In early May, when the world’s attention was on the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan and the threat of war, India’s government released data that showed it in poor light. The new data from the civil registration system – the country's official record of births and deaths – showed that there had been about 3.7 million excess deaths during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. This suggested that India had massively undercounted deaths. The official toll till then had been recorded at a little more than half a million.

The data did not come as a surprise to public health experts and health reporters in India who had been documenting undercounting of deaths since the early days of the pandemic. Vidya Krishnan was one of those reporters. While the number confirms the widespread mismanagement of the pandemic in India, Krishnan says there is no point getting fixated on numbers because the “more dangerous thing is this government’s ability to completely dismiss millions of deaths as business as usual.”

In this episode of State of Southasia with Nayantara Narayanan, Krishnan recalls the horrors of the Covid-19 in India, especially during the second wave in the summer of 2021 when the Narendra Modi government’s apathy and politics resulted in a collapsed health system, millions of deaths that were made only too obvious by mass cremations and burials across the country. Krishnan says that the government abdicated its responsibility during the pandemic and that while India’s scientific community did not fail it, the political community did.

This episode is also available on:

🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/vdm6mWsFH0M

🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/43uTqaF

🎧 Website: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/vidyakrishnan-covid19-pandemic-modi-india

Episode notes:

Vidya Krishnan’s recommendations:

- Fire in the Blood – Dylan Mohan Gray (documentary)

- Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History – Vidya Krishnan (non-fiction)

- Covid-19: A View from the Margins – edited by Yogesh Jain and Sarah Nabia (non-fiction)

- Ologies – Alie Ward (podcast)

Further reading from Himal’s archives:

Sri Lankan Muslims’ lasting pain over Covid-era forced cremations
Translating a pandemic: The impact of COVID-19 terminology on Southasian languages
Pandemics have always revealed the weakness of the Indian state
Unmasking Southasia: The pandemic issue
What behavioural science tells us about the COVID-19 response
Pandemic or poison?: How epidemics shaped Southasia's legal history
Prisoners in a pandemic
The season of discontent
In sickness and in health

Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.

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