Adar Poonawalla echoes Khushi Kapoor’s vaccine argument from Nadaaniyan, says he’s allowed to make creative inputs in Dharma movies

In the widely panned film Nadaaninyan, Khushi Kapoor's character tells her parents that she has been practicing her debating skills, and proceeds to make an argument for pharma companies charging money for vaccines during the pandemic.

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Nadaaniyan was produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, whose new co-owner is the Serum Institute of India’s Adar Poonawalla. In the movie, Khushi's character says that the pharma sector needs to be funded in order to innovate, and that providing free vaccines would ultimately harm the industry. In a new interview, Adar Poonawalla made the same arguments. He told journalist Barkha Dutt on MojoStory that he needs the money not for personal reasons, but to fund further innovation in the sector.

In Nadaaniyan, Khushi’s character says that she has taken a keen interest in debating, which prompts her father, played by Suniel Shetty, to ask what her latest subject was. She says, “It was a debate around the morality of private healthcare. Was it right to sell vaccines during the pandemic, or should they have been distributed for free.” She tells him that she chose to argue for the motion, because she wanted to give herself a ‘challenge’. Her father remarks, “You were for it, really? Arguing against it would've been easier. You would've got moral brownie points. So, what was your argument?”