In early 2020, it would have been hard to argue that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government were not focused squarely on the chall...
In early 2020, it would have been hard to argue that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government were not focused squarely on the challenge posed by the novel coronavirus. Of course, there was the shoddily planned national lockdownwere and distracting spectacles, like pot-banging and helicopters being deployed to shower petals on hospitals. But at a time when some other global leaders were downplaying the dangers of the virus, it was at least evident that Modi’s government was not ignoring it.
A year later, the Indian healthcare system is bursting at the seams with Covid-19 patients, as new cases climb to more than 200,000 per day, fueled in part by a little understood Indian variant of the virus. Social media is chock-full of requests for help and hospital beds, crematoriums are struggling to handle the number of dead bodies turning up and migrants are beginning to head for home yet again.
And where is India’s leadership?
The abiding impression is that the country’s leaders are all campaigning in West Bengal, where a high-profile state election is set to continue until the end of the month. There, they are happy to hold large rallies gathering enormous numbers of people with no social distancing or masks even...
