The pandemic should not become just one more example of the Indian government’s obsessive desire to control its image. As the recent spat with the World Health Organization over COVID-19 mortality figures suggests, clumsy attempts to influence the global narrative will only undermine India’s international reputation.
NEW DELHI – India is no stranger to political controversies. At least a half-dozen rage in its fractious public life at any time. But perhaps the most unseemly dispute recently has been the current one over the country’s COVID-19 mortality figures.
The pandemic hit India hard, particularly during the second wave in April-June 2021, when people were dying from COVID-19 in hospital waiting rooms and parking lots, while others succumbed due to a lack of medical oxygen. Countless funeral pyres glowed in the darkness along the banks of the Ganges, even as some poor families, unable to afford a funeral, wrapped their loved ones in shrouds and sent them floating down the river.
But, despite widespread anecdotal evidence of a catastrophic pandemic death toll, official Indian figures told a different, although still alarming, story. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government estimated that, between the start of the pandemic in January 2020 and March 2022, just over a half-million deaths were attributable to COVID-19. Many Indian journalists were skeptical, pointing out that the official figure was well below even the number of compensation payouts made by state governments to the families of COVID-19 victims. The respected British medical journal The Lancet published a study suggesting that India’s numbers were a gross undercount. But the government stood its ground.
NEW DELHI – India is no stranger to political controversies. At least a half-dozen rage in its fractious public life at any time. But perhaps the most unseemly dispute recently has been the current one over the country’s COVID-19 mortality figures.
The pandemic hit India hard, particularly during the second wave in April-June 2021, when people were dying from COVID-19 in hospital waiting rooms and parking lots, while others succumbed due to a lack of medical oxygen. Countless funeral pyres glowed in the darkness along the banks of the Ganges, even as some poor families, unable to afford a funeral, wrapped their loved ones in shrouds and sent them floating down the river.
But, despite widespread anecdotal evidence of a catastrophic pandemic death toll, official Indian figures told a different, although still alarming, story. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government estimated that, between the start of the pandemic in January 2020 and March 2022, just over a half-million deaths were attributable to COVID-19. Many Indian journalists were skeptical, pointing out that the official figure was well below even the number of compensation payouts made by state governments to the families of COVID-19 victims. The respected British medical journal The Lancet published a study suggesting that India’s numbers were a gross undercount. But the government stood its ground.