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Amid an unfolding COVID-19 catastrophe in India, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke over telephone on April 26. The call came a day after the United States embarked on a large-scale campaign to assure India, a vital security partner, that it stands by the country amid a tsunami of new cases that has pushed India’s creaky healthcare system to its breaking point.
Over the last couple of weeks as the pandemic raged on, significant and influential sections of the Indian public not only lashed out at the Biden administration’s silence on the issue but also pointed out ways in which his – and former President Donald Trump’s — invocation of the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) to manufacture COVID-19 in the U.S. could end up choking India’s own efforts in that direction by pulling raw materials and supplies toward U.S. efforts. (The DPA gives the U.S. president an “array of authorities to shape national defense preparedness programs and to take appropriate steps to maintain and enhance the domestic industrial base,” effectively granting the federal government the ability to shape the decisions of private firms.) An April 23 analysis from five prominent Indian think tanks noted that “over a dozen items desperately needed for vaccine manufacturing in India fall under the DPA’s purview.”