Vaccines for Votes in Bihar
The BJP's election promise for free vaccines for Bihar is problematic.
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BJP Offers Vaccines for Votes in Campaign in Bihar Elections
Campaigning in the Bihar Legislative Election is in its final stretch, with voting in the first phase of the election set to begin this week on October 28. There will be three phases in total, and the next two phases will be held on November 3 and November 7, respectively. The results will be announced on November 10.
The campaign is largely being fought between two alliances. On one side, the National Democratic Alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Janata Dal (United), and two smaller parties (the Vikassheel Insaan Party and the Hindustani Awam Morcha). On the other side, the Mahaghatbandhan (Grand Alliance) with the Indian National Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and an assortment of Leftist parties (the Communist Party of India (CPI), the CPI-Marxist, and the CPI-Marxist-Leninist).
With campaigning in the final stretch, parties have released their manifestos, outlining their key promises to the electorate should be elected to office. For example, the BJP’s manifesto has a series of promises. There are the headline items, such as the promise to create 1.9 million (19 lakh) jobs, spanning multiple sectors such as education, information technology, and healthcare. There are promises that speak specifically to voters in Bihar, such as ensuring that technical and medical education in the state would be offered in Hindi. There are promises that will appeal to specific populations, such a guarantee to farmers that the government would instate a minimum support price for lentils (as is the case with rice paddy and wheat).
However, once promise from the BJP manifesto has stood out, and not for the right reasons. It’s the promise that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has stated is the BJP’s Number 1 promise in its manifesto: free vaccination for all in Bihar if the BJP and the NDA are elected to power. Here’s video of the Finance Minister making the announcement (in Hindi):
Opposition parties have immediately hit out at the BJP for making such a promise:
However, the BJP has defended its promise:
From a policy perspective, this promise raises a number of problematic questions. Is it really appropriate for a political party, and the one which is in power at the central government no less, to politicize the ongoing pandemic by making a promise that citizens of a poll-bound state will receive benefits that other Indians will not? Given, as Amit Malviya says, that health is a state subject, is is appropriate for the Union Finance Minister, who, although she may be a member of BJP, owes her first allegiance to national advancement and development, to make such an announcement?
The issue gets further complicated when you look at how the government was planning to distribute the vaccine when they are eventually available. Milan Sharma of India Today reports that “Once available, the coronavirus vaccine distribution follows the same route as for the current practice of vaccines distribution under the Universal Immunisation Program (UIP).” If that is indeed the plan, how can the UIP - a Central government scheme - be then distributed in such a way where citizens of one state gets the vaccines for free (as with 12 vaccines currently distributed under the UIP), while others will have to pay for it (for example, the Serum Institute has stated it would cap the price of the vaccine at Rs. 225 or $3.05).
However, the larger issue here is how this promise adds further stress to an already strained center-state relationship. The distribution of COVID-19 vaccines (once available) to all 1.25 billion+ citizens of India will necessarily involve coordination between the center and India’s 28 states and 8 union territories. However, by making such a promise to Bihar’s citizens that their vaccines will be free, the BJP has instead set of a competition among states who will all be under pressure to similarly announce free vaccines for their citizens. This has already begun - Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami announced after Minister Sitharaman’s announcement that his government, too, will provide vaccines for free. Tamil Nadu heads to the polls next year.
Finally, the scramble to provide free vaccines will add financial pressure to state government budgets which are already reeling from a dispute with the center of pending compensation from the Goods and Services Tax (for more on this issue, please read this edition of Indialogue from a few weeks ago). The cost of the vaccine is going to be a major financial expense, as Vasudevan Mukunth and Siddharth Varadarajan outline in their recent article, using Bihar as an example:
Bihar’s population was estimated to be a little over 10 crore in 2011. This brings the total cost of just the doses required for the exercise to Rs 4,500 crore (assuming it will be a double-dose vaccine) – and which is likely the only portion of the exercise the Centre might subsidise. Then come the costs of storing, transporting and distributing the vaccines; recruiting and training healthcare workers to administer them properly; and reimbursing private hospitals and clinics that might be pulled into these efforts.
Where will this kind of money come from? The state’s revised expenditure on health and family welfare in 2019-2020 was Rs 10,315 crore, and the budgeted expenditure for this financial year is Rs 10,602 crore. If the COVID-19 vaccine is to be distributed without compromising existing healthcare services, the prospect of free vaccines seems well beyond the state’s control, and can only be executed with the Centre’s help.
