Modi’s well cultivated image at home and abroad dented severely
The strong suspicion raised by international experts that India was fudging data on death and infections related to Coivd-19 has now come explicitly true with thousands of corpses – all suspected to be Covid victims – discovered on the bank of the Ganga coupled with many found floating in river across UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. The latest in the series came from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat where a daily newspaper lifted the lid off the reality the BJP-led state government has impatiently been trying to hide.
On May14, Divya Bhaskar, a Gujarati language newspaper (Ahmedabad), carried a news story that sent shockwaves throughout Gujarat and the country. The thrust of the story was that during the period March 1 to May 10 this year (2021), Gujarat issued about 1,23,000 death certificates as against about 58,000 death certificates issued during the same period last year (2020). The increase was an alarming number of about 65,000 death certificates.
The same is the case in other states, mostly BJP-led. Across the country, the devastating second Covid-19 wave has overwhelmed hospitals with patients and crematoriums with bodies, and many coronavirus deaths are not being properly recorded as such.
Indian and international experts believe the actual numbers could be five to 10 times higher and the official over a quarter-million Indian death count is hugely under-reported. The official total death tally as on May 16 is about 274,390. However, London based Prof Murad Banaji contends that 80% of India’s Covid-19 deaths are missing and have not been picked up by the official death count. Closely tracking the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic in India since its start in March 2020, Banaji claims that 1 million Indians may have already died of Covid.
Similarly, Anant Bhan, an independent Indian health policy and bioethics researcher, went on to say that “Even three to four times would be an underestimate.”
Harrowing images from overwhelmed crematoriums, graveyards and even makeshift funeral pyres have highlighted the scale of the crisis.
Bodies of suspected Covid-19 victims have also been seen floating down the river Ganga. Even on Monday (at the time of filing the copy), more than 4,000 corpses were found on the banks of the Ganga at Shringverpur, Prayagraj (UP).
However, the discrepancies appear particularly stark and glaring in Gujarat. For the period of 71 days (March 1, 2021 to May 10, 2021), numbers published by Divya Bhaskar from 33 districts of the state are 1,23,873 in 2021 vs 58,068 in 2020 while during the period, the government of Gujarat has officially admitted to only 4,218 Covid-related deaths.
In Rajkot, the official death toll between April 1 and April 23 was 154, yet the city’s own health officials put it at 723. And in Bharuch, the official count for the same period was just 23 but there were 600 funerals.
Gujarat’s largest city Ahmedabad had declared 20 Covid-19 deaths on April 12 but local newspaper Sandesh reported that in just one city hospital, 63 people had died of the virus.
In the neighbouring BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh, Dainik Bhaskar carried a night-time shot of a crematorium in Bhopal on April 15 with a banner headline screaming “The government’s data are fake, the pyres tell the truth.”
It exposes the Chouhan government’s lie that just four Covid-19 patients had died that day. But the three crematoriums the paper had visited revealed that 112 Covid victims had been cremated that day.
MASSIVE UNDER-REPORTING
The World Health Organisation said in its latest weekly report that “India, with a population of 1.4 billion, accounts for half of cases and 30% of deaths worldwide”.
The editorial published in The Lancet, the world’s most renowned medical journal, said the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimates that India will see a staggering 1 million deaths from Covid-19 by August 1.
The official figures for deaths in some other states, including Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, also do not align with the number of funerals. The surge has pushed the Aishbagh Burial Ground in capital Lucknow to the brink. Hafiz Abdul Mateen from the graveyard told a foreign wire agency it handled four to five burials a day before the pandemic. “Today, 45 bodies of Covid victims have been buried here,” he said.
Reports have also suggested that the official numbers for the capital New Delhi also fall well short of the reality. Funeral worker Jitender Singh Shanty told Radiance Viewsweekly that he suspects that the Government of Delhi does not register around 50 per cent Covid-19 deaths.
Rijo M. John, a health economist, described the situation as a “battle for data, data sharing and transparency”.
