by Nahian Salsabeel and Faria Ulfath Leera
Vaccine diplomacy as a global concept and practice has a long history. However, contemporarily vaccine diplomacy has reached a peak due to the break out of the global pandemic announced by WHO on the 11th of March, 2020 (WHO Timeline — COVID-19, 2020). Supplying vaccines have emerged as a new avenue to exercise soft power, now that health diplomacy practises in relation to Covid-19 have a lesser weight to it, as a diplomatic instrument. More and more actors participate in the race of vaccine diplomacy, the option of whom to choose as a dependable friend to supply the vaccines expands for other countries that are seeking access to inoculation shots against Covid-19. The practice of soft power during the time of Covid through this short-term tactic in the form of vaccine diplomacy may have implications in the long run. This is no exception for India, one of the biggest pharmaceutical producers, as it started its regional international vaccine drive.
India, which is the biggest pharmaceutical manufacturer, has been the central point for the dispersion of AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccines. It has provided many countries with generous donations which were fundamental to tackle the Covid crisis, within its region and beyond. The South Asian region, which accounts for approximately 23% of the world’s population, now also accounts for over 7% of global Covid-19 infections and 3% of deaths from Covid-19. In late May, the percentages of infected and the percentages of death compared to global rates stood at 18% and 10%, respectively (Dhaka Tribune, 2021). As India’s vaccine supplies to the South Asian counterparts were critical to their respective vaccine roll-out programs, its halt of vaccine exports had a very detrimental impact on the region.
With this as the background, the objective of this paper is to locate and illustrate the implication of India’s embodiment of the role of a regional hegemon due to its slowing down of vaccine diplomacy in South Asia, in the contemporary context. This study will depend on the secondary source of data, and the procedure of inquiry, data collection, analysis and interpretation will follow a qualitative research design. As qualitative-based research, the study will be highly reliant on the literature of past journals, books, and news articles related to the issue of concern, and therefore adopt document analysis as its core research tool.
The Concept of Regional Hegemon
When discussing the concept of hegemony, Mearsheimer additionally stressed that the concept may also be applicable for an entity that wields dominance within a particular geographical or geopolitical region. In such cases, a regional hegemon would have a considerable impact within the region, but not as much influence or control over the entire international system (Mearsheimer, 2001). According to Myers, the concept of regional hegemons encompass “states which possess sufficient power to dominate subordinate state systems” (Myers, 1991). What makes a regional hegemon so, as like a global hegemon, is the political will to shoulder the responsibilities that come with its assumption of leadership over the region. While this usually entails the active pursuit of a hegemonic role by definition, sometimes certain states may be pushed to such responsibilities without the predisposition of the political will of the particular power (Prys, 2008). Followership is another key aspect without which a regional hegemon cannot become so. In many cases, the acceptance of a regional hegemon originates from necessity rather than a “joyful embrace”. In others, it arises simply because the other states are weaker than the regional hegemon and thus cannot challenge it, and must accept its leadership, even if with reluctance.
A regional hegemonic system is determined by four different types of actors: (i) the hegemon or aspiring hegemon, (ii) bargainers, (iii) peripheral dependents, and (iv) external challengers (Myers,1991). In order to develop effective followership of the peripheral dependents, regional hegemons must take certain “special responsibilities” (Holsti, 1970) that often root from its unique historical socio-cultural ties with the region and the other states within the region, thereby resulting in a sense of exceptionalism when dealing with other states within the region (Lipset, 1996). It must be able to funnel a unilateral flow of certain public goods that the region requires at certain periods of time or at certain times of crisis. Regional hegemons, unlike traditional concepts of hegemon, are far from being considered the “lender of last resort” (Kindleberger, 1986). Contrarily, the failure to carry out the “special responsibilities” may lead to other states in the region bandwagoning together to balance or contain the regional hegemon, with or without the help of an external actor or external challengers. Additionally, should external regional hegemons of bordering regions amass a degree of contestable power, it may also want to exercise greater dominance over the neighbouring region, especially when the regional hegemon of the respective region is unable to fulfill its responsibilities or when it loses the undivided devotion of its followership within the region, thereby replacing the existing regional hegemon (Ayoob, 1999).
India’s Vaccine Diplomacy in South Asia: The Elephant of the Region During Covid-19
India, which occupies a central position in South Asia, is without a question one of the biggest economic and political powers, not only in the region but in the rest of the Asian continent as well. It has found itself shouldering greater responsibilities in the region through the provision of monetary and non-monetary aid, whether it be in contexts of countering disasters or development. India through its generous and diplomatic activities has proven itself to have the potential of being the only regional hegemon. It has time and again proved that it can take up the baton of the reliable herculean neighbor whenever other South Asian states are unable to deal with crisis situations to the point where they substantially mitigate them. The international community also happened to be inclined towards appreciating India’s act of altruism and acknowledged it as a regional hegemon. According to theorists of the concept of ‘regional hegemony, India has long been perceived as the regional hegemon both within the South Asian region and beyond.
