The ‘good doctor’ Harsh Vardhan loses his cool

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan is an angry man these days. Former prime minister and senior Congress leader Manmohan Singh got a taste of Vardhan’s mood recently. On April 18, when Manmohan wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, suggesting a few changes to the country’s faltering Covid-19 vaccination programme, Vardhan didn’t like it.

“History shall be kinder if Congress leaders followed your advice,” retorted Vardhan the next day, which left political circles stunned.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said it was “unfortunate and condemnable” on part of the Health Minister to write a “politically motivated” reply to the former prime minister who had made “constructive suggestions” to the Central government.

Vardhan’s angry reply took everyone by surprise because the BJP leader is soft-spoken and genial.

Known as the ‘good doctor’ in the national capital, Vardhan earned his spurs by pioneering the Polio Immunisation Campaign during his term as Delhi’s first Health Minister between 1993-98.

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An ENT surgeon by training, he has been spearheading the country’s fight against Covid-19 since last year, working with state governments and keeping differences at an arm’s length.

Having built a reputation by successfully steering the polio programme, Vardhan is now hoping to pull off the biggest challenge in his career – the vaccination drive against Covid-19.

Vardhan also holds the distinction of implementing the first anti-tobacco laws in the country as the Health Minister of Delhi in 1997, earning praise from the then Prime Minister I K Gujral and later from his successor Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

However, as the pandemic batters India with a second wave, the health minister appears to be losing his cool over criticism on the Covid-19 vaccination drive.

The vaccination drive itself has been dogged by controversies: first over the approval of the home-grown Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech and the National Institute of Virology, and later over the pace of the inoculation.

As the government granted the ‘go-ahead’ to Covaxin and Covishield, developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and produced by the Serum Institute of India, the Opposition trained its guns on the “premature approvals” to the ‘desi’ vaccine.

In January, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Shashi Tharoor, Anand Sharma questioned the approval to Covaxin, contending that the vaccine had not cleared the Phase 3 trials. Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav went on to dub it ‘vaccine of the BJP’.

The rebuke to the Opposition, back in January, was mild considering the language used to counter Manmohan on April 19.

In January, he had urged not to discredit science-backed protocols followed for approving the vaccine. “Wake up and realise you are only discrediting yourself,” Vardhan had told Opposition leaders.

Cut to April, as the second wave swamped the country, the tone of Vardhan’s statements had changed and become politically charged, leading many to wonder who the real authors of the statements were. Gaurav Gogoi, deputy leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, said, “More likely these ministers are only mouthpieces for their Master. In Dr Harshvardhan’s language and tenor, you actually hear the words of Prime Minister Modi.”

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When Maharashtra raised the issue of vaccine shortages, Vardhan hit back, accusing the state of trying to distract attention from their “repeated failures” to control the spread of the pandemic.

“Throughout the last year, as the Health Minister of India, I have been a witness to the misgovernance and utter casual approach of the Maharashtra government in battling the virus. The lackadaisical attitude of the state government has singularly bogged down the entire country’s efforts to fight the virus,” Vardhan said on April 7.

He also accused the governments of Punjab, Delhi, and Maharashtra – all Opposition-ruled states – of being sluggish in vaccinating healthcare workers and frontline workers, for whom the vaccination drive had begun in January.

Then came the Manmohan episode. On April 19, responding to Singh’s letter to Modi, Vardhan accused the Congress party of derailing the vaccination drive against Covid-19, which a section of experts claimed was progressing slowly.

Vardhan also accused Congress governments of “spreading falsehoods” on the efficacy of the vaccines and “thereby fuelling vaccine hesitancy, and playing with the lives of our countrymen”.

He even accused a Congress party chief minister of inciting people against taking Covaxin.

The health minister has also been in midst of controversies.

Vardhan was in the eye of a storm when he tried to attribute comments on Vedas having a better theory than the Theory of Relativity to physicist Stephen Hawking.

More recently, the ENT surgeon was caught in an embarrassing episode after he graced an event to launch Coronil, developed by Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved. Ramdev had claimed that Coronil would cure Covid-19 but presented no study to back his claim.

The Indian Medical Association had expressed shock at the presence of Vardhan at the event, where Patanjali claimed WHO certification for Coronil.