VACCINATING INDIA (The writer can be reached at udayanhazarika@hotmail.com) The country had started its Covid-19 vaccination programme Phase-I on 16th January 2021 for its healthcare workers and frontline staff and thereafter for the aged ones in the month of March last as usual with much publicity and campaign. The Prime Minister was put at the centre of the programme in which his role confined not only in the opening of the programme but also extended by pausing for a photograph to be put in the middle of the vaccination certificate issued to the person vaccinated which was only to be removed later by an order of the CEC of India. This indeed is a disgraceful act and the PMO must take the responsibility for this act of negligence. One major objection raised from various circles concerned is that although there is a Vaccination Policy for India yet before resorting to Covid-19 vaccination, the Government should have laid down a specific Covid-19 Vaccination Policy or a type of SOPs. At the time of approval, the two registered vaccines namely Covishield (AstraZeneca's vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India) and Covaxin (manufactured by Bharat Biotech Limited) were at various levels of trials. Of the three clinical trials conventionally required, both had cleared the Phase-I i.e. to assess the safety, its response to immunity and determination of doses which is done using small numbers of participants and Phase-II to test the safely and degree of immunity that it generates utilising about 100 persons. Till the time of its Clarence however, the Covaxin did not to pass the Phase –III trials in India which requires the vaccine to be clinically applied to at least one thousands of participants to determine its effectiveness. Why the government was in such a hurry to grant emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) in India has not been explained convincingly.