Yet even India’s faulty government numbers now give reason for hope. The parts of the country where counting is fairly reliable show a clear trend. The virus’s vicious second wave is rolling back almost as fast as it rolled in. In early May India was recording some 400,000 new cases a day. This has now fallen below 250,000. The daily number of new cases in Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital and one of the first places to see a surge, is about an eighth of its peak.
Jokers point to another indicator of improving fortunes. Leaders whose visibility faded as the tragedy mounted have suddenly grown less camera-shy. “You know cases are going down because...Modi has reappeared,” jested one tweet, referring to the prime minister, Narendra Modi, who recently appeared to choke with emotion during a televised Zoom call with doctors in his parliamentary constituency.
Across India’s poor, crowded Gangetic plain, where doctors and statistics are most sparse, anecdotal evidence suggests that the grim reaper has come, snatched lives in every village and mostly then marched on again. It has left whole communities emotionally and economically shattered. A team of reporters from, a Hindi-language daily, counted more than 2,000 corpses hastily disposed of along a 1,100km stretch of the Ganges.
The wave has left scars. While India’s poorest, perennially battered by droughts, floods and capricious governments, among other plagues, have been forced to bear the calamity with stoicism, its middle class has been made to feel vulnerable as never before. Even the most privileged found themselves locked out of overwhelmed hospitals, or obliged to queue for vaccines along with hoi polloi. Their suffering continues.
I do not wonder
wow
Then there is something wrong with the stats. We expect better from !