Team India showed strength

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister

Public participation is the biggest strength of democracy. If we run the country with the participation of one hundred and thirty crore Indians, then our country will move forward one hundred and thirty crore steps every moment. Our vaccination campaign has once again shown the strength of this Team India.

India has achieved the target of 100 crore vaccine doses on October 21, 2021, just nine months after the introduction of vaccination. This journey has been amazing in coping with COVID-19, especially when we remember how the conditions were at the beginning of 2020. Humanity was facing such a global pandemic after a hundred years and no one knew much about this virus. We are reminded of how unpredictable the situation was at that time as we were facing an unknown enemy who was rapidly changing his face.

The journey from worry to assurance is over. Our country has emerged stronger as a result of the world’s largest vaccination campaign. It should indeed be considered as a Bhagirath effort, in which many sections of the society have been involved. To get an idea of ​​the scale, let’s say each vaccination takes a healthcare worker only two minutes. At this rate it took about forty-one lakh man-days or about eleven thousand man-years to achieve this feat.

The trust of all stakeholders is critical to any effort to achieve and maintain momentum and scale. One of the reasons for the success of this campaign was the public confidence in the vaccine and the subsequent process which persisted despite various attempts to create mistrust and fear.

We are some of the people who rely on foreign brands even for daily needs. However, when an important thing like the corona vaccine came to the fore, the countrymen unanimously trusted the vaccine made in India. This is an important fundamental change. This vaccine campaign of India is an example of what this country can achieve if its citizens and the government come together for a common goal filled with the spirit of public participation. When India started its vaccination programme, there were many doubting the capabilities of one hundred and thirty crore Indians.

Some people said that India will take three-four years. Some others said that people would not come forward for vaccination. There were others who said that the vaccination process would be a victim of gross mismanagement and chaos. Some even went so far as to say that India would not be able to organize the supply chain. But like the Janata Curfew and the subsequent Purnabandi, the people of India have shown how spectacular the results can be if they are made reliable partners.

When everyone takes the responsibility, nothing is impossible. Our health workers cross hills and rivers in difficult geographical areas to vaccinate people. The credit goes to our youth, social workers, health workers, social and religious leaders, that India has faced less hesitation than the developed countries when it comes to getting the vaccine.

There was considerable pressure from different groups with different interests to prioritize them in the process of vaccination. But the government ensured that like our other schemes, there will be no VIP culture in the vaccination campaign. At the beginning of the year 2020, when COVID-19 was spreading across the world, it was very clear to us that this pandemic would eventually have to be fought with the help of vaccines. We started preparing early. We constituted expert groups and started preparing a roadmap from April 2020.

To date only a select few countries have developed their own vaccines. More than one hundred and eighty countries depend on a very limited number of producers of vaccines. Not only this, while on one hand India has successfully crossed the unbelievable or magical figure of 100 million doses, on the other hand dozens of countries are still eagerly waiting for their supply of vaccines! Just imagine what would have happened if India did not have its own vaccine.

How would India have got enough vaccines for such a huge population, and how many years would it eventually take? The credit must definitely go to the Indian scientists and entrepreneurs who left no stone unturned in their efforts to successfully face this extremely difficult challenge. It is because of his outstanding talent and hard work that India has become truly self-reliant in the matter of vaccines. To successfully meet the massive demand for vaccines for such a large population, our vaccine makers have proven that they are second to none by massively increasing their production levels.

In a nation where governments were considered to be a hindrance to the progress of the country, our government instead has always been extremely helpful in ensuring the progress of the country at a very rapid rate. Our government has partnered with vaccine manufacturers from day one and provided them with all possible support in the form of institutional support, scientific research and funding, as well as significantly speeding up regulatory processes. Our vision of ‘Sampoorna Sarkar’ has resulted in all ministries of the government coming together to facilitate the vaccine manufacturers and remove any bottlenecks.

In a country with a huge population like India, just producing is not enough. For this, there should also be a focus on vaccination and smooth movement of the last person. To understand the challenges involved, just imagine how a vial of vaccine is finally made to the destination. The vial, released from a pharmaceutical plant in Pune or Hyderabad, is sent to any state center from where it is delivered to the district centre. From there it is taken to the vaccination center.

In this, thousands of journeys have to be ensured through plane flights and trains. To keep the vaccines safe, the temperature has to be maintained within a certain range throughout this journey, which is centrally monitored. More than one lakh cold-chain devices were used for this. The states were given advance notice of the distribution schedule of vaccines, so that they could plan their campaign better and the vaccines could reach them successfully on the pre-determined date. Therefore, it has certainly been an unprecedented effort in the history of independent India.

All these efforts were heavily supported by Kovin’s strong technical platform. This ensured that the vaccination campaign remains equitable, scalable, trackable and transparent. This ensured that there was no bias in the immunization work or no scope for out-of-line vaccination. It also ensured that a poor laborer could take the first dose in his village and the second dose of the same vaccine at stipulated time intervals in the city where he works. In addition to real-time dashboard to promote transparency in immunization work, QR-coded certificates ensured verification. There is hardly any example of such efforts not only in India but also in the world.

In my Independence Day address in 2015, I had said that our country is progressing because of ‘Team India’ and this ‘Team India’ is a big team of our one hundred and thirty crore people. Public participation is the biggest strength of democracy. If we run the country with the participation of one hundred and thirty crore Indians, then our country will move forward one hundred and thirty crore steps every moment.

Our vaccination campaign has once again shown the strength of this Team India. India’s success in the immunization campaign has also shown the world that democracy can achieve anything. I hope the success of the world’s largest immunization campaign will help our youth, our researchers and public service delivery at all levels of government. It will inspire us to set new benchmarks which will be a model not only for our country but also for the world.