The United States of America would do well to engage with India and help it develop as a bulwark against China, international trade expert and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bart S Fisher said on Saturday.
Addressing law students, Fisher suggested a Marshall Plan-like arrangement for the US to offer to India on the lines of the post-World War II plan to reconstruct Europe as a bulwark against the erstwhile Soviet Union.
On the current India-Canada imbroglio, he said the two sides should be led by facts and evidence and not by rhetoric. In India to campaign and set up a national bone marrow transplant registry for cancer patients, much like the one he set up in the US in 1983, Fisher spoke on a range of issues concerning bone marrow transplants, geopolitics and trade.
The US lawyer said India and the US should focus on their ties and make their respective ties their most important bilateral relationships.
Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his leadership, Fisher said he has a difficult job at hand given the geopolitical turmoil in Israel and Ukraine. This is worsened by his having to deal with China on several fronts. The US also has its list of outstanding unsettled issues with Beijing, he said.
“Indian goods and services could be made duty-free in the US as well as promoting Indian companies to do business taxfree,” he said.
Fisher, the founder of the Give Life Foundation, spoke of the need of and the importance of India having its own national bone marrow registry. India, at present, doesn’t have a viable registry and having one’s own registry can save half a million lives from cancer.
With incidences of cancer rising sharply in India, bone marrow transplants can give stem cells to fight leukemia, multiple myeloma, aplastic anemia and other such conditions.
Currently, India needs a 80 million registry with an estimated 6 million matches. The US registry has 37 million donors with 100,000 matches done with registry. The Indian registry can also be of use to the Indian diaspora, especially in the US. Fisher said all humans are connected because they need blood to survive and countries need to put aside their differences to come together on this front. He said Give Life had a registry set up in Cuba, which is under US economic sanctions even now.
Fisher said India needs to generate more awareness on bone marrow transplants and to this effect, he will be visiting the Kumbh Mela next year to spread awareness. The Kumbh Mela usually brings together millions of people. A largescale effort to draw more attention to the campaign will also see Fisher meet and interact with members of Parliament.
Underlining the slogan Swab for Life, he said all one needs to do is take a swab and check for matches. Once there is a match, the marrow can be extracted from peripheral blood and transplanted to anyone anywhere in the world. One can end up saving the life of someone whom they have never met, he said.