In July 2022, India crossed 200 crore vaccinations in the country. This was merely 547 days from the start of the vaccination drive. No one could have predicted this astounding success story.

In late 2019, a dreaded pathogen started spreading faster than any other virus in recent history. Every country had its unique challenges, but none more than India. The scale, complexity and diversity of the country, coupled with its deep global economic integration, meant India had to find counters to the pandemic by evolving its own financial, healthcare and social models.

And India did just that. With the decisive political leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ingenuity of Indian pharmaceutical firms and their scientists and a whole-of-government approach, India overcame everyone’s worst fears and potential disasters. India created its own vaccine intellectual property, used technology to distribute the doses and helped the world in the true spirit of vasudhaiva kutumbakam [The World Is One Family]. The result was the vast vaccine coverage in the country as well as the extensive aid provided to other nations.

In Braving a Viral Storm: India’s Covid-19 Vaccine Story, Aashish Chandorkar and Suraj Sudhir recall this saga of India’s fortitude and collective resolve. They use extensive data to follow the story, starting right from global perspectives on the unlikeliness of a pandemic, the development of the vaccine both in scientific and political terms and the series of triumphs over political, financial and geographical hurdles that followed. The book details how our self-belief played a key role in bouncing back from the pandemic and put the nation on the path of Aatmanirbharta, or self-dependence.