Tag: India Coronavirus Crises

  • Modi Administration exposed – India’s COVID crisis

    Modi Administration exposed – India’s COVID crisis

    The visuals from our next-door neighbour, India, are just horrendous. The record-breaking surge in coronavirus cases and the reports from India have left the entire world in shock. According to the Indian health ministry, 3,689 people have died within the past 24 hours. Last month, India became the first country in the world to register over 400,000 coronavirus infections in a single day. The situation in India continues to get worse. The second wave of coronavirus has exposed the Modi administration.

    The Modi administration gravely mishandled the COVID-19 crisis in India. From declaring a premature victory after the first wave, the Modi government is now downplaying the crisis. According to a report published in the New York Times, “Interviews from cremation grounds across the country, where the fires never stop, portray an extensive pattern of deaths far exceeding the official figures. Nervous politicians and hospital administrators may be undercounting or overlooking large numbers of dead, analysts say. And grieving families may be hiding Covid connections as well, out of shame, adding to the confusion in this enormous nation of 1.4 billion.”

    We have seen how journalists in India are being attacked online for telling the truth. The Modi government, it seems, is more worried about its international image than handling the crisis. From pro-Modi actors like Kangana Ranaut to media channels like Times Now to websites acting like the government’s mouthpieces, we have seen journalists Rana Ayyub and Barkha Dutt being attacked for their journalism. What is worse is how Indian government is also directly involved in intimidating those critising it. The police in Uttar Pradesh (UP) – a state run by BJP’s Yogi Adityanath – filed a criminal case against a man who used Twitter to appeal for an oxygen cylinder for his grandfather. CM Adityanath also asked the UP administration to “crack down” on hospitals that discharge patients due to shortage of oxygen or “complain” about it to the media. Just a week ago, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said it had asked Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms to remove some posts “in view of the misuse of social media platforms by certain users to spread fake or misleading information”. Such sort of censorship and intimidation just points to one thing: the Modi government is more interested in its image-building than addressing the disastrous COVID-19 crisis. Hospitals across India have run out of beds, oxygen supply is dwindling, the vaccination rollout programme is slow. All of this combined with election rallies and large gatherings that were allowed by the government in recent months led to catastrophic results.

    Pakistan government has offered relief and support to India. Prime Minister Imran Khan as well as others expressed their solidarity with India in this difficult time. We hope and pray that the situation changes for the better in India. 

  • When the apocalypse comes home

    Perhaps in 10 years, the world might develop the ability to look at pictures of the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc in India and not shudder in fear. Perhaps in 10 years, the memory of being horrified may have subsided enough for us to write more dispassionately about what happened in the terrible summer of 2021. Perhaps in 10 years, a new disaster may have befallen the human race, proving that nothing is the worst so long as we can say this is the worst.

    And perhaps in 10 years, we may also have the clarity to pinpoint exactly when the apocalypse came home in India. On January 30, 2020, India reported its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in a medical student who had returned to Kerala from Wuhan. That was not the beginning of the apocalypse. It begun much earlier, on May 26, 2014, when Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister.

    By electing Modi, India effectively signed up for a disaster that would begin with the persecution of minorities and end with a pandemic that does not differentiate between religions. The old identity that India had forged for itself, of a ‘non-violent’ state that was the birthplace of Gandhi and his freedom movement, came crumbling down on that fateful day in 2014, to be replaced by a Hindu Rashtra. The RSS, of which the BJP is part and Modi a member, has never shied away from its ultimate goal, i.e. the end of secular India and the birth of a Hindu Rashtra. Modi had promised to fulfill this goal by building a new country, one whose foundations would lie in the very worst days of India’s internal history, a live repeat telecast, if you will, of the Gujarat riots, of Babri Mosque demolition. And so it has come to be, that with every lynching reminding the world of the mutilated bodies in Gujarat, that Modi has indeed fulfilled his pledge. Unfortunately for his poor country, his promised land came at a cost.

    And that cost we now see being extracted from hapless people, breath for breath, gasp for gasp.

    Much has been written about how India allowed matters to reach this point, where the entire healthcare system has collapsed so completely. ‘How could the government have been this callous,’ ask the people. The answer lies in going just a few years back in time.

    Did the BJP government’s indifference to its people’s suffering begin with this wave of the pandemic? No. The indifference began with silence and tacit approval of Muslim lynchings at the hands of cow-vigilantes. It began when Dalits were stripped and flogged for skinning a dead cow. Did the Modi administration began sacrificing people at the altar of its popularity just now? No, that ritual began with anti-Muslim dog-whistles. It began with bringing all of India to the brink of war with Pakistan to win another election. It began with calculating political dividends in human lives.

    And now, as the world watches in horror, the true cost of having a populist fascist at the helm of affairs is obvious. Words fall woefully inadequate to describe the scale of the horror. The image of mass graves in New York and army trucks carrying away bodies in Bergamo seem to have paled in comparison to New Delhi’s overflowing crematoriums. If Modi had his way, the visuals coming through would have only been of overflowing graveyards. The virus had other plans.

    Biblical accounts of the coming of the apocalypse involve elaborate signs, trees sweating blood, stars falling from the sky and the burning of heaven and earth. For India, the apocalypse came home in a similar manner. The weak cried tears of blood, Bollywood and cricketing stars fell from grace. Finally, the earth burnt under one smoldering pyre upon another.