Other states, which are now considering their own decisions to make vaccines free in their states, will face a similar expense, further straining Center-State relations. However, the big exception is that this time, the strain will be increasingly politicized and along party lines, given how the BJP announced this move as part of an election manifesto.
To put it more concisely, here’s E.P. Unny, the chief political cartoonist for The Indian Express, who, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head:
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News Roundup
The Ministry of Defense announced that the annual MALABAR exercises, held annually with the U.S. and Japanese Navies, will see the participation of the Royal Australian Navy in the 2020 edition of the exercise.
The United States and India will hold their third-ever 2+2 on October 27, 2020. The dialogue will be led by External Affairs Minster S. Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on the Indian side, and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Both sides will discuss “bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest.”
The Union Cabinet approved a Memorandum of Understanding between India and Nigeria, aimed at facilitating cooperation in the exploration and uses of outer space for peaceful purposes. The two countries will work together on areas such as remote sensing of the earth, satellite communication and satellite-based navigation, space science and planetary exploration, and the use of spacecraft, launch vehicles, space systems and ground systems. The two countries will also establish a Joint Working Group, drawing members from India’s Department of Space and the Indian Space Research Organisation, as well as the National Space Research and Development Agency of Nigeria.
India and Oman held the 9th session of their Joint Commission, led by India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Hardeep Singh Puri and Oman’s Minister of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion Qais bin Mohammed al Yousef. The two countries “agreed to cooperate in the areas of agriculture & food security, standards and metrology, tourism, information technology, health and pharmaceuticals, micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, space, civil aviation, energy (including renewable energy), culture, mining, and higher education.”
The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) of India, a regulatory body established to regulate financial services in specific “International Financial Services Centres” in India, such theGujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, has approved a framework for the creation of a “Regulatory Sandbox” in GIFT City to allow entities in the city to “experiment with innovative FinTech solutions in a live environment with a limited set of real customers for a limited time frame.”
India participated in the 7th India-EU Foreign Policy & Security Consultations, with Secretary (West) Vikas Swarup leading the Indian delegation. In particular, the two sides discussed cybersecurity, counter-terrorism, maritime security, and disarmament and non-proliferation.
India will virtually host the 5th meeting of the Joint Working Group on Coal between India and Indonesia on November 5, 2020. The meeting will be co-chaired by Vinod Kumar Tiwari, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Coal of India and Dr Ir. Ridwan Djamaluddin, Director General, Mineral and Coal Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of Indonesia, and will include a business-to-business component to explore business opportunities in Coal sector in both countries.
The Indian Navy and the Sri Lankan Navy held the eight edition of their bilateral maritime exercise, SLINEX, from October 19-21, 2020. The exercise “aims to enhance inter-operability, improve mutual understanding and exchange best practices and procedures for multi-faceted maritime operations between both navies.”
Three to Read
From cogent analysis to potentially big news that you should keep an eye on, here are a few commentaries and other pieces of writing that I found particularly enlightening:
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Democratic Candidate for President, argues: “[Just] as we value the Indian-American diaspora, we’ll continue to value the U.S.-India relationship. For Donald Trump, it’s photo-ops. For me, it’s getting things done… That’s why if elected President, I will continue what I have long called for: The U.S. and India will stand together against terrorism in all its forms and work together to promote a region of peace and stability where neither China nor any other country threatens its neighbors. We’ll open markets and grow the middle class in both the United States and India, and confront other international challenges together, like climate change, global health, transnational terrorism and nuclear proliferation.”
Shiv Aroor, Senior Editor at India Today and Founder of Livefist, writes: “Plenty has been written so far about the clash between Indian and Chinese troops in Ladakh's Galwan Valley. But contradictory claims, and gaps in the narrative have so far left the story bereft of cohesiveness. Several questions have remained unanswered, with individual aspects lending themselves to speculation and guesswork. Now with a series of conversations with Army personnel in the Galwan Valley, Thangtse and Leh, India Today TV pieces together the most detailed account so far of how things played out.”
Joanna Slater Niha Masih of The Washington Post’s India bureau write: “As the United States and Europe grapple with fresh surges in coronavirus cases, the outbreak in India is slowing for the first time since the pandemic began. Epidemiologists and doctors say the virus is in retreat — at least for now — in this country of more than 1.3 billion people. After seven straight months in which cases increased relentlessly, culminating in a devastating September surge, the number of new infections per day in India dropped sharply in October.”
Thanks for reading this latest edition of Indialogue. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback by emailing me at aman@amanthakker.com.