Did a global conspiracy aim to derail India’s maiden indigenous Covid vaccine? Was the Indian media paid by Chinese and American pharmaceutical companies to tarnish India’s vaccine endeavor intentionally? Was India a casualty of global geopolitics and corporate interests that sabotaged its homegrown vaccine? This is how Vivek Agnihotri’s frames his politics-laced 2 hour 50 minute “bio science” documentary film. Tying itself in many contradictions, this is how Agnihotri’s Vaccine War plays out.
Touted as the tale of the tireless and ingenious efforts of unsung Indian scientists to combat Covid 19 at the time of pandemic in a country of a billion plus population and fragile healthcare system, the film ends up serving as a counter-narrative for another set of framing – Did India expedite its vaccine development primarily to burnish the reputation of its political leadership ? Were the requisite procedures diligently followed to secure the requisite approvals from regulators ? Did we possess sufficient data to assess the vaccine’s potential side effects? And, ultimately, did India effectively manage the pandemic?
It is unfortunate that Agnihotri’s ultimate commitment is to the battle of the narratives mentioned above, as he heavily pumps his scenes with elements of national pride and liberally sprinkles the script with policy jargon of the government, using words like “Atma Nirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India) and there are no prizes for guessing which side wins. This is not the kind of film the country needed to see on how it built an indigeneous vaccine.
Adapted from the book authored by Balram Bhargava, the former Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) “Going Viral”, the film chronicles journey of developing the COVID-19 vaccine, a collaborative effort between the ICMR, Pune’s National Institute of Virology (NIV), and Bharat Biotech.
There is no doubt that “The Vaccine War” has moments of cinematic brilliance that tugs at your heart and makes you deeply engaged with the story of Dr Bhargava and his dedicated, hardworking team, predominantly composed of women who find themselves in the middle of an extraordinary global crisis in a country with questionable medical infrastructure and a billion plus population nervoisly waiting for a cure for the dreaded disease.
The eccentric Bhargava embodies the archetype of the unassuming hero, leading a simple life, eschewing smartphones, promoting eating with one’s fingertips to stimulate hunger. His simplicity is exemplified by a fact hihglighted in the film that shows that he is not even on Whatsapp, a fact that gets him an earful from the Cabinet Secretary.
However, it’s the women of “The Vaccine War ” who imbue the film with warmth and depth. Joshi’s portrayal of NIV Director Priya Abraham as the emotionally conscientious Indian woman who has been conditioned to seek validation by being “useful” to her family and community, often neglecting her own needs, is pitch-perfect. Her scenes of confrontation with Patekar’s Bhargav are beautifully acted. They depict the dynamics of how hardworking first-generation working women, striving to establish themselves in their careers, grapple with self-esteem issues and often still seek validation from men at their workplace.
Similarly, Pragya Yadav, the head of the NIV lab, seeks assistance from her neurosurgeon husband during a critical phase in the monkey trials, and Meanwhile, ICMR specialist epidemiliogist Nivedita Gupta faces the difficult decision of leaving her emotionally distressed son, who is suffering from PTSD, to fulfill her professional responsibilities.
Now, let’s discuss the film’s antagonists. Remarkably, while the scientists’ lives are upended by the Coronavirus, China, Pfizer, and the Indian media emerge as their primary adversaries of the film director. The ICMR scientists are shown to be vehemently accusing China of waging a bio-economic war on a global scale. In the film as out of celluloid, they maintain that China engineered a bioweapon by combining two viruses, yet they struggle to provide concrete evidence to support their allegations.
Further, international agencies and pharmaceutical companies are shown as paying the media and allegedly biased journalists.
These characters represented by Rohini Dhulia as the Science Editor of The fictional Daily Wire is allegedly used to fabricate stories, exploiting images of pandemic victims’ graves to spread fear and promote vaccine hesitancy in the masses. In the director’s fervent nationalistic view these media persons who use “foreign toolkits,” are an enemy of Bharat (India).
