From the extremely rare Indian source, willing to criticize the Modi led BJP government.
The India Cable: India's Oxygen Woes; and Why Big Media is Happy Breathing Modi's Gas
Plus: PM speaks much, says little, eyes betray teleprompter, India has 39% of world cases, EC observers want to club WB poll phases, Covid surge begins to cost
From the founding editors of The Wire—MK Venu, Siddharth Varadarajan and Sidharth Bhatia—and journalists-writers Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh and Tanweer Alam. Editor: Pratik Kanjilal
Snapshot of the day
April 21, 2021
Pratik Kanjilal
Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Indian style:
(Image circulating on WhatsApp; full text of resolution is here)
On a more realistic note, Health Ministry data showed 295,000 new cases and 2,023 deaths in the last 24 hours, among the world’s biggest daily totals of the pandemic. Tragedy struck Nashik in Maharashtra when
22 patients on ventilators died after a leaking tank at the civic hospital deprived them of oxygen for half an hour.
Financial Times has
a detailed report on the gravity of the crisis. India can
again be called a “country of mass poverty” after 45 years, because of the mishandling of the pandemic. Pew Research Center, using World Bank data, estimates that the number of poor in India (with income of $2 per day or less in purchasing power parity terms) has more than doubled from 60 million to 134 million in just a year.
Campaigning in Murshidabad, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
accused Narendra Modi of “monumental incompetence” in dealing with the pandemic. She also wrote to him about the new vaccine policy, which allows direct purchase, reminding him that in February (when the self-congratulatory resolution above was passed), she had written to him seeking permission to purchase vaccines directly,
and had received no response.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has claimed that India’s “fatality rate of 1.18% is one of the lowest in the world and is continuously dipping. The present indicators tell us about the significant control we still have on the emerging situation.” He can’t be unaware of the massive underreporting of fatalities from BJP run states like
Gujarat, UP,
Haryana and
MP, which is being discussed extensively here and abroad. This chart, compiled by the FT from Indian news reports, is indicative:
(Chart: Financial Times)
And as for control over the disaster, the fact that more Indians seek help from the head of the Indian Youth Congress than the Union Health Minister is telling. Here’s how
India compares with other badly-hit nations on infections and vaccination.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has
written to the Prime Minister calling for a genuine partnership between the Centre and states and more funds to enable free mass vaccination. Vijayan has requestedthe PM to reconsider the new policy on vaccine distribution so that availability is assured and no additional financial burden is incurred.
In a radical move, the Maharashtra government has decided to import vaccines directly. Funds will be diverted from all departments, if necessary, to carry out an extensive inoculation drive like in the UK.
Admitting a petition filed by Paresh Dhanani, leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly, the Gujarat High Court has
issued notices to state BJP president CR Patil and the Vijay Rupani government in connection with the procurement and distribution of Remdesivir, used in Covid-19 treatment, from the party’s Surat office. The state BJP’s free Remdesivir distribution drive of 5,000 vials started from its Surat office from April 10, when the drug was scarce in the market.
Many states have imposed curbs to control the pandemic, including
Jharkhand,
Telangana,
Andhra Pradesh,
Chandigarh and
Puducherry. But Kerala has
decided against a weekend lockdown while the state branch of the Indian Medical Association has told the High Court that the Gujarat government
should impose a two-week lockdown. Gujarat’s newspapers are
overwhelmed with obituaries.
Deepak Patel @deepakpatel_91
The enormity of our tragedy: 6.5 out of total 20 pages in Sandesh newspaper’s Rajkot edition today contain just obituaries. Many of these obituaries say the deceased will be remembered on “telephonic get-together” keeping in mind the current situation. 
(100+ obituaries over six pages in the Sandesh, Rajkot edition. Official death toll in three preceding days was 31)
As Delhi reels under a surge, private labs as well as testing facilities at government and private hospitals are
struggling to keep up with the demand for RT-PCR testing, with patients facing a long wait to even book a test. Unable to get slots for home testing, hundreds begin queuing up in the morning at hospitals, waiting between an hour to three hours. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a 60-year-old X-ray technician who works there had to queue up for two days to be allotted a test.
