Going by media reports, India has triumphed in South Asia against its rival China in vaccine diplomacy. At least four South Asian neighbours – Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives have gladly accepted India’s generous gift of 3.2 million doses of Covid 19 vaccine produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) under the licence of Oxford-AstraZeneca. As the world is striving to find a way out of the pandemic, India found its vaccine producing capacity very useful for diplomatic revival in the neighbourhood.
On the other hand, such enthusiasm was markedly absent in relation to the Chinese vaccines. Among those four nations, China had offered Bangladesh and Nepal some of its varieties as gift. It has also offered similar goodwill gestures to few other countries in Asia and Africa. Pakistan has already accepted the Chinese offer of half a million doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine. China has made a concerted push to sell its vaccines to countries around the globe for months but only recently announced donations to Myanmar, Cambodia and Philippines. According to Chinese media reports, it has signed deals with 20 countries, many of which are in Southeast Asia, to offer its home-developed vaccines.
India started shipping those Maitri (friendship) vaccines just after four days of launching vaccination of its own population. But, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made the calculation that it has enough vaccines to share and hence it launched this diplomatic initiative ahead of any other in the world. It now plans to donate millions more to Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. A former Indian ambassador described it to Reuters as “a well-crafted, calibrated series of actions you are seeing, they confirm the validity of our ‘neighbourhood first’ policy.”
The ban effectively stalled some of the export commitments for which Serum Institute has already taken advance payment. Among the affected, the most notable is Brazil, which at the last hour had to cancel its special flight for taking the cargo. Bangladesh too did not receive the promised shipment that it bought through Serum’s agent Beximco Pharmaceuticals despite repeated assurances that the ban would not affect this deal. The deal stipulates that from January, Bangladesh will get 5 million doses a month and the whole 30 million will be delivered by August. Amidst confusion and uncertainties over Beximco deal, Bangladeshi officials said that they were expecting 1.5 million of the vaccine doses bought together with the Indian gift. But, at the end, it only got the gift consignment which is less than 40 percent of what Serum should have delivered under seller’s obligation.
Serum Institute also had a strategic partnership with Global vaccine alliance GAVI which had invested $300 million in strengthening its production capacity and to secure hundreds of millions of doses of its Covid 19 vaccines for low and middle income countries which would be managed by COVAX supported by the World Health Organisation. It seems quite unusual that the COVAX was not in the priority list as it has not yet received any supply, while, India was able to use it as a tool to advance its diplomatic agenda against China. The chronology of the events centering AstraZeneca vaccines clearly shows Modi government’s political intervention in the supply process by stalling normal exports and diverting some of those to re-label as donations. Had India allowed Serum to fulfil its export commitments and added the government gift with them, then the glory would have been something extraordinary.
Both India and China have joined the vaccine race from the very beginning and were keen to run trials in Bangladesh. At the onset of the Chinese vaccine development, Bangladesh did agree to allow its trial, but withdrew later owed to alleged dispute over cost sharing. But, the latest official statements suggest Bangladesh will now allow both China and India to run trials of their respective vaccines on its population. These developments too suggest China somehow lost out to India.
Kamal Ahmed is an independent journalist based in London.
