[Rather than making urgent preparations for a second wave of cases in an already weak health-care system, the government put much of its focus on vaccinations — a campaign too limited to blunt the oncoming disaster. The government repeatedly chose self-congratulation over caution, publicly stating that the pandemic was in its “end game” in India as recently as last month.]
By Joanna Slater and Niha Masih
NEW DELHI — As he surveyed the thousands of people gathered at an election rally in eastern India on April 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared jubilant. “Everywhere I look, as far as I can see, there are crowds,” he said, his arms spread wide. “You have done an extraordinary thing.”
At
the time, India was recording more than 200,000 coronavirus cases a day. In the western state of
Maharashtra, oxygen
was running short, and people were dying at home because
of a shortage of hospital beds. In Modi’s home state of Gujarat,
crematoriums were being overwhelmed by the dead.
Those
scenes were just a prelude to the devastation now unfolding in India. It is
recording more infections daily — at last count 379,000 — than any other
country since the start of the pandemic. Hospitals are turning away severely
ill patients, and their relatives are frantically
searching for medical oxygen.
[Coronavirus
has crushed India's health system. Patients are on their own.]
For
Modi, the most powerful Indian prime minister in five decades, it is a moment
of reckoning. He is facing what appears to be the country’s biggest crisis since
independence, a calamity that is challenging his vision of a proud,
self-reliant nation.
Modi’s
own lapses and missteps are an increasing source of anger. As coronavirus cases
skyrocketed, Modi continued to hold huge election rallies and declined to
cancel a Hindu religious festival that drew millions to the banks of the Ganges
River, despite pleas from health experts.
Rather
than making urgent preparations for a second wave of cases in an already weak
health-care system, the government put much of its focus on vaccinations — a
campaign too limited to blunt the oncoming disaster. The government repeatedly
chose self-congratulation over caution, publicly stating that the pandemic was
in its “end
game” in India as recently as last month.
Modi
swept to a landslide reelection victory in 2019, offering Indians a muscular
brand of nationalism that views India as a fundamentally Hindu country rather
than the secular republic envisioned by its founders. He has cultivated an
image as a singular leader capable of bold decisions to protect and transform
the country.
Now
that image is “in tatters,” said Vinay Sitapati, a political scientist at
Ashoka University in the northern Indian state of Haryana. Modi and his
governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) built a formidable machine for winning
elections, Sitapati said, but their mind-set of continuous campaigning has come
“at the cost of governance.”
Critics
have called for Modi’s resignation, and the author Arundhati
Roy described the current situation in India as a “crime
against humanity.”
The
governing party rejects such criticisms. Modi’s government has been working
“round the clock” to fight the pandemic since the start of 2020, said Baijayant
Panda, the national vice president of the BJP. “By the beginning of this year,
the number of active covid-positive cases had dwindled to a trickle. … The
suddenness and scale of the present surge has taken everyone by surprise.”
Modi
has acknowledged that the country is fighting “a colossal battle” against the
coronavirus. India was successful in confronting the first wave of cases, he
said in a
radio address this week, but “this storm has shaken the country.”
The
prime minister’s office, the minister of information and broadcasting, and two
officials in the Ministry of Health did not respond to requests for comments on
criticism of the government’s handling of the second coronavirus wave.
[India’s
devastating outbreak is driving the global coronavirus surge]
Modi’s
approach to India’s current surge stands in contrast to his actions last
spring. Last March, he ordered a strict nationwide lockdown, the world’s
largest, with four hours’ notice at a time when the country had recorded about
500 coronavirus cases. The lockdown caused extreme economic hardship: More than 100 million people lost their
jobs. Among them were millions of migrant workers who began leaving cities on foot to
return to their home villages.
The
lockdown slowed transmission of the virus and gave India time to scale up
testing and other capacities to fight the pandemic. Infections surged in the
fall as restrictions were loosened across the country but receded early this
year for reasons that remain unclear.