During the ongoing pandemic, not only did India choose to contribute to the region with greater contributions with health resources, in early 2021, it promised to provide the region with Covid-19 vaccines, Covishield, which has been developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca and manufactured by Serum Institute India (SII), and Bharat Biotech-ICMR’s Covaxin. It is one of the global pharmaceutical production titans, as well as home to SII, the largest one of the world’s largest vaccine makers. The company came in contact and formed a partnership with Oxford-AstraZeneca to produce vaccines once developed early pandemic, last year. It had already produced and accumulated 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines by late January of 2021, of which, some would be delivered for the COVAX programme backed by the WHO.
The South Asian neighbours of India can be viewed as the bargainers, while the activities of the Chinese counterpart in the region is oft-times viewed as those of an external challenger by international and regional political analysts. Every friendship is driven by self-interest rather than on the basis of compassion when it comes to the question of international politics. South Asian countries accepting India as a regional hegemon is no different, who often found their alliance with the South Asian elephant enriching in multiple spectrums. India announced that it would provide its South Asian counterparts with free doses of the Covid vaccines, in line with its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, and as part of its ‘Vaccine Maitri’ campaign. Subsequently, it provided Bangladesh with 2 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines as grant assistance, when the country was experiencing a looming rise in the number of infected. Additionally, the South Asian mammoth also sent consignments of a million doses, 500,000 doses, 150,000 doses, and 100,000 doses of Covisheild vaccines to Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Maldives, respectively, during the end of January, with additional grants following certain cases as well. It remains one of the first countries to offer vaccines as gifts to neighbouring countries as several other powers in the multipolar world order were still using vaccine production and promises of sharing their vaccines in order to expand and strengthen their span of global influence.
Nevertheless, as the responsible hegemon of the respective region, India has stumbled in its mission of providing Covid vaccines as public goods to countries it was obligated to. As home to one of the biggest vaccine-producing companies and manufacturing capacities, the country has found itself to be the innate fulfiller of the inoculation drug demand in the region amidst the global pandemic. Due to the cheap prices of the vaccines manufactured in the delta giant country, it faced a large demand from developing and underdeveloped countries for immunization doses. Therefore, once India was faced with a new domestic Covid spike, in order to take care of their own, it had to limit its regional and international focus on fighting against Covid-19. In addition, other multifaceted factors led the country’s Prime Minister to announce the curbing of vaccine exports. Therefore, other neighboring states found themselves struggling to continue their vaccination campaigns on their own.
India’s progress in its vaccine diplomacy with its neighbouring countries in the region came to an abrupt stop when India was hit with a severe second wave of a mutated form of Covid-19 (France 24, 2021). The death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 350,000, with the number of infected amounting to nearly 30 million on June 20, 2021. The porous borders it shares with the rest of the South Asian countries have led to the mass spread of the virus across the region, with rising numbers of Covid-19 related fatalities in each of the neighbouring countries of India. UNICEF reported in early May that the South Asia region accounted for around half of the known infections globally. The healthcare systems in the countries of the region face overwhelming pressure, as new infrastructural and resource constraints arise, pushing the already fragile healthcare systems to the very real threat of collapse.
When assessing India’s falling short in its vaccine diplomacy in the region, one must look at both internal and external aspects that led to its current conundrum. Analysts have claimed that this predicament that India faces today, for which a lot of the developing world is having to pay a steep price as well, is rooted in a series of poor planning, insufficient procurement of vaccines to serve domestic needs, before the Modi administration’s launch of its vaccine diplomacy. Absence of well-thought policies to equip the general population of the country sufficiently in order to tackle the still looming threat of Covid-19. Prior to the outbreak, the Indian people emerged from partial and full self and state-administered lockdown in moderate crowds to be a part of different events such as weddings, family functions, venerations, festivities, and so on. However, more open and public arrangements like election campaigns, rallies, and India’s Kumbh Mela. This increase of gatherings in public was largely fueled by the misconception of the Indian people from the narrative of Prime Minister Modi that India had defeated coronavirus. This, consequently, led to the national administration believing that it could successfully carry out its ambitious vaccine diplomacy program. However, the situation did not turn out how the government anticipated it to be. It prioritized the exports of vaccines over the inoculation of its own domestic population, which was evident in the statistics that said it had administered fewer vaccines than it had exported. Other domestic elements that led to the problems it faces now include its miscalculation of production capacities it could have utilized in vaccine production as well as its ability to manipulate the prices of the vaccines produced on its soil at the very onset of the production process. It failed to pre-order adequate numbers of vaccine-like other vaccine-producing countries had done to meet the demands for inoculation of the domestic populations, before they were available for immunization. Domestic analysts of India also hold the judgment of not utilizing the vast swath of the country’s biotechnology-related manufacturing capacities to produce the Covid vaccines in full throttle from the very beginning. Additionally, it has also been brought up that the initial centralized bulk procurement of vaccines by the state authority could have been leveraged for lower prices.
