By Sushil Kutty
By 7 pm of August 26, 68 million more Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered, said the Modi Government. Do we have to take it for gospel truth, especially when India doesn’t rely on vaccine mandates, unlike the USA, where vaccine mandates help ensure vaccine compliance? More so after August 23, when the FDA gave “full use approval” to the Pfizer vaccine – and the Biden administration made it compulsory for government employees to vaccinate, and US soldiers also.
Vaccine mandates help combat disease, and vaccine compliance. Those who have taken their jabs give a far more robust battle to the coronavirus. But vaccine mandates require rule of law, which is rather lax in India; especially, they say, post-May 26, 2014, when the Modi Government took charge. And, after the Covid-19 second wave, there’s confusion whether ‘Bharat’ is, indeed, land of the rule of law? There’s too much to complain about; and that, too, about too many things.
Then again, very few state governments have issued vaccine mandates. The Modi Government also hasn’t. But there’s the ‘mall vaccine mandate’ or the ‘local-train vaccine’ mandate. That said, India’s vaccine supplies are scratchy. Not just newspapers report vaccines shortages, even government vaccination centres where the free vaccines are administered lament vaccines shortages!
India’s vaccine mandates expose the Modi government’s tall vaccines stories. The Centre issues daily updates on the number of vaccinated. But the figures hide more than they reveal. For example, commuting by Mumbai locals requires compulsory vaccination and only the fully vaccinated can buy the mandatory e-passes. But there are virtually no takers for the e-passes!
Proof that the middle and lower middle classes, who use the railways’ locals, are not fully vaccinated; which is an indictment of the Centre’s Covid-19 vaccination claims. Mumbai reopened “locals” to the “fully vaccinated commuters” on August 15. But the locals are running half-empty, with footfalls falling from 75-80 lakh commuters per day in pre-Covid days to 30-35 lakh these days.
It’s not that half of the previous commuters are Covid-dead or that commuters have divided between locals and public transport buses. The more likely answer is people aren’t getting vaccinated. There’s distrust in the vaccines and there’s a hidden community of anti-vaxxers. There are people like Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, a self-proclaimed “anti-vaxxer”. But his kind are few; India’s anti-vaxxers are mostly those who wouldn’t go to malls because they don’t want to get vaccinated.
Now, railway officials at Mumbai locals’ stations, those posted at e-pass issuing counters, are twiddling their thumbs, waiting for a stray fully vaccinated Mumbaikar. With vaccination certificates mandatory, it’s unlikely that people will hop a bus to jump into a ‘local’.
Fact is, the government’s vaccination figures are as dodgy as its data on Covid-19 deaths. According to a media report, vaccine inequity is a reality, and not everybody who takes the public transport must have taken his vaccine shots. The same media says only 17% of Mumbai’s population had been vaccinated by August 15.
Apart from Mumbai “locals”, vaccination is mandatory also for staff of Mumbai’s malls and restaurants. Many malls are up in arms against this vaccine rule and the “why” of that isn’t hard to guess. The daily dose of vaccination figures doled out by the Modi Government aren’t as kosher as they are made out to be.
The “fully vaccinated” mandate is a dampener on travel, business, etc., because substantial numbers of people aren’t vaccinated despite knowing that it would be safe for everybody if they are fully vaccinated. India’s vaccine mandates are observed more in breach. People generally find ways to beat vaccination mandates.
And Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not subjected to the same strict media scrutiny that President Joe Biden faces. Modi has been getting away with a lot of laxities. The majority of India’s media can’t stop praising Modi’s handling of major challenges. This, when half of the United States’ population is fully vaccinated, and more than half of India’s millions are still waiting for their jabs.
For America’s anti-vaxxers Biden is “insane fraud” who “rushed the Pfizer vaccine into full approval status” to roll out what they call “medical martial law”. But Biden’s vaccine mandates go far beyond those of Modi. For instance, US nursing homes run the risk of losing government funding if their staff is not fully vaccinated.
The fact is as of August 19, over 55 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered to Indians; and 13 percent of adult Indians received both doses. It’s also a fact that only a few states have vaccine mandates in place – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Karnataka, Odisha and Rajasthan. Only when vaccine mandates are imposed throughout India, and vaccination certificates become mandatory, will the extent of vaccination prevalence be correctly known. (IPA Service)
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