The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates released on May 5, claims that India’s Covid deaths between January 2020 to December 2021 at 4.81 lakhs was grossly under-reported. The actual figure cited by WHO is over 47 lakhs which is ten times the number officially released by India. As expected the Modi Government has contested the WHO figures and alluded to its being antagonistic towards India. Some doctors in India too have called the WHO report preposterous while others that have no ideological leanings have said that the truth could lie anywhere in the middle but that the official figures released by India are an attempt to hide the truth. They point to the dead bodies floating in the Ganga River because there was no firewood to cremate the bodies. These doctors who have adopted a neutral stand also claim that reportage on Covid deaths from most states were faulty or under-reported. Those contesting the WHO figures also claim that the Organisation’s data collection and modelling was faulty as the sampling was done from only 17 states. Others claim that the mathematical modelling and extrapolation was wrong.
Ironically, India is the only country out of WHO’s 194 member countries to have rejected the data and to push back against these estimates. What the WHO says is that while India experienced roughly 830,000 excess deaths in 2020 (by the end of its first wave), the country saw over 3.9 million (39 lakh) excess deaths in 2021. Of these, 2.3 million (23 lakh) took place over just two months – April and May 2021 – at the height of the second wave caused by the Delta Variant. This is not the first time that India has contested data released by different international organisations whether it be on unemployment or on press freedom. Recently the international media watchdog Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) or Reporters Without Borders showed a very pitiable picture of India’s press freedom ranking. This year India is ranked 150 out of 180 countries. Last year India was ranked 142. It is a matter of concern that on World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders and nine other human rights organisations asked Indian authorities to stop targeting journalists and online critics for their work. It added, “More specifically, they should stop prosecuting them under counterterrorism and sedition laws.” The RSF said the Indian authorities should respect the right to freedom of expression and release any journalists detained on trumped-up or politically motivated charges for their critical reporting and stop targeting them and muzzling independent media. India was very critical of this report too and cast aspersions on the RSF, calling it anti-India. The point is how long can India live in denial and to what effect.
