 Hello and let's talk about the COVID-19 situation in India. Now India continues to be the leader in terms of the number of new cases per day. This has been a record for over a month now, almost a month and a half. And we are right now almost recording double the number of cases in the United States. The next in line is recording. And we have a doubling rate of about 35 to 40 days, which also means that very soon we are likely to be the country with the highest number of cases. Now the government is still not really been very clear on how we intend to address this. We've also crossed, we also recorded a huge number of deaths. There's been no real strategy so far, except in terms of just hope that things will turn out well. But one thing that the government has announced in the form of union health minister Harsh Verdan is that by next year, by mid next year, that's July 2021, at least 25 crore people are likely to be vaccinated. That is, they will receive two doses of the vaccine that might come out early next year. Now this is really a considerable logistical challenge. How do we ensure that 25 crore people get two doses of these vaccines? What is the logistics involved? The kind of storage that is necessary? The kind of tracking that is necessary? The kind of door-to-door outreach that will be necessary? Newspix Prabir Prakash analyzes some of these issues. This trajectory will see India reach the top probably another month or so. We are reaching at the moment a doubly great of 40 days, not much of a constellation. That means our numbers will double. So at the moment, something like six and a half million that we have reached will double in another, say, 35 to 40 days. So doubling rate has come down from 30 to 35 days, meaning that if the number becomes larger, it's better. So from 30 to 35 days, which it was about two weeks back, it's now about 35 to 40 days, which is good. That means we are still slowly increasing the numbers, but not as fast as we did earlier. But even at this rate, we are going to overtake United States another month or so. So India still continues on its trajectory of being the epicenter of the global epidemic. We are the ones who are, in that sense, showing the largest numbers and continuing to show the largest number of new cases by far. So that's where we are at the moment. Things are not good. Our only constellation, which the government has been talking about, is the number of deaths per thousand or per hundred thousand and lower than others, which is, as we have said earlier, an indication of A, our counting not being so good. But more than that, the fact that we have a young population and younger the population, the effect of COVID-19, though it is serious, does not lead to death in almost all cases, except a small portion who could have other congenital or other hidden cases, or even open cases of, say, suffering already from cancer, immune problems, immune compromise. Not all young people, their immune systems are good. So those cases could have serious complications with COVID-19. Otherwise, most of the younger people below 40 do not show serious consequences of COVID-19. But let's face it, COVID-19 is still a serious disease. If you do have it, it is true that it is not that you will rebound within five days, seven days. The effects of COVID-19, as we now know, are continuing to last for maybe 30 days, two months, three months, those things are also there. So it's not just a small flu, as Trump was fond of saying, that you get over it and you're perfectly hunky-dory. That's not what's going to happen. Let's come to what we now really should be looking towards is the vaccines. And we have Dr. Harshavardhan, our health minister, who has announced that India is going to vaccinate 25 crore people by middle of the year 2021, the first six months of the year. We expect the vaccines to be available early next year. And therefore, within six months, 500 vaccine doses would be procured. And 250 million people will be vaccinated. The reason is, of course, because there are two short vaccines. Most of the vaccines we are talking about at the moment, either the AstraZeneca one, which is what is known as the Oxford vaccine, that is what is being produced by Serum Institute in Pune. And then you have the Gamalaya vaccine, which is again from Russia. And that, they have promised 100 million doses to Reddy's laboratories. Or other vaccines we are considering. It seems to be there are mostly two short vaccines, which means if you get 500 vaccines, then you can vaccinate 20 to 50 million people or 25 crore population. Six months, 25 crore population is quite an ambitious target, because we have to maintain the cold chain. And then we have to also see that the dosage, the gap between the two doses, are maintained. So that's going to require a major logistical exercise, the cold chain that we have talked about. And then seeing that at the center where people are vaccinated, record is kept, they are tracked, and they are again after the requisite gap, they're again given the second dose. So this is the challenge. But even if we do that, we are going to vaccinate only 20% of our population. Which means the herd immunity that we are talking about was really still going to be far away. Of course, we are targeting the people who are the front line COVID workers. I would include in that the entire utilities, those who maintain all the essential services, including the food and civil supplies, the transport, all of that are considered essential services for the country. And of course, the health workers, including the technician who actually has the hazardous job of testing for our blood sample or our other samples to see that we are either affected or not affected by COVID. So all of this means that the entire health system has to be geared up. The public health system has to be geared up to deliver 500 million vaccine doses to the people in six months. We have to set up the whole supply chain, which should go down to the delivery centers where people can be vaccinated. It's not that the people have to travel long distance to get vaccinated. So that's a major challenge. We have to see how the central government and the state government fulfills this task. Because till date, the central government has more or less acted by dictates, giving directions to the police, giving directions to the government officials. But have not really undertaken a major logistical exercise of this kind. Fortunately, India's pulse polio program has a spine by which the cold chains are available for reaching to vaccinate babies. So we vaccinate 170 million babies in pulse polio program each year. But that's a simpler one. Why? Because A, they're oral drops. They're not basically shots which we have to take. So they're not flu shots equivalent. So therefore, this is going to be more complicated. Plus the gap between the two has to be also maintained. And since we're not going to do a pulse program where you do either the gap is easier to maintain because you do it on a particular day. After another X number of days, months, you again do the second pulse and every baby is a broth and the polio oral drops are given. This is not going to be that simple because it has to be phased out. It's not oral drops. It's a shot that has to be given. So that is going to take more effort. And therefore, we have to keep track of the people you are vaccinating for the second shot. And that, as I said, is a major logistical exercise for 250 million people that we have undertaken to do according to the health minister in six months. Let's see how it works because as of date, the government has not shown efficiency in terms of the deliveries. In fact, it has its pronouncement has far exceeded its capability. And we hope in this particular case on COVID-19 that they will not botch up the