India’s vaccine diplomacy- Economic and Social impacts and its competition with China in the global

Owing to the supply of affordable and quality medicines from India’s generic pharmaceutical industry to the global market, India has earned itself the title – “Pharmacy of the world” over the last two decades. With the help of its partnership with the Serum Institute of India (SII), India made its way as a major supplier of COVID-19 vaccines. So, what is the help of SII exactly? Taking a brief look at it –

· Serum Institute of India is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer and India has a partnership with SII by a number of doses.

· Serum Institute of India entered into a licensing agreement with AstraZeneca (British-Swedish Bio-pharmaceutical Company) in June, 2020 to supply one billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to low and middle income countries, including India.

· Also, in September 2020, a further collaboration among SII, Gavi (The Vaccine Alliance) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was announced. This introduces to the people a promise of accelerating the manufacture and delivery of up to an additional 100 million doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries as part of the Gavi COVAX AMC, a mechanism within the COVAX Facility.

· SII currently supplies the Covishield to the Indian government.

Preceding the collaborations of SII, another leading biotech company of India, ‘Bharat Biotech International Ltd.’ began developing India’s indigenous vaccine, Covaxin in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

According to a report in the New York Times, “India, the unmatched vaccine manufacturing power, is giving away millions of doses to neighbors friendly and estranged. It is trying to counter China, which has made doling out shots a central plank of its foreign relations. And the United Arab Emirates, drawing on its oil riches, is buying jabs on behalf of its allies.”

Let’s take a look at India’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’ which is making headlines-

· As part of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, the Indian government announced an elaborate ‘vaccine diplomacy’ strategy which includes providing vaccines to many of its neighboring countries as well as other developing countries.

· India’s neighbors, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, will benefit from vaccine supplies as part of India’s development cooperation initiative. Afghanistan, the Seychelles, Myanmar and Mauritius are also expected to be beneficiaries.

· India’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’ is also expected to make a way through the playing field in South Asia where China has actually had quite an impact in recent years.

Reports say India is using its ‘soft power’ to assist developing countries and this may just add up to its role as a ‘development partner’.

As per Duke University’s Global Health Institute, a group of advanced countries, which accounts for just 16 per cent of the world’s population, has succeeded in securing 60 percent of the global vaccinations for themselves. Thus, in the aspect of the increase in ‘vaccine nationalism’, India does stand out as it maintains a fine line between ensuring its domestic demand is met and supplying available vaccines with other countries.

Eric Bellman of Wall Street Journal also tweeted, “India has emerged the surprise leader of the global vaccine diplomacy race. It has exported three times more doses than it’s given its own citizens and can spare even more without hurting its own rollout.”

Nepal’s minister for health and population, Hridyesh Tripathi also stated that India has shown goodwill by providing the vaccine in grant. Bangladesh foreign minister said that “India again came with gifts of vaccines” after receiving the shipment of the vaccines.

However, on a different side, global vaccine supplies for High Income Countries have been seriously affected. It is quite obvious how every country tries to overcome the pandemic-induced crisis. Several studies caution that low vaccine availability, especially for smaller countries, will prolong recovery and trigger significant increases in global inequalities. According to a Rand Corporation study, it has been concluded that if low and low-middle income countries are unable to adequately immunize their populations, high income countries (HICs) will be severely impacted. The total cumulative economic cost for 30 HICs could increase from US$82 billion in 2020–2021 to US$258 billion in 2023–2024.

Indian companies stand today with the promise of production of “billions of Covid-19 shots this year alone”, as the world looks with a hope, in this pandemic, to have access to medical products as global public goods.