India's Covid diplomacy: US to Russia, Delhi part of every vaccine alliance

India is party to Sputnik-V, the vaccine under development jointly by Russia's Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology and Indian pharma company Dr Reddy's Laboratories

From Israel to France and the US to Sweden, if there is any country or alliance in the world that is developing a vaccine against Covid-19, India is part of the effort, marking new frontiers of diplomacy. The exception is China, where Sinovac is developing a vaccine and has chosen Bangladesh as its partner in the region.

“We were not invited (to participate)” said an official in the Ministry of External Affairs.

India is party to Sputnik-V, the vaccine under development jointly by Russia’s Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which reports to the Russian health ministry, and Indian pharma company Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL). The vaccine’s development is being supported by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth fund.

So if the new global currency of power is a vaccine against Covid-19, India’s partner to win the race is Russia. For this could be the first vaccine to hit the market, though it is early yet to say when.

The alliance isn’t surprising. President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to call Prime Minister Narendra Modi to wish him well on his birthday (September 17). And New Delhi was one of the few world capitals to send its defence minister to attend the June celebrations in Moscow to mark the 75th anniversary of the victory in World War II. Modi was the first world leader to congratulate Putin on winning the referendum that enables him to stay president of Russia till 2036 if he so chooses. Moscow encouraged New Delhi to attend a virtual meeting of foreign ministers of the Russia-India-China grouping when the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army were eyeball to eyeball on the Line of Actual Control. Russia hosted a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, where the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers had their first face-to-face meeting after the border standoff.

Some world powers might be wagging their finger at Russia’s apparently transactional support to Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of Belarus. But India has averted its eyes from these developments, as it had done previously in the case of Ukraine and Crimea. “It is not our policy to comment on the internal developments of other countries,” said an official of the MEA. Russia has been supportive of the Indian case on Jammu and Kashmir.

“Russia’s record in vaccine development goes back a long time. They developed vaccines against SARS and Ebola, and helped many African countries fight those outbreaks. The Covid-19 vaccine derives from that strain of vaccine,” said Anuradha Mitra Chenoy, author of Re-emerging Russia and a former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “Russia is doing massive Phase III trials, a lot of them on its own army because troops living in barracks were badly hit by Covid. Testing is taking place even as we speak, though the West does not recognise the legitimacy of these tests.”

“When they said they had the Sputnik-V, the first government to respond was Kerala,” Chenoy said. India and Russia have been partners in pharmaceutical development since the 1960s, she added. “The value chains already existed. It was just a matter of reviving them.”

“Russia is a big importer of Indian pharmaceuticals. And DRL has a very good name in the Russian market,” said P S Raghavan, former Indian ambassador to Moscow. “The Russians develop vaccines but have limited manufacturing capacities. That gap is met by Indian companies.” Diplomacy, he added, has little to do with it. “They have a vaccine, and we want to manufacture it. It is in our interest, and theirs.”

But there’s a background to it. It was hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the anti-malarial drug that India manufactures in huge quantities, which started it. In March, Bala Venkatesh Varma, India’s ambassador to Moscow, got an urgent request from the Russian government: How much HCQ could New Delhi supply? While the public Indian narrative was focused on denouncing President Donald Trump and his advocacy of the drug, India sent 105 million tablets of HCQ to Russia. Till now, 82 tonnes of medical supplies have been shipped from New Delhi to Moscow. While in overall trade this is just a factoid, it represents new directions for the India-Russia relationship that will be noted in many world capitals.

First, it was oil that tested diplomacy. Then it was data. Now, it is a vaccine against Covid-19.