoted’ to the Bloomberg. Did we tell Bloomberg found bad samples of Indian medicine in Iraq?
The Wire founder, Siddhart Varadarajan & Thakur go back to in time, at least to 2015, since The Wire started. Thakur has been writing for it since inception, & Siddharth was on the Advisory Board of Thakur funded ‘Project 39A’; apart from Thakur funding The Wire.
Not surprisingly, the underlying theme of Thakur-Wire enterprise was against Indian pharma, generic medicine & Indian vaccines in favour of foreign ones (read Pfizer & Moderna). Some of top voices calling for foreign vaccine were people associated with Thakur and The Wire.
The Wire reporting went so absurd that it was slapped with a 100 Cr defecation case by Bharat Biotech and had to pull down 14 stories. Almost all related to coverage of Indian vaccine, including Thakur funded & Pulla written.
Surprisingly, votaries of foreign vaccines didn’t bother to apply the same critical view to them they did to Indian which had followed an almost similar trajectory, facing & dealing with problems in similar fashion. But Indian vaccines were ‘hasty’, foreign ones ‘efficient’.
In fact, the foreign vaccines were trying a new technology (mRNA) for vaccines, which is yet to be fully stabilized. On the contrary, the Indian method was tried & tested over decades. But for these ‘experts’, the Indian vaccine was risky.
The pitch was so noisy, it betrayed the propaganda. Here is an example: An Indian Anthropologist at Harvard, Aparna Gopalan singled out Indian vaccine makers for profiteering.
Fact: US firms took 4-5 times of profit & would have been much costlier for end consumers.
But it is not only the cost that was saved, it is lives. A barrage of reports in countries with mRNA vaccines indicate a sudden spike in death cases and diseases, many were supposedly in control, including TB.
While India was already a thorn in the side for producing affordable generic medicines that eat into western pharma’s profit; the vaccine would put India in a different league – and a major threat. Making the vaccine was crossing a red line.
And lo & behold, there starts sudden findings of ‘killer’ Indian medicines, the medicines that India has been exporting 60k verities to 100 countries over decades! And even more strangely, the cases are popping up in one-off places in the countries.
COVID-19 was a revelation in terms of both Western vulnerabilities and narratives. It was a phase of hyper-reporting on India – where Indian media was worried about India and Western media was also worried about India. But why?
As per actual death data, most western/developed countries, likely due to demography, suffered most casualties & US’ handling of Covid was far worse by a margin. Causalities were abnormally high.This was a nightmare scenario for a country made in Hollywood saving the world.
And hence, the hyper-reporting about India –to paint India so dark that the West, and particularly the US, started looking better. India was a useful target for its size and a legitimate target for its vaccine.
Since data were not obliging, multiple fronts, news media portals, & WHO came up with their own ‘guestimate strategy’, stretching Indian casualties arbitrarily. Only logic- it made the US/ West look much better. They draw a bigger line to make others look smaller, literally.
Worth noting that Indian data was in line with most of South Asia, again likely due to demography. In fact, Indian causalities were highest in South Asia. Hence, if data was fabricated, it would have been across the countries.
Not only other nation’s data was accepted as it is but Pakistan was lauded for its COVID handling.A nation with much weaker health infra & virtually no COVID policy. Propaganda masters likely didn’t check notes:India had to look worse–what’s better than to compare with Pak.
While WHO was criticized in all corners for its handling of COVID,with China & so forth;its projection of Indian death nos. is readily accepted. Maybe some experts try to explain this abnormally high projected deaths in India coz it’s a ‘Hindu Nationalist fascist country’.
This ‘tarnishing of Indian image is not merely against Indian pharma, but as a nested strategy, it aims to target everything Indian. Thakur used Ranbaxy and other cases to paint the entire generic medicine dark. And used generic medicine to paint Indian pharma black.
This also explains the relentless target of alternative medicine, specially Ayurveda. Any alternative avenue other than foreign medicine is not acceptable. Earlier, Farmers Protest toolkit called for boycott of Indian Yoga and Chai.
In the end, it always aimed at India’s image itself. Thakur funds fronts like the Polis Project, exposed for anti-India charade, who pleaded “Biden to save India”. The sheer mental subjugation to everything Western is almost dystopian.
(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread posted by @DisinfoLab on January 15, 2024, with minor edits to improve readability and conform to HinduPost style guide)
