India's epidemic mirrors hypocrisy of US, West

By Qian Feng

GLOBAL TIMES

Published: Apr 25, 2021 


Multiple funeral pyres of COVID-19 victims burn at a site converted for mass cremations in New Delhi, India on Saturday. Indian authorities are scrambling to get medical oxygen to hospitals when the country reported a new global daily record of more than 346,000 infections for a third straight day. Photo: APThe US has refused India's request to ease exports for vaccine raw materials. Meanwhile, India's COVID-19 epidemic is getting into its "worst possible phase." By contrast, the US has celebrated its milestone of reaching the goal of 200 million shots. How ironic!

The US government has spiritually supported India in the epidemic fight in various occasions. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted on Sunday to show sympathy and support to the Indian people. He wrote, "Our hearts go out to the Indian people in the midst of the horrific COVID-19 outbreak. We are working closely with our partners in the Indian government, and we will rapidly deploy additional support to the people of India and India's health care heroes."

Nonetheless, as the US still faces challenges posed by COVID-19, it will continue to focus on meeting its domestic demands. Thus, in the near future it will be hard to see Washington give a substantial hand to other countries, including India, to fight the virus.

Countries like India should be aware that they are pawns to the US. They might be picked up when the US needs them, but then discarded like used tissue when they are not useful any more. The US has been attempting to bind India to its anti-China chariot. But when it is about support with practical moves, the US has stepped back with its commitment to take care of Americans "first and foremost." Hypocrisy of the US and the West has been exposed in this regard, together with their selfishness.

Some Indians have realized such hypocrisy. "If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it's that Western emphasis on human rights is one humungous farce," wrote K Bhattacharjee, an Indian author, at OpIndia media.

However, the US has attached special importance to India's strategic value as a leverage to suppress China. If India was weakened by the still wildly spreading COVID-19, it would obviously be less effective to the US' anti-China campaign. The US won't want to see this happen. So it is possible that Washington will reach out to New Delhi with some symbolic supports, including donations. In addition, the US-led Quad maybe has also disappointed India. At the "historic" Quad summit, the leaders of the US, Australia and Japan vowed to ramp up production of vaccines in India. This was done to counter China's vaccine distribution assistance to other countries and regions.

However, as India is more severely hit by the epidemic, both the US and Australia have issued only their vocal support. But Japan has remained silent so far. The Quad said it is committed to delivering up to 1 billion doses by the end of 2022 to address vaccine supply shortages across Southeast Asia and elsewhere. But the plan hasn't been carried out effectively. As a result, India will probably become reluctant when it comes to cooperating closely with its Quad partners.

When the US refused to help India with raw materials for vaccine, countries including China have expressed their good will to lend a hand. Actually, China has also capabilities to help its neighbor out. As a responsible major power, China clearly knows its international and regional responsibilities. It is willing to go through thick and thin together with its neighbors.



Photo:VCGNew Delhi hasn't responded to Beijing's olive branch. The Modi administration must be in a great hesitation. It desperately desires help from the international community as it is facing grave shortages of materials, including oxygen and personal protective equipment. Simultaneously, due to deteriorated relations with Beijing in recent years, New Delhi is restrained by domestic pressures from anti-China political forces.

What lesson can people draw from India's failure in getting a helping hand from the US? First, a big developing and emerging country as India should primarily focus on its own epidemic prevention to maintain its people's safety. This being the case, India should put aside all unrealistic diplomatic plans. India's attempts to earn influence by aiding others with COVID-19 vaccines go against not only Indian people's interests and epidemic prevention but also the country's future development.

Second, India should keep its strategic autonomy rather than tilting toward any side. India has been an upholder of autonomous development. But due to its geopolitical needs over the past few years, India has increasingly tilted toward the US and thus engaged in a game with China. But what India has been through has proven that the US and the Quad are not reliable.

It is believed that different voices from the international community will show that the real America does not care to help India right now as infections explode across the Asian country. India can perceive a very real America because of this.

The author is director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

Devastating epidemic 'may drag Indian economy back to 20 years ago'; China stands ready to help

By Zhang Hui

GLOBAL TIMES

Published: Apr 24, 2021 

Multiple funeral pyres of COVID-19 victims burn at a site converted for mass cremations in New Delhi, India on Saturday. Indian authorities are scrambling to get medical oxygen to hospitals when the country reported a new global daily record of more than 346,000 infections for a third straight day. Photo: AP

As India suffers its worst humanitarian crisis amid the devastating second wave of COVID-19 with the fastest rise in new daily cases any country has experienced since the outbreak, the Chinese government and enterprises have made goodwill gestures by offering help or donating medical supplies despite sour bilateral ties.

Chinese analysts, who project India's daily new cases may surge to 500,000 in two weeks, called on India to put aside political biases to learn from China in improving testing ability and building makeshift hospitals.

India has been breaking the record of the world's highest daily surge in the past days with more than 346,000 new cases and 2,624 deaths reported in the past 24 hours.

A shortage of medical oxygen, hospital beds and other necessary drugs continued to plague more hospitals in India on Saturday. Several hospitals either stopped admitting new patients due to no oxygen or posting SOS messages for help.

Moolchand Hospital in New Delhi tweeted on Saturday, "Urgent SOS help. We have less than 2 hours of oxygen supply."

Chinese analysts predicted daily new cases in India may peak at 500,000 in the next two weeks, and it needs at least a month optimistically for India to control the second wave. The real numbers are much higher than recorded as many homeless people infected with the virus have not been included, analysts said.

The worsening coronavirus situation in India will also deal a heavy blow to its economy, as its economy may be back to the size it was 20 years ago, and is likely to affect the stability of South Asia, Hu Zhiyong, who has closely followed the coronavirus situation in India since a year ago, told the Global Times on Saturday.

While expressing sympathies to India, the Chinese Foreign Ministry for two consecutive days this week said China is ready to provide support and help according to India's needs, and China is in communication with India on this, a good gesture that Chinese analysts said was the "friendliest signal" China has sent to India recently.

