While ‘cash for votes’ is all too familiar in the country, the BJP has introduced a new inducement -- ‘vaccine for votes’ -- in the Bihar elections in an obvious attempt to exploit the electorate’s fear over a pandemic that has cumulatively affected over 7.5 million people in the country and taken over 117,000 lives so far. Releasing the party’s poll manifesto, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the people of Bihar would be provided Covid-19 vaccination free of cost.
While the rest of the country, especially states that are worse affected than Bihar, have a right to be outraged over this partiality, Sitharaman’s statement has raised the question whether the Centre’s policy on vaccine distribution will be based on whether a state is going to elections or not, ignoring other parameters, so that the BJP can make electoral gains?
At a time when panic has gripped the country over Covid-19, the finance minister, instead of pandering to the voters of one state, should have donned the role of a statesman and instilled confidence in the people at large by announcing a pan-India plan, if the Centre indeed has one. Now, with criticism pouring in from various quarters, the BJP has changed tack by claiming that the Centre would provide vaccines at concessional rates to all states, and health being a state subject, the latter would decide whether or not to make it free of cost for their people.
In Bihar, the state government would provide the vaccine free if the BJP-JD(U) alliance were voted back to power. Firstly, the BJP is dangling before the Bihar voter a vaccine that is not yet available and may not be for months to come. Secondly, what if the people of Bihar reject the BJP-JD(U) combine and vote in the rival RJD-Congress government, instead? Will the BJP still ensure free vaccination for the people of Bihar?
Not surprisingly, therefore, the minister’s statement has been called out by the Opposition as another ‘jumla’ or gimmick, similar to the 2014 election promise of crediting Rs 15 lakh into every Indian’s account or the promise of confiscating all the black money in the country and abroad with demonetisation in November 2016, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh election. It is unfortunate that the BJP has made a campaign tool out of a pandemic which has caused much suffering across the country.
Every citizen has a right to public health services and it is the duty of the Centre to ensure fair and equitable distribution of all resources, especially vaccines. Playing politics over a pandemic for the sake of votes is despicable.