"Last week, Indian PM Narendra Modi told US President Joe Biden that India was ready to ship food to the rest of the world following supply shocks and rising prices due to the war in Ukraine." [1] (Article published on 19th April)
India has stopped exports before in response to domestic need. Onions in recent years[1], and also COVID vaccines in response to its devastating 2021 second wave, after it spent 2020 doing rounds of “vaccine diplomacy” where it assured countries it could help with their COVID vaccine needs. India is usually the world’s largest vaccine exporter, but its 2021 2nd wave led to this policy being put on hold as once again, exports were blocked[2].
Actions like these are not new or surprising because India’s economy is quite price sensitive and the government in response likes to micro-manage in the face of rising prices, but it does mean you’ve to take these sound bites to foreign leaders with a grain of salt. Very often these are actually intended for people at home to push the message of “see how much good we’re doing in the world?”
None of this is intended to be disparaging or specific to India, a lot of this applies to other countries as well.
Another factor of the Indian national government's failure with COVID vaccines was simply not sending any significant amounts of money to the companies that were either manufacturing them under contract like the Serum Institute of India (SII, largest in the world by doses, 1.5 billion/year in 2020). After that second wave, as far as I know the first really big wave hit, the CEO of the SII had to flee the country because of threatening demands he was getting from various powerful figures in various part of the country.
Although the SII also suffered from supply chain issues like everyone else, such as a world wide shortage of 2,000 L sterile plastic bags in which to culture cells and probably bacteria like the E. Coli used in the first step of making the mRNA vaccines.
Except US decided to influence a regime change in its rival Pakistan and install a puppet militarist. And to top that provide $12 billion aid through Saudi proxy and another 50+ millions direct aid.
US foreign policy has been baffling since last year.
I can’t find any news that supports this claim. Do you have a source? Closest is
> Khan’s new narrative is that there is a foreign conspiracy to oust him from power. And it is America, Khan says, that is really behind the no-confidence motion filed by opposition lawmakers.
https://theconversation.com/what-is-going-on-in-pakistan-and...
The United States can’t even get lawmakers in the unites states to cooperate. How are they getting an entire foreign legislature to cooperate?
It's because the political class in Pakistan is already a puppet in the hands of its Military. It's one of the few countries where the nuclear codes and strike decisions are in the hands of the military and not the civilian government. They control a puppet party which almost always gets a fixed number of seats from backward provinces. This party then becomes the king maker and hence controls who is at the helm of civilian government. The previous one (Imran Khan) also came into power with their support and so does the new one.
This isn't about foreign policy, this is about domestic food prices, which are more politically important than foreign policy for any government in any country
I don't see that being true in the US, it certainly hasn't changed policies that have resulted in massive increases of fertilizers, from high natural gas used for fixing nitrogen to the pre-invasion post-failed Color Revolution sanctions on Belarus which has 20% of the world's potash (potassium) market. We're both suppressing natural gas production and increasing as fast as possible our ability to export it as LNG.
Making Diesel fuel massively more expensive prior to a very expensive transition to electrical trucks is also making pretty much every good more expensive, everything travels by Diesel powered trucks and/or trains. Biden and company have also decided theoretical so far punishment of Russia is more important than all of the above, for example the East Coast has halved its refinery capacity in the last decade and as of late was getting a lot of distillates from Russia.
I'm not convinced on this issue one way or the other but I fail to see how this is relevant? Are you suggesting it was a consideration in India government's wheat ban? Seems unlikely.
"Last week, Indian PM Narendra Modi told US President Joe Biden that India was ready to ship food to the rest of the world following supply shocks and rising prices due to the war in Ukraine." [1] (Article published on 19th April)
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61138859