Donations from Chinese companies are also on the way.

With demand for medical oxygen cylinders skyrocketing in India, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi on Thursday announced it will donate INR 3 Crores to procure more than 1,000 oxygen concentrators for hospitals across India.

The Global Times learned from a source close to the matter on Saturday that a Chinese logistics company plans to donate 300,000 KN95 face masks to India, and the source is contacting recipients in India. A Chinese motorcycle company has donated more than 200,000 masks to a hospital in Delhi, and a Chinese company in the textile industry has purchased a ventilator in China and is sending it to a hospital in India.

Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital who shared China's epidemic control and prevention experience with many countries including India last year, told the Global Times on Saturday that with a large population, India's priority is to learn from China on strict prevention and control measures, including improving its testing ability to find more patients, and building field hospitals to quarantine and treat patients.

Wang said that these measures could effectively control the source of infection and cut the virus transmission route as China's experience showed that many patients were detected from testing.

Aside from providing medical supplies, China could help India with testing equipment, testing reagents, construction materials for building makeshift hospitals as well as technical support, Wang said.

A Chinese merchant in India told the Global Times on condition of anonymity that he's concerned Indian government may be reluctant to receive Chinese donations and help, and even if accepted, Indian politicians would not stop fanning the flames of anti-China sentiment for their political gain.

He said that Indian residents did not show any hatred toward Chinese in India, but it's those Indian politicians and media who incite nationalism.

The Times of India reported on Thursday that India was looking to import oxygen from countries in the Gulf and Singapore, but not China even if China said it is ready to help, as China was "not among the countries India was looking to source oxygen from."

India was excluding China's help, Hu said, noting that India should drop its ideological biases and put lives first.

India wants to move closer with Western countries led by the US. But Western countries are busy canceling diplomatic exchanges and suspending flights from India, and the US did not lift its restrictions of exports of vaccine raw materials that India urgently needs, Hu said.

India’s Worsening Democracy Makes It an Unreliable Ally

Salil Tripathi

TIME
Tue, June 20, 2023 

BJP Party Celebrate Modi Government's 9th Anniversary

A supporter of the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wears a mask of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he listens to speeches of the party leaders during a public rally in Srinagar. Thousands of BJP supporters attended the rally to mark the 9th anniversary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Credit - Firdous Nazir-Future Publishing

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in the United States on 21 June, which is World Yoga Day. Asserting India’s soft power, he will participate in a yoga demonstration at the United Nations headquarters in New York, while the Biden administration will be laying out the red carpet in Washington. On the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Japan last month, Indian media claimed President Joe Biden reportedly quipped to Modi that that his staff was struggling to cope with the demand surge for invitations to the State dinner he will host. Modi will also address a joint session of the Congress.

World leaders visit Washington all the time, but the hyper-nationalist Indian media sees American eagerness in welcoming Modi as a sign of India’s arrival on the international stage. The drum roll began in April, when commerce secretary Gina Raimondo gushed over Modi, anointing him as the world’s most popular leader, calling him “unbelievable” and “visionary.” The White House called India “a vibrant democracy.”


India’s pliant media is projecting the visit as unprecedented. Don’t rule out stories that count the number of times Congress members will applaud Modi, whether they stand up when they clap, measure the duration of the applause, and compare it with responses to similar addresses by former Indian leaders, hoping that Modi will set a record. For Modi likes adulation and believes in superlatives, and the bulk of the Indian media today aims to please him.

To be sure, India has arrived. The U.S. wants closer, stronger, and more meaningful relationship with India as a destination of investments, as a strategic ally, and as a bulwark against the rise of China. India is now the world’s most populous country. As it regularly holds elections, India is called the world’s largest democracy, although most indices that measure human rights or democracy show the precipitous decline in India’s record on both counts in the nine years Modi has been in power. Depending on how you measure economies, India is now the world’s fifth-largest—according to the World Economic Forum, it overtook its former ruler, the U.K., last year. While some international economists are skeptical over India’s public statistics, its chief economic adviser claimed in March that India’s economy grew 7.2% last year. It remains among the top ten destinations for foreign direct investment in the world.

No doubt India is a military power, and it is part of the Quad, a diplomatic alliance including Australia, Japan, and the United States, ostensibly intended to spread stability and prosperity in Asia-Pacific, but really a thinly-veiled alliance to rival China. Surely India is an ally of western democracies?

Not so fast. India unequivocally defended anti-colonial struggles until the end of the Cold War (it was one of the earliest countries to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa, and supported Palestine and many African liberation movements). But it has dragged its feet in supporting democracies since. The generals who annulled elections in Myanmar consider India a steadfast friend. It has issued only tepid, pious platitudes for peace in response to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. Its trade with Russia has not stopped, and it is accused of selling Russian oil in international markets undermining sanctions. It is wary of China, but only with regard to its disputed border; it has abstained U.N. resolutions on the treatment of Uyghurs and is unlikely to say anything meaningful if China invades Taiwan.

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, and Joe Biden show the peace sign with their hands at the G20 summit after the second working session. The group of G20, the strongest industrialized nations and emerging economies, meets for two days on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Kay Nietfeld/dpa

India’s interpretation of its own interests are therefore not aligned with western interests, and if its positions align with certain western positions, those have less to do with any perception of shared values, and more with defending its own perspective. Even if India’s non-alignment was never consistent, and John Foster Dulles in fact called it immoral, India saw it as a practical response in a polarized world. And the Modi administration’s differences with earlier Indian governments are only a matter of degree, and not of kind.

