There were lots of expectations with the vaccination drive in India. Many nations were looking forward to drive-in India and were even expecting to pick up a few tricks on the way. Now, India has over four decades of experience when it comes to vaccinations. It has been doing carrying vaccinations for children and pregnant women in urban as well as rural areas since almost its Independence. The polio mass immunization drive, for instance, has been witnessed by all for many years now. These were the reasons behind such high expectations from India during the covid vaccination drive. Though on paper everything seems fine, the ground reality is far from anything good. The country that boasts of hosting the largest vaccination drive in the world, is actually reeling under its scarcity.
It all started good for India, two of its companies namely Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech came up with the vaccines in a very short span of time. Soon after its approval from WHO India even started exporting to many countries, setting an example for many other nations. Even the Prime Minister took pride in India helping out her neighbours with vaccines. It was then that everything started tumbling down for Modi and company. As soon as the union government launched its vaccine programme for people over forty-five years of age, it was met with a huge backlash in the form of vaccine hesitancy. Many fake news and rumours became a major hurdle in the drive, as people avoided taking the jab. However, relentless publicising and pursuance somehow brought the drive back on track. Just as it seemed that the worst was over, coronavirus returned with vengeance. The ongoing second wave of the virus has wreaked havoc all across the nation. Records have been broken, bodies piling up, prices rising and earnings are at all timely low.
Amid this, the union government of India decided to open the vaccines for all above eighteen years. However, it seems to have miscalculated the numbers. What has been going on with the vaccination drive is utterly disappointing. Firstly, it’s the unending blame game between the centre and states regarding the availability of vaccines. It seems that the intentions of the union government are right to vaccinate the citizens as much as possible to check the virus causalities, but the execution seems to majorly lacking planning and strategy. Schools, offices, colleges, hostels, unions, associations, etc are always organised with decorum. Such institutions could have been used to vaccinate their members, staff and surrounding people which could have helped with the speed of the drive. Having said this, increasing the speed would mean more demand for vaccines which seems to be another problem currently. All in all, the government is walking over a sharp sword here, it needs to fix the issue of quantity of vaccines or come with a more planned way of execution. Nevertheless, we Indians are known to cope up, adjust and adapt ourselves as per the requirement of the day!