On Thursday Union Minister for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman while unveiling the BJP’s poll manifesto announced that the people of Bihar would be given free Covid-19 vaccination citing that as a reason to vote the BJP-JD(U) combine back into power in the state. It wasn’t merely a verbal announcement, but one that was in their manifesto as a poll promise and rightly so has sparked outrage from across the country.
The first question that immediately came to mind was: Are you saying that the rest of the country will not be given the vaccine for free? And what if the BJP-JD(U) alliance isn’t voted back to power? Do the people of Bihar have to pay for vaccines then?
Attempts to clarify the situation by members of the BJP claiming that it was up to each State government to decide whether the vaccine that will be supplied by the Centre will be passed on to the people free of cost have done little to blunt the ruling party’s blatant attempt at trying to mislead the people of India and of Bihar in particular in the name of a vaccine.
As things stand, little is known when, and if at all, a vaccine that is safe and effective will be made available. If -- and it remains a big if -- one is available there needs to be a countrywide plan for who will get the vaccine and in what manner the rollout will take place. Even best-case scenarios suggest that a rollout of a vaccine will remain a huge logistical challenge, and there is nothing to indicate that the government has a plan in place for how it will be conducted.
Offering the people of Bihar a vaccine that should ideally be freely accessible to everyone who wants a shot whilst making it sound like the party is doing the people a huge favour is doing a huge disservice to the country at large. This will only serve to fracture further the already creaking relationship between the Centre and State governments.
Instead, the Centre should be trying to take everyone along and send out an unequivocal message to the country that we will fight the pandemic together. Since the inception of the pandemic, the government’s moves had only served to encroach upon the domain usually occupied by State governments when it came to enforcing the lockdowns and the manner of it or moving in the opposite direction leaving states to fend for themselves in terms of treating those afflicted by the virus. In other words, the central government has held on to most of the power while taking none of the responsibility.
And now to suggest that political equations will determine the rollout of the virus vaccine is nothing short of preposterous. And yet rather than recoil at how repulsive that sounds, the ruling BJP will only double down on its promise. Those living in States other than those ruled by the BJP be damned. It’s now for the people of Bihar to decide whether they care for the common good more than their narrow gain.