Western wooing of India is real. There is the roadmap of defense collaboration with the U.S., the proposed submarine deal being negotiated with Germany, and France has invited Modi as a guest of honor on Bastille Day this July. These measures suggest a qualitatively different relationship, for India wants to diversify its defense procurement, which is still overwhelmingly reliant on Russian weapon systems. But the ties with Russia are historic, and China is a formidable neighbor which occupies vast stretches of territory India considers its own, and Chinese incursions have only increased in recent years. And yet, other than cosmetic steps like banning Tik Tok, India has not retaliated. Bilateral trade has grown to $136 billion (an 8% increase over the previous year) and its trade deficit with China has widened to $100 billion. While India would love to attract investors who look for alternate destinations other than China as part of their de-risking strategies, other countries in Asia are also looking to attract the same investments.

Realpolitik apart, the U.S. does speak of building ties based on values, such as democracy and human rights. First, India has always been a flawed democracy, but its human rights record has worsened significantly during Modi’s tenure. Researchers Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia have identified about 250 non-violent political prisoners who were put in jail without being formally charged or tried between May 2014, when Modi came to power, until July 2022, in their forthcoming book, How Long Can The Moon Be Caged?. The detained prisoners include lawyers, writers, human rights activists, and other socially-conscious dissidents. According to watchdog Access Now, India leads the world in network shutdowns, and as western tech companies have learned, India browbeats telecom and social media companies to take down content and threatens them with police action if they don’t comply.

The treatment of Muslims, who form 14% of India’s population, has worsened. A 2019 report by Human Rights Watch documented 44 murders (36 of them being Muslim) by lynch mobs who killed people they suspected of possessing beef, consuming it, or trading cows. Muslims find it hard to buy or rent property, are denied permission to build mosques in some cases, and prevented from praying in public. Vigilantes prevent Muslims from praying at home. Female Muslim students in one state were banned from wearing head-scarves. A senior politician from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had welcomed convicted cow protectors with garlands. BJP-ruled states have passed laws to make it harder for inter-faith marriages from taking place. Right wing Hindus celebrated the early release of 11 men who were convicted of having raped a Muslim woman and murdered some of her family members during the massacres of 2002. Those incidents occurred when Modi was Gujarat’s chief minister and had failed to stop Hindu violence against Muslims. Modi was then barred from entry into the U.S. or the E.U. until India’s Supreme Court said Modi did not have a case to answer. A recent BBC film which blamed Modi for complicity, is banned in India.

Organizations that measure democracies have concluded that India’s democratic record has worsened. Freedom House has down-graded India to ‘partly-free’ status. India has fallen from 27 in 2014 to 46 in 2022, as per the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index. The V-Dem project of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden has relegated India to “electoral autocracy.” The Civicus Monitor calls India’s civil society environment to be “repressed.” The Pew Research Center survey shows India’s social hostility score has worsened. And the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders places India at 161, a historic low, down from 150, of the 180 countries it surveys. In the global impunity index of the Committee to Protect Journalists, India ranks 11th, with 20 unsolved murders of journalists.

More broadly, India’s rank in the U.N.’s Human Development Index has fallen slightly, from 130 the year Modi took office to 132, the International Food Policy Research Institute’s world hunger index shows India ranked at 107 out of 121 surveyed countries. the World Economic Forum’s gender gap index shows India ranked 135th of the 146 surveyed countries. Thomson Reuters Foundation calls India the world’s most dangerous country for women. Unsurprisingly, Cato Institute, which measures human freedom, downgraded India between 2015 and 2022 from 75 to 112.

These organizations are drawn from different countries, use different methodologies, and are not ideologically aligned. Yet, they present a consistent image of a country where freedoms are under peril. No doubt, such rankings can be arbitrary and subjective, and there may indeed be some methodological problems. For its part, India disputes many such findings.

This is hardly a report card any government should be proud of. But while such report cards annoy Modi, and his feisty foreign minister Dr S Jaishankar dismisses them pithily, Modi realizes two things: these organizations do not matter in India, and western governments note these concerns and privately might even agree, but publicly they are not about to challenge India. And so he goes on, his party members whip up religious passions to divert attention and he organizes picture-perfect spectacles. By raising the toast for Modi this week, the U.S. is helping him write the script of his re-election campaign and providing him excellent visual footage, which Modi will use to silence critics back home as his party prepares the script for the elections in 2024.

India Is Not a U.S. Ally—and Has Never Wanted to Be

Alyssa Ayres
Wed, June 21, 2023 

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, during a news conference in Sydney, Australia, on May 24, 2023. Credit - Brent Lewin—Bloomberg/Getty Images

With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi slated for a June 22 State Visit to Washington, India will, if briefly, be front-page news in the United States. Since President Clinton ended a chill in U.S.-India relations almost 25 years ago, successive American and Indian administrations across political parties have worked to strengthen ties. So it’s fair to ask: how robust is this relationship today? As with the blind men and the elephant, the answer varies. Is India a bad bet, or is it, as the White House senior Asia policy official said recently, “the most important bilateral relationship with the United States on the global stage”?

Despite careful nurturing by Washington over the years, many aspects of U.S. ties with India remain challenging. Bilateral trade has grown tenfold since 2000, to $191 billion in 2022, and India became the ninth-largest US trading partner in 2021. But longstanding economic gripes persist, meriting 13 pages in the 2023 Foreign Trade Barriers report from the U.S. Trade Representative. Multilaterally, India’s role in the fast-consolidating “Quad” consultation (comprised of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan) has brought shared purpose to Washington and New Delhi, both of which harbor concerns about China. But New Delhi also champions alternative non-Western groupings like the BRICS, and it remains outside bodies central to U.S. diplomacy like the U.N. Security Council and the G7.

