India is embarking on one of the world's most ambitious
coronavirus vaccine programmes.
Central to this effort is the Serum Institute
of India, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer
here in Pune.
As a major pharma player India has the advantage
of huge manufacturing capacity.
Along with inoculating its own population,
India plans to export the vaccine to the developing
world.
But the government faces key challenges.
Rolling out the vaccine quickly across a diverse country
is a huge operation.
Convincing people from all walks of life to take the vaccine
is a major challenge.
What's more, the approval of its homegrown vaccines
has already proved controversial.
And the first days of India's vaccine rollout
have been slow, underscoring the difficult path ahead.
Indian government realised very early that it's one
of our strengths to manufacture a vaccine and supply in large
quantities.
India is one of the world's biggest manufacturers
of vaccines.
Two vaccines have been approved by the government so far,
Covaxin and developed by Bharat Biotech
and the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research,
and Covishield, the locally produced version of the Oxford
AstraZeneca vaccine.
There are several more in the pipeline based
on different technologies, including
one from Bangalore-based Mynvax that doesn't
need to be refrigerated.
In the developing world that could be a game changer.
For India, administering the vaccine to 1.4bn people is
a far bigger challenge than sourcing supply.
The government wants to vaccinate 300m people by July,
about a fifth of the population.
Official data shows more than 75 per cent of people
have not yet been exposed to coronavirus.
In the first two weeks of the vaccine programme India
inoculated over 3.5m people.
The vaccination programme is focusing on healthcare
and frontline workers first, and then people aged over 50.
More than availability, I personally feel that, you know,
vaccine hesitancy is going to be a challenge, actually.
Another huge challenge is to convince people
that the vaccines are actually safe.
Even healthcare workers are scared of taking the jab.
India's poor, who make up the majority of the population,
are far more concerned about the daily health
challenges they face from poor sanitation and hunger.
Convincing them that coronavirus is a priority
will be hard, despite being among the hardest hit
by the economic impact from the virus.
We have not seen that many deaths
due to Covid as we have seen because
of hunger, at least in India.
So for poor, it's not, I mean, they
are not really concerned about whether they
will get vaccinated or not.
India started its national vaccine rollout in mid-January,
but New Delhi is already looking beyond its borders.
The government sees an opportunity to boost its soft
power by supplying millions of doses of made in India vaccines
to its neighbours as gifts, as well as securing commercial
deals with countries, including Mongolia, Canada,
and Saudi Arabia.
India is also a significant contributor to the Gavi Vaccine
Alliance, which provides vaccines
to children all over the world.
Under its COVAX programme, India will supply a further 10m Covid
vaccine doses to Africa and a million doses to the UN.
India will even be sending vaccines to Pakistan
through COVAX in spite of their hostile relationship.
The soft power push has coincided
with questions over the efficacy of China's Sinovac vaccine.
Chinese companies are aggressively
marketing their products around the world
and have signed commercial deals with more than a dozen
countries.
The Modi government has made big promises
about its coronavirus vaccines, but delivering on them
will be hard.
Like China, India hopes to use its manufacturing capacity
to bolster its international standing.
At stake is not just the health of its people,
but whether the country gets a much needed injection
of confidence to start recovering from the wider
impact of the pandemic.