Devjyot Ghoshal, Krishna Das. Exclusive: Scientists say India government ignored warnings amid coronavirus surge // Kapil Komireddi: Modi Fiddles While India Burns

By Dilip -

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A forum of scientific advisers set up by the government warned Indian officials in early March of a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus taking hold in the country, five scientists who are part of the forum told Reuters. Despite the warning, four of the scientists said the federal government did not seek to impose major restrictions to stop the spread of the virus. Millions of largely unmasked people attended religious festivals and political rallies that were held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition politicians.

Tens of thousands of farmers, meanwhile, continued to camp on the edge of New Delhi protesting Modi’s agricultural policy changes. The world’s second-most populous country is now struggling to contain a second wave of infections much more severe than its first last year, which some scientists say is being accelerated by the new variant and another variant first detected in Britain. India reported 386,452 new cases on Friday, a global record.

The spike in infections is India’s biggest crisis since Modi took office in 2014. It remains to be seen how his handling of it might affect Modi or his party politically. The next general election is due in 2024. Voting in the most recent local elections was largely completed before the scale of the new surge in infections became apparent.

The warning about the new variant in early March was issued by the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genetics Consortium, or INSACOG. It was conveyed to a top official who reports directly to the prime minister, according to one of the scientists, the director of a research centre in northern India who spoke on condition of anonymity. Reuters could not determine whether the INSACOG findings were passed on to Modi himself. Modi’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-warning-excl-idUKKBN2CI2XW

Kapil Komireddi: Modi Fiddles While India Burns

On Jan. 28, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory against COVID-19. Addressing a virtual summit of the World Economic Forum, he sought applause for saving “humanity from a big disaster by containing the coronavirus effectively.” Three months on, India is the epicenter of the pandemic. The country’s health care system is on the precipice of total collapse. In New Delhi, patients are suffocating to death, relatives are scrambling for beds, the most advanced hospitals have been reduced to begging the government for emergency supplies of oxygen, and crematoriums—blazing nonstop—have run out of room and wood. Social media is inundated with agonizing pleas for help.

Some have buried their dead in their gardens. Others have cremated them on makeshift pyres erected on pavements. In the neglected countryside, a local reporter in southern India rang to tell me, “People are dropping like flies.” Hardly anybody knows anyone who hasn’t been ravaged by this contagion. The official death toll, which surpassed 208,000 on Thursday, is a scandalous undercount. By some estimates, the true figure could be 20 times that number. A thriving black market for oxygen and essential medicine has emerged, and a nation acclaimed in 2015 by the International Monetary Fund as an economic powerhouse poised to overtake China is now lobbying for emergency foreign aid.

What is unfolding in India is more than a crisis triggered by a pathogen. It is a carnage precipitated by the conduct of its self-enamored leader...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/30/modi-india-covid-19-pandemic-crisis-disaster/


Suhas Palshikar: A monumental failure of governance // ‘There should be no clampdown on information, people can voice grievances on social media’: Supreme Court

Mukul Kesavan - Kumbh vs Corona The logic of Hindu nationalism / Milind Murugkar: The political project of Hindutva is up against many contradictions

Nine Things BJP Leaders Said Recently About the Pandemic / Sakshi Joshi: Oxygen tanker ड्राइवर ने खोल दी पोल, किसानों के ख़िलाफ़ दुष्प्रचार

Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The ruthless politics of the Centre’s vaccine strategy

Pragya Akhilesh - The pandemic has exposed India’s dirty truth: a broken sanitation system

Election Commission responsible for spreading Covid-19, should probably be booked for murder: Madras HC // Bharat Bhushan on the departing CJI: Good riddance

Dipankar Ghose: In the mining villages of Raniganj, broken roads, homes - and system / Vidya Krishnan: India's moral failure

Apoorvanand: Government attempts to equate a belligerent state with a desperate citizenry / Ramachandra Guha: 'Modi's Leadership Main Reason for COVID Mishandling, He's a Megalomaniac'

As the dead pile up in Gujarat, the state’s media is on a warpath with the government over Covid-19 // Soutik Biswas: How India failed to prevent a deadly second wave

Geeta Pandey: Coronavirus overwhelms India's most populous state

Anand K. Sahay: The idea behind capturing power in any kind of way: fair or foul

Public Health-The Nordic Model



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