Read More: Indian Prime Minister Modi’s Visit to Washington Is His Most Important So Far. Here’s What to Know

Today, U.S.-India cooperation spans defense, global health, sustainable development, climate, and technology, among other things. But deep differences remain, including concerns in Washington about India’s democratic backsliding under Modi, and India’s failure to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In other words, the U.S.-India relationship has been transformed over the past quarter-century, but that transformation has not delivered a partnership or alignment similar to the closest U.S. alliances.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. India is not a U.S. ally, and has not wanted to become one. To see relations with rising power India as on a pathway that culminates in a relationship like that the United States enjoys with Japan or the United Kingdom creates expectations that will not be met. Indian leaders across parties and over decades have long prioritized foreign policy independence as a central feature of India’s approach to the world. That remains the case even with Modi’s openness to the United States.
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For India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, protecting his country’s hard-fought independence was a guiding principle for foreign policy. Speaking in the Indian Parliament in March 1951, Nehru noted that “By aligning ourselves with any one Power, you surrender your opinion, give up the policy you would normally pursue because somebody else wants you to pursue another policy.” Twelve years later, evaluating his country’s nonalignment policy in the pages of Foreign Affairs, Nehru went on to observe that it had not “fared badly,” and that “essentially, ‘non-alignment’ is freedom of action which is a part of independence.”

American President Harry S. Truman shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the tarmac as Nehru’s sister, diplomat Vijaya Pandit, and daughter, future Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, stand with them, in Washington D.C., on October 11, 1949.

PhotoQuest/Getty Images

For famously allied Washington, nonalignment in the 20th century was a bridge too far; in 1956 then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proclaimed that neutrality was “an obsolete conception…immoral and shortsighted.” It did not help matters that the United States had entered an alliance with India’s arch-rival Pakistan in 1954, and sided with the Pakistani military in the bloody civil war that gave birth to Bangladesh in 1971. Nor, too, when Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed a “Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation” with the USSR in 1971, definitively tilting India toward the Soviet Union even as the United States had tilted toward Pakistan.

Especially since the end of the Cold War, Indian leaders have sought to improve ties with Washington, but not by curtailing India’s independent approach to foreign policy. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee proclaimed India and the United States “natural allies” in a landmark 1998 speech in New York. Yet this was perhaps more a term of art than a call for an alliance as it occurred against the backdrop of India’s nuclear tests, underscoring New Delhi’s willingness to upset global nuclear nonproliferation conventions, which it never joined. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose 10 years at the helm greatly improved Indo-U.S. relations, pursued a civil-nuclear agreement with Washington and ushered in new cooperation in high technology, defense, and clean energy. But his government too defended its principle of “strategic autonomy” as a redline for its foreign policy even as it moved closer to Washington than ever in the past. Defending the civil-nuclear deal with Washington before Parliament in 2008, Singh twice asserted that “Our strategic autonomy will never be compromised.”

Read More: What Modi’s Visit to Washington Tells Us About Indian American Voters

In important ways, Prime Minister Modi represents a break with India’s past, most notably in his emphasis on India’s Hindu, rather than syncretic and secular, cultural heritage. But his approach to the United States remains consistent with the history of his country’s foreign policy independence.

Modi has deepened ties with the United States, now across three U.S. presidents, through increased partnership in defense, in advanced technology, and in energy, just to name a few, as well as through moments of high symbolism, like his 2015 Republic Day invitation to former President Barack Obama, the first time an American president joined this day honoring India’s constitution. Even so, Modi has leaned into the United States while leaning into many other partners around the world. The Modi government invokes a Sanskrit saying, the “world is one family” (vasudhaiva kutumbakam), to frame Indian diplomacy. This approach has been termed “multialignment,” a theory of seeking positive ties as far and as widely as possible, without seeing contradictions in this approach.

In practice, New Delhi has carefully managed its relationships with Saudi Arabia as well as Iran; with Israel as well as the Palestinian Territories; with the United States as well as Russia. India’s G20 presidency this year encapsulates this orientation, with its Sanskritic theme of “One Earth, One Family, One Future,” and its twin efforts to lead the forum for the world’s 20 largest economies while self-consciously presenting itself as the “Voice of the Global South.”

With this history in mind, it’s easier to perceive that momentum in the U.S.-India relationship does not necessarily imply a path to a formal alliance or mutual defense treaty. In the United States, the mental model for positive international cooperation defaults to seeing “ally” as the ultimate endpoint. For India, that suggests a curtailment of independence. And with India, even as cooperation becomes more extensive than ever in the past, consequential differences remain.

Read More: How India’s Record-Breaking Population Will Shape the World

For many in Washington, the dramatic growth of coordination and joint activities under the Quad consultative group fills a growing need in light of China’s rise, encompassing subjects as far-flung as maritime security, infrastructure, climate and resilience, vaccines, technology standards, and higher education—all underlining Indian strategic convergence with the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Yet strategic convergence there does not mean everywhere: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its year-long war has elicited a tepid tut-tut from New Delhi, while India has escalated its purchases of cheap Russian oil at a time Washington seeks to isolate Moscow.

On closer examination this foreign policy independence and desire to define its own path so prized by India may offer lessons for U.S. foreign policy. The unipolar moment has passed; in its place we have more actors with their own perspectives, and a rising China with global ambitions and its own priorities increasingly shaping the priorities of others. The array of special relationships and alliances nurtured by the United States over decades are still in place, but many of these are now inflected by divergences with Washington. Take Turkey, or France, or Egypt, Pakistan, or Brazil. These U.S. allies do not always see their alliance relationship with Washington as barriers to taking decisions that contradict U.S. preferences. Indeed, President Emmanuel Macron too invokes “strategic autonomy.”

It’s here that India’s ambivalence offers a lens onto the world Washington is likely to encounter on a growing scale. In this world of more diffused power—a world with more diverse actors taking more distinctive foreign policy steps—partnerships and even alliances marked by substantial disagreements might be the new normal. In fact, managing ambivalence may be the central skill for American foreign policy in the years ahead.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism 

PHOTO ESSAY
In the salt deserts bordering Pakistan, India builds its largest renewable energy project

SIBI ARASU
Updated Wed, 6 December 2023

Workers carry a solar panel for installation at the under-construction Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park in the salt desert of Karim Shahi village, near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world. 

KHAVDA, India (AP) — Rising from the bare expanse of the large salt desert that separates India from Pakistan is what will likely be the world's largest renewable energy project when completed three years from now.