A film with a weak, but angry script, could do a little better at the box office with some favorable reviews by film journalists, but it consciously tries to antagonise them by branding all journalists as “terrorists” on foreign payrolls whose only aim is only to tarnish India’s reputation by perpetuating a narrative of substandard ICMR vaccines. The film does reference real-life incidents where the online publication, The Wire, renamed as “The Daily Wire” in the film, is ordered by the court to remove 14 articles deemed to be “defamatory” towards Bharat Biotech. However, in reality, the website’s editors did not yield to the “bullying,” by the vaccine maker, contrary to the portrayal of Dhulia’s character in the film, who is shown as being broken and in tears.
Indeed, as the film claims there was a push in the government to facilitate adoption of Pfizer mRNA vaccine that has faced numerous allegations of causing adverse effects. It is a different matter altogether that the developers of the vaccine technology used by Pfizer and Moderna -mRNA have been awarded the Nobel prize (physiology) 2023. It also must not escape our attention that Pfizer’s side-effects were also questioned and scrutinized from the very beginning by international media. The revelation of subpar practices at a contract research firm engaged in Pfizer’s critical COVID-19 vaccine trial had raised concerns regarding data integrity and regulatory oversight.
It is also true that the The World Health Organisation eventually cleared India-made Covaxin as safe after initial reluctance. WHO websites says, “On 3 November 2021, the Technical Advisory Group for Emergency Use Listing listed the Bharat Biotech BBV152 COVAXIN vaccine against COVID-19 for emergency use. Vaccine efficacy against COVID-19 of any severity, 14 or more days post dose 2, was 78%. Vaccine efficacy against severe disease is 93%. In adults aged less than 60 years, efficacy was 79%; and in those aged 60 years and over it was 68%.”
However, to present these facts within the framework of victimhood narrative and painting the media as foreign agents is not only simplistic but also inherently dangerous. The film falls short of conducting a comprehensive inquiry or making even a modest attempt to clarify the intricacies of these global issues. Instead, it hastily connects disparate dots to construct a sweeping narrative that portrays India as a victim of the global pharmaceutical lobby and not by action but casual conversation among the scientists. The insidious insertions like “itne wild animals khayenge to yehi hoga” while referring to a wet market in China being the source of the virus is not just ludicrous but also objectionable. Such statements in popular media promote prejudice against specific ethnicities in a country where the majority are non-vegetarian eaters and also go against the decorum expected from a scientist.
The film repeatedly asserts that Indian scientists are capable of creating a world-class vaccine. Did anyone ever questioned that? Who was this message targeted at? The lack of confidence in our own system is only natural when the then Health Minister of the day went as far as endorsing Baba Ramdev’s so-called cure of Corona – Coronil at the peak of the health crisis. Unscientific responses of the government like asking citizens to light diyas or beat thalis to combat Corona were not even touched upon. Furthermore, it conspicuously avoids addressing the devastating humanitarian crisis triggered by migrant exodus from cities and their arduous journey back to their villages, which exposed how unprepared we were for a lockdown. What was omited was the hellish second wave that left lakhs dead.
Then, is the film angry that the media did not wholeheartedly promote the government’s Covaxin? The director misreads media’s role and expects it to endorse vaccines; that responsibility falls on the scientific community through peer-reviewed research and not by a nationalist press. The fact that a majority of the people opted for Covishield jabs, suggests that even the government had a different view of the vaccine from that. of Vivek Agnihotri.
Films of this ilk embody a disconcerting pattern, as they imprint a potent sense of victimization onto the Indian psyche, skillfully distorting government actions with the very essence of the nation. If you decide to watch the film, do so with a critical eye, and resist the temptation to be drawn into its jingoistic narrative and victimhood rhetoric. Alternatively, you might opt for far more superior films covering similar themes, such as “Contagion” (2011), which delves into the SARS outbreak, or the Malayalam film “Virus,” which serves as an educational tribute to the Nipah outbreak of 2018 in Kerala.
