For quite some time, I have been wondering why there are so relatively few reports in the Western media about the huge Covid catastrophe throughout India. After all, according to Western self-understanding, India belongs to the democratic world, and I’d expect our media over here to cover the devastating situation much more – to be curious about India’s fate in a way I would not expect the West to be about, say, China or Iran since both are designated enemies of the West.
I’ve checked CNN and BBC and a few Nordic media today and found very little – and that one aspect is whether the Indian variant could hit Europe and the US, how fast and how hard. This comes on top of an already ravaged India – ravaged by “Hindutva” – fundamentalist nationalist Hindu policies, gross discrimination of Muslims and draconic laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and even putting people in prison for political satire – more here.
Could it be that the West is hesitant to display evidence of how its Western democratic model is giving way to authoritarianism and how India is yet another ‘democracy’ (after the US) that has handled the Corona in a terrible manner whereas China has done much better?
With a quick search, I found this informative article in The Telegraph India. Read this carefully:
– Professor Ashish Jha, dean at the Brown University of Public Health in Rhode Island: “So, best estimate. 55K to 80K people dying daily. If you assume baseline deaths of 25-30k. Covid likely causing additional 25K to 50K deaths daily.”
25 000 – 50 000 dead from Covid-19 per day in India right now – and you hear virtually nothing about it!
The author is a dear friend of mine and TFF Associate since the 1990s. He is a leading personality in the Indian press. Here is what he writes:
Shastri Ramachandaran
Indepth News, IDN, New Delhi
May 18, 2021
“There is no dearth of novels and films that conjure up images of a dystopia of the dead and the dying. The reality in India though is indescribably grimmer than anything imagined or picturised in fiction or films. Not even the most authentic and devastating accounts of the plague and Spanish flu in Europe can prepare one to cope with the nightmare that Covid’s second surge has turned out to be in India.”
