India takes out giant nationwide subscription to 13,000 journals

Good. But also if any of that research was done by any university supported by tax dollars or otherwise public funds or even charitable contributions all that research should be free and open — that anyone has to pay twice or thrice for research and knowledge is insane.

And all these journals just gatekeep to be rent seeking entities. It’s gross.

It's good students are getting easy access to research papers but government funds going to these nasty opportunistic publishers is sending a very bad message. Deals like this only encourage these publishers that they have support and that they are in a 'legitimate' business.

We ought to be treating this mob like we do with cigarette manufacturers—barely on the side of 'legitimate' and that they're only still there because of historical circumstance.

The money the Indian Government has invested would have been better off spent ensuring that evey paper published in India would be published through its own scientific press. To achieve that it could make publishing in journals published by scumbag publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, etc. unlawful.

I wish they would use some of that money to start their own journals.