The solar and wind energy project will be so big that it will be visible from space, according to developers of what is called the Khavda renewable energy park, named after the village nearest to the project site.

At the site, thousands of laborers install pillars on which solar panels will be mounted. The pillars rise like perfectly aligned concrete cactuses that stretch as far as the eye can see. Other workers are building foundations for enormous wind turbines to be installed; they also are transporting construction material, building substations and laying wires for miles.

When completed, the project will be about as large as Singapore, spreading out over 726 square kilometers (280 square miles). The Indian government estimates it will cost at least $2.26 billion.

Shifting to renewable energy is a key issue at the ongoing COP28 climate summit. Some leaders have voiced support for a target of tripling renewable energy worldwide in any final agreement while curbing use of coal, oil and natural gas, which spew planet-warming gases into the atmosphere.

What makes this heavy industrial activity peculiar is that it's taking place in the middle of the Rann of Kutch in western India’s Gujarat state. The Rann is an unforgiving salt desert and marshland at least 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) from the nearest human habitation but just a short army truck ride away from one of the world’s most tense international borders separating the two South Asian nations.

GROUND ZERO OF INDIA'S CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION

When The Associated Press visited the renewable energy park, two days of unseasonal heavy rains had left the ground muddy and water logged since the only escape for water in this rough terrain is evaporation. This made it even harder for the workers to do their job.

Notwithstanding the tough conditions, an estimated 4,000 workers and 500 engineers have been living in makeshift camps for the better part of the past year toiling to get this project up and running.

Once completed, it will supply 30 gigawatts of renewable energy annually, enough to power nearly 18 million Indian homes.

As India aims to install 500 gigawatts of clean energy by the end of the decade and to reach net zero emissions by 2070, this project site will likely contribute significantly to the world’s most populous country’s transition to producing energy from non-carbon spewing sources.

As things stand, India is still mostly powered by fossil fuels, especially coal, which generate more than 70% of India's electricity. Renewable energy currently contributes about 10% of India’s electricity needs. The country is also currently the third-largest emitter of planet-warming gases behind China and the United States.

“There are people working here from all over India,” said KSRK Verma, Khavda project head for Adani Green Energy Limited, the renewable energy arm of the Adani Group, which the Indian government has contracted to build 20 gigawatts of the project. Verma, with over 35 years of experience building dams across turbulent South Asian rivers and enormous natural gas tanks under the Bay of Bengal, says this is one of the most difficult projects he’s undertaken.

“It’s not at all (an) easy site to work at, there is no habitation, the land is marshy, there are a lot of high winds, rains and this is a high earthquake prone area,” said Vneet Jaain, managing director of Adani Green at its headquarters in the city of Ahmedabad.

Jaain who has overseen multiple ambitious projects for the Adani Group said the first six months were spent just building basic infrastructure. “From April this year is when we started working on the actual project,” he added.

The Adani Group has been in the limelight this year ever since the U.S.-based short-selling Hindenburg Research firm accused the Group and its head, Gautam Adani, of “brazen stock manipulation” and “accounting fraud.” Adani Group has called the allegations baseless.

Jaain of Adani Green says the allegations have had little impact on its ongoing projects including work at the Khavda renewable energy park.

AN EXAMPLE TO EMULATE

“Twenty years ago, India was exactly where a vast expanse of (the) developing world was,” Ajay Mathur, director general of the International Solar Alliance, said of the country's renewable energy production. The alliance has 120 member countries and promotes renewable energy — primarily solar — across the world.

About 200 kilometers (124 miles) away in the industrial city of Mundra, also located along the Gujarat state’s coastline, the Adani Group is manufacturing the solar and wind energy parts needed for the project. It's one of the few locations in India where most solar energy components are made from scratch. Some of the factories are run like laboratories, with protective gear, face masks and head covers required to avoid dust particles that can compromise solar cells.

The nearby wind energy factory aims to produce 300 turbines a year, with each blade stretching nearly 79 meters (86 yards) and weighing 22 metric tons (24 tons). Each wind turbine generator is capable of producing 5.2 megawatts of clean energy. They will be India’s biggest.

As Mathur of the solar alliance said, “India has traveled a long way,” and its largescale renewable energy projects including the Khavda park will be inspiring for other developing countries. “Here is a country that was exactly where they are today and was able to make the change,” he said.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

While acknowledging the importance of transitioning to renewable energy, environmental experts and social activists say India’s decision to allow clean energy projects without any environmental impact assessments is bound to have adverse consequences.

“The salt desert is a unique landscape” that is “rich in flora and fauna,” including flamingos, desert foxes and migratory bird species that fly from Europe and Africa to winter in this region, according to Abi T Vanak, a conservation scientist with the Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. Vanak has overseen multiple environment-related research projects in the Kutch region.

Kutch and other similar regions are classified as “wastelands,” by the Indian government — and Vanak says this is extremely unfortunate. “They are not recognized as valid ecosystems,” he said.

With renewable energy projects exempt from environmental impact assessments, “There is no system in place” to determine the best places for them, according to Sandip Virmani, an environmentalist based in Kutch.

At a little over 45,000 square kilometers (17,374.5 square miles), the Kutch district is as big as Denmark and is India’s largest district. Given this, Virmani said there is enough land in Kutch for various renewable energy projects. But he fears that dairies and other local businesses in the region might be impacted by large-scale projects. “It has to be in the context of not compromising on another economy,” he said.

Meanwhile, longtime residents are still waiting to see how this huge project near their village will affect them.

Hirelal Rajde, 75, who has spent most of his life in Khavda, is mindful of the upcoming energy project as well as the increase in tourism in recent years in this otherwise desolate region. “I think these developments are both good and bad,” said Rajde.

“I think overall though it will benefit more than it will cause problems," he said. "I tell everyone who lives here to hold onto their land, don’t sell it. In a few years, I tell them they’ll have so much business that they won’t be able to rest even at night.”

