NEW DELHI: India, the world’s main supplier of generic drugs, said on Tuesday it will allow limited exports of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine that US President Donald Trump has touted as a potential weapon in the fight against the coronavirus.
The Indian government had put a hold on exports of hydroxychloroquine as well as on the pain reliever, paracetamol, saying stocks were depleting because of the hit to global supply chains after the coronavirus emerged in China late last year.
But Trump spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the weekend seeking supplies and on Monday said India may face retaliation if it didn’t withdraw the ban on exports.
India’s neighbors, including Nepal, have also sought the anti-malaria drug.
“It has been decided that India would license paracetamol and HCQ in appropriate quantities to all our neighboring countries who are dependent on our capabilities,” said Indian foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava.
“We will also be supplying these essential drugs to some nations who have been particularly badly affected by the pandemic,” he said.
Use of hydroxychloroquine has soared as the United States has quickly become the epicenter of the pandemic, though doctors prescribing it have no idea whether it works.
US fatalities from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, hit 10,902 on Monday, rapidly closing in on Italy and Spain, the countries with the greatest loss of life to date, according to a Reuters tally of official data.
In addition, the Indian government said it was lifting curbs on the export of 24 pharmaceutical ingredients and medicines made from them that includes several antibiotics, such as tinidazole and erythromycin, the hormone progesterone and Vitamin B12.
“After having confirmed the availability of medicines for all possible contingencies currently envisaged, these restrictions have been largely lifted,” foreign ministry spokesman Srivastava said.
India allows limited exports of anti-malaria drug
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India allows limited exports of anti-malaria drug
- Indian government also lifting curbs on the export of 24 pharmaceutical ingredients and medicines made from them
India hosts global leaders, tech moguls at AI Impact Summit
- 20 heads of state scheduled to attend event which runs until Feb. 20
- Summit expected to speed up adoption of AI in India’s governance, expert says
NEW DELHI: A global artificial intelligence summit opened in New Delhi on Monday, with representatives of more than 60 countries scheduled to discuss the use and regulation of AI with the industry’s leaders and investors.
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is hosted by the Indian government’s IndiaAI Mission — an initiative worth in excess of $1 billion and launched by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in 2024 to develop the AI ecosystem in the country.
After five days of sessions and an accompanying exhibition of 300 companies at Bharat Mandapam — the venue of the 2023 G20 summit — participating leaders are expected to sign a declaration which, according to the organizer, will outline a “shared road map for global AI governance and collaboration.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will attend the summit on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, said on X it was a “matter of great pride for us that people from around the world are coming to India” for the event, which is evidence that the country is “rapidly advancing in the fields of science and technology and is making a significant contribution to global development.”
Among the 20 heads of state that the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has announced as scheduled to attend are Macron, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, and Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince.
Also expected are tech moguls such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google’s chief Sundar Pichai.
The summit will give India, the world’s most populous country, a platform to try to steer cooperation and AI regulation between the West and the Global South, and to present to the global audience its own technological development.
“India is leveraging its position as a bridge between emerging and developed economies to bring together not just country leaders and technologists, but also delegates, policy analysts, media, and others … to explore the facets of AI, multilateral collaborations, and the direction that large-scale development of AI should take,” said Anwesha Sen, assistant program manager for technology and policy at Takshashila Institution.
“India is trying to do three things through the AI Impact Summit. One, India is advocating for sovereign AI and the development of inclusive, population-scale solutions. Two, establishing international collaborations that prioritize AI diffusion in sectors like healthcare and agriculture. And three, showcasing how Indian startups and organizations are using frameworks such as that of digital public infrastructure as a model to bridge the two.”
It is the fourth such gathering dedicated to the development of AI. The first one was held in the UK in 2023, a year after the debut of ChatGPT; the 2024 meeting in South Korea; and last year’s event took place in France.
The summit is likely to help the Indian government in speeding up the adoption of AI, according to Nikhil Pahwa, digital rights activist and founder of MediaNama, a mobile and digital news portal, who likened it to the Digital India initiative launched in 2015 to provide digital government services.
“A summit like this, with this much bandwidth allocated to it by the government, even if the agenda is flat, ends up making AI a priority focus for ministries and state governments,” Pahwa told Arab News.
“It encourages diffusion of AI execution-specific thinking and ends up increasing adoption of AI in governance and by both central and state-level ministries. That reduces time for adoption of AI.
“We saw this play out with the government’s Digital India focus: it increased digitization and the adoption of digital technology. The agenda and India’s role in AI globally is less important than speeding up adoption.”
