[Marxistindia] for Universal Mass Vaccination

[news from the cpi(m)]

April 20, 2021

Press Statement

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued  
the following statement:


A Universal Mass Vaccination Programme
Essential to Meet This Grave Health Emergency

The new vaccine policy announced yesterday, is once again an effort by  
the central government to absolve itself from the colossal health  
crisis that they have created. There is an effort to shift the entire  
responsibility on to the state governments.

This policy is essentially an effort to liberalise vaccine sales and  
deregulate prices, without augmenting supply. The centre has failed  
for a year to do anything to ramp up adequate and needed vaccine  
supplies. This is a recipe for exclusion of crores of people who will  
find it unaffordable to procure the life-saving vaccine.

Further, vaccines were so far free of cost to the states. Now, states  
have to ‘procure’ them from the ‘open market’ without any price  
regulation. The vaccine providers according to this latest policy,  
will declare their ‘self-set vaccine price’. This again, is bound to  
exclude an overwhelming majority of our people.

The state governments should be funded for the vaccines from the  
central exchequer.

Further, this policy is bound to breed large-scale black marketeering  
and hoarding.

A mass vaccination programme has to be free and universal. This has  
been independent India’s heritage and practice.

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) strongly condemns this discriminatory,  
anti-equity and haphazard policy making of the centre aimed at  
absolving itself from all responsibility. This is not going to  
mitigate the pandemic or resolve the huge public health emergency that  
our people face. On the contrary, such a discriminatory policy will  
only make India more vulnerable to the pandemic surge.

Only a mass universal vaccination programme can meet the needs of this  
emergency.


For Central Committee Office