___

Follow Sibi Arasu on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @sibi123 ___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Workers walk through a swamp to install electric transmission towers for the Adani Renewable Energy Park near Khavda, Bhuj district, near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world. 

Employees work at the site of Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park in the salt desert of Karim Shahi village, near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world.

A worker takes an afternoon nap during a lunch break at the construction site of Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park in the salt desert of Karim Shahi village, near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world. 

Trucks carry aluminium alloy frames to Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world. 

Employees work at the construction site of Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park in the salt desert of Karim Shahi village, near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world. 

Ahmed Ramzu, from the Maldhari community, milks a buffalo in Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world. 

Workers sit on a tractor trailer as they make their way to work at the construction site of Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park in the salt desert of Karim Shahi village, near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world.

Employees work on a wind turbine blade at the Adani New Industries Limited in the port town of Mundra in Western India's Gujarat state, India, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. It's one of the few locations in India where most solar energy components are made from scratch.

Employees work on a wind turbine blade at the Adani New Industries Limited in the port town of Mundra in Western India's Gujarat state, India, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. It's one of the few locations in India where most solar energy components are made from scratch. 

A sign is displayed at the construction site of Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park in the salt desert of Karim Shahi village, near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. India is developing a 30 gigawatt hybrid — wind and solar — renewable energy project on one of the largest salt deserts in the world. 

An employee works to transport a wind turbine blade for painting at the Adani New Industries Limited, one of India's largest solar panels and wafers manufacturing facility in the port town of Mundra in Western India's Gujarat state, India, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. It's one of the few locations in India where most solar energy components are made from scratch. 

Machine operators work on cell printing for solar panels at the Adani-owned Mundra Solar Techno-Park Private Limited, in the port town of Mundra in Western India's Gujarat state, India, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. It's one of the few locations in India where most solar energy components are made from scratch.

A worker makes arrangements of solar cells at the Adani-owned Mundra Solar Techno-Park Private Limited in the port town of Mundra in Western India's Gujarat state, India, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. It's one of the few locations in India where most solar energy components are made from scratch. 

A load lifter operator wheels past a solar panel display alongside an image of Gautam Adani inside the Adani-owned Mundra Solar Techno-Park Private Limited, in the port town of Mundra in Western India's Gujarat state, India, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. It's one of the few locations in India where most solar energy components are made from scratch. 

Solar panels are installed at an under-construction site of Adani Green Energy Limited's Renewable Energy Park in the salt desert of Karim Shahi village, near Khavda, Bhuj district near the India-Pakistan border in the western state of Gujarat, India, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. When completed, the project will be about as large as Singapore. 

(AP Photos/Rafiq Maqbool)

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi could have prevented India's devastating Covid-19 crisis, critics say. He didn't

MODI MASS MURDERER 

SACRIFICING TO  KALI 

By Julia Hollingsworth, CNN

Sat May 1, 2021

(CNN) On April 17, ahead of a state election, a maskless Prime Minister Narendra Modi boasted to a sea of cheering supporters: "I've never ever seen such huge crowds at a rally."
His country was on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. That day, India recorded more than 261,000 new coronavirus cases -- more than many countries have seen during the entire pandemic.
And it was only going to get worse. Each day since April 22, the country has reported more than 300,000 new cases -- at times, up to half of the daily cases reported globally. The capital New Delhi is now running out of wood for cremations. Hospitals are full and lacking oxygen. Only 2% of the population has been fully vaccinated. Foreign leaders are now rushing to India's aid.

While Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesman Narendra Taneja told CNN this week that responsibility for India's second wave belonged "first and foremost" to the government, he maintained the crisis could not have been foreseen -- despite countless countries being battered by second waves as new variants emerged globally.

Others in Modi's orbit have argued state governments are to blame for not imposing regional lockdowns and mismanaging their health care systems. Last weekend, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said oxygen shortages at hospitals were a problem not of supply but distribution, which he claimed was the responsibility of state governments.
But many in India believe responsibility lies with Modi and his Hindu nationalist government, which not only didn't prepare for a second wave but also encouraged mass gatherings at Hindu festivals and political rallies, including in a closely contested battleground state.
"The government has failed us all," Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the general secretary of opposition party Indian National Congress, said in a statement this week. "Even those of us who oppose and fight them could not have foreseen a complete abdication of leadership and governance at a time as devastating as this."


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A woman waits to receive a Covid-19 vaccine in Mumbai on April 18.
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Children wear face shields at a martial-arts class in Kolkata on April 5.
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People wear protective suits while watching a relative's cremation in New Delhi on April 28. Their loved one died from Covid-19.
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Umar Farooq mourns at the grave of his mother, a Covid-19 victim, in Srinagar.
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Health workers turn away an ambulance at the main entrance of the Lok Nayayak Jaiprakash Hospital in New Delhi on April 25.
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A man inspects an intensive-care ward after a fire broke out at a Covid-19 hospital in Virar on April 23. At least 13 Covid-19 patients were killed in the fire.
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This aerial photo, taken with a drone, shows a mass cremation in New Delhi on April 22.
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Ambulances carrying Covid-19 patients line up outside a government hospital in Ahmedabad on April 22.
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People line up for vaccines at an indoor stadium in Guwahati on April 22.
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A relative of a Covid-19 victim breaks down during a cremation in New Delhi on April 20.
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Police officers patrol a deserted street in New Delhi on April 20. The capital city has been on lockdown because of Covid-19.
Hide Caption
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Signs inform people that a vaccination center in Mumbai was out of vaccines on April 20.
Hide Caption
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Migrant workers crowd the Kaushambi bus station on April 19. They were trying to return home after a lockdown order was announced in the capital.
Hide Caption
20 of 30


