A case of Indian mishandling of COVID-19

 

With the resurgence of the second wave of COVID-19 in India hitting new heights in terms of the number of cases and fatality, the debate over life v/s livelihood has resurfaced to the fore. Given the benefit of the knowledge of hindsight of the first wave, the recent announcement by PM Narendra Modi to consider Lockdown as the measure of the last resort seems a sensible move given the economic cost it inflicts. However, the question remains, what has gone wrong this time? Why the biggest manufacturer of vaccines around the world reached this point and what needs to be done to curb this problem?

To understand the rise of coronavirus, we first need to look at the data of the first wave. During the previous wave, cases started plateauing around the mid of September after which a decline was seen. Given the fact that as cases started declining in September and started increasing again in March, four reasons contributed to this disastrous situation. First, complacency and laxness started resurfacing both in public as well as in government’s behaviour with a declining number of cases which led to the negligence of COVID-appropriate behaviour. Second, a false sense of immunity with the start of the vaccination drive in India led to a ‘business as usual' approach. Third, no renewal of policy measures, while having an advantage of the knowledge of hindsight, to deal with the change in environment outside led to ambiguity. Fourth, laxness in harnessing the healthcare facilities and technological innovation, while knowing imminent danger with the virus, led to pushing India behind the queue of tackling the challenge in a sustainable way.

A model of steering the price and distribution of vaccine by the central government led to regulation of vaccine dissemination akin to the ‘commanding the controlling heights’ model, a model which has remained close to our hearts. The idea was to make vaccine as cheap as possible to look after consumers, albeit neglecting the interest of producers. When the decentralization and flexible model of the governance structure was most needed to define local solutions to a national problem, an inflexible centralized model was adopted.

Studying the reason which resulted in problems which we are facing now, there are two criticisms of the government which needs elucidation for our better understanding. First, the criticism from one school of thought which lamented the idea of vaccine export when India itself has been facing scarcity is a case worth looking. Sources from External Affairs ministry tells us that India has exported 644 lakh doses to around 80 countries till now. While the fact remains, India faced a sudden scarcity hitting at a lightning speed, it was not because of our production constraints but because of our consumption constraints and an intransigent approach by the government of controlling everything due to which production capacity was not running at an optimal level resulting in scarcity. The vaccine manufacturing capacity of Covishield is 70-100 million doses every month, of which 50% is for the Covax initiative, while Covaxin has a planned production capacity of 12.5 million a month, cumulatively which comes out at around 47.5-62.5 million, a capacity to produce vaccines to serve India’s promising idea to inoculate 300 million people by August. Second, a criticism emanated from a school of thought criticizing India’s lack of comprehensive planning to vaccinate people and its reticence to not pursue a hoarding policy of vaccine doses beforehand in contrast to the western countries. While it is a well-known idea that the west is the frontrunner in hoarding vaccines, India did not pursue this idea due to a lack of deep pockets with the government and its self-proclaimed mastery in vaccine production capacity which turned out to be a self-defeating idea.

While things look hunky-dory at the outset when politicians were chest-thumping themselves in conferring a tag of India as the biggest manufacturer of the vaccine in the world, the ground realities were different. A model of steering the price and distribution of vaccine by the central government led to regulation of vaccine dissemination akin to the ‘controlling the commanding heights’ model, a model which has remained close to our hearts. The idea was to make vaccine as cheap as possible to look after consumers (the general populace), albeit neglecting the interest of producers (vaccine makers). When a decentralised and flexible model of the governance structure was most needed to define local solutions to a national problem, an inflexible centralized model was adopted, as if to define the central government as the master of the fate of every state government and its citizens. 

Now the thing comes to how should we go about tackling this problem. Besides adhering to COVID-appropriate behaviour, increasing vaccination drive to include a wider population and looking onto policy issues to implement policies helping life concomitantly with the livelihood of the people, it is equally important to take lessons from the UK, which was also facing the same problem but tackled it, to use scientific measures to understand the SARS CoV-2 virus on a deeper level to make better policy choices. Here the recent moves by the central government to increase vaccination base from age 18 onwards, giving more leeway to states and private firms in vaccine procurement, importing foreign vaccines for dissemination and increasing domestic vaccine production capacity, are some welcoming moves but more needs to be done on the ground level to provide a more flexible policy, uniquely crafted based on geography, demographics and other factors at hand.

India is facing an imminent danger which defeats the Indian prospect of a V-shaped economic recovery and robust health infrastructure to handle the Pandemics. The need of the hour is to have a more relaxed policy as opposed to a rigid ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy while taking measures to provide social security and basic amenities to those in urgent need due to the resurgence of the virus to handle the situation. This pandemic needs a scientific solution, not hoaxes and disinformation-driven solutions to mitigate the prospect of yet another resurgence of the virus in the future because India would do better to lose its credential as a self-sufficient (Aatmanirbhar) country in vaccine production rather to lose the life and livelihood of its citizens!