Notwithstanding Opposition Volte-Face, Should Modi Government Recentralise The Vaccination Programme?

Damned if you do and damned if you do not; that is the situation of the Narendra Modi government, in the centre, right now with respect to the vaccination programme.

In the early days of the vaccine rollout, the states wanted more responsibility with procurement and pricing and wanted the free markets to play an active role to enable state governments to reach out to foreign manufacturers.

A fair demand, perhaps? Only if the intent had matched the action on the ground.

Today, the vaccine rollout is a logistical nightmare. While this nightmare will be resolved in another month as the orders for the doses are fulfilled, the political mess remains.

Last week, 12 parties in the opposition came together to write a letter to the Prime Minister, demanding for the vaccine procurement process to be centralised. As of today, India has vaccinated more than 18 crore people with at least a single dose. The programme has barely begun, and the state governments have already chickened out.

The signatories of the letter included Sonia Gandhi for Congress, Sharad Pawar for the Nationalist Congress Party, Uddhav Thackeray for the Shiv Sena, Mamata Banerjee for the Trinamool Congress, M K Stalin for Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Akhilesh Yadav for the Samajwadi Party amongst others.

So, now that 12 parties in the opposition with state governments across the country have surrendered their responsibilities, the obvious question is that is Modi the leader we need to run the entire vaccination campaign, from procurement to last-mile delivery, and if yes, how must it be done?

Firstly, the good news is that the central government has a plan to administer every eligible Indian with at least one dose, and most by two, by the end of this year.

The plan factors Bharat Biotech's increased capacity to produce 75 million doses by September, and Serum Institute of India’s ramped up production to 115 million doses by the same month. As per some reports, Bharat Biotech is aiming to increase its production to 100 million in the final quarter of 2021.

Manufacturing for Covaxin would also be licensed out to other companies which would add 35 million doses by December. Starting November, Russia’s Sputnik will be produced in India, adding another 70 million doses a month.

Currently, in phase-3 trials, the government’s plan also factors in the arrival of Biological E Vaccine and another being manufactured by Zydus Cadilla.

Then there are enough candidates the government of India can turn to for imports which are currently not factored in the 2 billion doses plan.

Now, the bad news. The state governments have messed up the oxygen supply recently. In some states, ventilators sent by the centre were lying unused, and even on the procurement front, some state governments have been sleeping.

Therefore, can the state governments be trusted for the management of the entire supply chain- from procurement to storage to last-mile delivery. If recent events are any indication- it’s an absolute no.

The second problem? The state governments have to compete with the likes of the United States, United Kingdom, European Union amongst other nations when it comes to global manufacturers. Already, many global vaccine manufacturers are running behind their commitments.

How strong a chance do the state governments stand in an international market?

It is not about the politics alone, for the state-imposed lockdowns are now turning the green into the red on the economic recovery front.

While most job losses registered in April 2021 were from the agricultural sector, given the harvesting season has got over, the 45-odd day lockdown across the country will show its impact in the next quarter.

While April 2021 witnessed a slight uptick in the percentage of bounced payments on auto-debit of instalments, the impact might be more pronounced in the upcoming months, and will only get worse if the lockdowns persist.

If one chooses to look at the silver lining, the recent lockdowns have allowed a few businesses to operate within a few guidelines, unlike a hard lockdown last year. While the constrained operations might enable most businesses to weather the wave, a prolonged lockdown or a sudden spike in cases, say in July or August, would dent India’s recovery permanently.

Therefore, there are two reasons why the centre, under Modi’s leadership, must take over the entire vaccination programme, from procurement to last-mile delivery.

Firstly, it makes sense from an economic perspective. Instead of having a scattered rollout, the centre must prioritise 50-70 economic hubs across the country. Today, many districts have empty slots due to vaccine hesitancy while people in Mumbai and Delhi struggle for their first dose.

Given the vaccine supply, in terms of volume, would stabilise within 8-12 weeks, given the orders incoming, the centre can go on a vaccination spree across the big financial hubs, and ensure the economy is 100 per cent open in these areas.

Get the economic revival going even if it comes at a political cost in terms of tinkering with the redistribution of the vaccine doses. The economic hubs of the nation cannot be shackled by the faults in our federal structure.

The vaccination in the 50-70 economic hubs can be followed by a free rollout by the centre in villages, skipping the digital registration process.

Irrespective of how the pricing may work out for the centre, the Modi government must march ahead without worrying about political bickering.

From purely an optics point of view, the BJP must make a spectacle of the letter sent to the Prime Minister by the 12 opposition parties, stating how the coalition of 2024 has chickened out of all responsibility.

In the end, it’s a gamble. No leader, anywhere in the history of mankind, has led a vaccination programme that aims to reach out to a billion people within a year, and only in the second year of the pandemic. A decentralised process ensures distribution of responsibility, and both success and failures, but in a centralised process, the buck stops at one leader.

For Modi, this is the Everest of crisis to conquer, and if there is a leader who can complete the climb, it is him.

It’s a lot of tinkering, lots of politics, lots of bickering, but a lot of it is right-but will the centre bite the bullet?