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A woman waits to receive a Covid-19 vaccine in Mumbai on April 18.
Hide Caption
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Relatives of a Covid-19 victim mourn for their loved one outside a government hospital in Ahmedabad on April 17.
Hide Caption
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Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Migrant workers line up at a railway station to leave Mumbai ahead of a lockdown on April 14.
Hide Caption
23 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
People gather at a Srinagar mosque on the first day of Ramadan on April 14.
Hide Caption
24 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
A Hindu priest puts a face mask on an idol of the Goddess Ashapura during Navaratri celebrations in Beawar on April 13.
Hide Caption
25 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Hindu holy men wade into the Ganges River during the Kumbh Mela religious festival on April 12. People also packed the streets of Haridwar for what is the largest religious pilgrimage on Earth, and the massive crowds created concern.
Hide Caption
26 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Protesters wearing protective suits lie on a street near the Election Commission office in Kolkata on April 7. They were calling for a stop to the ongoing state legislative election and its associated campaign rallies.
Hide Caption
27 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Children wear face shields at a martial-arts class in Kolkata on April 5.
Hide Caption
28 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party wear masks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an election rally in Sonarpur on April 3.
Hide Caption
29 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Social distancing was not easy to achieve as people walked through a busy market in Old Delhi on March 27.
Hide Caption
30 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
People wear protective suits while watching a relative's cremation in New Delhi on April 28. Their loved one died from Covid-19.
Hide Caption
1 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
A man performs the last rites of a deceased relative on April 30.
Hide Caption
2 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
A health worker collects a nasal swab sample to test for Covid-19 in Siliguri on April 30.
Hide Caption
3 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Police personnel hold placards on their motorbikes during a Covid-19 awareness rally in Chennai on April 29.
Hide Caption
4 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Workers prepare beds for a Covid-19 isolation center that was set up inside a stadium in Srinagar on April 27.
Hide Caption
5 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Multiple funeral pyres burn in New Delhi on April 27.
Hide Caption
6 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
A health worker administers a Covid-19 test at a hospital in Noida on April 26.
Hide Caption
7 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Umar Farooq mourns at the grave of his mother, a Covid-19 victim, in Srinagar.
Hide Caption
8 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Health workers turn away an ambulance at the main entrance of the Lok Nayayak Jaiprakash Hospital in New Delhi on April 25.
Hide Caption
9 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
A worker digs a grave for a Covid-19 victim in Guwahati on April 25.
Hide Caption
10 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
A relative of a Covid-19 victim is consoled by another during a cremation in Jammu on April 25.
Hide Caption
11 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
People wait to refill their oxygen cylinders at a refilling station in Allahabad on April 24.
Hide Caption
12 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
A man inspects an intensive-care ward after a fire broke out at a Covid-19 hospital in Virar on April 23. At least 13 Covid-19 patients were killed in the fire.
Hide Caption
13 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
This aerial photo, taken with a drone, shows a mass cremation in New Delhi on April 22.
Hide Caption
14 of 30


Photos: India's Covid-19 crisis
Ambulances carrying Covid-19 patients line up outside a government hospital in Ahmedabad on April 22.
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Modi's pandemic PR moves

Modi has been keen to tie himself to positive aspects of India's pandemic responses.
Vaccinated Indians receive a certificate with his face on it. The Covid relief fund, a charitable trust which gathers voluntary contributions to help support those affected, is named PM Cares -- an acronym for Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund. It also bears Modi's face on its official website.

With his name tied to these positive initiatives, a first wave that avoided the catastrophic caseload some experts feared, and a roaring pharmaceutical industry that had produced a homegrown vaccine, India's pandemic response was on track to be a PR win for Modi. The country was positioning itself to help other countries, having exported more than 66 million doses of vaccines, rather than be the one in need of aid.

"(India) has saved the world, entire humanity, from a major tragedy by effectively controlling coronavirus," Modi boasted at the World Economic Forum on January 28.
With many in India feeling the pandemic was over, there was a slower take-up of vaccines there than expected. About 300 million of India's 1.3 billion population are illiterate, meaning they may have had less ability to investigate what was going on for themselves.

"You can't blame people for thinking 'maybe the government knows best, maybe things are back to normal, maybe we should go out and live our normal lives,'" said Pradeep Taneja, an expert on Asian politics at the University of Melbourne and a fellow of the Australia India Institute.

But the pandemic was far from over. By February, cases were beginning to tick up. The BJP, however, still claimed India had "defeated Covid under the able, sensitive, committed and visionary leadership" of Modi.

On March 7, when the country reported about 18,000 new daily cases, the Health Minister Vardhan said India was in the "end game of the Covid-19 pandemic." And on March 30, a day before authorities reported more  than 81,000 cases in a single day, Vardhan said: "The situation is under control."

Yet mutations had been circulating overseas for months, and epidemiologists in India believed another wave was coming. While the second wave was inevitable, its size took everyone by surprise, said Ramanan Laxminarayan, an economist and epidemiologist at Princeton University who is in New Delhi.

"I think there was a premature sense of optimism among many that was probably unwarranted and in hindsight has ended up being quite deadly," he said.
Asia politics expert Taneja said: "Modi was complacent, even arrogant in thinking that India had succeeded when more developed countries, countries with much stronger health systems ... were struggling."

Fury over the second wave

As it became clear India's cases were spiraling, Modi stayed largely silent -- and a second nationwide lockdown that some expected never came. In a national address last month, he actively advocated against a nationwide lockdown.

Modi's apparent inaction prompted a wave of anger, spurring hundreds to share hashtags on Twitter such as #ModiMustResign and #ModiMadeDisaster. This week, the national vice president of the Indian Medical Association, Navjot Dahiya, called Modi a "super spreader" for holding political rallies and allowing millions of pilgrims to descend on Haridwar in northern India, to celebrate the Hindu festival Kumbh Mela, local media reported.

"People expect their governments to assure them that they are in charge and taking care of things ... but the government is almost missing in action," Pradeep Taneja said. "Now that India is facing the worse crisis, in my lifetime, certainly, where is the Prime Minister?"

Members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party continue to hold rallies despite a devastating second wave of coronavirus gripping the country.


