Modi’s Leadership on Trial
By Dr Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
Pakistan’s recent offer to India to help it in its current battle with Covid-19 has been lauded worldwide as a triumph of humanity over narrow ethnic, religious, and national considerations. India lacks the tools to effectively fight the virus, SARS-CoV-2, as vaccines, life-saving equipment, oxygen, ventilators, and, most crucially, hospital emergency beds are in critically short supply. Every day, heart-rending images are shown on TV screens of desperate people fruitlessly searching for a bed in an emergency room to save family members, who often die on pavements and street corners. Delhi, with a population of 17 million, recently had only 10 beds available in the intensive care units, according to a report in the Washington Post.
India on Saturday (May 1) reported more than 400,000 new Covid-19 cases in a 24-hour period, a total of 211,853 deaths, and 18 million confirmed cases since the epidemic began. Many people believe that the real numbers are much higher. According to World Health Organization, India accounted for 38 percent of all infections recorded worldwide in the preceding week. The situation has become so critical that the US has banned admission of anyone coming from India, except for US citizens.
The record number of deaths have challenged the capabilities of cremation and burial facilities. Neither are designed to cope with this high load. Some unorthodox improvisations have been made to cope with the emergency. In the Northern Indian State of Uttar Pradesh, pavements are serving as the emergency crematoriums, while Muslim cemeteries are running out of space.
Last Spring, Covid cases in India were relatively few, and the Modi government instituted draconian measures to control it. It ordered nation-wide shutdown of all businesses that led to great hardships, with millions of people losing their sources of income. Throngs of the unemployed walked, in a bedraggled state, to their villages to find family support. In response, the infections rate went down swiftly, so much so that it astonished many epidemiologists, who struggled to find an explanation for the precipitous decline.
Unfortunately, the pandemic returned with a vengeance which, according to many commentators, can be squarely attributed to the negligence and gross mismanagement of the Modi Government. It took a lot of missteps. India is the world’s largest producer of vaccines and the Government prematurely decided to export 60 million vaccine doses to other countries to earn both money and political goodwill. Now, the Serum Institute of India is unable to produce enough doses to cover even India’s own needs, mostly because some basic ingredients are not locally available, and Europe and the US have banned their export to ensure that their own domestic needs are fully met. Consequently, only about 2 percent of the Indian population has been fully vaccinated.
Several other factors have also contributed to the calamitous spread of the virus. Earlier in March, the Modi Government permitted the month-long festival of Kumbh Mela that attracted 9.1 million Hindu pilgrims for a holy bath in the Ganges at Haridwar in Uttarakhand. The chief minister of the state, belonging to Modi’s party, declared that since the Mela was being held by the bank of the holy Ganges, pilgrims would be immune to Covid-19, an assertion contrary to all rational thought. Similarly, some Hindu zealots have been advocating quack medicines, such as cow urine and turmeric.
Highly respected voices in India and abroad are excoriating the Government’s negligence and failure to manage the pandemic. In an op-ed in the Guardian newspaper (April 28), Arundhati Roy, a renowned author and human rights activist, characterized the unfolding tragedy in India “as a crime against humanity.”
Prime Minister Modi, who, with a long grey beard, an ornate cap and flowing saffron robe, now gives the appearance of a holy man or Rishi has largely ignored the emergency. Instead, he has been campaigning in the state elections. In West Bengal, he addressed mass rallies, and while preaching to others to wear masks and keep social distance, he himself has been flouting his own advice.
The chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, has described the new virus “supremely contagious and those who do recover, don’t do so swiftly.” The speed of the current infection rate has stunned the scientists and given rise to the speculation that the country was witnessing the emergence of a more virulent and deadly new form of it. However, India’s top virologist, Professor Shahid Jameel, stated that they are still studying the problem and have not reached a firm conclusion.
There has been worldwide sympathy for India’s plight and many countries have been rushing the needed supplies. The US Government has pledged the delivery of more than $100 million worth of crucial materials, including oxygen cylinders, protective gear for hospital personnel, therapeutics and 184 thousand rapid diagnostic kits. In addition, it will share with India Astra Zeneca doses in store in the US, though the vaccine has still not been authorized for use in the US.
Besides the US, nearly 40 countries, including Russia, European Union, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Thailand, are also offering assistance. There is a general recognition that if not controlled, the virus will threaten everyone, producing an infinite number of variants that will spread worldwide--a few most likely able to evade the current vaccines, a nightmarish scenario.
Many political observers believe that widespread unhappiness will finally loosen Modi grip on the masses Writing in the opinion page of CNN, Meenakshi Ahamed, a prominent journalist, commented that “The attempt to cripple India's democratic institutions is evident everywhere. The BJP has intimidated the domestic press and has tried to have Twitter and Facebook remove posts critical of the prime minister.” However, this anger is limited to an elite intellectual circle.
Modi has sought to transform the visage of India from a secular liberal democracy, as envisioned by its founders, the first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and the country’s iconic leader Mahatma Gandhi, to a narrow Hindu nationalist nation. His entire political career has been shaped by his affiliation with the right-wing Hindu nativist parties, Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, exponents of Hindutva. He has been able to forge a coalition of Hindu nationalist parties, in the process marginalizing the Muslim minority. It has proven to be a winning strategy. A highly shrewd politician, it is doubtful that he can be dislodged easily.
(The writer is a former assistant professor Harvard Medical School and a retired health scientist administrator US National Institutes of Health.)
