General rant on #VaccineMaitri -- ignore if you want to! #…

How many of you remember this India: always begging around. Waiting on the so called "western powers" to dole out goodies. The land of Yindoos who can't do anything right. Heathens or Kafirs always talking high and seeking Western approval. Yes. We were that not long ago.

Countries that were a fraction of our size in population and resources would not give us a second look, because we were utterly useless. We didn't make anything. We wrote code - for others. We were proud of it too. Well, we did make our money out of it. So, no harm done.

We were the preachy neighbor / distant cousin for many countrys that couldn't get our own house in order. Corruption? yes. Crimes? yes. Inefficiency? yes. Third world infra in health and industry? yes. Empty high falutin talk about moral high ground? hell yes.

In 2014, the country decided to course correct. We decided that we will focus on manufacturing. Many missteps and slips later, we aren't where we ought to be. But we are far ahead from where we were.

Cut to 2020 and Covid. For a year we were told that we will be decimated.

But we somehow controlled it. Despite the utter chaos in the streets [we were irresponsible] the governments [central and state] managed to keep the losses to a minimum. Don't take my word for it - see the per capita / per 100K stats across the world. We did a stellar job.

In about June 2020, the race for vaccines started. It was not a trivial race. By Dec 2020, we had two vaccines [Astra Zeneca and Pfizer] approved in the West; we had Astra Zeneca approved in India.

India still had it well under control. So much so, that people ignored ++

++ government warnings and went about their merry lives. Let me paraphrase a saying that I heard from many: "no one cares. It is as if there is nothing". That is the time when SII had taken a big bet and mass produced millions of doses of vaccine [60million doses, IIRC].

China was actively supplying vaccines to many countries [Dubai has either Pfizer or Sinopharm, till date]. Every single country was trying to use the calamity to their advantage. Only idiots won't do so.

Countries in Caribbean, Africa & IOR were wary of China and its diplomacy.

India had snubbed China in 2020. In order to establish itself as a global major power, we had to press on that advantage.

India had low case counts & had vaccine supplies. Not only that - we had obligations to supply vaccines to GAVI (look it up). Those were IP transfer terms.

Enter #VaccineMaitri - in a single move, India had nullified the Chinese vaccine diplomacy in IOR / Caribbean. The goodwill earned was enormous. For once, India was known across the world as the saviour. For the first time - Indians walked with their chin up.

When the situation worsened at home, India scaled back its supplies and focused on internal demand. As the article by @surajbrf shows - we are NOT in any kind of shortage. We are walking a tight rope - but to blame #VaccineMaitri for this is beyond stupid.

Why? Because the total number of doses we donated would have covered 2 - 3 days of our current rate of utilization. We have sufficient stock until about May. The two - three days of reduced stock isn't going to affect our safety.

To say we are having a shortage is a lie.

Now we come to the problems: USA under Dems (thanks to all those who voted them) have stopped critical supply to SII under an emergency law.

We have people asking why we don't have the capability to make them here.

How do we know we don't make them here? We may well be.

However, the nature of industrial production is that supply chains are fine tuned strategically. Many a times, we can't find an alternative supplier who can provide at the scales we need and quality we demand - within a short time. That shit takes time, boss. But, lesson learned

Amidst all of this -- what do we Indians do? We don't have the mental strength to stand up and say "yes .. we did the right thing by giving those countries vaccines". We don't have the spine to point a finger at US for stopping critical supplies. We don't care that entirety of ++

++ #vaccineMaitri could have only lasted two days in India, given our rate of supply. All of this when we have more than a month's worth of stocks and we are already working to ramp up.

We don't care about any of these because we have more egos than brains. We are easily shamed.

For all the self-righteous talk about being more brainy than the others [we question our own], we are basically Pavlovian dogs trained to self flagellate at the mention of the word bhakt.

The liberal has to throw the word bhakt and we will burn our house down to prove otherwise.

I am sorry if the world doesn't work according to your clean plans. At least have the humility to understand this: just because you have a pandemic, none of the other problems facing this country - both internal and external, have taken a break. /Fin.