When I see pictures of India now with thousands of people dying every day and crowds desperate

to get vaccinated, I keep thinking back to this moment in January.

First, allow me to congratulate you on your handling of the pandemic and launching the biggest

vaccine drive in the world.

This guy is a Swedish executive and he's congratulating Neurand Ramoti, India's prime minister.

On what seemed at the time like a victory against COVID, Modi was speaking in Hindi to

international thinker types at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which was held online.

I'm very grateful to you for your support.

He told the crowd that India, quote, succeeded in saving the lives of the maximum number of

its citizens.

When Modi was talking at Davos, I think a number of Indians would have looked at what he

said or heard what he said and felt that he was sort of broadly right.

That's some on supermanian journalists with courts.

That, you know, on the evidence of the past year or the past nine months, India had done

relatively speaking better than many advanced Western countries with much better healthcare

systems.

But the plan, as it was laid out in Davos, wasn't just to sit back and enjoy India's apparent

COVID successes.

Vaccines were coming online, and India would undertake the world's largest ever vaccine drive.

If India had a massive challenge on its hands, 1.3 billion people needing 2.6 billion doses,

it also had a huge advantage over everyone else, the Serum Institute of India.

The Serum Institute, or SII, is the world's largest vaccine manufacturer.

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