By Don Aguiar
Mumbai: On a single January day in 1997 India vaccinated 127 million children against polio. The following year, another 134 million were vaccinated in a single day. No Aarogya Sethu, no Cowin, no OTP, no running from hospital to hospital, no PM’s photo on anything.
India has tons of experience in free vaccination. We just need the right leadership, who can ensure its proper execution. But what is happening today is……
The nation is not in a state of shock because the healthcare system has collapsed. It was always biased against the Poor and Marginalised. It was always biased against the Labourers, Farmers, Low wage workers, manual scavengers and all those who were in the lower strata of society. For them it had collapsed long back. This time, the country is in a state of shock because healthcare system has collapsed for the Rich too.
Although our Prime Minister not too long ago convinced the nation that we are a super-power or, at least, one that is definitely in the making. This misplaced, unscientific, irrational and downright foolish conviction we are special is the cause of the crisis we face today.
Well, an invisible virus has punctured the bubble of our pretensions making a lot of people feel disappointed with the government’s governance – the same government they lovingly voted back to power for reasons that has nothing to do with governance. The root cause of this disappointment is the same as always, unwarranted expectations.
Coming to specifics, all of us are expecting the government to provide free vaccination in a timely organised manner. Vaccination is all the rage these days – and that’s the crux of the problem, people are unable to manage their expectations.
Our PM has given thousands of speeches in the past seven years. Has he ever talked of ‘Vaccinated India”? No. all he has ever spoken about is ‘Digital India’ so you must be crazy to actually expect free vaccines from the world’s largest vaccination drive.
A patriot’s foremost expectation from the government – more important than even his own life expectancy – is that it will channel all its resources to protect the country’s image i.e. the PM’s image. That is why one must not expect the thousands of millions set aside for building the PM’s new residence to be used for buying vaccines and giving them free to every citizen.
India’s biggest tragedy is that even the highly educated intellectuals claim to be disappointed with the government for “not offering any governance.” They expect centralised coordination for ensuring timely, organised access to vaccines, etc.
For several months, well before the advent of coronavirus in India our PM repeatedly urged us to become Aatmanirbhar and he did so expressively that we are fully prepared for the pandemic. Do you even know what ‘Aatmanirbhar’ means? It means expect nothing from the government. So be it. Expect nothing.
On April 28, when the Indian government opened up vaccine registrations for all adult citizens the government said citizens should sign up on CoWIN, its Covid vaccine registration website, or download its coronavirus contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu, on their phones. Vaccination slots would be made available on May 1.
But the domestic workers, labourers, farmers, low wage workers, manual scavengers and internet illiterate have no idea what the CoWIN website and the Aarogya Setu app are. Their mobile and internet literacy are limited to making calls, exchanging messages on WhatsApp, and browsing Facebook: the latter two only because a salesperson at a mobile store downloaded the apps on their phone and changed the language setting to theirs, the only one they can read.
“I have never heard of the Aarogya Setu app. I don’t know how to download apps. I’m not educated. How will I self-register?” a domestic worker said in an interview.
While the Aarogya Setu app is available in a few regional Indian languages, the labourers, domestic workers, farmers, etc. are not aware that they needed to download it and register on it in order to get the vaccine. The CoWIN website, however, is available only in the English language.
But registrations don’t really matter because India is experiencing a dire shortage of vaccines, which means within seconds of opening up, slots are booked. The Indian government has fallen way short of its own target of vaccinating citizens.
Their helplessness has been exacerbated by an unjust vaccination system that prioritizes efficiency and high technology instead of need, loading the dice in favour of the tech-savvy elite over most of the country’s 1.4 billion population.
Ahead of vaccine registration for the 18–44-age group on April 28, the government opened up CoWIN’s application programming interface to third parties. By offering tech tools like application programming interface that can only be used by software programmers, the government, in effect, has created a discriminatory arrangement that defeats the logic and urgency of a public health program. In this environment of scarcity, the government’s message seems to be: learn how to code and you can get a vaccine.
However, only a small percentage of people in the country can take advantage—or are even aware—of these workarounds. Even those who are urban, educated, internet literate, and come from wealthier backgrounds cannot do much to book a slot unless they are aware of platforms that are making the booking process easier or have a techie friend who knows how to write code.
The government should not have made self-registration mandatory for anybody, whether online or offline as CoWIN and Aarogya Setu are barriers for vaccination progress. People were never expected to register on their own and come for appointments, in earlier vaccination programs, even walk-ins will not solve the problem. The government needs to micro plan and organize vaccine drives by chalking out specific dates for specific districts and cities.
The government’s vaccine policy has been widely criticized on all fronts including supply shortage, communication, pricing and rollout, by several health experts and public intellectuals – when actually it should have been given free and rolled out quickly because it has been budgeted for.
What we got in vaccine policy is a bizarre combination of ruthlessness and managing the headlines. … This is ad hoc social Darwinism. The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. A perfect metaphor for our healthcare system.
There is nothing like a critical moment in history. So even after everyone gets vaccinated, until we sort out ourselves……. there is nothing to stop another round or another pathogen.
Consequently the picture the world sees of India is not of a potential super power but an inept and flailing third-world country struggling but unable to handle a crisis it’s inflicted on itself.