The tall claim of vibrant Gujarat and digital Gujarat has proved completely bogus as people are dying because of poor health facilities, Abdulhafiz Lakhani, who edits Gujarat Siyasat and Siyasat.net, told Radiance. Alleging that the government has the habit of manipulating data, Lakhani said even the Gujarat High Court pulled up the state government by saying, “The state had nothing to gain by hiding the real picture and hence suppression and concealment of accurate data would generate more serious problems including fear, loss of trust and panic among the people at large.”
In a similar vein, Ahmedabad-based activist Dev Desai said Chief Minister Vijya Rupani is squarely responsible for the grave health crisis in the state. He told Radiance the situation is worse in the countryside of the state as village folks have no idea how to tackle this virus.
Instead of spending extravagantly on its publicity, the Gujarat government should have spent money on awareness campaigns in rural areas that would have saved the day for it, he averred.
After the Kumbh mela event, daily infections are shooting up in the countryside in comparison to big towns, where they have slowed after last month’s surge, experts say.
The “absence of a coherent, timely and well-thought policy” allowed the virus to spread to rural India.
Commenting on this, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Vice President Engineer Mohammad Salim said the government squandered precious time late last year, “defying expert advice and napping at the wheel”.
Citing the eight-phase West Bengal Assembly elections, the “super-spreader rallies” and the Kumbh Mela, he said it was a criminal negligence on the part of the government and it is still not displaying seriousness in tackling this tsunami-like situation.
However, ruling BJP spokespersons R.P. Singh vehemently denied allegations of undercounting or political motivations behind the mismatch in fatality numbers. “It is not possible for anyone to hide the numbers in this age and time,” he said.
OPPOSITION ATTACKS BJP-RUN STATE GOVTS
The main opposition Congress has accused Modi and several BJP-run states of fudging the Covid-19 data on deaths. Senior party leaders said that the BJP ruled states especially Gujarat were suppressing the actual number of deaths due to Covid.
“We have a strong suspicion that the Government of India, in conjunction with some state governments, is suppressing the true numbers of new infections and Covid-related deaths. If our suspicions are true, this is a grave misdeed apart from being a national shame and a national tragedy,” said P. Chidambaram, former union minister.
“Our suspicions are confirmed by the fact that hundreds of unidentified bodies have been found floating on the River Ganga and nearly 2000 unidentified bodies have been found buried on the sands along the River Ganga,” he underlined.
MODI UNDER FIRE
In a scathing criticism of the government, The Lancet said, “If that outcome was to happen, Modi’s government would be responsible for presiding over a self-inflicted national catastrophe.”
“Modi’s actions in attempting to stifle criticism and open discussion during the crisis are inexcusable,” The Lancet said.
There is no iota of doubt now that the apocalyptic scenes playing out in India have not only deflated Modi’s reputation abroad but also severely dented his image at home.
As the public anger and frustration mounted, the pro-Modi media could no longer ignore the mood of the country. The horrific photographs of floating bodies of Covid patients were ostensibly the last straw on the camel’s back.
This government is only concerned about building the image of the glory of the Prime Minister and every step this government has taken and every responsibility this government has abandoned is to protect the image of the Prime Minister, Chidambaram quipped.
“If any good step is taken, anything that will bring a benefit, immediately the credit should go to the Central Government and in particular to the Hon’ble Prime Minister.”
In a bid to defend PM Modi on Covid crisis, several BJP leaders and ministers shared puff piece replete with misinformation. The article, penned by Sudesh Verma, convenor of the Media Relations Department of the BJP, argues how the Prime Minister is working his best, in silence, for the betterment of the country.
Commenting on this, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said that as the nation was overwhelmed by the pandemic, one man with his government is “still busy trying to save a fake image that he has built of himself. His fake image cannot be more important than my real life, than the real lives of my family members, my friends, my loved ones….”
The opposition also urged the National Human Rights Commission to investigate the matter and to call upon all states to submit figures of death certificates issued last year for any period and the corresponding death certificates issued this year for the same period that is one way.