Only Political Action Can Mitigate the Disastrous Effects of Pegasus Spyware The technology cannot be rolled back. But it neednât be allowed to function as an unregulated, legitimate industry, reeling in profits, blossoming and flowering on the pulsing transcontinental highways of the free market. Photo: Gordon Johnson/Pixabay. Illustration: The Wire Tech16 hours ago Here in India, the summer of dying is quickly morphing into what looks very much like a summer of spying. The second wave of the coronavirus has retreated, after leaving an estimated four million Indians dead. The official government figure for the number of coronavirus deaths is a tenth of that â 400,000. In Narendra Modiâs dystopia, even as the smoke dwindled in crematoriums and the earth settled in graveyards, gigantic hoardings appeared on our streets saying âThank you Modijiâ. (An expression of the peoplesâ gratitude-in-advance for the âfree vaccineâ that remains largely unavailable and which 95% of the population is yet to receive.) As far as Modiâs government is concerned, any attempt to tabulate the true death toll is a conspiracy against India â as if the millions more who died were simply actors who lay down spitefully in the shallow, mass graves that you saw in aerial photos, or floated themselves into rivers disguised as corpses, or cremated themselves on city sidewalks, motivated solely by the desire to sully Indiaâs international reputation.