Month: May 2021

India’s Vaccination Conundrum!

Delhi, India’s capital reported around 1600 new cases yesterday with the test positivity rate dropping to 2.5% from a high of 35% in April. Mumbai, the commercial capital reported around 1300 new cases yesterday. In the 1st half of April, the daily cases were averaging 10000 plus.  Both these cities are under near complete lockdowns and the reduction of activities has helped to bring the case load down. Elsewhere in India, many cities and towns are still showing a worrying trend and the respective authorities have imposed circuit breakers and I am certain the numbers there will also show a decreasing trend in the coming weeks.

Now with the decrease in the case load in Mumbai, already there is a clamour to “Unlock” so that business activities can resume. In Delhi, the Chief Minister has said that if the cases continue to drop for another week, his government will start the process of unlocking. As we saw in the past, when the lockdowns are eased, there is a chance that the case load goes up. It is a vicious cycle of numbers going up and down with locking and unlocking. Hence, at this point of time, the only option we have, to break this cycle is to rapidly vaccinate majority of the population.

India’s vaccination program thus far has only flattered to deceive. The programme kicked off on the 16th Jan, 2021. It is now over 5 months and yes, we have administered over 18 crore doses but, the coverage has only been 3% of the population. If we continue at the same pace, we will take years to cover the total population by which time, wreckage on all fronts due to Covid will be humongous. It is clear as daylight that we have to up our ante on the vaccination front as of yesterday.

This is where the government’s overall planning on the vaccination program begs all kinds of questions.   During the initial phases of the program that was meant to cover health workers and later senior citizens, one thought that the program was proceeding smoothly. However, it was during the 2nd phase – that of citizens over the age of 45 commenced, the whole program started falling apart. From a phase of vaccine hesitancy we quickly moved to vaccine shortages. And this was happening exactly at the time when the second wave Covid numbers were hitting the roof on a daily basis.

A panic struck government facing fire from all directions on a single day opened up the vaccination program whereby it allowed vaccine makers to sell 50% of their stock to states and private sector. And in another bizarre move, it opened up the vaccination to 18+ age group with a caveat that this will not be sponsored by the Central government.  Bizarre, because the opening up happened when there were no sufficient stocks to cover the 45+ age groups adequately.

Today as far as vaccination is concerned, there is a strange situation. As I mentioned earlier, there is less vaccine hesitancy among people. There is a good awareness and urge amongst many to get the vaccination done. However, due to the shortages, we are back to the good old “IRCTC” days. The tyranny of OTPs, slowly loading site and the fastest finger first routine are back. Those who are not IT savvy, have to make the daily trips to the centre and try for walk in jabs and of course deal with big lines there, that too during Covid times. The Cowin portal which at the outset is impressive is a gate keeper today. And for some strange reason it is available only in English language!

As I have written in my earlier posts, as far as Covid is concerned, there have been many unknowns. The magnitude of the second wave came as a big surprise and caught all of us in the back foot. I have argued that no government in the world could have planned and smoothly handled a wave which is 3X and 4X times the peak of the previous wave in terms of hospitalisation requirements. On this, the barrage of excessive criticism on the Indian Government has been a bit unfair and we should cut the government some slack on this.

Having said that, where the Government and here I mean the Central Government, has been found wanting is on the vaccination project front. In this project, there were lesser or no unknowns. Data of the population, the production capacities of the indigenous vaccine makers were all available right in front. Yet, we did not move on securing enough stocks of the doses for vaccination. It is not clear if it is executive decision making or bureaucratic sloth that has landed us in this situation. Either way, we missed the bus.

While the important aspect of arresting the second wave is in progress, the Central Government must shift its priority to bringing the vaccination program back on track. We are now seeing that the program of state governments procuring vaccines directly is not taking off. In response to the global bids floated by the Municipal Corporation in Mumbai (BMC), only suppliers of Sputnik have quoted. And there again, with the stringent supply conditions of the tender, I doubt any supply will happen in the near future!

Therefore, the onus is on the Central Government to ensure sourcing of the required doses of vaccines required to vaccinate at least 70% of the population by end of this year. That would mean making available over 160 crore doses from now till December. In a recent press conference, the government put out a table that said that the Production/Availability of vaccines from August to Dec is 216 crore doses. With this availability picture, has the central government placed the orders on the vaccine makers already at least for the approved ones? Are the approval process for the other vaccines on queue put on fast track? Has the government assessed the working capital requirements of the indigenous vaccine makers and committed the same? Is the supply chain secured for the production of the vaccines as per capacity? IS work happening on the Cowin site to make it more citizen friendly?

If the answers are yes, we have learnt from the past mistakes. If No, we have decided to live “Ram Bharose”.

