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On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour to draw the US into World War II. In January 1942, US president Franklin Roosevelt ordered that factories that were manufacturing something else in peacetime should begin producing armaments for the war. The fiat continued for three years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi can perhaps take a leaf out of Roosevelt’s books and ‘conscript’ some of the pharma companies of the country to produce COVID vaccines. India has a thriving pharma sector that also exports various drugs to various nations. If some of the pharma majors join hands at this hour of crisis, producing the sufficient number of vaccines might not be a challenge. Call it vaccine nationalism if you will, but in an hour of national peril, it seems to be in order.

The India story has examples of a particular sector changing the face of the country. Till the 1980s, the cab driver was the predominant Indian identity in New York. For the past several years, it is the information technology worker. There is no reason why the nation’s pharma sector cannot take up the cudgel against the virus.

Going by the fury of the second wave, the fight against the virus seems to have just begun. The lockdown and the injury to the economy caused by the virus in 2020 now appear like the opening scene in a suspense thriller.

The vaccines that are produced in India by Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech are inadequate compared to the number of people who need the protection. Till April 16, only 1.1% of the population were fully vaccinated and 7.6% got at least one dose.

The Centre’s decision to fast-track approval for the use of foreign vaccines might not open up a flood of dependable jabs since all manufacturers have a domestic market to protect and a government to listen to. The clock is ticking away; and the graph rising furiously.