[Overconfidence and missteps
contributed to the country’s devastating second wave, his critics say,
tarnishing the prime minister’s aura of political invulnerability.]
By Jeffrey Gettleman, Hari Kumar, Karan Deep Singh and Sameer Yasir
India “saved humanity from a big
disaster by containing corona effectively,” Mr.
Modi told a virtual gathering at the World Economic Forum in late
January, three tricolor Indian flags displayed in the background.
Now, a second wave has made India
the worst-hit country in the world.
New infections have reached about
400,000 a day. Vaccines are running short. Hospitals are swamped. Lifesaving
oxygen is running out. Each day, cremation grounds burn thousands of bodies,
sending up never-ending plumes of ash that are turning the skies gray over some
of India’s biggest cities.
India’s stark reversal, from
declaring victory to suffering its gravest emergency in decades, has forced a
national reckoning, with Mr. Modi at its center.
Experts around the world once
marveled at how the country seemed to have escaped the worst of the pandemic,
entertaining explanations about the relative youth and health of the population
that Mr. Modi and his government embraced, if not encouraged. Even now, Mr.
Modi’s supporters say that India has been hit by a global phenomenon and that more
time is needed to trace the causes of the second wave.
But independent health experts and
political analysts say that Mr. Modi’s overconfidence and his domineering
leadership style bear a huge share of the responsibility. Critics say his
administration was determined to cast an image of India as back on track and
open for business despite lingering risks. At one point, officials dismissed
warnings by scientists that India’s population remained vulnerable and had not
achieved “herd immunity” as some in his administration were suggesting, said
people familiar with those conversations.
The growing distress across this
country has tarnished Mr. Modi’s aura of political invulnerability, which he
won by steamrolling the opposition and by leveraging his personal charisma to
become India’s most powerful politician in decades. Opposition leaders are on
the attack, and his central hold on power has increasingly made him the target
of scathing criticism online.
With parliamentary elections three
years away and no signs of defections from his government, Mr. Modi’s power
seems secure. His government has stepped up efforts to get supplies to
desperate patients and broadened eligibility for scarce vaccines to more age
groups. Still, analysts say that his dominance means that more people will hold
him personally responsible for the sickness and death exploding across the
country.
“The bulk of the blame lies in
Modi’s governance style, where top ministers are chosen for loyalty rather than
expertise, where secrecy and image management is privileged over transparency,”
said Asim Ali, a research scholar at the Center for Policy Research in New
Delhi.
“In such a governance framework,”
he added, “when Modi drops the ball, as he did on Covid, there can be
disastrous consequences.”
At various points in recent months,
officials made decisions that have come back to haunt India.
Though India is a vaccine
powerhouse, producing vaccines to protect the world, it didn’t purchase enough
doses to protect itself. Instead, while vaccination rates remained low at home,
New Delhi exported more than 60 million shots to bolster its standing on the
world stage.
Even as infections rose, Mr. Modi
decided to let big groups gather to help his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and
burnish its Hindu nationalist credentials. His government allowed a Hindu
festival with millions of worshipers to take place. He campaigned in state
elections without a mask at rallies of thousands of maskless supporters.
Mr. Modi surrounded himself with
allies rather than experts, analysts said. Officials felt too intimidated to
point out mistakes, the analysts said, or to call into doubt his claims that
the pandemic was over. His party and his allies have also moved to silence
critics, ordering Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter to take down critical posts and threatening to arrest ordinary people for pleading for
oxygen
Mr. Modi’s party, known as the
B.J.P., and the government declined to answer specific questions but listed
actions the government has taken, including Mr. Modi holding more than a dozen
meetings in April with Air Force officers, pharmaceutical executives and many
others.
In a statement, the government said
it “maintained a steady pace of coordination and consultation to prepare an
adequate response.” It added that the administration in February had “advised
states to maintain strict vigil” and “not let their guard down.”
Any Indian leader would have faced
challenges. Hundreds of millions of poor people live cheek by jowl, easy
targets for a highly contagious virus. India has long neglected public health,
spending less than $100 per capita per year, the World Bank
says, less than many developing nations — a problem that predates Mr. Modi.
On Saturday, the country reported
over 398,000 new virus infections and more than 3,500 deaths. Evidence suggests
the official numbers vastly
understate the toll. The country’s biggest city, Mumbai, just halted all vaccinations because it essentially
ran out.
