Vaccine Rollout: Why India Needs The Private Sector

Besides bringing in more inoculators, the private sector can be instrumental in reducing hesitancy and help speed up the current laggard pace of vaccinations

- Divya J Shekar & Manu Balachandran

The world’s largest vaccination drive is currently underway in India.

From March 1, the programme was extended to the country’s private hospitals for the first time under the next phase of immunisation for senior citizens and persons with comorbidities. For a few months now, the entire vaccination rollout in India has been reminiscent of the country’s once-notorious government-controlled economy, where the government has been undertaking the initiative, keeping the private sector at bay.

That’s also probably why the pace of vaccination has been laggard, forcing clarion calls from India’s top business leaders to allow participation. “If the government was to engage private industry quickly, we can be rest assured that we can achieve a coverage of 500 million people within 60 days,” Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, told Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in a post-budget interaction. “That's a practicality. It is important that the government consider this as a major supplementation to the effort.”

In February, the government provided some reprieve and permitted private hospitals in India to start vaccinating large swathes of the population. Ever since the vaccination began on January 16, it has only been the government that has purchased the vaccines and even administered them to close to three crore health care and frontline workers.