Ethical Issues Relating to Indias COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: An Idealistic vis-a-vis Realistic Perspective

ABSTRACT

The socio-economic challenge emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic can be effectively arrested by inoculating the people all over the world. Tiding over the pandemic warrants vaccine solidarity by ensuring equity in the vaccine distribution among the countries around the globe. However, the Vaccine Nationalism (VN) attitude of many countries, especially the countries from the global north, is threatening the global fight against the pandemic. VN refers to the problem of the rich or vaccine-developing countries securing a majority of the supplies of vaccines initially to inoculate their own population. In this backdrop, the article highlights the case of the vaccine diplomacy of India, the domestic problem of vaccine shortages, and future directions. The vaccine diplomacy strategy adopted by India can be viewed as a humanitarian approach in the spirit of considering the world as one family from the idealistic viewpoint, whereas such steps can be seen as a strategic measure to counter China’s dominance in South Asia and also to reposition its global image. Such initiatives are also in line with South-South Cooperation and South-South and Triangular Cooperation. However, trading-off between domestic vaccine requirements and foreign vaccine requirements is extremely important for India, considering its huge population. Scaling up vaccine production by ensuring voluntary licensing for Indian origin vaccines, tackling vaccine hesitancy, and eventually, promoting vaccine solidarity will remain at the centre of the vaccine policy decision in the near future.