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India’s Vaccine Policy Fiasco And How The Media Covered It

India was seen as a vaccine hub and was exporting, once AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech rolled out the vaccines.

Many saw him on their television sets – he spoke, he claimed, he slyly accused opponents and non-Bharatiya Janata Party led governments and once again, made loud proclamations, promises and left. Not a word on his whereabouts (can’t ask, won’t tell), before and after the speech. One important observation: the beard has grown longer and was rather annoying to see on national television. For the record, that was our Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

So, what has the mainstream media done to dissect the claims? The first one being how health infrastructure had been set up to fight the coronavirus pandemic. This included setting up laboratories, making available ventilators, PPE kits and new infrastructure. He said, “India spared no effort in fighting the second wave of Covid-19, tackling the oxygen crisis”. This claim comes in the face of the fact that over half of the 3.5l lakh who died, died for this very reason – struggling for oxygen. As early as May, the shortage of oxygen in most hospitals across the country was making headlines. Not only patients, but hospitals were resorting to sending SOSs on social media and in fact, Twitter had become the first go-to platform for people begging to get oxygen and ventilator beds. Who will hold the government responsible? Worse still, this is not the first time the head of the state has got away making false claims.

 

PM Modi addressed the nation on June 7 to announce the national Vaccine Policy.

 

Exactly a year ago, BJP leaders claimed there were no deaths due to hunger or starvation on the special trains which ferried the migrant workers. The Union Home Minister did not even acknowledge that the fear of no work and food created panic and hundreds of migrant workers left major cities to walk back to their villages. He claimed ‘some workers lost patience and started walking’, while the entire country watched television reports a few days after the crisis had unfolded. One need not look further, just type deaths for lack of oxygen in India and it will out anyone with a little conscience.

Speaking of vaccinations, the PM, as is his usual style, rubbished efforts in the past and said vaccines for polio, smallpox and hepatitis B came after decades. When he became PM, vaccination coverage in India was only 60 per cent, he said. There are basic fallacies in these claims, not expected of a person who heads the country, but taking into account how the BJP and PM want to obliterate everything that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi have done, this is expected. Now, for some history lessons. In 1955 the world got the first vaccine for polio. Going by the sheer size of this country and the population, India was considered the most challenging place on earth to eradicate polio from. In 1988, India became a signatory to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and committed to ending polio. And you know what, in March 2011, the World Health Organisation declared India polio-free. Not as per the claims made in the speech on Monday.

Coming to the Covid-19 vaccine programme, we are all aware of governments in every country pushing for the manufacture of vaccines. India was seen as a vaccine hub and was exporting, once AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech rolled out the vaccines. But the fact is, our government failed us. They did not take into account the waves we would face and the 1.38 billion-plus population. Till now, only 14 per cent of our entire population has received at least one dose. It is way lesser than UK, US and Brazil. Worse still, less than 5 per cent of 950 million adults have been completely vaccinated.

 

Mother and her son take the vaccine jab. (credit: Reuters)

 

When the vaccination drive was first announced in January, it was to be given to the frontline health workers, doctors and this was to be extended till eight months. In April, only 37 per cent of the three crore health workers were fully vaccinated. The coverage for this drive still remains poor and that is where the crux of this issue lies. Procurement of these vaccines still remains the main issue. Again, Maharashtra was in the lead, having vaccinated the most number of health workers. At that time, one continued to be bombarded with only the news that Maharashtra was responsible for most of the nation’s case burden. The selective communication of information and the way most of the media that seemed to be siding with the government also portrayed this bias did not help spread word of the vaccination drive. But the central health ministry had by then said it had received complaints of people fraudulently claiming to be health workers and getting the first shot and in April, the government stopped any further registration of health workers on the Cowin site. At that time even people above 45 years could register for the first shot. By May, 20.4 per cent of those 18 years and above in Maharashtra had got at least one shot and 25 per cent of this chunk is in Mumbai.

Around this time, Uddhav Thackeray, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra had demanded an adequate supply of vaccines, oxygen, medicines from the Centre, in a virtual meeting with the PM. Maharashtra had a stock of only 5 lakh doses and Uddhav said due to lack of supply the pace had slowed down. He had actually wanted a round-the-clock vaccination drive. This entire vaccination tug of war has unfolded, thanks to the PM. In the middle of this chaos, we also heard the ministry of health telling us to delay taking the second dose of Covishield, it would not affect the schedule. At the same time, a new googly was bowled to the citizens. Suddenly people woke up to the news of the Government of India saying, one need not worry if they had mixed their doses. As in, one could take the first shot of vaccine made by one company and a second by another. What exactly was the purpose of this vaccination, was a question many wanted to ask but did not, or could not muster enough courage to do so, as the main adviser to the Government of India, Dr V K Paul said, “Two different doses are safe. We are thinking to mix and match (vaccine doses) on a trial basis.”

Shocking to say the least, this entire approach has raised doubts about the government’s approach to vaccination drive and policy. In fact, the former Governor of Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan in his interview to Karan Thapar said, “Well, let’s start with what’s going wrong. What’s going wrong is extreme centralisation of governance, a distaste for experts, and an appearance of criticism.” Rajan was clear the political leadership lacked vision in its policy. Let us assess, at the beginning itself, how the Modi government made it clear that the Centre would distribute vaccines and give the quotas to the state governments. This controversy is regarding states versus the central government on vaccinations. Initially, the Modi government controlled and procured vaccines. It was seen there were many non- BJP led governments that had run-ins with the Central government. In his speech, Modi mentioned, his government thought ‘as an experiment to allow states to procure 25 per cent vaccines’. Obviously, procurement ran into problems as there were certain waivers and policies only the central government could deal with. But the language used in his speech suggested as though he were leveraging vaccines against citizens in states where his party was not in power. “Different states made efforts in their own way….Within a fortnight, several states started saying that the earlier system was better. Then even those states which had vociferously asked state procurement fell in line.” A contradiction from his earlier policy, his government asked individual states to buy vaccines from domestic manufacturers or procure directly from foreign manufacturers from May 1 onwards.

This is not the time to settle scores or play dirty politics. It is time every citizen gets vaccinated.

 

 

Neeta Kolhatkar is a senior journalist with over 30 years of work experience across different media platforms. She is currently a freelancer and media consultant.

(Views Expressed Are Personal)

 

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