Money9 Edit | The opportunity in the challenge

Never earlier since Prime Minister Narendra Modi sold the ‘Make in India’ dream to the nation in 2014 did the opportunity come up so starkly – India now has the chance of emerging as a hub of manufacturing vaccines for the world. The country already has two manufacturers, something that most countries don’t have. In February, consultancy major Deloitte said that India has the ability to emerge as the second-biggest producer of vaccines after the US.

The government should now marshal all its resources to produce vaccines taking a leaf out of Franklin Roosevelt’s book who had asked even toy manufacturers to make armaments after the attack on Pearl Harbour. It should collaborate with reputable pharma companies and, if necessary, pump in public funds to buy out the intellectual property of Covaxin – a fruit of the collaboration of Bharat Biotech, Indian Council of Medical Research, and National Institute of Virology – and enlist new manufacturers to undertake 24X7 production.

The target should be to create additional vaccine capacities for speedier domestic inoculation and export to a number of nations. The entire world is in the need of vaccines and the demand is not going to dip anytime soon.

India has inherent advantages of mass production – technology, cheap labour, modern infrastructure, and logistics to take care of transportation. Production Linked Incentive Scheme should be extended to vaccine manufacturers. There is another big advantage in favour of India. The vaccines being produced here can be stored under normal circumstances and do not require the cold chain storage those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna need. In fact, the special storage requirements make it impossible for many countries to employ those vaccines at all.

Vaccinating the domestic population and becoming a dominant exporter makes the opportunity a rare combo.