Vaccine populism: It endangers India’s painstaking Covid fight

India’s too-big-to-fail Covid vaccine delivery mission has taken a political turn with Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiling BJP’s Bihar election manifesto and promising free vaccines to everyone in the state. Comparatively well-heeled Tamil Nadu and Karnataka which however have chief ministers on a weak footing and Madhya Pradesh which is less so, quickly jumped on the free vaccine bandwagon. Other states and political parties won’t be far behind. While other nations pursue vaccine nationalism to maximise self-interest India could boast its own self-goal variant: vaccine subnationalism.

Vaccine delivery presents complex challenges that populism with its simplistic claims about solving citizens’ difficult problems could end up aggravating. Any unhealthy race among states to corner vaccine stocks or perceptions of federal bias in vaccine distribution will be self-defeating. In this regard, Sitharaman’s Bihar pitch doesn’t help the Centre’s cause. A national policy that delineates how many vaccine doses will be available, who will get priority and subsidy, the logistics and financing models hasn’t been announced yet or discussed thoroughly with state governments.

BJP social media head Amit Malviya’s statement that states are free to pursue their own vaccine delivery paradigms almost suggests that India will do without a national strategy. The fact is most people are not going to get the vaccine in the first phase. Instead of assuring people that their turns will eventually come in an orderly rollout, free vaccine talk will whip up mass euphoria and great expectations. This portends chaos and public disorder when people find long waiting times, perhaps lasting months. So it is essential that Centre and states coordinate vaccination strategies, especially with each state having its own financial constraints. The nation’s overall economy is already a worry and we must not fall behind other countries in vaccinating as well. The stakes are very high: both prosperity and peace.