Modi owns Indiaâs unfolding Covid disaster
Modi owns Indiaâs unfolding Covid disaster
India s Covid tragedy was avoidable, and is largely the fault of a boastful, incompetent government. Yet, Modi may suffer few political consequences for his devastating missteps.
Pankaj Mishra 22 April, 2021 3:30 pm IST Text Size:
A+
Indiaâs healthcare system is buckling under the weight of the Covid-19 pandemic: The country registered more than 1,500 deaths and nearly 300,000 infections on Monday alone. Videos of crowded mortuaries and funeral sites, and grief-stricken relatives outside packed hospitals, are circulating among middle-class Indians. The Lancet says India could suffer more than 2,300 deaths every day by June.
Copy code
The Election Commission of India should either enforce virtual rallies or not conduct elections if the pandemic persists.
India is witnessing a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with record numbers of new cases and deaths every day. At the same time, States holding Assembly elections have seen mass rallies by political parties. In most such rallies, especially in West Bengal, which still has two phases to go and where campaigning is still on, COVID-19 protocols such as masking and physical distancing are blatantly flouted.
In view of the COVID-19 surge, and the fact that public rallies are super-spreader events, should campaigning be restricted to virtual mode at least until the pandemic is behind us? Here we explore this question.
Northlines
Vir Sanghvi
So, how is your Vaccine Utsav going? I can only base my opinion on limited evidence, but I get the distinct feeling that there is much less utsah for this Utsav than there was for the thaali-banging at the start of the pandemic.
It would be nice for each one of us to help vaccinate one other person. But at a time when it is hard enough for us to even vaccinate ourselves, this remains a forlorn hope.
Like Sanjay Gandhi’s Emergency-era proclamations, which the Utsav instructions clearly echo (Sanjay said Each One, Teach One; it was a lot like Each One, Vaccinate One and all the other Utsav slogans), all this sounds better in a speech than it does on the ground.
How women voters are changing the political script across states, one at a time
How women voters are changing the political script across states, one at a time
Women outnumbered men by a wide margin of 3.6 lakh votes in 2016 Tamil Nadu Assemby polls. During Chhattisgarh elections, there was a 23 per cent surge in female turnout in 2013 compared to what was seen 2008.
advertisement
UPDATED: April 9, 2021 08:27 IST
Women outnumbered men by a wide margin of 3.6 lakh votes in 2016 Tamil Nadu assembly elections in.
There was a trend reversal of sorts in the 2016 assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. Women outnumbered men by a wide margin of 3.6 lakh votes, and the verdict came as a surprise, with incumbent AIADMK winning a successive term a first in the state in over three decades.
EVMs in a strong room. Representational image.
NEW DELHI: Voting in Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry have concluded on Tuesday. West Bengal yesterday completed its third and by far the most violence-hit round of polling out of eight phases with a voter turnout of 77.6% across 31 seats. Now, All eyes will be on the exit polls which will be out on April 29 once the election concludes in Bengal. The Election Commission has banned exit polls till 7:30 pm on April 29. Counting of votes will be done on May 2.
Exit poll is an opinion survey that is conducted to get a sense of how people voted in a particular election. Unlike opinion polls, which are based on responses gathered from a sample size, the exit polls gather data from the ground on polling day itself.