coronavirus vaccine programmes.

Central to this effort is the Serum Institute

of India, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer

here in Pune.

As a major pharma player India has the advantage

of huge manufacturing capacity.

Along with inoculating its own population,

India plans to export the vaccine to the developing

world.

But the government faces key challenges.

Rolling out the vaccine quickly across a diverse country

is a huge operation.

Convincing people from all walks of life to take the vaccine

is a major challenge.

What's more, the approval of its homegrown vaccines

has already proved controversial.

And the first days of India's vaccine rollout

have been slow, underscoring the difficult path ahead.

Indian government realised very early that it's one

of our strengths to manufacture a vaccine and supply in large

quantities.

India is one of the world's biggest manufacturers

of vaccines.

Two vaccines have been approved by the government so far,

Covaxin and developed by Bharat Biotech

and the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research,

and Covishield, the locally produced version of the Oxford

AstraZeneca vaccine.

There are several more in the pipeline based

on different technologies, including

one from Bangalore-based Mynvax that doesn't

need to be refrigerated.

In the developing world that could be a game changer.

For India, administering the vaccine to 1.4bn people is

a far bigger challenge than sourcing supply.

The government wants to vaccinate 300m people by July,

about a fifth of the population.

Official data shows more than 75 per cent of people

have not yet been exposed to coronavirus.

In the first two weeks of the vaccine programme India

inoculated over 3.5m people.

The vaccination programme is focusing on healthcare

and frontline workers first, and then people aged over 50.

More than availability, I personally feel that, you know,

vaccine hesitancy is going to be a challenge, actually.

Another huge challenge is to convince people

that the vaccines are actually safe.

Even healthcare workers are scared of taking the jab.

India's poor, who make up the majority of the population,

are far more concerned about the daily health

challenges they face from poor sanitation and hunger.

Convincing them that coronavirus is a priority

will be hard, despite being among the hardest hit

by the economic impact from the virus.

We have not seen that many deaths

due to Covid as we have seen because

of hunger, at least in India.

So for poor, it's not, I mean, they

are not really concerned about whether they

will get vaccinated or not.

India started its national vaccine rollout in mid-January,

but New Delhi is already looking beyond its borders.

The government sees an opportunity to boost its soft

power by supplying millions of doses of made in India vaccines

to its neighbours as gifts, as well as securing commercial

deals with countries, including Mongolia, Canada,

and Saudi Arabia.

India is also a significant contributor to the Gavi Vaccine

Alliance, which provides vaccines

to children all over the world.

Under its COVAX programme, India will supply a further 10m Covid

vaccine doses to Africa and a million doses to the UN.

India will even be sending vaccines to Pakistan

through COVAX in spite of their hostile relationship.

The soft power push has coincided

with questions over the efficacy of China's Sinovac vaccine.

Chinese companies are aggressively

marketing their products around the world

and have signed commercial deals with more than a dozen

countries.

The Modi government has made big promises

about its coronavirus vaccines, but delivering on them

will be hard.

Like China, India hopes to use its manufacturing capacity

to bolster its international standing.

At stake is not just the health of its people,

but whether the country gets a much needed injection

of confidence to start recovering from the wider

impact of the pandemic.