THE Texas grid failure impacted millions with no electricity and no heating in sub-zero temperatures for days. It has not only caused scores of deaths and injuries, but also economic havoc in the state. Even after two weeks of the blackouts, life is far from normal as the citizens deal with frozen and burst pipes, denying people access to safe water and causing extensive damages to the houses.

THERE is plenty to be depressed about these days. The year-long Covid-19 pandemic continues to plague people in India and around the world, the government obstinately refuses to engage with the existential issues raised by farmers, and freedom of speech and everyone expressing critical opinions face continued assault. In the midst of these dark clouds, recent space expeditions to Mars by the UAE and China, and especially the dramatic soft landing of NASA’s Perseverance Rover on the red planet streamed live at 2:30 am on Wednesday, February 24, 2021, came as welcome rays of light.

THEgovernment has released a Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2020 (STIP 2020) and invited responses by January 31, 2021. The Department of Science & Technology and the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government did conduct a series of consultations with some scientists and other experts to seek, albeit prior to the actual formulation and release of the policy document leading to considerable disgruntlement in this community.

THE drug regulator's hurried emergency clearance to Bharat Bio-tech's Covaxin in a clinical trial mode has been followed by the government making it integral to its mass vaccination drive. It has bought 1.1 crore doses of Serum Institute-Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and another 55 lakh from Bharat Biotech. According to the government, neither states nor individuals will have a choice with regards to vaccines.

IT is disturbing the way the Indian government and the regulatory authorities have handled the emergency use for vaccines for Covid-19. It started with the emergency use being granted to Oxford-AstraZeneca-Serum Institute's (Oxford-SII) Covidshield vaccine, and the furore in the BJP's social media-troll army for not granting similar approval for the indigenous National Institute of Virology-ICMR-Bharat Biotech's (NIV-BB) Covaxin, framing it as an angrezi versus Indian vaccine issue.