Yesterday, we critically expressed our views over the motivated politics being played over the introduction of Covid vaccine in India. Since India gets closer to an eventual country-wide rollout of vaccines, it must also brace-up to tackle the misinformation campaign against the Covid vaccine in a serious manner. While similar sort of campaigns are also being witnessed in other countries but the India is on different plane as it has varied regional and religious sensitivities and this country is more prone to such rumours and fake news. Given our troubled past with regard to vaccination, where a sizeable population has a strong hesitancy to it, some people are particularly likely to resort to falsehoods, conspiracy theories and spread wild rumours about the efficacy and side-effects of the Covid vaccines. Even before vaccine breakthroughs, a local survey of social media in India found a staggering 59 per cent of the surveyed Indian population were hesitant or would not go for such vaccination.
In the past, major nation-wide immunisation drives, such as for polio, have suffered due to misinformation and conspiracy theories. For instance, Muslims in Uttar Pradesh were opposed to the oral polio vaccine in the early 2000s, as they felt it may lead to ‘infertility’. In Kerala, the diphtheria vaccination drive among its Muslim population badly suffered due to similar rumours in 2016.
Similarly, the measles and rubella (MR) vaccination programme suffered in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, due to misinformation that some constituents of the vaccine were derived from animals forbidden in Islam. In short, both past and ongoing experience of fighting pandemic- related misinformation should alarm governments (federal and States) into taking urgent steps to stem the fake news and falsehoods on vaccination.
The best course for authorities is to take cues from the manner and mode in which fake news and misinformation were populated by social media platforms during different stages of the pandemic. In this regard, the Government needs to proactively engage with major tech platforms, social media companies and their sister platforms to stem the rot before it goes viral.
While it is a welcome sign that key tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter have already announced their plans to quickly pull out fake news related to vaccination, India’s real challenge is to prevail over other spurious mediums particularly WhatsApp, which by far remains the biggest source of misinformation in the country. In conclusion, India’s greatest challenge to mass vaccination against Covid-19 is not the logistics or supply chain but rather, fake news, misinformation and the vaccine critics.
