As of 9 March 2021, India has supplied about 60 million doses of vaccine globally. On the other hand, China has supplied only about 12-15 million overseas. And deeper analysis of India's supply of vaccines to different countries shows that New Delhi has been using its vaccine diplomacy very strategically.
Posts tagged as “coronavirus”
Breakdown in communication and trust between the government and citizens resulted in heavy hardship as citizens lost access to basic services. There are lessons to be learnt from Punjab, Kerala and Odisha. We need to build enabling infrastructure that helps communities to act freely to meet their own needs.
During COVID-19, larger centralised rice mills have been shut down due to transportation restrictions and lack of diesel. But smaller decentralised rice mills have been running and keeping farmers alive. There are many lessons for rural development from this experience.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, India saw 680,000 unsafe abortions, sparking demands to promote telemedicine abortions, which would allow doctors to provide consultations and prescribe pills over the telephone or the internet. However, in India, this practice could have its own side-effects.
While 42 percent families in urban India have access to the internet, only 15 percent in rural India do. Yet, in the face of the pandemic, India has no choice but to adapt to online education, unless it wants to risk years-long gaps in the education of millions of children. Here's how to do it.
The anti-vaccine movement across Europe and America has led to sharp increases in vaccine-preventable diseases in recent years. This is particularly alarming, given that the only viable solution to COVID-19 is a potential vaccine. How did American politics turn so radically anti-science?
Whenever there is a one percentage point increase in poverty, there is always a 0.7 percent increase in child labour. With falling family incomes, many children might choose to stay out-of-school even after the pandemic subsides, in order to add to the household income.
Mental health is gravely affected in numerous ways by regressive social norms, which curtail individual freedom. Improving the state of mental health in India requires a multidimensional approach - more inclusive policies, better law enforcement, and sustained social reform.
Millions of people live inside or around remote forests and wildlife reserves. Their close proximity to animal species creates the potential for existing and undiscovered diseases to spread out to the world through them. It is integral that we make efforts to address the needs of these communities.
In the next ten years, India could account for one-third of the world’s mental illness cases. Yet, only 0.06 percent of GDP is currently allocated to the problem. The Mental Health Care Act 2017 was a step in the right direction, but it needs to be better adapted to India's unique context.