GS Paper: GS2-19.Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

Why vaccination gap is cause of worry

• By the end of May 2021, only 2.1% of Africans had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
• A widely vaccinated world population is the only way to end the pandemic; otherwise, the multiplication of variants is likely to undermine the effectiveness of existing vaccines.
• Vaccination is also a prerequisite for lifting the restrictions that are holding back our economies and freedoms.
• If the vaccination gap persists, it risks reversing the trend in recent decades of declining poverty and global inequalities.
• Such a negative dynamic would hold back economic activity and increase geopolitical tensions.
• The cost of inaction would for sure be much higher for advanced economies than what we collectively would have to spend to help vaccinate the whole world.
• The International Monetary Fund has proposed $50 billion plan in order to be able to vaccinate 40% of the world population in 2021 and 60% by mid-2022.

Need to resist the vaccine nationalism

• To achieve the goal set by IMF, we need closely coordinated multilateral action.
• We must resist the threat posed by linking the provision of vaccines to political goals and vaccine nationalism.
• The EU has been vaccinating its own population, while exporting large volumes of vaccines and contributing substantially to the vaccines roll-out in low-income countries.
• The EU has also exported 240 million doses to 90 countries, which is about as much as used within the EU.
• One-third of all COVAX doses delivered so far have been financed by the EU.
• India’s Vaccine Maitri is another example of global solidarity.
• However, this effort is still far from sufficient to prevent the vaccination gap from widening.

Way forward

• To fill widening vaccination gap, countries with the required knowledge and means should increase their production capacities, so that they can both vaccinate their own populations and export more vaccines.
• All countries must avoid restrictive measures that affect vaccine supply chains.
• We also need to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and technology, so that more countries can produce vaccines.
• Voluntary licensing is the privileged way to ensure such transfer of technology and know-how.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that health is a global public good. Our common global COVID-19 vaccine action to close the vaccination gap must be the first step toward genuine global health cooperation, as foreseen by the Rome Declaration recently adopted at the Global Health Summit.

The article suggest the Indian model for peaceful coexistence as a possible solution to Israel-Palestine conflict.

Brief history of the conflict

• Britain renounced its Mandate over Palestine in 1948.
• This paved the way for the United Nations to divide Palestine between the Jews and Arabs, giving them about 55% and 45% of the land, respectively.
• The Jews, meanwhile, had declared the establishment of the state of Israel for which they had been working for long.
• The Palestinians, who lacked the resources to conceive of a state, failed to form a state of their own in the land allotted to them.
• Instead, a coalition of Arab countries invaded the nascent state of Israel to nip it in the bud.
• Israel defeated the Arab armies.
• Israel also destroyed about 600 Palestinian villages and expelled about 80% of Arabs from its territory.
• In 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel captured not just more Palestinian land but also Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights.
• During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Arabs came to realise that Israel is here to stay.

Need for realisation on both the sides

• The Arab states failed to impress the realisation of permanency of Israel upon their Palestinian brethren, a sizeable number of whom remain committed to seeking a solution through counter-violence. 
• Vicious cycle of violence is not going to end unless there is realism on both sides.
• The Hamas should know that Israel will not give up on holding on to land it has held for years.
• Israel should understand that total subjugation, expulsion or even decimation of Palestinians will not make it any safer.
• A solution based on the common humanity of all stakeholders, one that is not riven by racial and religious schisms, needs to be explored.

Viability of Indian model

• The Indian model of democracy and secularism, which accommodates religious, ethnic, linguistic and other diversities, could be a viable model for the peaceful coexistence of formerly antagonistic groups.
•  India evolved a unique model of accommodating the victors and the vanquished, without ever resorting to the latter’s decimation.
• A modus vivendi has to evolve on the basis of hard realities, the first of which is that neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are going to vanish.
• If the two-state solution is nowhere in the offing, a single state after the Indian model, i.e., a secular, democratic and pluralistic state, may be the only feasible option.
• The Palestinian refugees have a right to return.
• That the altered demographics would impinge on the religio-racial character of Israel is not an argument which behoves a modern democratic state.
• It is true that a nation state belongs to the group which constituted itself into a nation.
• A nation is an imagined community.
• As imagination expands, the foundations of the nation become deeper.

Consider the question “In the absence of two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, what lessons India could offer to the two parties for peaceful coexistence?”

Conclusion

Israel might not offer the right model of conflict resolution for India, but India presents a model of peaceful coexistence for Israel.