Modi’s
national government as well as state authorities “went into the comfort zone of
believing the pandemic has passed,” said Srinath Reddy, the president of the
Public Health Foundation of India. “That illusion came to settle in the minds
of most people and clouded their judgment.”
A
national task force of experts and scientists set up to advise the government
on its response to the pandemic did not meet at all in February and March,
according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the panel’s behalf.
The task force met twice in April, and another meeting is scheduled for this
week.
In
March, the government allowed an enormous month-long Hindu religious festival,
the Kumbh Mela, to proceed in the northern state of Uttarakhand. Earlier this
month, the state’s chief minister, a member of Modi’s party, said that because
the gathering was held on the banks of the Ganges River, which Hindus consider
holy, “there
should be no corona.”
As
infections in the country climbed — including at the Kumbh Mela — Modi asked
the religious leaders to consider making the rest of their observances
symbolic in nature. Still, about
25,000 people took part in the final bathing ritual held Wednesday.
More than 3 million devotees took part in one on April 12.
[Inside
a Delhi hospital, oxygen runs fatally short as covid cases mount]
Meanwhile,
Modi threw himself into several state election campaigns, including a crucial
one for his party in the state of West Bengal. Although the state was not one
of the hardest-hit in the second surge, experts say the continued rallies sent
a bad message.
While
health officials were reminding people to wear masks and maintain distance,
Indians saw “their prime minister doing just the opposite on national
television every evening,” said Navjot Singh Dahiya, national vice president of
the Indian Medical Association. Modi’s biggest failure is that “his government
kept misleading people during such a huge tragedy. Now people are paying with
their lives.”
The
current desperate struggle for oxygen across much of India has revealed a lack
of preparation by the government for a new surge. Although India launched a
bidding process to build more than 160 new oxygen plants at hospitals across
the country in October, only a small fraction had been installed as of April, according
to a report by Scroll.in, an Indian media outlet.
In
the past two weeks, the government has announced plans to build hundreds more oxygen plants across
the country using money from a discretionary relief fund set up by Modi to
tackle the pandemic. The fund’s donors and its precise outlays have not been
disclosed.
India
launched a nationwide vaccination drive in January but sent more than 60
million doses of domestically produced vaccine to other countries, both through
commercial deals and as gifts in a form of vaccine diplomacy. Such exports were
halted in late March as case numbers began to rise in India. More recently, the
government announced that it would open vaccinations to everyone over the age
of 18 — but it not clear that it has the supplies to do so.
Now
anger is growing, even among Modi voters. Shivashankarappa, a 60-year-old in
the southern state of Karnataka who goes by one name and works at a wholesale
agricultural market, has been a Modi supporter for years. He thought Modi
handled the first wave of the pandemic well but said he was disgusted to see
him on the campaign trail as deaths began to rise.
“Isn’t
there value for human life? Is an election more important than people?” he
asked. If Modi “takes credit for the first wave going away, he has to take the
blame now.”
For
BJP supporters whose relatives died trying to find treatment for covid-19, the
sense of betrayal is acute. Arun Kumar Goyal is a lawyer in the northern state
of Uttar Pradesh and has been a BJP party worker for nearly two decades. His
mother-in-law was turned away from a hospital after hospital on April 25. She
received a few hours of oxygen at a site run by volunteers but died at home the
next morning, Goyal said.
“I
will never support the party again,” said Goyal, 53. “The government is
completely absent. They have left the people to fend for themselves.”
Shams
Irfan in Srinagar, India, and Mohit Rao in Bangalore contributed to this
report.
Updated April
28, 2021
India’s
coronavirus crisis: What you need to read
Latest: India’s coronavirus death toll tops 200,000 as infections surge
and anger grows
Explainer: How did the covid-19 outbreak in India get so bad?
Analysis: The world finally woke up to India’s virus nightmare
In desperate hunt for oxygen and hospital beds, India turns to
Twitter
India’s covid-19 tragedy: Photos and videos show a nation on
the brink
Inside a Delhi hospital, oxygen runs fatally short as covid
cases mount