vaccination program as the botched up the lockdown. As you remember, Indian lockdown was one of the most draconian ones. And yet it produced no slowing down of the COVID-19 cases, mainly because it was executed without any public health vision. It was really a police lockdown of the curfew variety. Now that's not a law in the power. COVID-19 is not a law and order issue. So that's not the way it works. It needs a whole set of other measures, including isolating the people who are infected, also contact tracing. Contact tracing is an extremely important element and then following up on the contact tracing of the people. Without this, the COVID-19 lockdown is only partially effective and it tends to break down as it did because people had also no food, no jobs, and therefore the entire lockdown really failed in its intent. So we hope that this time the government will prepare a lot better. They have time at least another three months to prepare for and they will take the state governments into confidence and this will be a partnership between the center and the state governments because health is a concurrent subject. It has to be delivered by the state government in the places where people are. Therefore it is not a top-down exercise and unless the communities are involved, this will not happen. So we hope this time the public health vision of involving communities, the state and central government, local government officials working together will be the model followed and yet it is a major challenge that's not underestimate the enormity of the challenge of vaccinating 250 million people and giving them two doses which is what the health minister has committed to do and hopefully in another six months they will be able to get 500 million people vaccinated by which time probably will be much closer to herd immunity. Six months you're still not going to reach herd immunity so for a lot of people the problem would still be there and we will not be able to go to what is called the opening of the Indian economy because irrespective of what government says the Indian economy will have the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic as long as the cases are as they are today that you cannot have 75,000 cases per day and yet return to normalcy which is what the government keeps on talking about so this the vaccination will be the crucial element for us to reach normalcy. Our next story is about the heartless incident over the past few days there have been a number of reports political leaders have visited the family of the victim there's been an outpouring of solidarity with the family of the victim there have been a lot of questions asked against the government both the UP government and the center as well about what is being done to make sure that such an incident does not take place again. Another key question that is being asked to the UP government is regarding the institutional failures that took place which after the rape happened on September 14th why was the victim why was the woman the Dalit woman not given the kind of support that she should have. We talked to senior advocate at the Supreme Court Indira Jai Singh on some of these issues and she also explained the kind of investigation process that might be needed to bring some confidence back into this process after the initial botched up attempts. After the September 30th we saw how the family was not allowed to speak to the media the media were not let in there were reports of the district magistrate even talking to them in a threatening way so we do see that there has been a continuous attempt to make sure that a lot of information does not get out but it did and once there was an outreach now the government itself has recommended a CBI probe so do you see this as in any way a positive sign or how would you see that? Well the family itself has rejected the idea of a CBI probe so if it's about sensitivity to their wishes I think we should defer to them somewhere I get the impression in this case it isn't even going to be enough to make sure that there is a proper investigation and a prosecution. What I would ideally like to see is a commission of inquiry separately from the prosecution a commission of inquiry under the Commissions of Inquiry Act looks into specifically the levels at which the state failed regardless of whether she is whether anybody is convicted or not convicted that's not the point what if ultimately in a properly conducted investigation and prosecution it is held that there was no rape so far there's been a murder anyway but that prosecution will not go into the question of what were the levels of failure of what you first your first question the first word you uttered in this interview was the state so the question really is a commission of inquiry of the levels at which you mentioned an additional level you mentioned the district magistrate how far up the chain of command does this failure of responsibility go with whom does the buck stop will it stop with the home minister of the state what kind of liability does he have to make sure that his bureaucracy do not interfere with a free and fair investigation has there been a failure at that level and compounded with the fact that this is a crime at the intersection of gender and caste what kind of caste atrocities are Dalits facing in this country what kind of atrocities are women facing in this country only a properly constituted commission of inquiry would give us the answers to this question and point to the way forward absolutely and finally maybe a slightly larger question we remember that in 2012 after the incident of rape at Delhi there was a massive number of protests there was a lot of discussion at that point of time about the kind of laws that needed to be implemented and not maybe not only that but even before people's movements feminist organizations, lawyers they have been in the forefront of pushing for a very strong legal system to deal with cases like this especially when it occurs at an intersection of caste and gender as you pointed out but in today's situation how do you see the strength of these laws actually when it comes to being implemented on the ground and especially maybe in a state like Uttar Pradesh a law is as good as its implementation okay and here I think an issue which is as important as the rape is the issue of command responsibility unless we address that question we are getting nowhere with these laws you know the sometimes people say it's a question of no it's not a question of implementation or lack of implementation it's a political question it is all these institutions are actually manned by people from the upper caste and they have come to believe that they have a right to oppress well I was dumbfounded when I saw a video in circulation of a very high up police officer and Madhya Pradesh who was beating up his wife here is a man who was given the charge of preventing crime against women okay an officer of the state he's beating his wife and he's coming out in the public domain and he's saying it's not a crime to beat your wife okay now if it's not a crime to beat your wife then it's not a crime to beat a Dalit woman then it's not a crime to rape a Dalit woman it's just not what we're seeing here is a decriminalization of crime and a crime which is in the nature of an atrocity okay not just a crime so to answer your question I don't see this as a question of lack of implementation I see this as a lack of political will I also see it as a lack of of you know the mindset again the word mindset has no meaning physically in flesh and blood these positions are manned by people from the upper caste with no empathy with no respect for law absolutely that's all we have time for today we'll be back tomorrow with more news from the country and the world until then keep watching NewsClick