Covid vaccine politics

The BJP’s surprise decision to make free Covid-19 vaccination in Bihar an election promise adds an avoidable and uncalled-for political twist to the battle against coronavirus. The Union Finance Minister and not a party functionary making the announcement only makes it look and sound worse. Singling out a state and steering the vaccine conversation from identifying who needs it on priority in any part of the country to who should get it as a poll promise amounts to fiddling with management of an unprecedented public health emergency. Within hours of the BJP, ruling both at the Centre and in Patna, releasing its manifesto, the Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu, which goes to the polls next year, and BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh announced free coronavirus vaccination. This could just be the beginning.

Suddenly, from a cooperative Centre-state national resolve, a political agenda has been injected into the Covid containment processes. The implications of encouraging competitive federalism and a state-versus-state, party-against-party tussle for getting access to the vaccine stocks could be grave. There will be genuine apprehensions in various state capitals about whether the Centre plans to dilute a national vaccine management plan.

In a bid to douse the criticism, a Union minister did allude to the fact that if a vaccine comes, it will be for the whole of India, not just one state, but that is not the message the manifesto tends to give. The Prime Minister has repeatedly assured that there will be no shortage of funds for the gigantic undertaking of vaccinating the second most populous country after China. On the eve of the festival season, he even warned citizens that the disease was still active and present, and they would be putting their own lives and those of their family members at risk if they were irresponsible about safety measures. The BJP choosing to make vaccination an election issue, too, cannot be deemed a responsible approach.