Referring to his 20-year long career as Gujarat’s chief minister and now as Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi while addressing the 76th session of the UNGA recently said, “I have been serving the countrymen in the role of Head of Government for 20 years. And I am saying this from my experience—Yes, Democracy Can Deliver. Yes, Democracy Has Delivered.”
In an unprecedented achievement, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country surpassed the mammoth 100 crore milestone on October 21, 2021. In a tweet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the countrymen and expressed gratitude to the country’s scientific community and health professionals for working towards achieving this stupendous feat in his characteristic style, being completely modest about his own superior leadership, which eventually delivered when it mattered the most.
India’s recovery rate currently stands at 98.15 per cent. Recovery rate is currently at its highest since March 2020. The active caseload is only 1.79 lakh cases, the lowest in the last 221 days. Active cases presently constitute 0.52 per cent of the country’s total positive cases, which is again the lowest since March 2020. India has so far conducted over 59.57 crore cumulative tests.
The weekly positivity rate, at 1.34 per cent, has remained less than 3 per cent since the last 118 days. The daily positivity rate, at 1.48 per cent, has remained below 3 per cent for the last 52 days and below 5 per cent for 135 days in a row. India is only the second country globally after China to reach the 100 crore milestone. But the basic difference between the two nations is access to related data. China claims to have vaccinated over 2.23 billion individuals. It even claimed last month of fully vaccinating over 100 crore people but there is no open-source data accessible to validate it. China even asserts that it has produced more than half of the world’s COVID vaccines so far, which is absolutely false and nothing but a frivolous claim by the CPC to reclaim lost ground after reports emerged that the Wuhan virus may have been engineered and incubated in a laboratory in China.
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On January 3 this year, India gave emergency-use approval to Covishield and Covaxin. Covishield is a two-shot COVID vaccine developed by AstraZeneca-Oxford University. Pune-based Serum Institute of India is its major producer. On the other hand, Covaxin, also a two-shot vaccine, is completely an indigenous achievement. It is developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR. Covishield is a viral-vector vaccine which uses an adenovirus or common cold virus found in chimpanzees. The vaccine has an efficacy rate of 70 per cent but when both doses are given 8 to 12 weeks apart, it can go up to 91 per cent. Covaxin also uses an inactive viral strain (killed coronaviruses) and has a 77.8 per cent efficacy rate. India, under Prime Minister Modi, started its vaccination drive on January 16, 2021, targeting healthcare workers first. Other frontline workers were added as intended beneficiaries in February. In April 2021, India approved a third vaccine made by Russia, Sputnik V, and opened the vaccination drive to everyone above 45 years of age.
On May 1, 2021, India opened its vaccination drive for all adults. On June 12, 2021, the country crossed the mark of administering 25 crore doses in 148 days, from January 16 when the vaccination drive had begun. On June 21, 2021, the Narendra Modi government announced free vaccines for everyone in the 18-44 age group in a landmark decision. The world’s first DNA-based COVID vaccine by the Indian pharmaceutical company Zydus Cadila was approved on August 20, 2021. It is a three-shot vaccine and the population base above 12 years of age can be inoculated with it. It is expected to hit the markets soon.
On August 26, 2021, the country reached the mark of giving at least one jab to half of its 94 crore adult population. September 13, 2021, saw India crossing the 75 crore total vaccination mark. On September 17, the country, for the first time, crossed the ‘two crore doses a day’ mark and, in fact, became only the second country after China to achieve it. Over 2.15 crore jabs were given that day. On September 18, 2021, India achieved the mark of fully vaccinating 20 crore adult individuals.
The vaccination drive under PM Narendra Modi has been outstanding in ways more than one. For instance, to connect remote areas of the country, the Health Ministry started drone delivery of COVID vaccines on October 4, 2021, a first in Southeast Asia. The vaccines, through drones, were delivered to a government health centre in a Manipur island in the Northeast. Currently, remote areas of Manipur and Nagaland and the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands are being covered under this ‘supply through drones’ initiative, which is exemplary.
In effect, India’s vaccine roll out is not only the largest in the world, but also the most affordable, with no compromises whatsoever on any standard operating procedures (SoPs). The PM-Cares fund has shouldered the entire cost of the first phase aimed at inoculating 30 million or 3 crore frontline COVID workers. Earlier, in June 2020, over Rs 2,000 crore was allocated from the PM-Cares fund for supply of 50,000 ‘Made-in-India’ ventilators to government-run COVID hospitals in all states and UTs. Of these, 30,000 ventilators were manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited, yet again showcasing India’s indigenous manufacturing prowess. While a jaded, directionless and clueless Rahul Gandhi keeps taking needless jibes at the Modi government, the fact of the matter is that for over six decades India just had 47,000 ventilators, whereas in June 2020, the Modi government in one go made 50000 ventilators available, to ensure no life is lost for want of life-saving equipment.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s food security scheme for the needy, called the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKAY), provided free ration to 81 crore or 810 million people every single month for nine months in a row during the pandemic, both last year and this year. Effectively speaking, this means a population 2.5 times the size of America was being fed every single month, for months together, showcasing the Modi government’s generous, welfarist and people-centric approach.