“People need oxygen now, why should you wait for April 22 to ban use of oxygen for industries?” the
Delhi High Court asked the Modi government yesterday in a marathon hearing. The oxygen supply in Delhi’s hospitals threatened to run out last night, and the AAP government
went public with it, causing panic among the families of patients. But as
this Twitter user pointed out, “As we in Maharashtra found, our central government functions like customer support - they only respond if you shame them on Twitter. Calling is no use.”
Read this on why oxygen is such an important indicator of the resilience of the health system and impossible to rustle up in a hurry.
The central government is firefighting the oxygen shortage, which should have been planned for since Covid-19 causes respiratory distress. On the contrary,
India doubled exports of oxygen to nearly 9,300 metric tonnes in the first three quarters of FY20-21. Most of it went to Bangladesh. India can product 7,000 metric tonnes of oxygen a day but is now looking to import 50,000 mt.
Under pressure, the Modi government may have committed advances to two private vaccine manufacturers, but “it is only by July 2021 that we may have a better understanding of our evolving supply-chain [and] timelines of vaccine coverage,”
warns Dr K Srinath Reddy. The Centre will
not supply any vaccines to private hospitals from May 1, even for those seeking their second dose. Dr Reddy’s chief says that the SputnikV vaccine
will be sold at its global rate of $10 per dose in India, or Rs 750, in a country where the bottom 20% of households on the economic ladder, as per Longitudinal Ageing Study released in January by the government,
earn Rs 2,152 per month per capita. Serum Institute of India’s
Covishield will be available to state governments at Rs 400 a dose and to private hospitals at Rs 600 a dose, while the Centre buys it at Rs 150 per dose.
For a requirement of 1.2 billion doses from May, India has a
production capacity of 114 million per month. A senior WHO India official has said that of all the vaccination strategies possible, the
Modi government has chosen “the worst one”, and that the vaccine strategy “underlines how the
government, despite having time to plan ahead, did not ensure a sufficient stockpile of Covid-19 vaccines in advance to streamline the push.”
The US has
advised its citizens to avoid travelling to India, even if they are fully vaccinated as there is a “very high level” of Covid-19 in the country. Al Jazeera has a grim
photo feature on the situation in Delhi. Noted Bangla poet, critic and teacher
Shankha Ghosh died today, a week after he
tested positive for Covid-19.
The PM spoke to the nation last night, saying much but giving away little, and commending the nation to the care of the public, since the government is inept. The headlines which should have been in the papers this morning appeared on Twitter instead:
Jairaj Singh @JairajSinghR
Nation needs oxygen. Not gas.
April 20th 2021
1,399 Retweets10,020 Likes
Admired for his perfect delivery, which is often mistaken for oratory, the Prime Minister stumbled at least three times during his speech. And moments of heightened emotion were marred by the
bright reflection of the teleprompter in the lenses of his spectacles.
Nikhil Patidar @NikhilPatidarr
#ModiHataoDeshBachao #ModiResign Imagine the shallowness in his words when Pappu PM Modi cannot even empathise with people in his own words and has to read from a teleprompter - which was today reflecting in his spectacles. Very Sad!!!!
April 20th 2021
604 Retweets1,109 Likes
India contributes 39% of global coronavirus surge
The
massive surge in India and the Indian variant of Covid-19, B1167, are
becoming major discussion points amongst experts. The fact that India
did not help much with sequencing its genome or studying it is being noted, and this will not help the global reputation of Indian science. West Bengal (which has had mass election rallies) is now reporting a
new Indian variant, B1168.
India’s addition to the UK’s ‘red list’ of travel-banned countries
may have come too late, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser fears. Prof Mark Walport said he believed the new variant is “more transmissible” and there are “good reasons” for keeping it out of the UK. Israel has
registered eight cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in India and believes that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is at least partially effective against it.
The Centre and BJP-ruled state governments may think that India’s under-reporting is helping the Modi government spin its way out of the crisis, but a lot of questions are being asked now. Last week, India added 1.6 million cases to the global tally. There are
estimates now for
what the real numbers might look like ― 29 times higher than the number of confirmed cases. That is
evident from Bhopal, where about 1,000 bodies were disposed of under the Covid protocol in April, but the BJP state government says that less than 50 people died of Covid in that period.
Plus: PM speaks much, says little, eyes betray teleprompter, India has 39% of world cases, EC observers want to club WB poll phases, Covid surge begins to cost, Domino’s credit card database pillaged
www.theindiacable.com
