Is India's COVID surge Modi's fault?

[AFP/ Tauseef Mustafa]

By Sarah Leonard

Makeshift funeral pyres are burning throughout Delhi – one measure of a growing catastrophe.

India is now suffering an extreme COVID surge. The country is recording as many as 350,000 infections per day, with 1 in 3 people tested in Delhi testing positive for the virus. ICUs are crammed, and the country is suffering from an oxygen shortage. There is a new mutant variant. Medical workers are terrified and exhausted.

AJ+ producer Raji Ramanathan spoke with Rana Ayyub, an Indian journalist and opinion writer at the Washington Post who is currently in Mumbai.

“As a journalist who has been reporting from India for more than 15 years,” says Ayyub, “I personally have never seen anything like this, unless there has been a genocide or a natural calamity.” The government of Narendra Modi, she argues, should receive much of the blame. Here are the essential takeaways from the conversation, edited and condensed.

“I think Modi should be tried for crimes against humanity”

“Our hospitals are petitioning [the courts] over the high costs for oxygen. And there is absolutely no government in sight. Modi has been an absolute failure,” Ayyub says. “We always saw him as a strongman with dictatorial tendencies. One thought that he was somebody who was polarizing, but probably at a time like this, when there's a health crisis, he might just extend the healing touch. But the way he has criminally abdicated his responsibility, I think just puts everyone to shame. I think [he] should be tried for crimes against humanity.”

A “festival of democracy”

Modi, who was reelected in 2019, is campaigning for his Hindu nationalist party and has been holding rallies rather than encouraging people to stay home. “This man has been telling people to come out and vote on the streets of West Bengal and celebrate the ‘festival of democracy,’” says Ayyub, referring to a province where Modi hopes his candidate will defeat a powerful rival. Despite a mask mandate, Modi’s close advisor Amit Shah drove through a West Bengal crowd, maskless, according to the New York Times, throwing rose petals.

Religion over safety

Ayyub notes that Modi’s ruling BJP party took out full-page ads telling Indians that it was safe to participate in the Hindu Kumbh Mela pilgrimage, which involves a dip in the Ganges. Tens of thousands have been showing up to bathe since March, according to Time. “That has become a single source spread over the rest of the country,” says Ayyub. “What kind of appeasement is this?” In the midst of a humanitarian crisis that affects everyone, Modi, who has been widely accused of leading a campaign against Muslims in India, “is thinking in terms of religion.”

Politics over health?

“The first strain of this virus was detected in India in the month of October because of the genome sequencing. If we had spent more resources on this, as opposed to the amount of money [pumped into] the election campaign, we probably would have had a solution by now – if we had funded the vaccination drive the way we should,” Ayyub says. “The prime minister should have been on television asking people to take the vaccine.”

You can watch the AJ+ video here.

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