By Sandeep Verma
The Covid-19 vaccine distribution ecosystem is mindbogglingly complicated: it is now clear that nearly all nations will use numerous vaccines consistently moving from numerous suppliers to the final mile, operating practically on a ‘just-in-time’ basis. To make matters tough from procurement and logistical perspectives, unique vaccines need unique refrigeration temperatures, have unique shelf lives, want unique time-spacing in between the 1st and the 2nd shots, and have vastly differing handling needs. To its credit, the central government initiated a effectively-planned physical exercise for procurement and delivery of vaccination services at a scale by no means attempted just before in planet history, outpacing in the approach just about every other nation by securing for India’s citizens what is possibly the biggest stockpile of Covid-19 vaccines anyplace in the planet.
Given the size and scale of India’s needs, the Centre has taken charge of delivering vaccines to regional depots and it is the states that want to choose up that point onwards for on-time, final-mile delivery of vaccination services. It is crucial, consequently, that states spend complete heed to the PM’s clarion contact urging them to work constructively with the central government, for guaranteeing the achievement of the PM’s vision of guarding just about every single Indian from the Covid-19 pandemic.
This, of course, will also need states to shed their standard adversarial attitudes vis-à-vis the central government and India’s national efforts getting expertly piloted for containing the Covid-19 pandemic could effectively want ‘responsible’ politics on aspect of India’s states more than ever just before.
States-Centre cooperation: A win-win
Governance frameworks that contact for states seamlessly cooperating with the Centre have huge prospective to provide crucial public policy objectives in occasions of crisis: the most crucial a single getting a uniform method enabling complete options to be forged—these had been necessary lately when some consuming states in India began stock-piling oxygen supplies and some other making ones began putting restrictions on their inter-state movement, requiring the central government to gently: (i) ask states to audit oxygen consumption in hospitals—nudging them towards a lot-necessary ‘demand rationalisation’ and (ii) discourage inter-state restrictions on movement of goods—thus unclogging India’s provide chains as soon as once more.
Constitutional authority for Covid-19 management
While public overall health and law & order come across mention in List II (the State List) of the Indian Constitution, List III (the Concurrent List) thereof permits the central government to prevail so as to assure prevention of extension of infectious/contagious illnesses (such as Covid-19) from a single state to yet another. When it comes to handling of disasters, constitutional authority is somewhat more dispersed sub-element smart amongst List I (the Central List) and the other Lists on the other hand, the pyramidical structuring of the Disaster Management Act (DMA)—unambiguously putting the central government at the helm of affairs—clearly indicates that central initiatives for Covid-19 management are on an incredibly firm foot.
Again, although procurement preferences or exclusivity beneath the DMA architecture could, prima facie, lie with state and district authorities as opposed to, for instance, the Defense Production Act (DPA) of the United States a more harmonious and complete reading of the DMA leads as an alternative to the conclusion that it is the National Disaster Management Authority that has overriding powers for management of disaster conditions.
Central authority for managing numerous other very important components of the Covid-19 mitigation framework is exclusive: it is the only regulatory authority for managing (or even taking more than) industrial production beneath the Industries (Development & Regulation) Act, or for the testing of vaccines and approval of drugs beneath the Drugs & Cosmetics Act. And once more, it is the central government alone that can use its informal (diplomatic) and formal (trade policy) roles for maximising national interest outcomes, each of which had been superbly discharged by the central government for guaranteeing timely availability of Covid-19 testing kits and other healthcare supplies from all corners of the planet.
OWS: USA’s unfolding story
The Operation Warp Speed (OWS) at present underway in the US has benefited from States’-Federal cooperation in a quantity of intriguing approaches, enabling the forging of a national consensus on a quantity of crucial operational problems. These include things like invocation of the DPA prioritising federal acquiring suppliers releasing only 50% production just about every week reserving the other half for adhere to-up second doses hence guaranteeing one hundred% second dose administration and establishment of a ‘vaccine trading’ platform exactly where states can exchange their respective allocations amongst themselves, to the extent of any mismatches in between centralised allotments and neighborhood/state refrigeration capacities.
Bootstrapping by states in India
In India, the Centre has seamlessly tied up vaccine supplies each from domestic and international sources for creating them accessible to regional depots and the ball is now clearly in the states’ courts to similarly organise their efforts and preparedness in very important regions of logistical preparing such as identification and upgrading of neighborhood refrigeration capacities (to support the Centre program allocation of which vaccine(s) would be most appropriate for that location) identification of vaccination venues and targeted info dissemination (so that target populations as prioritised nationally are in a position to in fact avail vaccination services in a streamlined manner as soon as they arrive at such a centre) coaching of vaccination service providers (VSPs) and providers of other logistics services so as to assure correct tracking of vaccine movement and of vaccine recipients and so on and so forth.
States will, consequently, want to have in location acceptable contractual arrangements effectively in time just before the actual vaccination rollout starts, either by means of rigorous PPP-style SLAs (service-level agreements)/IDIQs (indefinite delivery indefinite quantity) or framework agreements so that infrastructure upgrade is timely and VSPs in certain are reimbursed straight away and with no any unnecessary delay. In truth, an even more ambitious state-level method could be to make advance or automated payments against automated tracking of vaccination, so that VSPs do not face liquidity crunches that can otherwise endanger timely delivery of vaccination services.
Conclusion
The part of states in final-mile delivery of vaccination services is certainly ‘serious business’ and any district/neighborhood level bottlenecks in the provide chain could need reallocation of vaccines to yet another location in view of the want to consistently move stocks from suppliers to regional depots to district depots to vaccination centres amidst rigid refrigeration capacity constraints at numerous levels. This reallocation, in turn, could potentially deprive, even if temporarily, eligible residents of that location/district from the national objective set out by the PM so clearly—all for the reason that of some state government or district authority failure to take vital actions for timely preparing, upgrading and procurement. The PM, in his normal interactions with state governments, has repeatedly underlined the want for a national consensus for Covid-19 containment and the want for India’s states to come forward—irrespective of divergent political ideologies—and to constructively contribute to the central government’s national work is right here and now.
The author is an IAS officer and LLM specialised in Government Procurement Law from George Washington University Law School. Views are individual
(Not to be cited with no prior permission of the author.)