The Opposition parties have raised questions about the modified vaccination policy announced by the Centre on Monday. The Congress said the new policy refuses to grasp that the problem is not only of vaccine production, but also of financing, procurement and distribution, and of coordination with the States.

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram told reporters that the Centre appears to have abdicated its responsibility towards the poor by excluding them from its vaccination programme.

“In a country where the median age is 28 years, to leave those who are below the age of 45 years out of a public-funded programme is, to say the least, callous. The migrant workers who live and work in other States and are the lifeblood of the economy of our cities will be the worst affected by this directive,” he said.

While welcoming some changes, he said the devil is in the details and the policy is, in crucial respects, regressive and inequitable.

‘Regressive policy’

He said the States will have to bear the responsibility and cost of vaccinating the poorer sections who are below the age of 45 years. By liberalising vaccine pricing, and by not fixing a price for States at the same rate as it is available to the Centre, the government is paving the way for unhealthy price bidding and profiteering. “States with limited resources will be at a considerable disadvantage. States that are already weighed down by shrinking GST revenues, lower tax devolution, reduced grants-in-aid and increased borrowing would have to bear this additional burden. Meanwhile, nobody knows where the thousands of crores of rupees collected under PM-CARES are being deployed,” Chidambaram said.

Senior leader and former Minister Jairam Ramesh, who also addressed the briefing, asked the Centre to invoke the provisions for compulsory licensing to allow other domestic vaccine manufacturers to manufacture the approved vaccines and augment total supply. The leaders said while the modified policy allows for import of foreign-made approved vaccines, there is no clarity whether any foreign manufacturer has agreed to export its vaccine and, if so, whether adequate quantities have been promised to be supplied on an agreed schedule. “It is also not clear if the central government will take the initiative to import foreign-made vaccines and distribute them among the States,” they said adding that nowhere in the world has any government left its vaccination programme to be determined by the vagaries of market forces, and for good reason.

Free, universal programme

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) said a universal mass vaccination programme is essential to meet this grave health emergency. The party said the new vaccine policy is yet another effort by the Centre to absolve itself from the colossal health crisis that it has created. “There is an effort to shift the entire responsibility on to the State governments. This policy is essentially an effort to liberalise vaccine sales and deregulate prices, without augmenting supply. The Centre has failed for a year to do anything to ramp up adequate and needed vaccine supplies. This is a recipe for exclusion of crores of people who will find it unaffordable to procure the life-saving vaccine,” the statement added.

The States have to procure the vaccines from open market which were so far available free of cost for them. “The State governments should be funded for the vaccines from the central exchequer. Further, this policy is bound to breed large-scale black marketing and hoarding. A mass vaccination programme has to be free and universal. This has been independent India’s heritage and practice,” it added.