India’s Vaccine Diplomacy: Role in New Order and Challenges

Abstract

The COVID-19 hit the world heartlessly. Throughout the worldwide lockdown was imposed, which is now considered as an economic lockdown. Since the World Health Organization (WHO) announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, this involved the world in the development of vaccine breakthroughs. Until December 2020, many new vaccines have been rolling out for use, e.g., Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, COVAXIN, Sputnik V, and others. The vaccines were roll-out, the vaccine diplomacy came into vogue in the international scenario. However, there are many questions about the distribution and export of vaccines, which is considered one of the state’s soft power instruments to influence the relationship with other countries. Similarly, the purpose of this article is to trace India’s vaccine diplomacy and space in the new changing order from the perspective of soft power. Recently, the second wave of COVID-19 devastated India. Though, the study also explores the challenges and increasing role of China in South Asia. Vaccine diplomacy is an approach to the soft power theory in international relations. The case study and content analysis methods are applied here to explain the current vaccine diplomacy. The study finds that initially India strongly showed its vaccine diplomacy widely in its neighbourhood and other developing countries, but the second wave of COVID-19 weakened its position of not providing vaccines to its own home. To provide validity to an argument, vaccine diplomacy of India as a soft power instrument provides a framework for analyzing India’s role in the new world order.