In the international context, India faced issues in terms of the production of Covid vaccines due to the US limitation in the export of raw materials needed for AstraZeneca vaccine production in India. The US President Joe Biden’s invocation of the Defense Production Act made things worse as it effectively curbed the export of essential raw materials required for the production of the Covisheild vaccine produced by SII. The US partially changed its stance for India, announcing in late April that it would make resources critical to the production of the Covid 19 vaccines available to the country. It also facilitated US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to finance the expansion of production capabilities of BioE, which manufactures vaccines for India. The substantial development would allow the firm to produce up to a billion doses of the vaccine by the end of 2022. While March the 24th, 2021, marked the halt of vaccination exports, it was not until later in April that India declared a de-facto ban on exports of vaccines in order to deal with domestic shortages of vaccines and to cope up with Covid-19 infection surges. Even though the US did lift the embargo eventually, the dent had been instilled into the strong facade of India, put in place by its seemingly well-oiled vaccine diplomacy. Moreover, the South Asia heavyweight has also declared that it would not be continuing with its current vaccine export restraint until October.
A very critical challenge to India’s supremacy in the region has been posed by China. As the Indian diplomatic efforts to rekindle its relationship with other South Asian countries came to a halt due to its domestic inflated numbers of Covid infections, China has arrived at the scene to aid the rest of the neighbours in its adjacent region. Under the circumstances that China intervened in the regional diplomatic efforts, the desperate South Asian countries welcomed Chinese vaccines with open arms, and as a viable alternative to India’s service. In retrospect, China has been long accused by India for barging into its regional territory and meddling in the business of its backyard. By the end of May, China had shipped over a million of its Sinopharm vaccines to Sri Lanka, 1.8 million to Nepal, 550,000 to Bhutan, half a million to Bangladesh, and 200,000 to the Maldives (Ganapathy, 2021; Zeeshan, 2021), and has made deals to supply South Asian states with millions of doses of vaccines. And China’s donation and sales of vaccines in the region following India’s inability to fulfill the demands of the region only hyped up the debate that if the South Asian elephant cannot take care of its neighbours, the Chinese dragon will. Should India keep faltering in its attempts to carry out the duties expected of it as the regional hegemon due to external and internal obstacles, it is likely that its regional neighbours will side with other potential benefactor states, such as China.
Conclusion
While during the initial year pandemic, a greater number of countries resorted to resolutions of serving their own population over the international community, nowadays more and more of them have sought out vaccine diplomacy as a fruitful maneuver of increasing international standing. In today’s context, Covid 19 vaccines have proven to be an effective tool for maintaining and strengthening diplomatic relations for producer states with receiver states. This is evident through Russia’s recently launched vaccination campaign named Sputnik v in order to supply Covid 19 vaccines to countries in need across Europe. Russia’s initiative carries soft power messages, as more than 60 countries responded to it and made deals to purchase a Russia-made vaccine, Sputnik V as of June 2021.
In parallel, India’s motives for its highly acclaimed vaccine production and donations belonged to the same frame of mind. Its ‘Made-In-India’ vaccines really kicked off the vaccination roll-out campaigns in the neighbouring South Asian countries. Bhutan, for example, 64% of the population in a mere two weeks time. However, with the exacerbation of the Covid crisis within India, and the external element of US blockage on exporting raw materials for vaccines, drawback from its initiatives of vaccine diplomacy. As such, the South Asian countries have experienced a halt in their vaccine inflows, which has disrupted their respective vaccination programs and aggravated their own pandemic in the homefront. These developments have paved the way for questioning its hegemonic ability to perform its duties as a regional hegemon in regard to providing much-needed assistance in the region at times of crisis.
India’s vaccine diplomacy came at a time when it was a necessity for it to soothe its bumpy relationship with the rest of the countries in South Asia, most of whom were very inclined towards China’s own vaccine diplomacy attempts in the region. But as India has found itself withdrawing from the race of vaccine diplomacy, China has arrived to fill up void of India’s inability to take care of its self-proclaimed ‘backyard’, and establish its own Sino- centric footprint in the absence of the Indian ‘big brother’. In such a context, India’s prowess to successfully tend to the needs of the rest of the countries in the region, and thereby, act as a thriving regional leader, has been brought under scrutinous by governments in South Asia, regional and international analysts, as well as the general public in the region.