Why India’s vaccination against Covid-19 is a global democratic pivot

When future generations look back at this moment, democracy will be adjudged in needle jabs.

As the world’s largest democracy rolls out the world’s biggest programme for providing vaccination to 1.3 billion people against the Covid-19 disease, it is a pivot in the history of democracy in India, and in the world.

It is easily forgotten today that vaccination, and inoculation, and indeed the spread of health for the masses using government tools and materials have been one of the key pillars in the empowerment and the spread of democratic processes around the world. In America, for instance, the ‘founding fathers’, men like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Adams, were also supporters and propagators of inoculation against the dreaded smallpox at a time when many were suspicious of such medical treatment.

The successful roll-out of the vaccine in India will complete a cycle that started with the country not only enforcing a tough lockdown, pushing almost full compliance of the use of face masks, sending much needed medication like hydroxychloroquine to several countries, and an Indian company (Serum Institute) mass producing the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. It will showcase that far from being a problem centre, India’s ability to handle problems at a mass scale, and provide global solutions, again at scale, is something for the world to learn from, and prize.

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