The External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’sofficial trip to the USA is a tightrope walk for him. As the Indian governmentis locking horns with America-based social media juggernauts namely Twitter andWhatsApp over privacy vs surveillance, it is also on a mission to procurevaccines.
This disaster has been exacerbated by a shortage in vaccineswhich is not only devastating but also seems to be created by design. TheExternal Affairs Minister has been tasked to secure as many vaccines it canfrom the quota of 8 crore vaccines the USA has earmarked for needy countries.
India is deep in COVID disaster with the nation seeing morethan 4,000 deaths every day. The total number of cases were 2.76 crore andabout 3.2 lakh individuals have died. Many believe the real figures are morethan these numbers released by Our World in Data and JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data.
India’s predicament is made worse by the rapidly droppingvaccination numbers in the nation and its states fighting among themselves toget as many vaccines as they can for their citizens.
Not only at home, but India’s mismanagement and going backon its word to provide vaccines to poorer nations has left those nations in alurch, claimed a Time magazine report.
The nation banned all exports of vaccines - which it hadearlier promised and the recipient nations were depending on it - to prioritiseits own citizen. Experts however claim that the situation need not be them vsus, had PM Modi shown prudence and not taken to making grand noises about hisgrandiosity.
Experts claim that PM Modi’s theatrics and words were notbacked by intelligent and self-serving actions to secure vaccines early in thepandemic wave.
The Time report claimed that the root of this Indian andglobal crisis is PM Modi’s inexplicable hesitance in procuring the medicinewhen funds were clearly not an issue. About $ 100 million were donated toPM Cares Fund in the year 2019-2020.
The first order of the vaccine was made as late as January2021, while the PM had claimed earlier in August 2020 that a full vaccinedistribution plan had been worked out.
On top of it the vaccine maker Adar Poonawalla was notfunded by the government in time and later on when he arranged funds and rampedup production, he was threatened by everyone there that he had to flee to theUK.
It is pertinent to add India isamong the top six economies of the world. The report by Time claimed thatthe other wealthy nations ordered vaccines well before the pandemic’s waves hitwith full intensity. Canada ordered enough doses to vaccinate its populationfive times over, England 3.6 times over, the European Union 2.7 times over, andthe USA two times over.
Also read: Global COVID death toll likely 2 to 3 times higher than reported, majorly from India: WHO report
Though, this hoarding of the vaccines is inequitable on aglobal scale and this cornering means that individuals in poorer nations arehit much worse than those in the wealthy countries.
All in all, if PM Modi had shown prudence and managed theCOVID situation proactively instead of making noise about his efforts, then the139crore individuals in his nation and the plethora of poorer nations and the global equitable distributionprogram COVAX depending upon India would not have been in this disaster.