Shoaib Daniyal on COVID in India

Shoaib Daniyal writes in Scroll of the WHO's estimate that India’s death toll from COVID was 4.7 million. He says-

This meant India was the country hardest hit by Covid, with approximately a third of the global deaths.

India's population is over four times that of the US. This means India was not hit as hard as the US in per capita terms. But India is much much poorer than America. COVID deaths were a small fraction of Spanish Flu deaths when the population was twenty percent of what it is now. Those deaths had zero political impact even thought there was plenty of political agitation against the British rulers at the time.

We would expect excess mortality from any negative economic shock - which is what COVID was- in a country as poor as India. But we have no means of measuring what that might be. We don't know what the mortality was before the epidemic. We don't know what it is now. We don't know what it will be. Why? India is as poor as shit. It can't even measure its own poverty.

It is in the WHO's interests to inflate the number of deaths. Sadly, it won't get more funding precisely because it was entirely useless during this crisis. Similarly, the bleeding hearts who are having orgasms over all those juicy unreported deaths have completely failed to turn the thing into political capital. Modi is remembered as taking a strong line against the danger but then giving up when the popular mood was for letting the thing run its course.

Shoaib, naively asks

Here is a paradox though: why did Indian democracy produce no political reaction to this incredible distress? 

The answer is that Indians know India is as poor as shit. The Government did what it could but then gave up because...urm...India is as poor as shit. Still Modi made an effort and gained by it. Shailaja in Kerala did very well but she has been dumped from the Cabinet. Why? The CM wants to be the Deng Xiaoping of Kerala. He wants Growth. Let Health outcomes worsen. The Economy must come first. This is because India is as poor as shit. That's the epidemic Indians aren't keen on. 

At the start of the pandemic, the Modi government seized emergency political powers,

It jailed its opponents- right? Wrong. It invoked the National Disaster Management Act and the Epidemic Diseases Act. That was perfectly proper. COVID was a disaster. It was an epidemic. But no 'political' as opposed to administrative powers were seized.  

placing the Union government in charge of the states when it came to directing the pandemic response.

Which is perfectly proper. India's constitution is unitary, not federal. 

In theory, therefore, the Bharatiya Janata Party should have been held accountable by voters for the collapse during the second wave.

It was considered to have made a good effort before giving up as the popular mood changed.  

It should also have been blamed for the incredibly harsh, unplanned lockdown in 2020

but was rewarded for trying to do the right thing just as with demonetization. 

which saw the Indian economy suffer more hurt than any other.

The Indian economy suffered massively in one quarter but then rebounded. The lesson was plain. India is as poor as shit. It can afford to lose people. It can't afford lockdown. 

What explains this inexplicable breakdown in the democratic accountability loop for a catastrophe the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic?

Indians know India is as poor as shit. They know the BJP didn't make the country as poor as shit. It did its best to save lives but then gave up because...urm...India is as poor as shit. There is a 'democratic accountability loop' in India. If Congress is run by a fucking cretin, Congress loses elections. Modi isn't a cretin. Yogi isn't a cretin. Vijayan isn't a cretin. They get re-elected because of accountability. Meanwhile Scroll, like the Wire, get by on subsidies. This means it does not have to compete by doing good journalism. Shoaib can write any old tosh and pocket his salary. Will more subsidized media outlets unseat Modi? No. That money is wasted. Subsidies produce careerist stupidity. Competition produces Prashant Kishore.

The single largest reason seems to be lack of media critique.

If only Scroll was given lots more money it could do lots more media critique and then Modi would fall for sure. Why is the West wasting money on Zelenskyy? It should give money to Scroll.Russia to write about Putin's COVID failures. Then Putin will burst into tears and resign.  

Throughout the pandemic, big media houses – especially Hindi and English-languages outlets based in the National Capital Region – chose to avoid blaming the government for both the economic losses as well as the healthcare collapse.

Why? Rich peeps who own media outlets were scared shitless of dying. They liked the lockdown. Then they calmed down. Maybe it would be no bad thing if one's elderly relatives popped their clogs and you inherited their money. 

Indians know why healthcare will collapse. It has to do with the fact that India is as poor as shit.  

Instead, Covid-19 was portrayed as a global act of god that had affected each and every country in much the same way.

Unless, like China, the Government could shoot people and then bill their families for the cost of the bullet.  

Very few news reports made it to the mainstream Hindi and English media showing government malfunction or the fact that India was one of the worst-hit countries.

But Indians know India is as poor as shit. The country is very very over-populated. All we ask is that some other people die so that we might get more breathing room.  

In fact, even the latest WHO data was covered by the mainstream media quite poorly, with newspapers and TV channels either simply choosing to avoid highlighting it in their reporting or, in some cases, uncritically running with the government line.

Foreigners keep trying to tell India that it is as poor as shit. Our response is that we are only as poor as shit because we are too busy fucking your Mother to get a job.  Anyway, WHO is utterly useless.

Along with lack of government critique, large media houses also devoted significant amounts of airtime to absurd accusations that Indian Muslims were responsible for the spread of Covid-19 in the country.

Shoaib is Muslim. His response should have been that he was too busy fucking your Mother to spread anything.  

