Ameer Shahul’s ‘Vaccine Nation’ chronicles India’s immunisation story
For readers interested in the moral, historical and political underpinnings of vaccination, the book offers insight and perspective
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Book Title: Vaccine Nation: How Immunization Shaped India
Author: Ameer Shahul
In ‘Vaccine Nation: How Immunization Shaped India’, Ameer Shahul traces the historical, political and ethical trajectory of vaccination in India from colonial times. He chronicles the development of vaccines, celebrating them as milestones in human ingenuity, while simultaneously providing a social and political context of how immunisation came to symbolise the making of modern India. Although the title includes India, Shahul captures the landmark historical moments that shaped vaccine discovery and deployment, irrespective of their country of discovery.
Drawing on vivid anecdotes, from scientists testing vaccines on themselves, their children, prisoners, or soldiers (practices that would be ethically unthinkable today), to the mass vaccination campaigns of the 19th and 20th centuries, the book elegantly captures how modern immunisation practices evolved and led us to where we are today.
Shahul takes us from Haffkine and Jenner’s pioneering works to the controversies surrounding polio eradication and Covid-19, traversing empires and democracies along the way. His writing is lucid and empathetic, particularly when portraying the stories of public health and mutual aid. Yet he does not shy away from critique, highlighting, for instance, the questionable practices of multinational corporations and the growing sway of market forces in what was once considered a purely humanitarian enterprise. “Could you patent the sun?” Jonas Salk famously asked when pressed to patent the polio vaccine. His collaborator Albert Sabin called his own discovery a “gift to children”.
The author’s treatment of the smallpox eradication campaign is nuanced, balancing colonial legacies with post-Independence scientific achievements. Equally compelling is the story of Varaprasad Reddy, who transformed from political rebel to “vaccine rebel” through his fight for the hepatitis B vaccine. Also fascinating is the portrait of Sahib Singh Sokhey, whose vision of the public sector’s role in healthcare and institution building remains instructive even today.
The transformation of a Pune stud farm into the world’s largest vaccine producer, the Serum Institute of India, is one of the book’s most interesting accounts. It shows how vision and public health goals can align to shape national capacity and global equity. It is a remarkable story of how vaccines moved from labs and government institutes into large-scale industrial production, yet remaining, at their core, public goods. The analysis of the Universal Immunisation Programme is a sobering lesson in the challenges of implementing large-scale public health initiatives in a diverse, unequal nation.
Another strength lies in Shahul’s exploration of how Indian research institutions took root and grew, before and after Independence, leading to the country’s eventual self-sufficiency in vaccine production. It would be interesting to see a critical analysis of the current status of the 50 or so institutions described in the book, examining how they have evolved, or struggled, amid globalisation and privatisation.
While deeply engaging, the book is not without shortcomings. For a work that rightfully champions India’s self-reliance in vaccine development, its treatment of the Indian Patents Act, 1970, is surprisingly brief. This landmark legislation, recognising process rather than product patents, formed the cornerstone of India’s pharmaceutical independence. A more detailed account of its conception, the political battle behind it, the roles of various committees — like that of Dr Bakshi Tek Chand (a retired judge of the Lahore High Court) Committee (1950) and later Justice N Rajagopala Ayyangar Committee — and how much time it took to pass the legislation, would have greatly enriched the book’s economic and policy dimensions.
The second point is about the book’s likely audience — it occupies an awkward middle ground. The narrative, while accessible to a determined layperson, might not keep them involved for long. Conversely, experts and historians will find much of it familiar, as the book synthesises well-known histories. Its unique contribution lies in weaving these threads together, but experts might crave for more “revelations” or a more provocative thesis, which, admittedly, is not an easy thing when it comes to this topic.
A few factual and stylistic lapses detract from an otherwise commendable work. The description of Waldemar Haffkine as “Soviet-born” is historically inaccurate; he was born in Odessa in 1860, six decades before the USSR came into being. The footnotes, while informative, at times are over-explanatory. These are small irritants, and do not detract substantially from the book’s value.
‘Vaccine Nation’ is a significant and timely contribution. It may not be the definitive word on the subject, but it is certainly an important one. In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, Shahul’s account offers a valuable backstory for understanding why our system reacted the way it did, the legacy of our vaccine diplomacy, the fragility of health infrastructures worldwide and the persistent challenge of vaccine hesitancy.
For readers interested in the moral, historical and political underpinnings of vaccination, this book offers insight and perspective as it fittingly concludes: “In a world driven by patents and fractured by technological inequality, the right to life must remain sacrosanct.”
—The reviewer is a professor at PGI
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