By : Sabatini Chatterjee and Satyaki Paul
On May 31, 2021 the Supreme Court of India held that Modi Government’s policy of not providing free vaccines to individuals between 18 to 44 years age bracket was prima facie “arbitrary and irrational”. Thus, Modi government introduced a new Vaccine Policy to neutralize the effects of May 1, 2021 notice. The new Vaccine policy would be effective from June 21, 2021.
Some of the new mandates of the Vaccine Policy are:
- Every citizen above the age of 18 will be vaccinated free at central and state government centres.
- All citizens will have to pay for vaccination at private centres.
- The 3-Vaccines will be available at the cost of Rs. 780 (for Covishield), Rs. 1,410 (for Covaxin) and Rs. 1,145 (for Sputnik V). Furthermore, a price cap of Rs. 150 is proposed as service charge amount for private centres.
- Due to digital divide, individuals who are unable to register at CoWIN app can directly register in all government and private centres through onsite medium.
- The Centre will procure 75% of the manufactured doses and distribute the rest among the states for free administration. The rest 25% will be accessible to private centres.
- The allocation of vaccines to the states will be done on the basis of indicators such as: population, disease burden, the progress of vaccination and wastage of vaccines. Therefore, good number of vaccinations will draw a higher number of doses; consequently, higher wastage of vaccine doses will result in lesser allocation.
- The State governments will also aggregate the demand of private centres keeping in view equitable distribution and regional balance;
- Non-transferrable electornic vouchers, approved by RBI, will be introduced to enable individuals to financially support vaccination of economically weaker sections at private centres. Such vouchers can be download in one’s mobile phone, later it can be scanned at a vaccination site and the amount will be credited. It will be also available on CoWIN app.
The policy has also assigned priority groups such as: Healthcare and frontline workers, individuals above the age of 45 and individuals who second dose is due (18-44). However, no supply agreements have been finalized with Pfizer, Moderna or John and Johnson yet, and the Corbevax vaccine of Biological-E is also at pending state.
Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has directed the Centre to make availableexplicit details of its vaccination initiative such as: procurement, % of population covered, and other plans for coverage. Thus, Modi’s world’s largest vaccination programme is under scanner. Furthermore, to degrade the situation recent collated data from various state governments website exhibit that only 15% of our country’s population has received a single dose, while only 3.5% of our country’s population are fully vaccinated. The situation is very grim at the ground level. So, our country’s premiership should move away from showmanship to doing what is needful at the moment. The author works as a Research Assistant at the Cultural Research Institute, Kolkata under Backward Class Welfare Department, Government of West Bengal. And, the co-author works as a Ph.D. Research Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta.