IT'S NOT JUST FOR CORONA, INDIA NEEDS MULTIPLE VACCINES

Some of the preventive shots that are needed have existed for long in the form of protections under our Constitution

- G S VASU

THESE are strange times in many ways. At no other point in history has the entire world been focused on only one problem: finding a drug, ideally a vaccine, for a raging pandemic that has affected millions, throwing out of gear what all of us believed was normal life. In the Indian context, though, there appears to be a dire need for more than one vaccine to deal with the social, political and economic orders that have come to dictate our lives. This is needed if the electoral democracy and the institutions we have built in the post-Independence era—having already developed comorbidities owing to assaults at different times—are not to succumb to the varied viruses sweeping across the nation. Suppression of labour-power (what UP and other states are doing using Covid as an excuse), disdain for intellectuals and using fear as a tool against the masses and selected individuals—the signs are all there.

But let’s make no mistake. Such knocks have been delivered even before, crudely during the time of Indira Gandhi, more subtly during UPA rule, and perhaps belligerently now. Some of the vaccines that are needed have existed for long in the form of protections under the Indian Constitution. It’s just that they are out of stock now or those who are required to vaccinate themselves are unwilling to do so.