India's mammoth COVID-19 vaccination drive: The body is an Ambassador car, but the engine is a Ferrari

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a long-lasting impact on many facets of human life globally.

It has caused significant illness and death in every area of the globe, developing into an unprecedented pandemic — the only one to afflict such a huge proportion of the world's population since the Spanish flu in the early 20th century.

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However, with the aid of stringent procedures rigidly followed by the health care system, the Indian government and its people, the disease was more or less stopped in its tracks.

Mass vaccinations, successful containment and mitigation methods, have proved to be a boon to the country.

The Indian health care system that has been frequently labelled as inefficient, sluggish and bureaucratic has gone on to demonstrate how even the most experienced observers may be misled by appearances.

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It has convincingly demonstrated that, while it may resemble the good old ambassador car, it is propelled by none other than the prancing horse of Ferrari.

So what really has made a difference?

Clearly, India has learnt from past failures in organisation and deployment.

The country, in recent years, had tremendous failures in coordination between states and the centre when rollouts happened on ambitious, well-meaning schemes such as Goods and Services Tax.

In the past, there have been coordination failures, at least by way of allegations, in the Indian parliamentary elections. The greatest democratic exercise known to mankind.

But this time, in the face of an unprecedented crisis, India banded together. And more remarkably, the formless, shapeless, "system" seems to have come together to deliver the biggest vaccination drive ever, in the face of odds that the rest of the world, especially our friends in the West, imagined to be insurmountable. And remember, much of the developed world is still struggling with their vaccination drives due to a combination of ignorance, misinformation and logistical issues.

So, what really made the impossible possible for India? Whatever we may think of the "system" as Indians, it does react when it needs to, and it did.

Our civil services system, which is infamously difficult to get into, has delivered.

People who can make a difference have made a difference, proving that they can, and do, deliver when needed.

Most importantly, the political menagerie came together and understood that irrespective of their ideological differences, saving Indian lives is more important than anything else on the agenda.

So while people in Georgia still dispute the merits of the vaccine, people in Gorakhpur are lining up to get vaccinated.

We can reserve the discussion about who is "civilised" for another day.

For now, we can say for sure that the world can learn from India a thing or two about managing pandemics.