No, This Viral Video Does Not Show IAS Officer Vijay Singh Talking About Climate Change In Glasgow; Misleading Claim Viral

A video showing a person speaking about the climate movement and laying down a scathing criticism of the West for its effect on climate change is going viral across social media. Viral claims indicate that the man is IAS officer Vijay Singh delivering a speech in Glasgow, UK.

Claim:

In the speech, the person is referred to as ‘Vijay’, who begins his speech appreciating the city of Glasgow while talking about the Bengal famine and the colonial mindset that led to the famine. He talks about how the West has usurped resources and money from India for centuries and how, in the present, they continue to talk down to India and other developing nations regarding their contributions to climate change.

"You only know condescension... You like to say we are all in this together, and so on. We are not in this together. The United States: 4-5 per cent of the world's population, still uses 25% of the world's resources. You outsource production to China and then say China is the carbon polluter. China is producing your buckets; China is producing your nuts and bolts; China is producing your phones. Try to produce it in your own country and see your carbon emissions rise,” he says in the viral video.

The video is captioned, “See the daring of an Indian official on an international platform in Glasgow. Salute to Vijay Singh, IAS. Wonderful speech.”

It is being widely shared on Facebook and Twitter with a similar claim.

Fact Check:

The Logical Indian fact-check team verified the viral claim and found it to be misleading. The man in the viral video is historian Vijay Prashad.

We used InVid’s Keyframe Analysis tool to isolate the keyframes of the video and conduct a reverse image search. This threw up a report by News18 published on November 22, 2021, which carried the image of the same person seen speaking in the video in the thumbnail.

The News18 report says that the video was shot during Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad’s participation in a panel discussion at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasglow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 13. The report also notes that the historian pointed out that the United States makes up 4 to 5% of the world’s population but still uses 25% of global resources.

“You (United States) love lecturing us because you have a colonial mentality. Then some colonial structures and institutions lend us money, which is our money. The IMF comes to our societies, you give us our money back as debt and lecture us on how we should live," Prashad is quoted as saying in the News18 report.

This prompted us to conduct a keyword search, leading us to the video uploaded by COP26 Coalition on YouTube on November 10, 2021.

We also looked up the Twitter handle of Vijay Prashad, who describes himself as the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, a journalist, and the editor of LeftWord Books, a Marxist publishing house based in New Delhi.

Looking through his Twitter page, Prashad, in a tweet dated January 29, commented on the virality of the video saying, “This video of me from Glasgow has gone so viral in Indian right-wing WhatsApp groups that I am hearing from people I have not heard from in over thirty years”

He also made a tongue-in-cheek remark referring to the viral claim portraying him as an IAS officer in another tweet dated July 18, 2022.

Conclusion:

We found that the man in the viral video is historian Vijay Prashad and not an IAS officer. The video was shared with the false claim that it showed an Indian bureaucrat speaking out against the West’s contributions to climate change.

If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.

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