Plug critical gaps in logistics & planning

Subir Roy
Senior Economic Analyst

INDIA’s corporate leadership seems to be moving towards the position that there is no alternative to declaring a total lockdown across the country, the way it was done last year, to tackle the ongoing Covid wave. This is the sense that comes through from the observations by CII president Uday Kotak.

The received wisdom from last year’s quick and total lockdown was that it did more harm than good and that is why the government at the Centre has till now resisted going in for such a move again. Instead, it has left it to individual states to devise their agenda depending on how seriously they have been affected by the resurgence of infection.

Indian industry has, on its own, gone in for lockdowns for short periods at manufacturing plants in order to break the chain of infection and thus save the workers from falling victim to the virus. Plus, through CII, it has offered a plan to tackle the emergency.

With material aid coming in from all over the world and corporates coming up to do all they can, it is clear that the critical gaps are in logistics and planning. The oxygen, ventilators and medicines are there. The challenge is to get them in time to those facilities which are in critical need. Only functioning platforms which bring together the supply, demand and logistics can save the day.

Planning has to address the immediate crisis at hand — with patients dying outside and in hospitals for lack of oxygen — and also look ahead. There is an urgent need to up the rate of vaccination and testing. While there can be some excuse that nobody expected a second wave of infection to come so suddenly and furiously, there seems to be no excuse for India’s poor record in vaccination. Only 9 per cent have received one shot each, compared to 44 per cent in the case of the US.

Vaccination is not going faster primarily because there are not enough shots in hand. It is appalling to be told by the Serum Institute of India (SII), the country’s major vaccine producer, that the current shortage will continue till July when its monthly output will go up from 60-70 million doses to 100 million. Capacity would have been upped earlier had the SII received the orders.

And it is not at all clear why even after the government has taken the decision to let in vaccines approved by leading global regulators without going through trials in India, the head of Pfizer had to go on record saying a few days ago, “Unfortunately, our vaccine is not registered in India although our application was submitted months ago.” The Indian government is still discussing an expedited approval pathway even as vaccination of those 18 or above cannot take off smoothly because there simply aren’t enough shots available.

The measures outlined by Kotak focus on tackling the medical emergency in hand. The CII will in time be ready with an economic action plan that will have to counter not just one but what seems likely two successive years of severely stymied growth.

The scenario that experts have visualised is that around the end of May the virulence of the second wave could begin to subside, allowing for economic activity to be slowly scaled up again. While doing so, it must be ensured that the country never makes the same mistake again. It will have to be assumed that there will come a third wave for which medical contingency plans will have to be kept ready.

While micro lockdown restrictions are slowly lifted, it has to be ensured that people don’t say goodbye to basic precautions like wearing masks, maintaining social distancing and not gathering in large numbers, particularly indoors. Unless this is done and the country plunges into further rounds of electioneering and large religious gatherings, the future will be doomed.

The job of ensuring that precautions continue to be taken should not be left in the hands of the police but given to the volunteers of political parties which are important in individual states. Only they can ensure cooperation without intimidation. Who is missing in action?

Delhi is the worst affected city and it has been left to a senior RSS functionary in the Capital, Rajiv Tuli, to bemoan the ‘virtual absence’ of the BJP there. On Twitter he has asked rhetorically, “There is a fire everywhere in Delhi, has any Delhiwalla seen BJP Delhi?” At the end of the day, it is only the political forces that can get people to act the way they should, not the threat of police fines or lathis.

Current priorities are clear: tackle the medical emergency, try to ensure that economic activity is not stopped any more than can be helped, and make available some succour to the unorganised worker and his family who are on the edge of starvation.

The corporate sector can, for its part, play a somewhat unusual role: come forward and tell the government — we will do the logistics for you so that every Covid patient gets a hospital bed and oxygen and whatever is necessary as a matter of course. The government was goaded into involving the private sector in vaccination after Azim Premji said in late February that 500 million could be vaccinated in two months if the private sector was brought in.

Then India had given one shot to only 0.75 per cent of its population; today it is 9 per cent. I took my first Covid shot at a private hospital shortly after Premji spoke up, at the government-approved rate of Rs 250 (in a government hospital it would have been free). I would have gladly paid a multiple of that if only to ease the government’s resource crunch.