The Tablighi Jamat came in for intense scrutiny during this part of the news cycle, with large sections of the media claiming that a meeting of the Muslim organisation before the lockdown was responsible for the virus spreading through India.

The Malaysians first made that discovery. It was true enough. Anyway, the bitterest enemies of that particular organization came from within the Muslim fold.  

There was, of course, little scientific backing for this and two years later all the foreign Tablighis at the event have been freed. However, by turning public anger against a minority group rather than the government, the media hysteria offered a critical safety valve for the BJP.

It could have done but that isn't the road the BJP chose to go down. Why? It would have led to pogroms and ethnic cleansing and the more rapid spread of the disease. Old peeps were scared shitless by this disease. The BJP is getting pretty long in the tooth.  

The Opposition also failed to perform its duty by failing to help Indian voters understand that their predicament was at least partly due to government malfunction.

Scroll gets funding because it is supposed to be 'helping Indian voters understand' that India isn't as poor as shit. Also, no terrorists are Muslim.  

The BJP also made sure that Opposition space was curtailed significantly.

Very true. They would defecate on the more and more of that space while claiming this was mandated by Swacch Bharat. Poor Rahul has to go to nightclub in Kathmandu just to take a pee.  

India’s Parliament, for example, played no part in the pandemic and governance was centralised almost completely in the Union executive.

Shoaib does not understand that the Legislative function is separate from the Executive function. However Parliament can topple the Administration with a vote of no confidence. They can also raise questions and institute committees of inquiry.  

In contrast, democracies like the United Kingdom placed an immense amount of reliance on their legislatures during the pandemic.

No they didn't. The situation was exactly similar because both BoJo and Modi had big enough majorities. But BoJo kept having parties during lockdown while Modi didn't.  

This lack of opposition voice in India allowed the government narrative to become hegemonic.

India has plenty of 'opposition voice'. Shoaib is pretending that Mamta is a dumb doll. 

In theory, democracies are well-placed to handle natural calamities because

they have super-powers? Rich countries are well-placed to handle calamities. The poor as shit may welcome them because they represent an Malthusian check on over-population.  

their internal structures allow them to absorb and respond to extreme stresses compared to more brittle authoritarian governments.

China has had one hundred times less COVID death than the US despite being much poorer and much much more populous. Authoritarian governments aren't brittle. They will fuck you up if you look at them cross ways.  

The most famous explanation of this mechanism has come in the work of economist Amartya Sen, who argued that democracies do well in combating famine thanks to the constant pressure the government is put under by Opposition parties and a free press.

The transition to popularly elected Bengali administrations resulted on two different occasions in huge famine fatalities. Sen is as stupid as shit. The fact is Shurawardy as Minister Civil Supply had most responsibility for the 1943 excess deaths. Yet he became Premier of Bengal and even P.M of Pakistan for a short while. Mujib would have been re-elected if he hadn't been assassinated.  

But what happens to Sen’s model in a country like current-day India where the press is now seen by experts as quite unfree?

Sen's model quits modelling and takes to sucking off homeless dudes because, truth be told, it is very elderly and as stupid as shit.  

India’s rank on the Reports without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, for example, now stands at 150 out of 180 countries (China-ruled Hong Kong is two places higher).

You should hear what India says about 'Reporters without Borders'. I can't print it here because this blog is mainly read by innocent children and easily shocked elderly women. 

In his 2014 book An Uncertain Glory, Sen seems far more critical of the Indian media than in his pioneering work on famine prevention. If a person only read the Indian media, she “would be only vaguely aware of the fact that India has the largest population of seriously undernourished people in the world”, he points out.

Indians who live in India don't need to read the media to be aware that India is as poor as shit. But then Indians don't need to read Sen to know that he has shit for brains.

Like the media, the Opposition is also not functioning in the way it should in a democracy.

Says Shoaib who doesn't understand that the media should get hold of news not just recycle half-baked views.  

In many states and at the Centre, there is little space given to the Opposition to compete fairly. In states like Uttar Pradesh, in fact, the police is often wheeled out to explicitly curtail Opposition activity.

If that activity is of a criminal nature- sure. That's why Yogi was re-elected.  

That India just saw a bruising episode of mass death and economic collapse with almost no political expression might be a significant example of India’s current moment of democratic malfunction.

In other words, Indian democracy did not do whatever it was Scroll's funders wanted it to do. Naughty India! 

Thus Sen’s model, where a democracy with a free press and a vigorous opposition can prevent catastrophes,

The UK has a free press and a vigorous opposition. That is why nobody died of COVID here. The Daily Mail published pictures of COVID's mummy taking it up the arse from Sir Keir Starmer. The virus felt so ashamed it dared not show its face in this country.  

might not apply to India in 2020-’21 at all. That is possibly why India experienced such a catastrophe during the first two Covid-19 waves.

India is as poor as shit. But because the population is young no virus is going to provide the Malthusian check on its overpopulation. The problem is that the rich don't want to die. In the short run they may be able to enforce a lockdown. Medium to long term nothing of the sort is possible. That is why wealthy Indians are buying bolt-holes in New Zealand and Alaska and so forth.