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On June 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed the blame on state governments for demanding decentralisation of the vaccination process and then not being able to deal with the challenges. A narrative was built by the leaders of the BJP that the April 19 vaccine policy was based on demands of the state governments and later they failed in handling the responsibility of vaccination. The Union government, in its May 11 affidavit to the Supreme Court of India also claimed that “several rounds of consultation and discussion with experts, state government and vaccine manufacturers” were held before taking a decision on the vaccination policy.
TNM spoke to representatives of state governments in the south, all of whom have confirmed that the states were neither consulted nor informed before the Union Government's April 19 decision to pass the responsibility of funding and procuring the vaccines for the 18-44 age group.
In the multiple meetings held between PM Modi and Chief Ministers of states, also attended by Health Secretaries, there was no discussion on the vaccination policy and states were informed of the revised policy, like the rest of the country, when the announcement was made on April 19.
‘PM-CMs meetings unilateral, with no scope for interaction’:
A dozen sources that TNM spoke to confirmed that the meetings were mostly unilateral in nature-with the PM telling the states what needed to be done with no scope for either raising questions, objection or seeking clarifications. The meetings mostly addressed issues like-containment zones, oxygen supply and availability of oxygen concentrators.
A highly placed source in the CM's office of a southern state told TNM that Chief Ministers of only three states-West Bengal, Maharashtra and Puducherry-were allowed to speak in a CMs meeting held in January. The then Puducherry CM, V Narayanasamy urged the Union government for universal free vaccine to be undertaken but his request was not met with any satisfactory answer, the source said.
Speaking to TNM, Narayanasamy confirmed the same. “In the CMs’ conference, I had suggested that you should give free vaccination, that the Union government should procure and give it to the states. The PM said that they have still not made a decision. This was in January 2021,” said the former Puducherry CM.
“At no point had the Centre or anybody told us that we(state governments) will have to fund the vaccines. During the 2020 Bihar elections, the PM had said free vaccination will be given to the people of the state. Later on, the Health Minister had also said there will be free vaccination for all. So in that backdrop, I asked the question to the PM and when we insisted further, he did not respond at all,” added Narayanasamy.
The tone of these interactions was authoritarian, according to a member of another CM's office of a southern state who was privy to the meeting. "The meetings where PM Modi spoke was like a strict teacher speaking to school students, with no scope for a two-way interaction," the source said.
No consultation process followed by Union government
In his address on June 7, PM Modi emphasised that the decision was taken by the Union government because the states asked for autonomy in handling the vaccination drive. "We thought if states are asking for this, they are enthusiastic, why not, let us give them 25% of the work. To complete this, they tried their own methods. In such a major endeavour, they also determined the kind of obstacles that can occur,” Modi said. “Two weeks into opening up the policy, many states said the earlier policy was better. Those who wanted the process to be decentralised also agreed with this," Modi said in his address.
But one Health Secretary told TNM that while a few states had in the past asked for power to handle the vaccination process, before the policy was drafted and announced, there was no consultation done by the Union government. The representatives of state governments who attended the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC) meetings were neither given the agenda of the meetings beforehand nor were they provided with the minutes of the meeting.
“The biggest blunder of this government was that they started thinking of vaccines only in January 2021 when countries like the USA, UK, Canada and even Spain had already placed their orders with Pfizer and Moderna by June of 2020,” Narayanasamy said.
After the April 19 announcement, several states had reached out to the Union government at different levels urging them to reconsider the decision of pitting states against each other. The Telangana Chief Secretary had written to his counterparts in Delhi asking for the policy of passing the responsibility of vaccination onto the states. The response was clear--the policy cannot be changed at the behest of the states.
What did the states ask for?
The decentralisation that the states asked for was not in procurement or funding say representatives of state governments. The demand was for decentralisation of the administration and implementation of vaccination, says Tamil Nadu Finance Minister PTR Palanivel Thiaga Rajan.
“I don't think anyone asked for decentralised procurement. When there are only two vaccine manufacturers in the country, to say let hundreds of people bid for it and create a lopsided market would be inane,” PTR told TNM.
The states were not ready to handle competition between themselves to place orders with the two available vaccine manufacturers in the country. With no prior notice, the burden of dealing with the manufacturers as well as funding was overwhelming for the cash-strapped states.
“What states were asking is-why should there be one central website where every single vaccine in the country should be registered? Why should that require documentation like Aadhaar when the SC has that Aadhaar is not required for services? Why should all those vaccine certificates be issued by the Union government? How do you mistake diversified distribution and freeing up implementation with diversified purchasing which nobody asked,” PTR added.