Image Courtesy: Amul

2021 State Elections – My Flash Take aways!

This round of elections in five states is finally over today and India will get a break from being in election mode for a year.  It’s been too long an election process that, everything else took a back seat including our war on Covid.  The counting is still on as I write this but the broad trends are clear. Since there are pundits galore in theorising on the results, I will skip that for the moment. Instead, in this post, I would like to list a few take aways on the whole elections, not just the results of this round of elections.

Here we go:

  • Anti-Incumbency as the pièce de résistance among theories for explaining a result is passé: In the past, analysts would always just dismiss any defeat of an incumbent government by ascribing to “Anti-Incumbency” as if it was extremely legitimate and acceptable. A few decades ago, it is true that incumbent governments were thrown out 7 out of 10 times. But, that’s no more the case. As we have seen in this round, 3 out of 5 governments have been re-elected. In Bengal, TMC has won a third consecutive term. It all boils down to quality of governance and what people feel about the next best option.  Anti-Incumbency is no more an excuse. And Pro-Incumbency is a virtue.
  • Hawa, Leher, Mahoul exist only in the minds of commentators: This is increasingly becoming the case in social media driven journalism. As we saw in UP in 2017, Karnataka in 2018 and now Bengal this time, mainstream media and social media can create their own “Waves” and “Hawa” that is far away from situation on the ground. So, making predictions and conclusions based on social media trends, Youtubers’ narratives and mainstream media commentary is fraught with a lot of risks.
  • Opinion Polls and Exit Polls are for entertainment only: This we have seen time and again now and doesn’t need much explanation. For almost all agencies, getting the polls right has a huge amount of luck riding on it. If they get it right, it’s their day. That’s all. In a diversified country like ours, statistical samples however scientific they are, have proven to be inconclusive. So, opinion polls and exit polls are a lottery. Even in this round, no agency predicted the scale of Mamata win and almost all predicted a tough fight.
  • Voters vote for Lok Sabha and State polls on their own merits: This is getting very conclusive by every election. In one of my earlier articles for Newslaundry (Read here), I had explained this with quite a few examples. In this round as well, we can see this aspect quite established in Bengal and Kerala.
  • Time for building consensus around One Nation – One Poll: This is linked to my last point as well. Now that we can see clearly that voters are indeed intelligent and vote as per merit in Lok Sabha and state elections, many of the regional parties and even the Congress which have their apprehensions that it will be only “Advantage BJP” if India opts for simultaneous elections, should shed the same and have a re-think for the sake of larger national interest. It is obvious that elections every year or twice a year are a huge distraction for governance. Also it is a drag on the resources for any government. Both the government and the parties can save a lot of money and time if we have simultaneous elections. Of course, it is not as easy as it sounds, but there should be a national debate on the same and a consensus built around this so that at least in the next 10 years we can move in this direction. My personal opinion is, if not simultaneous polls, at least we should move towards “One Nation, Two polls” by having Lok Sabha Polls once and all State polls together after 2.5 years.
  • Limit the number of phases to 3 or 4 for any state: I don’t think there is any country in the world that conducts its elections over two months in eight long phases. The phase wise polling was conceived by T.N.Seshan when he was the Chief Election Commission mainly to counter violence and election related mal practices so that the EC can muster central forces and conduct free and fair polls. But those were the days of ballot papers where the chances of rigging were higher. Also in today’s times of EVMs and of course prevalence of Smart technology, ways and means need to be found for conducting free and fair elections in 3 or 4 phases in any state and eventually one phase.
  • Limit for expenses in an election is a joke: It is high time, the limits are re-visited. Also new limits need be prescribed for self, party and total expenses. It wll be good to take a look at best practices in other democratic countries on this and come up with a model for future.
  • Huge market opens up for political strategists and IPAC type organisations: This is not a new take away based on today’s results. But today’s results cement this proposition beyond doubt. It is no longer enough for parties to depend on their loyal karyakartas to carry our ground work. Parties need strategists and organisations to hold a mirror to them and carry out smart work in the field using data, analytics, technology and tools. It is not that an external strategist or marketing can save a bad product. But even a good product in today’s competitive times need adequate marketing cover. And therefore, the market for political strategists and political consulting companies in India has expanded. So it is as a career for youngsters in election management and related marketing. And Marketing works.
  • Last but not the least, EVMs are not instruments in the hands of those in power: I hope the debate around EVMs is put to rest conclusively now that opposition has also won spectacularly.

As you can see half of the points are related to the way elections are being conducted in India. After a round of reforms which Seshan initiated during his tenure, we have not seen much of electoral reforms. It is now time for the country to build consensus around electoral reforms and introduce them to keep our status as a vibrant democracy.

Image Courtesy: Firstpost.