The essence of Modi government’s management of the pandemic is that, Prime Minister Modi has been continuously communicating with the people by addressing the nation at regular intervals. He coordinated with the chief ministers of the state governments. When Modi asked countrymen to applaud the doctors and para-medical staff for their commitment to handling the COVID-19 crisis by clapping for a few minutes, everyone responded with great enthusiasm. The same response was seen when he asked everyone to switch off the lights and light candles. Moreover, when Modi wanted people to wear masks and observe social distancing, there was no protest from the people, unlike in other countries like the US. It is true that some people did not follow guidelines but that was more because of indiscipline by few, rather than any broad opposition to the guidelines. In most democracies, often people do not hesitate to conduct protest marches even for trivial reasons. It is extraordinary, therefore, that Prime Minister Modi could manage the pandemic without giving room to unrest and turmoil despite a complete lockdown during the second wave and the months preceding that.
Now, contrast the policy of obfuscation and apathy followed by China with the probity and transparency shown by India in taking COVID head-on. Be it building over 116 million toilets under the “Clean India” or “Swachh Bharat” mission, making India’s 5.5 lakh villages open defecation free (ODF), giving free health insurance to 50 crore Indians under the “Ayushman Bharat” scheme, producing over 60 million PPE kits and 150 million N95 masks between April and October 2020, bringing home over 3.9 million stranded Indians from different parts of the globe via the “Vande Bharat Mission”, or extending medical and humanitarian assistance to over 150 countries in the fight against the pandemic. The Modi government’s fight against the Wuhan virus was made easier by the fact that a humungous amount of effort went into ramping up India’s health infrastructure and making cleanliness a way of life in the last seven years. What is worth mentioning here is that during the initial days of COVID outbreak, there was only one lab in the country that could undertake testing for the infection, but today there are over 2,000 testing laboratories.
A key concern is vaccine wastage. What is vaccine wastage? While wastage cannot be fully eradicated, it has to be within recommended limits. In general, high vaccine wastage inflates vaccine demand and increases unnecessary vaccine procurement and supply chain costs. Vaccine wastage is directly linked to vaccine usage, which is the proportion of vaccines administered against vaccines issued to a vaccination site. What is causing the wastage? For instance, each Covishield vial has 10 doses in total, while a Covaxin vial contains 20 doses—each dose being 0.5 ml (for one person). Once opened, all doses have to be administered within four hours, otherwise it goes waste and the remaining doses have to be destroyed.
Vaccine wastage in India can be largely attributed to low turnout of beneficiaries to get vaccinated due to inadequate planning of sessions by a few states. For instance, if the vial contains doses for 10 people and only six turn up, four doses would go waste. In few opposition-ruled states, opening vials despite inability to mobilise critical mass of people led to huge vaccine wastage in the initial phases, particularly in states like Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Punjab. The wastage rate was as high as 18 per cent and 12 per cent in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh during the second wave. Despite the opposition-ruled states completely abdicating their responsibility, the sheer will power to deliver showcased by the Modi government eventually resulted in the epoch-making 100 crore doses possible on October 21, 2021. From Taali, Thaali, Janata Curfew to Jan Bhagidari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran the world’s largest vaccination drive by putting his political and personal credibility to test and needless to say, he emerged unscathed and stronger than ever before.
The Modi government’s CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) app is owned by the Ministry of Health and Family welfare and was earlier the platform used for conducting pulse polio and other crucial and highly successful immunisation programmes across the country. The same platform was expanded for doling out COVID-19 vaccines and the Ministry of Electronics and IT along with the National Informatics Center are now handling the backend and the tech infrastructure for it. CoWIN is again an example of how the Modi government has seamlessly embraced technology to ensure last-mile delivery. Needless to add, in the final analysis, Modi’s “Make in India” model runs high on both growth and humanitarian quotients whereas Xi’s “Make in China” lacks the emotional quotient that separates a robotic, authoritarian regime from an aspirational India, helmed by a “karmayogi” like Modi, who leads by example, never playing on the backfoot and always keeping the nation first above everything else. COVID-19, which is still unfolding in many parts of the globe, will also be remembered for the global outreach by the Indian political diaspora, which has shown to the world how a responsive and nimble-footed government can tackle any emergency with the right mindset.
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In the final analysis, it can be said with no “ifs” and “buts” whatsoever that the Indian response to the coronavirus pandemic has been awe-inspiring at various levels. While the US and Europe are dealing with endless queues of people lining up at malls and stores that have run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizers, India’s calibrated approach by the government, without causing panic, has had a salubrious impact. Also, don’t forget while India reported its first case only on January 30, 2020, it had started screening incoming passengers from affected countries, via infra red thermometers, from January 7, 2020.
On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln made an iconic speech at Gettysburg, redefining the concepts of nationalism, liberty and equality and thereby, forever changing the course of American history. Lincoln, to this day, is remembered for abolishing slavery and winning the American Civil War—most importantly, however, he is remembered for his famous Gettysburg address, which healed a divided America and connected the work of the Union’s soldiers at Gettysburg to the work of the Union’s founders at Philadelphia. In much the same mould, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on October 22, 2021, where he denounced VVIP culture and stressed on “Made in India” and “Made by India”, will go down in history as a landmark one, for reasons more than one.
Sanju Verma is an Economist, National Spokesperson of the BJP and the bestselling author of ‘Truth & Dare-The Modi Dynamic’. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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