Ever since the Donald Trump administration's clampdown on USAID, economist Sanjeev Sanyal has been raising questions about the foreign aid agency's role in India.
In his latest tweet against USAID, the member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister condemned the current outrage against the foreign aid agency's involvement in India's National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
"Quite amusing that some people are outraging that USAID was not removed from NFHS earlier. Well, none of them seemed interested when a few of us began to write about it some 4 years ago. No one cared when NFHS was completely taken over by GoI two years ago. The only media reports from that time were concerned that GoI had "unfairly" replaced certain senior personnel from IIPS (with some justification as one can see)," he shared on X Tuesday.
Earlier too, Sanyal had raised concerns over USAID’s involvement in India’s health policies, warning that the agency’s influence extended beyond elections.
"For those who have arrived in the scene yesterday, the link between foreign aid agencies and our medical system goes back to the 1960s. A handful of us have been writing about this systematically. The last column that I co-authored with Bibek-da was about how foreign agencies deliberately popularised sex-selection abortions in India in the 1970s and 80s. Till the recent revelations about USAID, this was seen by many (including those now outraging) as a conspiracy theory despite the body of evidence that we put forward," his tweet on Tuesday said in reference to an article he co-authored with the late Bibek Debroy.
"The Overton window may have shifted in recent weeks, but it is very difficult to change an entrenched system. Yet, many things did get done one piece at a time. I give full credit to the political leadership for supporting what most people would have seen as an arcane battles in some dark corner," he added.