Naked Hindu holy men take dips in the Ganges River during Kumbh Mela, one of the most sacred pilgrimages in Hinduism, in Haridwar, northern state of Uttarakhand, India, on April 12, 2021.

This sort of criticism of Modi is remarkable in a country where he is seen by many as a "saintly" figure who always acts in the national interest, according to Asim Ali, a researcher at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research think tank. Modi's landslide 2019 re-election for a second five-year term gave him a sweeping mandate to push his Hindu nationalist agenda, in a country where 80% of the population is Hindu.
Despite this, experts believe Modi was too concerned about losing support to impose another nationwide lockdown.

When on March 24, 2020, Modi announced an unprecedented nationwide lockdown, India had only reported 519 cases. Buses and trains were brought to a halt, cross-state travel was banned, and most people weren't allowed out of their house unless they were buying groceries. Some called it the world's strictest lockdown.

That lockdown lasted months in some parts of the country. Although cases eventually fell after peaking in September, the elongated lockdown hurt India's millions of daily wage workers. The country's economy shrank by a record 24% in the second quarter, and GDP contracted by 6.9% overall last year.

This time, Modi has instead advocated for "micro containment zones," where restrictions are focused on areas of concern. It's been up to states to decide when and how to implement them. So far, at least eight of India's states and territories have some form of lockdown, ranging from a curfew in Karnataka and Gujurat states to a full lockdown in New Delhi.

The crowd during the first T20 international match between India and England at Sardar Patel Stadium on March 12, 2021 in Ahmedabad, India.

Rajeev Sadanandan, a former bureaucrat in the health ministry of the state of Kerala and CEO of non-profit Health Systems Transformation Platform, said the reason for that was simple: "Last time, the lockdown was widely criticized as a failure" because it came at a huge economic cost and suffering to the poor.
The legislative elections held over the past month in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu states, and Puducherry union territory, may have also been a factor. Two of those are BJP-run, while one -- West Bengal -- was a closely contested state. When asked why BJP had continued to hold rallies, the party's spokesman Taneja said the "autonomous" Election Commission of India allowed election events to proceed.
Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton's Clinical Informatics Research Unit, said aside from restricting gatherings and having clearer messaging, the government could have curtailed cross-country travel -- as it did during the first lockdown.

Lack of preparedness

As India enjoyed a relative period of calm at the beginning of this year, Modi could have been preparing his country for another battle with Covid-19, patching up health care gaps in preparation for a possible future outbreak.

Pradeep Taneja said there was "criminal negligence on the part of the government" to not prepare for another wave despite knowing other countries with better health care systems had experienced multiple waves.

Both the US and the UK were hit harder by their second waves than their first, despite warnings from experts. In the US, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said last June the US was preparing for a second wave by "filling the stockpile."

Despite local media in India reporting officials had warned of looming oxygen shortages in April last year, and then again in November, the government didn't appear to take action. Pradeep Taneja said it was "arrogant" for Modi to hold campaign rallies, rather than safeguarding the country's oxygen supplies.

The criticisms of the lack of preparedness in India's government, however, go beyond Modi.

In April, local media outlet The Caravan reported the country's national scientific taskforce -- a group intended to advise the central government on how to respond to the pandemic -- did not meet during February and March, as daily cases increased more than sixfold. CNN has contacted the chairman of the taskforce, V. K. Paul, for comment.
And India's health system has been underfunded for years. In 2018, India spent 3.5% of its GDP on health care, according to World Bank figures -- well below the world average of 10%, or the 17% spent in the US, which also battled to contain its Covid-19 outbreak. India has 0.9 physicians per 1,000 people, well under the world average of 1.6, or the US's 2.6, according to the World Bank.

As human rights activist Harsh Mander puts it, India had "starved" its public health systems for decades -- long before Modi's time in office.

An employee fills oxygen cylinders inside an oxygen filling centre on April 28, 2021 in Bengaluru, India.

Even before hospitals were overwhelmed, this impacted India's ability to monitor the virus. According to a paper published in February, India had only sequenced 0.06% of its reported cases. Its rate is lower than neighbors Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Sadanandan, the former Kerela health official, said most parts of India did not have an adequate surveillance system to keep track of the outbreak. But to him, that was a state-level failing -- not a central government one -- as health is a state issue. "I'm not surprised by what has happened because we've seen this happen for many epidemics," he noted.

Was it all Modi's fault?

To critics, while state leaders have some blame to bear, ultimately if Modi is going to take credit for India's pandemic wins, he also needs to take responsibility for its pandemic failings.

His extraordinary popularity means his actions have power -- so underplaying the risk of the pandemic could have influenced how millions of his followers across the country acted. By the start of this year, many people in India stopped wearing masks and many social distancing measures had fallen by the wayside.

It's too early to know if the grim scenes India is witnessing will tarnish Modi's reputation. There are still three years before the next general election, and Modi has no clear challenger.

Supporters of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wave towards a helicopter carrying Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi upon his arrival at a public rally at Kawakhali on the outskirts of Siliguri on April 10, 2021.

But Taneja expects to see a "significant reevaluation of the Modi government by the Indian public."
"No single person can be blamed for the catastrophe that India finds itself in. But if you are the Prime Minister, clearly the primary responsibility falls on you," he said.
Barkha Dutt, a Washington Post columnist whose father died from Covid a few days ago, said her father's last words were: "I'm choking. Please give me treatment." She felt angry and betrayed that as people across India battled the virus, politicians were still holding rallies. Dutt described Modi's government as "callousness," "tone deaf" and in "complete denial."

She said the health care system had clearly collapsed -- but that wasn't the fault of doctors, hospitals or frontline workers.

"We've been failed by the government that did not think to put in place a contingency plan for the second wave," she said. "Is anyone going to take accountability for the thousands that are dying?"

Esha Mitra and Manveena Suri contributed reporting from New Delhi. Akanksha Sharma contributed reporting from Hong Kong.