Vaccine prices and national interest.

Source: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/booster-dose-covishield-covaxin-prices-drop-to-rs-225-per-shot-11649499288064.html.

Recently, vaccine makers in India dropped their prices, some even by as much as 80%+. There was a brouhaha about price gouging and profiteering. The media, Twitterati, thought leaders, and social influencers, were all up in arms. I, for one, do not agree with either of them.

You see, my problem isn’t with the vaccine makers for making money. I mean, they are for-profit enterprises. What else did you expect? It is right there in their Memorandum and Articles of Association. Why is anyone surprised? They deserve to make profits, whether or not they were subsidised, or got their tech from another foreign company, or were supported by the government, of whatever.

You. Cannot. Blame. A. Private. For-Profit. Enterprise. For. Making. Profit.

That’s it. There’s nothing immoral or unusual about it.

My problem is with the government. You take our taxes. You arm-twist HNIs and corporates into putting money into your elections, into your PM CARES, into your CM relief funds and so on. You charge a 260% tax on fuel. You charge ridiculously high direct and indirect taxes. It is your responsibility to negotiate with the vaccine makers, order in bulk, use the laws to your advantage, use our taxes and donations to pay for the vaccine, and distribute it to every Indian efficiently and in time.

Why. The. Hell. Am. I. Even. Paying. For. It?

It’s your job to ensure I am safe in a fucking pandemic.

By diverting our attention from ‘Why is the vaccine not free?’ to ‘Why is Serum Institute making so much money?’, you are shirking your responsibility. I do not blame the vaccine makers. They are being true to form, and doing exactly as they are mandated to do, which is maximise shareholder value by taking as much from the customer they can get away with and give as little as is allowed. To them, this is a PR issue and not an ethical one.

I blame the government. They are not doing what they are mandated to do, which is to serve the country’s interests by taking as little from the citizen (in terms of money and freedoms) as is practically possible, and giving so much in return that even if they have to borrow in order to do so, that’s considered par for the course. To the government, this ought to be an ethical issue, but they are making it out to be a PR one.

We must learn how to cut through the clutter and see the problem (and its source) for what (and where) it is, and not get distracted by the noise, as we are often prone to.

P.S: I had written about this long back (in 2010). It is long-winded and verbose, boring even, because I was just evolving as a writer then (I am still long-winded and verbose; I am just less boring, if that can be called evolution). But it is worth the read, if you have the time.