Analysts say Mr. Modi performed
much better during the first wave. A longtime politician with humble roots and
a penchant for dramatic moves, Mr. Modi, 70, embraced masks and social
distancing from the earliest days.
On March 24, 2020, when India had
fewer than 600 total reported infections, Mr. Modi ordered his country
into one
of the strictest lockdowns in the world at four hours’ notice. Anxious
for guidance, most people dutifully stayed indoors. When Mr. Modi asked
citizens to stand on their balconies and bang pots and pans in solidarity with
health care workers, millions did just that.
Experts credit that lockdown,
though flawed,
with slowing the spread. But the restrictions were economically devastating,
putting tens of millions out of work and imperiling many of Mr. Modi’s grandest
ambitions, including turning India into
a global power. He became fearful of locking down again.
After he eased many restrictions,
infections rose, reaching almost 100,000 per day in September, but the health
care system held. By the beginning of 2021, when infections had ebbed and the
economy began to stagger to life, Mr. Modi and his team made a concerted effort
to signal that India was back.
Many Indians shed their masks. They
returned to markets and socialized. Even more restrictions were lifted.
Covid-19 centers set up during the first wave were dismantled.
His party’s leadership declared in
February that India had “defeated Covid under the able, sensitive, committed
and visionary leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.” In early March,
Harsh Vardhan, India’s health minister, proclaimed India was “in the endgame of
the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Those who weren’t so sure were
sidelined. India’s Covid-19 task force, which includes around 20 health
professionals, had been meeting at least twice a month. But between Jan. 11 and
April 15, the task force did not meet at all, according to three people with
knowledge of their deliberations. Two said that the government simply believed
the threat had passed.
Some scientists grew concerned with
the official line that India, a nation of 1.4 billion, was approaching herd
immunity, or the point at which enough people in the population are immune
— either through vaccinations or through earlier infection — that the virus can
no longer spread easily. V.K. Paul, head of the Covid-19 task force, said in
January that “most of our highly populated districts and cities have
had their run of the pandemic.”
The concerned scientists pushed
back, according to the three people. Serological studies didn’t necessarily
back up the idea, they said. Two people familiar with the research said the
government cherry-picked results that suggested a move toward herd immunity.
The vaccination program lost steam
as complacency set in. The Modi administration began exporting
Indian-made vaccines to gain favor with neighbors who might be tempted
to take vaccines from China, New Delhi’s regional rival. The government
approved only two vaccines for use, both made in India, touting the country’s
self-sufficiency. Less than two percent of the population has received two
doses.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a spokesman
for the B.J.P., said there were no shortages when the government exported
vaccines and that “the government proactively has expanded production and
procurement from alternate sources.”
As vaccinations sputtered, Mr. Modi
hit the campaign trail. Several states were holding elections, and he focused
specifically on West Bengal, a state controlled by an opposition party. Up
until mid-April, Mr. Modi and Amit Shah, the home minister, campaigned
relentlessly, drawing crowds of thousands, many not wearing masks and packed
closely together. Results of the vote are expected on Sunday.
Though health experts warned of
risks, Mr. Modi, an energetic campaigner, seemed to draw strength from the rallies.
He told one in mid-April, as India topped 200,000 new daily
infections, how happy he was to “see only people and people and nothing else.”
Labs in West Bengal are now reporting a staggering positivity rate of 50 percent,
meaning half the people tested have been infected. Other states holding
elections are seeing spikes.
Though several factors are at play
and new,
more dangerous virus variants might also be involved, many people blame the
elections. In a recent hearing, a judge told a lawyer for India’s election
commission that “your officers should be booked on murder charges.”
In another court hearing in Delhi,
after a lawyer representing the local government complained that Mr. Modi’s
administration was not doing enough to help with the acute oxygen shortage, the
country’s solicitor general responded: “Let’s try and not be a crybaby.”
Mr. Modi is likely to hold on to
power, thanks to a weak opposition and his ability to fire up his Hindu
nationalist base. Even his image has changed; Mr. Modi has lost the baseball
cap and chic sunglasses he wore a year ago and grown his hair and beard long,
reminiscent for some of a Hindu sage.
“He’s just a unique political
animal,” said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia program at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He has this charisma, an allure, a
magnetism, a very compelling personal story, and he has enormous personal
credibility with the average voter.”
Even now, Mr. Vaishnav added, “people like Modi and they will find ways to
justify it.”