 You're watching News Made Easy. I'm Anandya Chakravarty and today I'm going to talk about the new policy announced by the Prime Minister yesterday, India's COVID vaccination policy. Now, if you remember in April what had happened that the government said that they are going to liberalize vaccination, which means that 50% of the vaccines are going to be procured by the central government, by the Modi government and then distributed to states. 25% will be available to states to directly buy from the manufacturer and another 25% was going to be bought by private hospitals. Now private hospitals were allowed to charge a certain amount and mark up on what they were paying to the vaccine manufacturers and whoever was willing to pay was going to get vaccinated that way. Yesterday that policy has taken a U-turn and the government has said that everyone was above the age of 18 is going to get a free vaccination and the central government is going to procure and provide that. Some say this is because of a nudge from the Supreme Court which came a few days ago where the Supreme Court wanted the government to review its vaccine policy at least question the vaccine policy and some say no, this is because the states have failed. That's the government's argument and those who support the government. The argument is that the states wanted to vaccinate and we opened it up and that didn't happen, they failed. So what can the Modi government do? Now it has to come back and take charge and distribute. Well, that's come two months too late. It's come at a time when the COVID second wave is already on its way out and throughout that second wave you've seen a complete mess of the vaccination process. Now the question is that if every Indian is going to get a free vaccine then why is 25% of the vaccine still being reserved for the private sector? Why are private hospitals going to be allowed to procure 25% of those vaccines? These are the two questions to ask, right? First, what was wrong with the previous policy where you were allowing states to directly procure and states really didn't want to. They kept saying let the government do it, center do it and give it to us and there's been a course correction. You know, let's try and understand this a bit and think about it that, you know, you've made a lovely butter chicken at home and if you're vegetarian maybe a paneer makhani that you've made and you don't want to make the rotis or the naan yet. So what do you do? And this happens in every family. You call up the local dhaba or the restaurant or club and ask for rotis to be delivered. The tandoori roti or naan which goes well with the butter chicken or the paneer makhani that you've made. Now imagine that you tell everyone in the family that you call up the dhaba or the restaurant or the club yourself and tell them how many rotis you want, right? Or how many naans you want. What is the normal procedure? Everyone asked how many are you going to have? How many are you going to have? You collate the total and then give a single order. But now instead of that, you say, oh, how many do you want? You say, and someone says, I want two tandoori rotis. Another one says I want a naan and a, you know, a lachha paratha. It says, okay, everyone make your own phone calls and get the delivery. Now think about it. What is going to happen? The person who first makes the delivery, a phone call gets the delivery and they're waiting and they say, okay, my rotis and come, I am going to start eating. So they eat while the rest wait for their deliveries to happen because they made their phone calls later and when the restaurant gets these eight different phone calls, they don't know how to track and who to send. So they send eight different people to deliver the food, right? To the same place for the same objective of providing rotis. So think about that. It's more or less the same way in which the vaccination process was opened up. It supposedly opened up in April. Every state was supposed to make their own demands and get vaccines for themselves. Yes, a part of it, 50% of it or half of it was going to be delivered by the center, no doubt. But there was no plan. So finally the government has understood that if you have to order rotis to the same place, same restaurant, better collate all the demand, find out who wants what and order at one go. That is exactly what is happening. But even now, we don't really know how it's going to be distributed to the states. There's no clear plan available, no transparency. Is there a policy as to if there are cities which are congested where there has been a high incidence of COVID? Is the government going to vaccinate those places first? Are they going to treat villages the place to vaccinate first because that's likely to be hit by the third wave? Is there a policy on vaccinating children who are supposedly going to be hit by the third wave? What is the policy? We just don't know. And I think in some senses we have got used to a system in which of authoritarian top-down planning and decision-making. We just don't question it anymore. And that is what we're seeing, that we don't ask questions, we don't seek transparency. Anything that happens is dictated right from the top and it is changed whenever it is required. So that is where the problem was with the old system. And even now, despite this course correction, there are some problems that remain. Now let's look at the private sector, how private hospitals will still be procuring 25%. Now imagine to go and get a vaccine in a private hospital, you have to pay anywhere between 850 to 1250 rupees depending on the vaccine you're taking if you're taking among the two key vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin. It depends on what you're taking, you'll have to pay accordingly. And mind you, most people cannot in this country afford to do that. If 25% of people could afford to pay that, then we would have 25% of affluence in this country and we know that's not true. Not even the top 10% are people who can afford to pay that kind of money for medical issues. Especially at a time when so many people have lost their jobs, so many people have lost their livelihood, incomes have gone down. This is when the government needed to step in. Okay, the government will say, we are giving it for free if you want it for free, take it for free. But look at the news reports that have come out from just three cities in the last few days. Let's take Delhi. We see the news report which says that in Delhi, because there's no availability of vaccine for the 18 to 44 age group in the government centers, what is happening? You either go and get it and pay more at a private sector hospital, at a private hospital. Or if you don't have money, you can't get it and that's the report. Delhi's youth are unable to get vaccinated because it's either too expensive or it's not available where it's supposed to be free. That is the problem and by the way, the youth need to get vaccinated because they are the people who need to go back to work. That's crucial thing to remember. Look at Bangalore. Majority of vaccines that have been given in the past few days have been in the private sector. Look at Bombay in Mumbai. In Mumbai, the BMC has given fewer vaccines in the last few days than private hospitals. So this is across the board. There is no transparency. Okay, we've been told that in India we are producing anywhere between 8 to 10 crore vaccines doses a month. But where are they? We have no transparency. We are not clear about how many actually are being produced even now. Even though we've been hearing that there's a production has been ramped up here. Bharat Baitik has ramped up and Serum Institute has ramped up, but we have no clear picture. So who's going to decide whether 25% of the quota that the private sector is going to get when at the end of the day or every batch that is coming out? We don't know any of that. There's no way to track it. Finally, even in the private sector, we have data which shows that nine top hospitals have cornered a majority of vaccines. They are the people who are giving the vaccinations right now and think about it. I'm quoting data produced by CNBC TV 18 where Prashant Nair presented this data where he showed that the pure profit that private hospitals are making on these vaccines is anywhere between 120 to 170 rupees per dose. That's a huge profit per dose and they're going to end up with huge profits by the end of the year. No one's grudging them their profits. They've invested money and if you believe in the private sector, go ahead. That's profit driven, but it's for the center to ensure that vaccination is available to everybody and there's no internal apartheid that is being created because of that. The rich get better access to vaccines because they can go and pay more and get it in a private hospital. And the poor and not so affluent, those who cannot afford it, have to queue up and wait when those vaccines are going to be available. No one knows. We have announcements about ramping up and free vaccines, but it's simply not been coming. That's the episode today. Keep watching NewsCleg and also subscribe to our channel.