New Delhi: “Please do not see any other reason behind it, I plead with you as a scientist, as a professional. We need to respect our institutions, the world is looking at our systems…I plead with folded hands that this controversy should be put to rest. This is a scientific decision, not expedience.”
Dr V. K. Paul, member (health), NITI Aayog, made this impassioned plea last week, defending India’s decision to double the gap between two doses of Covid-19 vaccine Covishield from the earlier six-eight weeks to the current 12-16 weeks. The plea came on a day when the United Kingdom decided to compress the vaccine dose gap, citing the SARS-COV2 variant originating from India as the reason.
For the past few weeks, Dr Paul, a professor of paediatrics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and member/chair/or co-chair of at least five task forces or empowered groups assisting the Modi government’s pandemic response, has emerged as the face of the now thrice-a-week briefings on India’s Covid-19 status.
While Dr Paul has been among the speakers at the briefing since the beginning of the pandemic, his position of pre-eminence as the primary speaker is a more recent development.
This has also coincided with Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, who earlier used to lead these interactions, testing positive for the virus and increasingly difficult questions being asked of the Government of India as the country’s Covid situation went from bad to worse.
“His is among the most credible voices, his style of delivery adds to its authenticity. He is not aggressive, but he is forceful, in a quiet and dignified way. But he has always been one of the most important people advising this government,” said a senior government official.
Be it the “optimistic” — in Dr Paul’s own words — projection of a Covid vaccine-starved India having 216 crore doses between July and December 2021, or his assertion that warnings had been issued about the second wave not just from the government platform (the Covid-19 briefing), but also by the prime minister himself, or his fearless wading into the brewing political tussle between the Delhi government and the Centre over vaccine doses available in the capital, Dr Paul’s has emerged as the Government of India’s voice of choice to neutralise criticism at a very crucial junctures.
Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal, who had once in the early days of the pandemic held court in these briefings, now plays a reticent second fiddle while Paul fields the controversies.
Dr Paul is easily the most important technocrat in the government. He is co-chair of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19, of the task force on vaccine development and also of ICMR’s COVID-19 task force. He heads the empowered group on medical infrastructure and Covid management plan and is a member of one other empowered group headed by home secretary Ajay Bhalla on logistics.
As a member of the National Institution for Transforming India, the NITI Aayog, he leads the Health, Nutrition and HRD verticals. He has played a pivotal role in formulating the Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY, the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre Scheme and POSHAN Abhiyaan.
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Gentle, soft spoken image an asset
As a teacher and a doctor at the country’s premier medical institute, Dr Paul has maintained a low profile for years and continues to be a soft-spoken person, with infinite passion for public health communication.
Every day after the briefing, through the duration of the pandemic, he would patiently record public appeals for the electronic media — in the early days these were about masks, now it has moved on to vaccinations and the need to maintain Covid-appropriate behaviour post-vaccination.
He had been a part of the AIIMS faculty since 1985 and had been the head of the paediatrics department for over a decade. His ability to break down complex science into understandable public health communication has held him in good stead.
Except on occasions when he has been accused of oversimplification or miscommunication.
One such moment was in April 2020, when he showed a slide that seemed to suggest that the number of Covid-19 cases in India would drop to zero by 16 May. The comment drew a lot of flak, but Dr Paul, in what probably makes him an exception in the pantheon of IAS officers and politicians talking about Covid, apologised for making that statement. It was never his intention, he had said soon after, to convey such a misconception.
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Once in the running for AIIMS director
While Dr Paul has emerged as the new face of India’s Covid communication, talking as easily about science as policy and politics, the two other technocrats who have shared the spotlight with him are AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria and DG, ICMR, Dr Balram Bhargava.
All three are of AIIMS provenance but there is one other interesting thread linking them. All three were in the shortlist for the post of AIIMS director when the position fell vacant in 2017 and for some time it was Dr Paul who was touted as the frontrunner. However, after some last minute behind-the-scenes moves, it was Dr Guleria who took charge.
That same year, however, soon after the Uttar Pradesh elections, Dr Paul became member (health) NITI Aayog, and a short while afterwards, when Dr Soumya Swaminathan left for Geneva to be deputy DG at World Health Organization, Dr Bhargava took over the reins of the Indian Council of Medical Research.
In its earlier avatar of the Planning Commission, health experts had mostly held the post of advisor. Dr Paul became the first full member with health as his mandate. He also served as the Chairman of The Board of Governors in supersession of the Medical Council of India for two years, from 2018 to 2020.
“This tenure was recognised for a record increase in undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats, and introduction of telemedicine guidelines, district residency scheme and a plethora of other reforms,” reads Dr Paul’s profile on the NITI website.
During the UPA era, Dr Paul had been a member of the High Level Expert Group (HLEG) set up by the erstwhile Planning Commission of India in 2011, to lay down a road map for India’s transition into an era of Universal Health Coverage.
Dr Paul’s has been an illustrious career, though the pandemic has been undoubtedly his biggest challenge ever. And the strain is beginning to show. A colleague reacting to his promise of 216 crore vaccines by the end of the year said, on condition of anonymity, “Dr Paul’s mid-May slide surprise continues! I recall the slide of May last year showing cases falling off a cliff.”
There is reason for such scepticism. The Government of India in an affidavit told the Supreme Court last month that by July the government expects production of Covishield, Covaxin and Sputnik taken together to go up to 12.2 crore doses per month. That rate over the next six months, adds up to less than 75 crore doses by December.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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